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Hier können weiträumig Umweltthemen besprochen werden.
Wo wir uns gut verhalten, wo wir uns schlecht, dumm und unverantwortlich verhalten, schlaue Studien, neue Erkenntnisse, neue Gesetze, ob die Marskolonialisierung letztlich alternativlos ist, was 'gut wäre'.
Und so weiter.
Are humans impacting the deep Earth? - ENN/PEO/JA - Aug 7, 2014
- Alex Peel -
http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=1737&cookie…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47679
"Human forays deep underground, such as boreholes, mines and nuclear bomb tests, are leaving a mark on the planet's geology that will last for hundreds of millions of years, say scientists.
In a new report, published in the journal Anthropocene, they say we are altering Earth's rocks in a way that's unique in the planet's 4.6 billion-year history.
The phenomenon adds weight to the 'Anthropocene' concept — the idea that we have changed the planet so dramatically that it has now entered a new, distinctive phase in its history.
Scientists disagree about whether the Anthropocene should be officially recognised as part of the geological timeline.
Until now, much of the focus has been on changes at the surface, to the atmosphere, oceans and ecosystems. But according to Dr Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester, who led the research, our influence below ground is just as pronounced.
'The underground world is not one that most of us experience directly,' he says. 'Effectively it's out of sight, out of mind.'
'But we're leaving a mark on the geology that will last for millions of years, probably more. Whatever we do in the future, that influence is only going to grow — we've set in motion a new phase in the planet's history.' "
Wo wir uns gut verhalten, wo wir uns schlecht, dumm und unverantwortlich verhalten, schlaue Studien, neue Erkenntnisse, neue Gesetze, ob die Marskolonialisierung letztlich alternativlos ist, was 'gut wäre'.
Und so weiter.
Are humans impacting the deep Earth? - ENN/PEO/JA - Aug 7, 2014
- Alex Peel -
http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/news/story.aspx?id=1737&cookie…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47679
"Human forays deep underground, such as boreholes, mines and nuclear bomb tests, are leaving a mark on the planet's geology that will last for hundreds of millions of years, say scientists.
In a new report, published in the journal Anthropocene, they say we are altering Earth's rocks in a way that's unique in the planet's 4.6 billion-year history.
The phenomenon adds weight to the 'Anthropocene' concept — the idea that we have changed the planet so dramatically that it has now entered a new, distinctive phase in its history.
Scientists disagree about whether the Anthropocene should be officially recognised as part of the geological timeline.
Until now, much of the focus has been on changes at the surface, to the atmosphere, oceans and ecosystems. But according to Dr Jan Zalasiewicz of the University of Leicester, who led the research, our influence below ground is just as pronounced.
'The underground world is not one that most of us experience directly,' he says. 'Effectively it's out of sight, out of mind.'
'But we're leaving a mark on the geology that will last for millions of years, probably more. Whatever we do in the future, that influence is only going to grow — we've set in motion a new phase in the planet's history.' "
IPCC warns over greater risk to food +water security - SciDevNet/IPCC/IRI/CCAFS/CfS&E/IEfE&D, NEW DELHI - APr 5, 2014
"Speed Read":
+ Extreme events such as floods +heat waves will hit key human resources
+ Climate change is likely to increase human displacement +conflict
+ The challenge is managing climate risks, particularly to coasts +islands ...
www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/news/ipcc-risk-food-wat…
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-TS_FGDall.pdf
"The climate change-related risks from extreme events such as floods and heat waves will rise further with global warming, aggravating food and water insecurity, especially for some of the poorest communities, says the second instalment of the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
The report of the second working group of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), dealing with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, and offering new insights into key risks due to climate change, was released this week (31 March) in Yokohama, Japan.
“Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri warned.
Christopher Field, the co-chair of the second working group, added: “We are not in an era where climate change is some kind of a future hypothetical. We live in a world where the impacts of climate change that have already occurred are widespread and consequential ... There is no question that we live in a world that is already altered by climate change.”
The report highlights many global shifts that climate change has already caused. It says that changing rainfall and melting snow and ice are affecting water resources in many regions. Glaciers continue to shrink, affecting run-off and water resources downstream. Permafrost is thawing. And wheat and maize yields have fallen in many regions.
The report also repeats warnings about shifts in species’ migratory ranges and the threats this may pose to food security. And it raises concerns about increased human displacement and resulting conflicts.
Impacts in Asia
Asia will be particularly hard-hit by water scarcity, food insecurity, the redistribution of land species and an increased risk to coastal and marine ecosystems, the report says. And it predicts that South Asia will be the region most impacted by global warming, due to more extreme weather events such as floods and droughts.
It has “rung warning bells for Asia” and has “very serious implications” for South Asia in particular, says Chandra Bhushan, deputy director at the Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based NGO.
A major reason for the greater impact in the region is its large population of impoverished people, says Bhushan. Bangladesh, India and Pakistan together account for almost half the world’s poor people, he says.
Purnamita Dasgupta, coordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on rural areas, and professor at the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi, tells SciDev.Net that the impacts of climate change “will add to the existing vulnerabilities of people in rural areas, such as lack of access to water and infrastructure”.
“We could have more poverty shocks because the poor are already disadvantaged,” she says, adding that climate change acts as a “threat multiplier”.
With 70 per cent of people in developing countries living in rural areas, the “rural poor would be impacted through reduced access to water” and “stand to lose whatever assets they have” with a rise in extreme events such as floods and drought, she says.
The report provides scientific evidence on how adaptation could reduce the risks that climate change will pose and how to manage those risks, Dasgupta says. “We now have enough evidence to show that adaptation is important.”
But Pachauri says that it is difficult at this stage to work out the costs of adaptation measures, as few countries are yet to practise it. But he agrees that the report highlights the urgent need for adaptation and “hopefully restores the balance between the need for both mitigation and adaptation measures” by countries.
He adds that there is a huge dearth of local knowledge on the kinds of adaptation needed in particular locations, and on which local institutions could be fully engaged in adaptation policies, practices and corresponding cost estimates. “That is a real gap” in knowledge that experts need to work on, he tells SciDev.Net.
Some positive messages
Yet the report says that “adaptation is already occurring” to an extent, as some governments are beginning to embed it in some planning processes.
“One thing that we have come up with is the importance of adaptation and mitigation choices because this is the only way we might be able to reduce the risks of climate change,” Pachauri said at a press briefing.
Camilla Toulmin, director of UK-based research organisation the International Institute for Environment and Development, said in a statement: “Some of the world’s least developed countries are already forging ahead. Ethiopia has committed to carbon-neutral development. Bangladesh has invested US$10 billion of its own money to adapt to extreme climatic events. Nepal is the first country to develop adaptation plans at the community level.” "
"Speed Read":
+ Extreme events such as floods +heat waves will hit key human resources
+ Climate change is likely to increase human displacement +conflict
+ The challenge is managing climate risks, particularly to coasts +islands ...
www.scidev.net/global/climate-change/news/ipcc-risk-food-wat…
http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WGIIAR5-TS_FGDall.pdf
"The climate change-related risks from extreme events such as floods and heat waves will rise further with global warming, aggravating food and water insecurity, especially for some of the poorest communities, says the second instalment of the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.
The report of the second working group of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), dealing with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, and offering new insights into key risks due to climate change, was released this week (31 March) in Yokohama, Japan.
“Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri warned.
Christopher Field, the co-chair of the second working group, added: “We are not in an era where climate change is some kind of a future hypothetical. We live in a world where the impacts of climate change that have already occurred are widespread and consequential ... There is no question that we live in a world that is already altered by climate change.”
The report highlights many global shifts that climate change has already caused. It says that changing rainfall and melting snow and ice are affecting water resources in many regions. Glaciers continue to shrink, affecting run-off and water resources downstream. Permafrost is thawing. And wheat and maize yields have fallen in many regions.
The report also repeats warnings about shifts in species’ migratory ranges and the threats this may pose to food security. And it raises concerns about increased human displacement and resulting conflicts.
Impacts in Asia
Asia will be particularly hard-hit by water scarcity, food insecurity, the redistribution of land species and an increased risk to coastal and marine ecosystems, the report says. And it predicts that South Asia will be the region most impacted by global warming, due to more extreme weather events such as floods and droughts.
It has “rung warning bells for Asia” and has “very serious implications” for South Asia in particular, says Chandra Bhushan, deputy director at the Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based NGO.
A major reason for the greater impact in the region is its large population of impoverished people, says Bhushan. Bangladesh, India and Pakistan together account for almost half the world’s poor people, he says.
Purnamita Dasgupta, coordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on rural areas, and professor at the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi, tells SciDev.Net that the impacts of climate change “will add to the existing vulnerabilities of people in rural areas, such as lack of access to water and infrastructure”.
“We could have more poverty shocks because the poor are already disadvantaged,” she says, adding that climate change acts as a “threat multiplier”.
With 70 per cent of people in developing countries living in rural areas, the “rural poor would be impacted through reduced access to water” and “stand to lose whatever assets they have” with a rise in extreme events such as floods and drought, she says.
The report provides scientific evidence on how adaptation could reduce the risks that climate change will pose and how to manage those risks, Dasgupta says. “We now have enough evidence to show that adaptation is important.”
But Pachauri says that it is difficult at this stage to work out the costs of adaptation measures, as few countries are yet to practise it. But he agrees that the report highlights the urgent need for adaptation and “hopefully restores the balance between the need for both mitigation and adaptation measures” by countries.
He adds that there is a huge dearth of local knowledge on the kinds of adaptation needed in particular locations, and on which local institutions could be fully engaged in adaptation policies, practices and corresponding cost estimates. “That is a real gap” in knowledge that experts need to work on, he tells SciDev.Net.
Some positive messages
Yet the report says that “adaptation is already occurring” to an extent, as some governments are beginning to embed it in some planning processes.
“One thing that we have come up with is the importance of adaptation and mitigation choices because this is the only way we might be able to reduce the risks of climate change,” Pachauri said at a press briefing.
Camilla Toulmin, director of UK-based research organisation the International Institute for Environment and Development, said in a statement: “Some of the world’s least developed countries are already forging ahead. Ethiopia has committed to carbon-neutral development. Bangladesh has invested US$10 billion of its own money to adapt to extreme climatic events. Nepal is the first country to develop adaptation plans at the community level.” "
Wir tragen Gift, wir essen Gift, wir vernichten den Planeten!!!
Dagegen ist kein Kraut gewachsen, Profit steht über allem!!!
Dagegen ist kein Kraut gewachsen, Profit steht über allem!!!
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.478.313 von buchi1971 am 10.08.14 09:29:32
Ganz so radikal würde ich es nicht sagen.
Aber im Prinzip solche Meinungen und Ansichten meine ich, auch.
Ganz so radikal würde ich es nicht sagen.
Aber im Prinzip solche Meinungen und Ansichten meine ich, auch.
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.478.313 von buchi1971 am 10.08.14 09:29:32
„Erst wenn der letzte Baum gerodet, der letzte Fluss vergiftet, der letzte Fisch gefangen ist, werdet ihr merken, dass man Geld nicht essen kann.“
- "Weissagung der Cree" -
„Erst wenn der letzte Baum gerodet, der letzte Fluss vergiftet, der letzte Fisch gefangen ist, werdet ihr merken, dass man Geld nicht essen kann.“
- "Weissagung der Cree" -
Trading Spotlight
$5.100.000.000.000 'to be' Invested in Renewable Energy, by 2030 - CT/3BLM/BBNEF - Jul 9, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/07/09/5-1-trillion-to-be-invest…
"$5.1 trillion dollars is one very big number. It’s a figure equal to just a little less than one-third of the U.S. economy’s annual GDP. $5.1 trillion is the amount that will be invested by 2030 to build new power plants that use renewable energy, according to a Bloomberg News Energy Finance report. Out of 5,000 gigawatts of power generation capacity to be added worldwide by 2030, renewable power will account for 4,000 gigawatts—nearly 80 percent of all new capacity. The leading technology in these new clean energy installations will be solar power, say the Bloomberg analysts. They predict that solar will be economically competitive with other power sources by 2020.
Falling prices for solar cells are making this power source a profitable business that doesn’t depend on subsidies for support. Decreasing prices for wind turbines are also driving the growth of wind power. Solar and wind power’s combined share of global generation will rise to 16 percent of the world’s total by 2030, up from its current 3 percent, predicts the Bloomberg forecast. And the report notes that this growth is taking place despite the downsizing of incentives for renewable energy from the U.S. and German governments. Since 2011, annual investment in renewable energy technologies has totaled more than the dollars invested in fossil fuel power generation. This upward trend for clean energy shows every sign of continuing to rise. "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/07/09/5-1-trillion-to-be-invest…
"$5.1 trillion dollars is one very big number. It’s a figure equal to just a little less than one-third of the U.S. economy’s annual GDP. $5.1 trillion is the amount that will be invested by 2030 to build new power plants that use renewable energy, according to a Bloomberg News Energy Finance report. Out of 5,000 gigawatts of power generation capacity to be added worldwide by 2030, renewable power will account for 4,000 gigawatts—nearly 80 percent of all new capacity. The leading technology in these new clean energy installations will be solar power, say the Bloomberg analysts. They predict that solar will be economically competitive with other power sources by 2020.
Falling prices for solar cells are making this power source a profitable business that doesn’t depend on subsidies for support. Decreasing prices for wind turbines are also driving the growth of wind power. Solar and wind power’s combined share of global generation will rise to 16 percent of the world’s total by 2030, up from its current 3 percent, predicts the Bloomberg forecast. And the report notes that this growth is taking place despite the downsizing of incentives for renewable energy from the U.S. and German governments. Since 2011, annual investment in renewable energy technologies has totaled more than the dollars invested in fossil fuel power generation. This upward trend for clean energy shows every sign of continuing to rise. "
Nun, da dieses ein deutsches Forum ist und auch nicht jeder (vorallem "ältere" Semester ) des englischen mächtig sind, sollten Beiträge nicht nur per Mausklick aus irgendwelchen Webseiten in englisch kopiert werden , sondern hier in Deutschland auch deutscher Sprache veröffentlicht werden. Wenn die Teilnehmer das nicht können, dann sollen sie m.M.n. die Finger still halten!!
Jack
Jack
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.532.424 von JACKYONE am 15.08.14 21:23:31
Hallo Jack,
Tut mir leid, aber da stimme ich Dir nur teilweise zu.
Wenn jemand deutsche Artikel hat, kann er sie, auch, geeern einstellen.
Aber man hat sich auch auf gewisse Umstände -in diesem Falle in Börsenforen- einzustellen. Und was Böre und Wirtschaft angeht dürfte nun mal der größte Teil von allem in englischer Sprache ablaufen.
Von daher von mir aus kööönnen gern, aber irgendetwas von "müssen", sorry -aber das kannst Du aus meiner Sichtt komplett vergessen.
Gruß
P.
Hallo Jack,
Tut mir leid, aber da stimme ich Dir nur teilweise zu.
Wenn jemand deutsche Artikel hat, kann er sie, auch, geeern einstellen.
Aber man hat sich auch auf gewisse Umstände -in diesem Falle in Börsenforen- einzustellen. Und was Böre und Wirtschaft angeht dürfte nun mal der größte Teil von allem in englischer Sprache ablaufen.
Von daher von mir aus kööönnen gern, aber irgendetwas von "müssen", sorry -aber das kannst Du aus meiner Sichtt komplett vergessen.
Gruß
P.
South Africa's coal clean-up digs deep, with gasification; South Africa produces almost all of its power from coal-fired plants that pollute the air with dark clouds of smoke +fail to generate enough electricity, to avert blackouts. Now, if scientists are right, coal in the future could produce electricity without ever leaving the ground
www.miningweekly.com/article/south-africas-coal-clean-up-dig…
" South Africa produces almost all of its power from coal-fired plants that pollute the air with dark clouds of smoke and fail to generate enough electricity to avert blackouts.
Now, if scientists are right, coal in the future could produce electricity without ever leaving the ground.
State power utility Eskom wants to address both South Africa's supply shortfall and its carbon emissions by burning its vast coal reserves underground to produce gas for more efficient, cleaner electricity.
An experimental technology dubbed underground coal gasification (UCG), which is also being developed in Australia, Canada, India and China, could be especially important for South Africa, which relies on coal for nearly 90% of its power.
"It could have the double benefit of boosting electricity and reducing carbon emissions," said Steve Lennon, an Eskom sustainability executive leading the UCG programme.
UCG involves drilling wells to previously unrecoverable coal reserves hundreds of metres underground and injecting steam and oxygen to ignite a combustion process which produces a synthetic gas that can be used as fuel.
Separate, steel-lined, sealed wells are drilled to carry up the gas.
Scientists say the process promises to be much cleaner than coal mining because much of the carbon dioxide, ash and other pollutants produced can be stored deep underground.
The gas can be used to replace coal in existing power plants, fire gas turbine facilities or for heating and cooking. The approach promises to be cheaper than coal mining too because it eliminates transportation and ash disposal costs.
It could also massively increase global coal reserves as it burns coal far deeper than miners can reach. Experts estimate it could more than double South Africa's reserves.
CLEANER
South Africa is the twelfth-largest carbon emitter in the world and by far the biggest on the continent, prompting the government to discuss legislation to clean-up its power sector.
Ministers may now choose to push ahead with cleaner options such as wind, solar, nuclear and shale gas. However, with the world's seventh-largest reserves, coal is likely to remain an important source of power generation.
"Coal is here to stay in South Africa and UCG offers the opportunity to use that coal in a much cleaner and more efficient fashion," said Eskom's Lennon, adding that he was in discussions with private companies about investing in UCG.
Eskom has been developing UCG for ten years and is investing a further R1-billion ($94-million) in research over the next five years, when it hopes to give the green light for the technology to be rolled out.
The utility is looking for ways to keep up with rising power demand and rein in spiralling costs, which threaten to push electricity prices above inflation and burden Africa's most developed economy.
Lennon says Eskom is committed to funding new technology and UCG research is not under threat, although many hurdles remain.
"When we first started the biggest challenges were technological," Lennon said. "We've overcome that."
"Now the challenges we face are regulation, legislation and the next big one will be costs. Can we make sure this is a cost-competitive technology? The indications are we can."
Lennon says he hopes UCG will produce power at around $5 to $6 per kilojoule, less than half the cost of its obvious competitor, imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), but around double that of shale gas in the United States.
For now, UCG remains a frontier technology and much could change in global energy in the five years before South Africa expects to harness it.
It could also face resistance from environmentalists who are concerned about how UCG can be controlled and its potential dangers accurately assessed due to the depth of operations.
There is also concern that the process in the long term could raise the country's carbon output, not lower it, by sustaining the use of the fossil fuel.
Yet many experts are optimistic.
"UCG has very large potential. It will probably be the successor to conventional coal mining," said Xavier Prévost, senior coal analyst at Pretoria-based XMP Consulting.
"It fits in perfectly with South Africa's needs because it will create energy and minimise emissions."
Edited by: Reuters "
www.miningweekly.com/article/south-africas-coal-clean-up-dig…
" South Africa produces almost all of its power from coal-fired plants that pollute the air with dark clouds of smoke and fail to generate enough electricity to avert blackouts.
Now, if scientists are right, coal in the future could produce electricity without ever leaving the ground.
State power utility Eskom wants to address both South Africa's supply shortfall and its carbon emissions by burning its vast coal reserves underground to produce gas for more efficient, cleaner electricity.
An experimental technology dubbed underground coal gasification (UCG), which is also being developed in Australia, Canada, India and China, could be especially important for South Africa, which relies on coal for nearly 90% of its power.
"It could have the double benefit of boosting electricity and reducing carbon emissions," said Steve Lennon, an Eskom sustainability executive leading the UCG programme.
UCG involves drilling wells to previously unrecoverable coal reserves hundreds of metres underground and injecting steam and oxygen to ignite a combustion process which produces a synthetic gas that can be used as fuel.
Separate, steel-lined, sealed wells are drilled to carry up the gas.
Scientists say the process promises to be much cleaner than coal mining because much of the carbon dioxide, ash and other pollutants produced can be stored deep underground.
The gas can be used to replace coal in existing power plants, fire gas turbine facilities or for heating and cooking. The approach promises to be cheaper than coal mining too because it eliminates transportation and ash disposal costs.
It could also massively increase global coal reserves as it burns coal far deeper than miners can reach. Experts estimate it could more than double South Africa's reserves.
CLEANER
South Africa is the twelfth-largest carbon emitter in the world and by far the biggest on the continent, prompting the government to discuss legislation to clean-up its power sector.
Ministers may now choose to push ahead with cleaner options such as wind, solar, nuclear and shale gas. However, with the world's seventh-largest reserves, coal is likely to remain an important source of power generation.
"Coal is here to stay in South Africa and UCG offers the opportunity to use that coal in a much cleaner and more efficient fashion," said Eskom's Lennon, adding that he was in discussions with private companies about investing in UCG.
Eskom has been developing UCG for ten years and is investing a further R1-billion ($94-million) in research over the next five years, when it hopes to give the green light for the technology to be rolled out.
The utility is looking for ways to keep up with rising power demand and rein in spiralling costs, which threaten to push electricity prices above inflation and burden Africa's most developed economy.
Lennon says Eskom is committed to funding new technology and UCG research is not under threat, although many hurdles remain.
"When we first started the biggest challenges were technological," Lennon said. "We've overcome that."
"Now the challenges we face are regulation, legislation and the next big one will be costs. Can we make sure this is a cost-competitive technology? The indications are we can."
Lennon says he hopes UCG will produce power at around $5 to $6 per kilojoule, less than half the cost of its obvious competitor, imported liquefied natural gas (LNG), but around double that of shale gas in the United States.
For now, UCG remains a frontier technology and much could change in global energy in the five years before South Africa expects to harness it.
It could also face resistance from environmentalists who are concerned about how UCG can be controlled and its potential dangers accurately assessed due to the depth of operations.
There is also concern that the process in the long term could raise the country's carbon output, not lower it, by sustaining the use of the fossil fuel.
Yet many experts are optimistic.
"UCG has very large potential. It will probably be the successor to conventional coal mining," said Xavier Prévost, senior coal analyst at Pretoria-based XMP Consulting.
"It fits in perfectly with South Africa's needs because it will create energy and minimise emissions."
Edited by: Reuters "
Zitat von Popeye82: Hallo Jack,
Tut mir leid, aber da stimme ich Dir nur teilweise zu.
Wenn jemand deutsche Artikel hat, kann er sie, auch, geeern einstellen.
Aber man hat sich auch auf gewisse Umstände -in diesem Falle in Börsenforen- einzustellen. Und was Böre und Wirtschaft angeht dürfte nun mal der größte Teil von allem in englischer Sprache ablaufen.
Von daher von mir aus kööönnen gern, aber irgendetwas von "müssen", sorry -aber das kannst Du aus meiner Sichtt komplett vergessen.
Gruß
P.
Nun, das ist deine Meinung - OK - zeugt aber von absoluter Ignoranz und Arroganz.
Du schreibst als ersten Satz :
Hier können weiträumig Umweltthemen besprochen werden.
So wies ausschaut wirsd du mit deiner Einstellung hier den Alleinunterhalter spielen müssen - oder glaubst du ernsthaft, dass jeder, der etwas Schulenglisch kann, deine kopierten Sachen samt englischen Fachausdrücken
versteht? Vergiß es, nach zwei Sätzen hat fast jeder das Interesse verloren. Da iss nix mit "besprechen" .
Wenn du englisch schreiben willst , dann such dir ein englischsprachiges Forum.
Jack
Nachtrag
Wer ernsthaft sowas meint :
ob die Marskolonialisierung letztlich alternativlos ist, was 'gut wäre'.
Und so weiter.
Hat m.M.n. eh ein Rad ab.
Wer ernsthaft sowas meint :
ob die Marskolonialisierung letztlich alternativlos ist, was 'gut wäre'.
Und so weiter.
Hat m.M.n. eh ein Rad ab.
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.537.035 von JACKYONE am 16.08.14 22:28:41
Das ist meiner Meinung nach falsch.
Zitat von JACKYONE: zeugt aber von absoluter Ignoranz und Arroganz.
Das ist meiner Meinung nach falsch.
Brillenträger @work.
Making 'eco-friendly 'pre-fab' nanoparticles' - NW/NL/UoMA/EFRC/DoE, MASSACHUSSETTS - Aug 12, 2014http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl502209s" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl502209s
www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=36907.php
"A team of materials chemists, polymer scientists, device physicists and others at the University of Massachusetts Amherst today report a breakthrough technique for controlling molecular assembly of nanoparticles over multiple length scales that should allow faster, cheaper, more ecologically friendly manufacture of organic photovoltaics and other electronic devices. Details are in the current issue of Nano Letters ("Multiscale Active Layer Morphologies for Organic Photovoltaics Through Self-Assembly of Nanospheres").
- Postdoctoral research associate Monojit Bag (left) and graduate student Tim Gehan (right) synthesize polymer nanoparticles for use in organic-based solar cells being made at the UMass Amherst-based energy center. Deep purple nanoparticles are forming in the small glass container above Gehan’s left hand. -
Lead investigator, chemist Dhandapani Venkataraman, points out that the new techniques successfully address two major goals for device manufacture: controlling molecular assembly and avoiding toxic solvents like chlorobenzene. “Now we have a rational way of controlling this assembly in a water-based system,” he says. “It’s a completely new way to look at problems. With this technique we can force it into the exact structure that you want.”
Materials chemist Paul Lahti, co-director with Thomas Russell of UMass Amherst’s Energy Frontiers Research Center (EFRC) supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, says, “One of the big implications of this work is that it goes well beyond organic photovoltaics or solar cells, where this advance is being applied right now. Looking at the bigger picture, this technique offers a very promising, flexible and ecologically friendly new approach to assembling materials to make device structures.”
Lahti likens the UMass Amherst team’s advance in materials science to the kind of benefits the construction industry saw with prefabricated building units. “This strategy is right along that general philosophical line,” he says. “Our group discovered a way to use sphere packing to get all sorts of materials to behave themselves in a water solution before they are sprayed onto surfaces in thin layers and assembled into a module. We are pre-assembling some basic building blocks with a few predictable characteristics, which are then available to build your complex device.”
“Somebody still has to hook it up and fit it out the way they want,” Lahti adds. “It’s not finished, but many parts are pre-assembled. And you can order characteristics that you need, for example, a certain electron flow direction or strength. All the modules can be tuned to have the ability to provide electron availability in a certain way. The availability can be adjusted, and we’ve shown that it works.”
The new method should reduce the time nano manufacturing firms spend in trial-and-error searches for materials to make electronic devices such as solar cells, organic transistors and organic light-emitting diodes. “The old way can take years,” Lahti says.
“Another of our main objectives is to make something that can be scaled up from nano- to mesoscale, and our method does that. It is also much more ecologically friendly because we use water instead of dangerous solvents in the process,” he adds.
For photovoltaics, Venkataraman points out, “The next thing is to make devices with other polymers coming along, to increase power conversion efficiency and to make them on flexible substrates. In this paper we worked on glass, but we want to translate to flexible materials and produce roll-to-roll manufactured materials with water. We expect to actually get much greater efficiency.” He suggests that reaching 5 percent power conversion efficiency would justify the investment for making small, flexible solar panels to power devices such as smart phones.
If the average smart phone uses 5 watts of power and all 307 million United States users switched from batteries to flexible solar, it could save more than 1500 megawatts per year. “That’s nearly the output of a nuclear power station,” Venkataraman says, “and it’s more dramatic when you consider that coal-fired power plants generate 1 megawatt and release 2,250 lbs. of carbon dioxide. So if a fraction of the 6.6 billion mobile phone users globally changed to solar, it would reduce our carbon footprint a lot.”
Doctoral student and first author Tim Gehan says that organic solar cells made in this way can be semi-transparent, as well, “so you could replace tinted windows in a skyscraper and have them all producing electricity during the day when it’s needed. And processing is much cheaper and cleaner with our cells than in traditional methods.”
Venkataraman credits organic materials chemist Gehan, with postdoctoral fellow and device physicist Monojit Bag, with making “crucial observations” and using “persistent detective work” to get past various roadblocks in the experiments. “These two were outstanding in helping this story move ahead,” he notes. For their part, Gehan and Bag say they got critical help from the Amherst Fire Department, which loaned them an infrared camera to pinpoint some problem hot spots on a device.
It was Bag who put similar sized and charged nanoparticles together to form a building block, then used an artist’s airbrush to spray layers of electrical circuits atop each other to create a solar-powered device. He says, “Here we pre-formed structures at nanoscale so they will form a known structure assembled at the meso scale, from which you can make a device. Before, you just hoped your two components in solution would form the right mesostructure, but with this technique we can direct it to that end.”
Source: University of Massachusetts Amherst "
Making 'eco-friendly 'pre-fab' nanoparticles' - NW/NL/UoMA/EFRC/DoE, MASSACHUSSETTS - Aug 12, 2014http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl502209s" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl502209s
www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology-news/newsid=36907.php
"A team of materials chemists, polymer scientists, device physicists and others at the University of Massachusetts Amherst today report a breakthrough technique for controlling molecular assembly of nanoparticles over multiple length scales that should allow faster, cheaper, more ecologically friendly manufacture of organic photovoltaics and other electronic devices. Details are in the current issue of Nano Letters ("Multiscale Active Layer Morphologies for Organic Photovoltaics Through Self-Assembly of Nanospheres").
- Postdoctoral research associate Monojit Bag (left) and graduate student Tim Gehan (right) synthesize polymer nanoparticles for use in organic-based solar cells being made at the UMass Amherst-based energy center. Deep purple nanoparticles are forming in the small glass container above Gehan’s left hand. -
Lead investigator, chemist Dhandapani Venkataraman, points out that the new techniques successfully address two major goals for device manufacture: controlling molecular assembly and avoiding toxic solvents like chlorobenzene. “Now we have a rational way of controlling this assembly in a water-based system,” he says. “It’s a completely new way to look at problems. With this technique we can force it into the exact structure that you want.”
Materials chemist Paul Lahti, co-director with Thomas Russell of UMass Amherst’s Energy Frontiers Research Center (EFRC) supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, says, “One of the big implications of this work is that it goes well beyond organic photovoltaics or solar cells, where this advance is being applied right now. Looking at the bigger picture, this technique offers a very promising, flexible and ecologically friendly new approach to assembling materials to make device structures.”
Lahti likens the UMass Amherst team’s advance in materials science to the kind of benefits the construction industry saw with prefabricated building units. “This strategy is right along that general philosophical line,” he says. “Our group discovered a way to use sphere packing to get all sorts of materials to behave themselves in a water solution before they are sprayed onto surfaces in thin layers and assembled into a module. We are pre-assembling some basic building blocks with a few predictable characteristics, which are then available to build your complex device.”
“Somebody still has to hook it up and fit it out the way they want,” Lahti adds. “It’s not finished, but many parts are pre-assembled. And you can order characteristics that you need, for example, a certain electron flow direction or strength. All the modules can be tuned to have the ability to provide electron availability in a certain way. The availability can be adjusted, and we’ve shown that it works.”
The new method should reduce the time nano manufacturing firms spend in trial-and-error searches for materials to make electronic devices such as solar cells, organic transistors and organic light-emitting diodes. “The old way can take years,” Lahti says.
“Another of our main objectives is to make something that can be scaled up from nano- to mesoscale, and our method does that. It is also much more ecologically friendly because we use water instead of dangerous solvents in the process,” he adds.
For photovoltaics, Venkataraman points out, “The next thing is to make devices with other polymers coming along, to increase power conversion efficiency and to make them on flexible substrates. In this paper we worked on glass, but we want to translate to flexible materials and produce roll-to-roll manufactured materials with water. We expect to actually get much greater efficiency.” He suggests that reaching 5 percent power conversion efficiency would justify the investment for making small, flexible solar panels to power devices such as smart phones.
If the average smart phone uses 5 watts of power and all 307 million United States users switched from batteries to flexible solar, it could save more than 1500 megawatts per year. “That’s nearly the output of a nuclear power station,” Venkataraman says, “and it’s more dramatic when you consider that coal-fired power plants generate 1 megawatt and release 2,250 lbs. of carbon dioxide. So if a fraction of the 6.6 billion mobile phone users globally changed to solar, it would reduce our carbon footprint a lot.”
Doctoral student and first author Tim Gehan says that organic solar cells made in this way can be semi-transparent, as well, “so you could replace tinted windows in a skyscraper and have them all producing electricity during the day when it’s needed. And processing is much cheaper and cleaner with our cells than in traditional methods.”
Venkataraman credits organic materials chemist Gehan, with postdoctoral fellow and device physicist Monojit Bag, with making “crucial observations” and using “persistent detective work” to get past various roadblocks in the experiments. “These two were outstanding in helping this story move ahead,” he notes. For their part, Gehan and Bag say they got critical help from the Amherst Fire Department, which loaned them an infrared camera to pinpoint some problem hot spots on a device.
It was Bag who put similar sized and charged nanoparticles together to form a building block, then used an artist’s airbrush to spray layers of electrical circuits atop each other to create a solar-powered device. He says, “Here we pre-formed structures at nanoscale so they will form a known structure assembled at the meso scale, from which you can make a device. Before, you just hoped your two components in solution would form the right mesostructure, but with this technique we can direct it to that end.”
Source: University of Massachusetts Amherst "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.537.041 von JACKYONE am 16.08.14 22:31:23
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.591.530 von Popeye82 am 23.08.14 12:03:16
Environmentalism and the Fear of Disorder
Greens engage in rituals to allay their anxieties.
Why do people recycle and buy organic foods? According to Marijn Meijers and Bastiaan Rutjens, a couple of social scientists at the University of Amsterdam, they do it to realize a sense of personal control stemming from their fear that disorder is increasing in the world. Technological optimists, meanwhile, are more likely to eschew the comfort of such rituals....
http://reason.com/archives/2014/08/22/environmentalism-and-t…
Greens engage in rituals to allay their anxieties.
Why do people recycle and buy organic foods? According to Marijn Meijers and Bastiaan Rutjens, a couple of social scientists at the University of Amsterdam, they do it to realize a sense of personal control stemming from their fear that disorder is increasing in the world. Technological optimists, meanwhile, are more likely to eschew the comfort of such rituals....
http://reason.com/archives/2014/08/22/environmentalism-and-t…
mousepotatoe, Zu diesem Thema haben wir mutmasslich einen gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanz kleinen Dissenz. 
How Cutting Emissions Pays Off - ENN/MIT - Aug 25, 2014
- Audrey Resutek -
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/cutting-carbon-health-care-sa…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47754
"Lower rates of asthma and other health problems are frequently cited as benefits of policies aimed at cutting carbon emissions from sources like power plants and vehicles, because these policies also lead to reductions in other harmful types of air pollution.
But just how large are the health benefits of cleaner air in comparison to the costs of reducing carbon emissions? MIT researchers looked at three policies achieving the same reductions in the United States, and found that the savings on health care spending and other costs related to illness can be big — in some cases, more than 10 times the cost of policy implementation.
"Carbon-reduction policies significantly improve air quality," says Noelle Selin, an assistant professor of engineering systems and atmospheric chemistry at MIT, and co-author of a study published today in Nature Climate Change. "In fact, policies aimed at cutting carbon emissions improve air quality by a similar amount as policies specifically targeting air pollution."
Selin and colleagues compared the health benefits to the economic costs of three climate policies: a clean-energy standard, a transportation policy, and a cap-and-trade program. The three were designed to resemble proposed U.S. climate policies, with the clean-energy standard requiring emissions reductions from power plants similar to those proposed in the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan.
Health savings constant across policies
The researchers found that savings from avoided health problems could recoup 26 percent of the cost to implement a transportation policy, but up to to 10.5 times the cost of implementing a cap-and-trade program. The difference depended largely on the costs of the policies, as the savings — in the form of avoided medical care and saved sick days — remained roughly constant: Policies aimed at specific sources of air pollution, such as power plants and vehicles, did not lead to substantially larger benefits than cheaper policies, such as a cap-and-trade approach.
Savings from health benefits dwarf the estimated $14 billion cost of a cap-and-trade program. At the other end of the spectrum, a transportation policy with rigid fuel-economy requirements is the most expensive policy, costing more than $1 trillion in 2006 dollars, with health benefits recouping only a quarter of those costs. The price tag of a clean energy standard fell between the costs of the two other policies, with associated health benefits just edging out costs, at $247 billion versus $208 billion. "
How Cutting Emissions Pays Off - ENN/MIT - Aug 25, 2014
- Audrey Resutek -
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/cutting-carbon-health-care-sa…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47754
"Lower rates of asthma and other health problems are frequently cited as benefits of policies aimed at cutting carbon emissions from sources like power plants and vehicles, because these policies also lead to reductions in other harmful types of air pollution.
But just how large are the health benefits of cleaner air in comparison to the costs of reducing carbon emissions? MIT researchers looked at three policies achieving the same reductions in the United States, and found that the savings on health care spending and other costs related to illness can be big — in some cases, more than 10 times the cost of policy implementation.
"Carbon-reduction policies significantly improve air quality," says Noelle Selin, an assistant professor of engineering systems and atmospheric chemistry at MIT, and co-author of a study published today in Nature Climate Change. "In fact, policies aimed at cutting carbon emissions improve air quality by a similar amount as policies specifically targeting air pollution."
Selin and colleagues compared the health benefits to the economic costs of three climate policies: a clean-energy standard, a transportation policy, and a cap-and-trade program. The three were designed to resemble proposed U.S. climate policies, with the clean-energy standard requiring emissions reductions from power plants similar to those proposed in the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan.
Health savings constant across policies
The researchers found that savings from avoided health problems could recoup 26 percent of the cost to implement a transportation policy, but up to to 10.5 times the cost of implementing a cap-and-trade program. The difference depended largely on the costs of the policies, as the savings — in the form of avoided medical care and saved sick days — remained roughly constant: Policies aimed at specific sources of air pollution, such as power plants and vehicles, did not lead to substantially larger benefits than cheaper policies, such as a cap-and-trade approach.
Savings from health benefits dwarf the estimated $14 billion cost of a cap-and-trade program. At the other end of the spectrum, a transportation policy with rigid fuel-economy requirements is the most expensive policy, costing more than $1 trillion in 2006 dollars, with health benefits recouping only a quarter of those costs. The price tag of a clean energy standard fell between the costs of the two other policies, with associated health benefits just edging out costs, at $247 billion versus $208 billion. "
Bloomberg Papier 1. Link.
Fossil Fuel Divestment, "the $5.000.000.000.000 challenge: will it sunset, +who’s next?"
http://about.bnef.com/content/uploads/sites/4/2014/08/BNEF_D…
http://about.bnef.com/white-papers/fossil-fuel-divestment-5-…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/08/26/fossil-fuel-divest…
"Pressure is starting to build for institutional investors to cut their exposure to fossil fuel stocks, but they will need to find viable alternative destinations for their money?
A new white paper from Bloomberg New Energy Finance tackles the topic.
Oil, gas and coal companies make up one of the world’s largest liquid asset classes, with a combined stock market valuation of nearly $5trn.
In the past two years, dozens of public and private institutions have announced plans to divest their fossil fuel holdings because of environmental concerns, ethical investment strategies, or worries that assets might become “stranded” by emission regulations.
However, a much larger-scale divestment from fossil fuels by institutional investors would be far from easy, according to new research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Oil and gas stocks in particular are at the heart of institutional investor portfolios. ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil and gas firm, has a market capitalisation of $425bn; BlackRock, the largest investor in oil and gas stocks, holds $140bn just in its top 25 holdings. Governments such as China, Russia, and India are also major strategic investors in fossil fuels.
For some motivated investors, clean energy might be the logical destination for their money after divesting from fossil fuels, but clean energy currently does not yet approach the necessary scale as an investable asset class for institutions. While Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts $5.5trn in clean energy investment from now to 2030, much of that will have risk-return and liquidity characteristics suitable for banks, developers or utilities, not for pension funds or institutional asset managers.
Clean energy equities, as captured by the Wilderhill New Energy Global Innovation Index, or NEX, have a free float of $220bn. Issuance of green bonds may top $40bn this year but that would still be less than 3% of the new corporate debt issued in the US. “Yieldcos”, also increasingly popular for investors wanting to get exposure to clean energy assets, have a total market cap of less than $20bn.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyzed seven other stock market sectors that could accept divested capital, ranging from Information technology to real estate. Companies in these sectors have many of the same investment attributes as fossil fuels firms, but not all of them in one package.
For instance, information technology is a $7trn sector and its biggest firm, Apple, is nearly 40% larger than ExxonMobil – but as a group, IT companies offer relatively low yields, either because their shares are highly rated or because they pay modest dividends as a proportion of post-tax profits. Real estate investment trusts are only $1.4trn in total market cap, although they do have dividend yields of 4%-plus.
Nathaniel Bullard, author of the White Paper, said “Fossil fuels are investor favourites for a reason. Very few other investments offer the scale, liquidity, growth and yield of these century-old businesses with economy-wide demand for their products. Given their scale and performance, oil and gas companies are attractive to institutional investors. Coal firms, smaller and recently underperforming wider markets, are less of a focus for institutions.
“The $5.5trn needed to build out clean energy through 2030 will offer many new opportunities for investors, but a major switch into that and out of fossil fuels would require a massive scale-up of new investment vehicles.” "
Fossil Fuel Divestment, "the $5.000.000.000.000 challenge: will it sunset, +who’s next?"
http://about.bnef.com/content/uploads/sites/4/2014/08/BNEF_D…
http://about.bnef.com/white-papers/fossil-fuel-divestment-5-…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/08/26/fossil-fuel-divest…
"Pressure is starting to build for institutional investors to cut their exposure to fossil fuel stocks, but they will need to find viable alternative destinations for their money?
A new white paper from Bloomberg New Energy Finance tackles the topic.
Oil, gas and coal companies make up one of the world’s largest liquid asset classes, with a combined stock market valuation of nearly $5trn.
In the past two years, dozens of public and private institutions have announced plans to divest their fossil fuel holdings because of environmental concerns, ethical investment strategies, or worries that assets might become “stranded” by emission regulations.
However, a much larger-scale divestment from fossil fuels by institutional investors would be far from easy, according to new research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Oil and gas stocks in particular are at the heart of institutional investor portfolios. ExxonMobil, the world’s largest oil and gas firm, has a market capitalisation of $425bn; BlackRock, the largest investor in oil and gas stocks, holds $140bn just in its top 25 holdings. Governments such as China, Russia, and India are also major strategic investors in fossil fuels.
For some motivated investors, clean energy might be the logical destination for their money after divesting from fossil fuels, but clean energy currently does not yet approach the necessary scale as an investable asset class for institutions. While Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts $5.5trn in clean energy investment from now to 2030, much of that will have risk-return and liquidity characteristics suitable for banks, developers or utilities, not for pension funds or institutional asset managers.
Clean energy equities, as captured by the Wilderhill New Energy Global Innovation Index, or NEX, have a free float of $220bn. Issuance of green bonds may top $40bn this year but that would still be less than 3% of the new corporate debt issued in the US. “Yieldcos”, also increasingly popular for investors wanting to get exposure to clean energy assets, have a total market cap of less than $20bn.
Bloomberg New Energy Finance analyzed seven other stock market sectors that could accept divested capital, ranging from Information technology to real estate. Companies in these sectors have many of the same investment attributes as fossil fuels firms, but not all of them in one package.
For instance, information technology is a $7trn sector and its biggest firm, Apple, is nearly 40% larger than ExxonMobil – but as a group, IT companies offer relatively low yields, either because their shares are highly rated or because they pay modest dividends as a proportion of post-tax profits. Real estate investment trusts are only $1.4trn in total market cap, although they do have dividend yields of 4%-plus.
Nathaniel Bullard, author of the White Paper, said “Fossil fuels are investor favourites for a reason. Very few other investments offer the scale, liquidity, growth and yield of these century-old businesses with economy-wide demand for their products. Given their scale and performance, oil and gas companies are attractive to institutional investors. Coal firms, smaller and recently underperforming wider markets, are less of a focus for institutions.
“The $5.5trn needed to build out clean energy through 2030 will offer many new opportunities for investors, but a major switch into that and out of fossil fuels would require a massive scale-up of new investment vehicles.” "
Policy uncertainty threatens to slow renewable energy momentum - NW/IEA - Aug 28, 2014
www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/MTrenew2014SUM.pdf
www.iea.org/media/speeches/140828_MTREMR_Slides.pdf
www.iea.org/media/speeches/140828_MTRMR2014_FactSheet.pdf
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=37123.php?utm_source=fee…
"The expansion of renewable energy will slow over the next five years unless policy uncertainty is diminished, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said today in its third annual Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report.
According to the report, power generation from renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydro grew strongly in 2013, reaching almost 22% of global generation, and was on par with electricity from gas, whose generation remained relatively stable. Global renewable generation is seen rising by 45% and making up nearly 26% of global electricity generation by 2020. Yet annual growth in new renewable power is seen slowing and stabilising after 2014, putting renewables at risk of falling short of the absolute generation levels needed to meet global climate change objectives.
Non-OECD markets, spurred by diversification needs in many countries and increasing air quality concerns in China, in particular, comprise almost 70% of the growth. Renewables are seen as the largest new source of non-OECD generation through 2020. Yet they meet only 35% of fast-growing electricity needs there, illustrating the still-large role of fossil fuels and the potential for further renewable growth. Renewables account for 80% of new power generation in the OECD, but with more limited upside due to sluggish demand and growing policy risks in key markets.
“Renewables are a necessary part of energy security. However, just when they are becoming a cost-competitive option in an increasing number of cases, policy and regulatory uncertainty is rising in some key markets. This stems from concerns about the costs of deploying renewables,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven.
“Governments must distinguish more clearly between the past, present and future, as costs are falling over time,” she added. “Many renewables no longer need high incentive levels. Rather, given their capital-intensive nature, renewables require a market context that assures a reasonable and predictable return for investors. This calls for a serious reflection on market design needed to achieve a more sustainable world energy mix.”
The report noted that policy and market risks threaten to slow deployment momentum. For example, in many non-OECD markets including China, constraints include non-economic barriers, an absence of needed grid integration measures, and the cost and availability of financing. In the European Union (EU), uncertainties remain over the precise nature of the post-2020 renewable policy framework and the build-out of a pan-European grid to facilitate the integration of variable renewables.
For the first time, the annual report provides a renewable power investment outlook. Through 2020, investment in new renewable power capacity is seen averaging over USD 230 billion annually. That is lower than the around USD 250 billion invested in 2013. The decline is due to expectations that both unit investment costs for some technologies will fall and that global capacity growth will slow. With decreasing costs, competitive opportunities are expanding for some renewables under some country-specific conditions and policy frameworks. For example, in Brazil, with good resources and financing conditions, onshore wind has continued to outbid new-build natural gas plants in auctions. In northern Chile, high wholesale electricity prices and high irradiation levels have opened a new unsubsidised solar market.
The roles of biofuels for transport and renewable heat are also increasing, though at slower rates than renewable electricity. Uncertainty over policy support for biofuels is rising in the EU and the United States, slowing expectations for production growth and threatening the development of the advanced biofuels industry at a time when the first commercial plants are just coming online.
The annual report highlights the potential energy security implications of energy use for heat, which accounts for more than half of world final energy consumption and is dominated by fossil fuels. But the contribution of renewables to meet heating and cooling needs remains underdeveloped, with more limited policy frameworks compared with the electricity and transport sectors. Although modern renewable energy sources are expected to grow by almost 25% to 2020, their share in energy use for heat rises to only 9%, up from 8% in 2013.
To download the executive summary of Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market
Report, please click here (pdf).
To download Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven's presentation at the launch of the report, please click here (pdf).
To download a fact sheet related to the report, please click here (pdf).
Source: IEA "
www.iea.org/Textbase/npsum/MTrenew2014SUM.pdf
www.iea.org/media/speeches/140828_MTREMR_Slides.pdf
www.iea.org/media/speeches/140828_MTRMR2014_FactSheet.pdf
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=37123.php?utm_source=fee…
"The expansion of renewable energy will slow over the next five years unless policy uncertainty is diminished, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said today in its third annual Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report.
According to the report, power generation from renewable sources such as wind, solar and hydro grew strongly in 2013, reaching almost 22% of global generation, and was on par with electricity from gas, whose generation remained relatively stable. Global renewable generation is seen rising by 45% and making up nearly 26% of global electricity generation by 2020. Yet annual growth in new renewable power is seen slowing and stabilising after 2014, putting renewables at risk of falling short of the absolute generation levels needed to meet global climate change objectives.
Non-OECD markets, spurred by diversification needs in many countries and increasing air quality concerns in China, in particular, comprise almost 70% of the growth. Renewables are seen as the largest new source of non-OECD generation through 2020. Yet they meet only 35% of fast-growing electricity needs there, illustrating the still-large role of fossil fuels and the potential for further renewable growth. Renewables account for 80% of new power generation in the OECD, but with more limited upside due to sluggish demand and growing policy risks in key markets.
“Renewables are a necessary part of energy security. However, just when they are becoming a cost-competitive option in an increasing number of cases, policy and regulatory uncertainty is rising in some key markets. This stems from concerns about the costs of deploying renewables,” said IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven.
“Governments must distinguish more clearly between the past, present and future, as costs are falling over time,” she added. “Many renewables no longer need high incentive levels. Rather, given their capital-intensive nature, renewables require a market context that assures a reasonable and predictable return for investors. This calls for a serious reflection on market design needed to achieve a more sustainable world energy mix.”
The report noted that policy and market risks threaten to slow deployment momentum. For example, in many non-OECD markets including China, constraints include non-economic barriers, an absence of needed grid integration measures, and the cost and availability of financing. In the European Union (EU), uncertainties remain over the precise nature of the post-2020 renewable policy framework and the build-out of a pan-European grid to facilitate the integration of variable renewables.
For the first time, the annual report provides a renewable power investment outlook. Through 2020, investment in new renewable power capacity is seen averaging over USD 230 billion annually. That is lower than the around USD 250 billion invested in 2013. The decline is due to expectations that both unit investment costs for some technologies will fall and that global capacity growth will slow. With decreasing costs, competitive opportunities are expanding for some renewables under some country-specific conditions and policy frameworks. For example, in Brazil, with good resources and financing conditions, onshore wind has continued to outbid new-build natural gas plants in auctions. In northern Chile, high wholesale electricity prices and high irradiation levels have opened a new unsubsidised solar market.
The roles of biofuels for transport and renewable heat are also increasing, though at slower rates than renewable electricity. Uncertainty over policy support for biofuels is rising in the EU and the United States, slowing expectations for production growth and threatening the development of the advanced biofuels industry at a time when the first commercial plants are just coming online.
The annual report highlights the potential energy security implications of energy use for heat, which accounts for more than half of world final energy consumption and is dominated by fossil fuels. But the contribution of renewables to meet heating and cooling needs remains underdeveloped, with more limited policy frameworks compared with the electricity and transport sectors. Although modern renewable energy sources are expected to grow by almost 25% to 2020, their share in energy use for heat rises to only 9%, up from 8% in 2013.
To download the executive summary of Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market
Report, please click here (pdf).
To download Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven's presentation at the launch of the report, please click here (pdf).
To download a fact sheet related to the report, please click here (pdf).
Source: IEA "
Irreversible Damage Seen From Climate Change, in UN Leak
www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-26/irreversible-damage-seen-f…
www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-26/irreversible-damage-seen-f…
Mercury in the oceans increasing - ENN/WHOI/N - Aug 6, 2014
media@whoi.edu / (508) 289-3340
www.whoi.edu/news-release/mercury-in-global-ocean
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v512/n7512/full/nature13563.ht…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47676
"Although the days of odd behavior among hat makers are a thing of the past, the dangers mercury poses to humans and the environment persist today.
Mercury is a naturally occurring element as well as a by-product of such distinctly human enterprises as burning coal and making cement. Estimates of "bioavailable" mercury - forms of the element that can be taken up by animals and humans - play an important role in everything from drafting an international treaty designed to protect humans and the environment from mercury emissions, to establishing public policies behind warnings about seafood consumption.
Yet surprisingly little is known about how much mercury in the environment is the result of human activity, or even how much bioavailable mercury exists in the global ocean. Until now.
A new paper by a group that includes researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Wright State University, Observatoire Midi-Pyréneés in France, and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research appears in this week's edition of the journal Nature and provides the first direct calculation of mercury in the global ocean from pollution based on data obtained from 12 sampling cruises over the past 8 years. The work, which was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundationand the European Research Council and led by WHOI marine chemist Carl Lamborg, also provides a look at the global distribution of mercury in the marine environment.
Analysis of their results showed rough agreement with the models used previously - that the ocean contains about 60,000 to 80,000 tons of pollution mercury. In addition, they found that ocean waters shallower than about 100 m (300 feet) have tripled in mercury concentration since the Industrial Revolution and that the ocean as a whole has shown an increase of roughly 10 percent over pre-industrial mercury levels.
"With the increases we've seen in the recent past, the next 50 years could very well add the same amount we've seen in the past 150," said Lamborg. "The trouble is, we don't know what it all means for fish and marine mammals. It likely means some fish also contain at least three times more mercury than 150 years ago, but it could be more. The key is now we have some solid numbers on which to base continued work."
"Mercury is a priority environmental poison detectable wherever we look for it, including the global ocean abyss," says Don Rice, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Chemical Oceanography Program, which funded the research. "These scientists have reminded us that the problem is far from abatement, especially in regions of the world ocean where the human fingerprint is most distinct."
Photo shows a CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) rosette being lowered over the side of R/V Knorr during the North Atlantic GEOTRACES cruise in 2011. Data and water samples collected during the cruise contributed to the study of mercury in the global ocean led by Carl Lamborg. (Photo by Brett Longworth, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) "
media@whoi.edu / (508) 289-3340
www.whoi.edu/news-release/mercury-in-global-ocean
www.nature.com/nature/journal/v512/n7512/full/nature13563.ht…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47676
"Although the days of odd behavior among hat makers are a thing of the past, the dangers mercury poses to humans and the environment persist today.
Mercury is a naturally occurring element as well as a by-product of such distinctly human enterprises as burning coal and making cement. Estimates of "bioavailable" mercury - forms of the element that can be taken up by animals and humans - play an important role in everything from drafting an international treaty designed to protect humans and the environment from mercury emissions, to establishing public policies behind warnings about seafood consumption.
Yet surprisingly little is known about how much mercury in the environment is the result of human activity, or even how much bioavailable mercury exists in the global ocean. Until now.
A new paper by a group that includes researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Wright State University, Observatoire Midi-Pyréneés in France, and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research appears in this week's edition of the journal Nature and provides the first direct calculation of mercury in the global ocean from pollution based on data obtained from 12 sampling cruises over the past 8 years. The work, which was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundationand the European Research Council and led by WHOI marine chemist Carl Lamborg, also provides a look at the global distribution of mercury in the marine environment.
Analysis of their results showed rough agreement with the models used previously - that the ocean contains about 60,000 to 80,000 tons of pollution mercury. In addition, they found that ocean waters shallower than about 100 m (300 feet) have tripled in mercury concentration since the Industrial Revolution and that the ocean as a whole has shown an increase of roughly 10 percent over pre-industrial mercury levels.
"With the increases we've seen in the recent past, the next 50 years could very well add the same amount we've seen in the past 150," said Lamborg. "The trouble is, we don't know what it all means for fish and marine mammals. It likely means some fish also contain at least three times more mercury than 150 years ago, but it could be more. The key is now we have some solid numbers on which to base continued work."
"Mercury is a priority environmental poison detectable wherever we look for it, including the global ocean abyss," says Don Rice, director of the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Chemical Oceanography Program, which funded the research. "These scientists have reminded us that the problem is far from abatement, especially in regions of the world ocean where the human fingerprint is most distinct."
Photo shows a CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) rosette being lowered over the side of R/V Knorr during the North Atlantic GEOTRACES cruise in 2011. Data and water samples collected during the cruise contributed to the study of mercury in the global ocean led by Carl Lamborg. (Photo by Brett Longworth, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) "
New Jersey bans Ivory sales - ENN - Aug 6, 2014
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47671
"The state of New Jersey has enacted a statewide ban on sales of Ivory.
The following statement was issued by John Calvelli, WCS Executive Vice President of Public Affairs and Director of the 96 Elephants Campaign:
"Today is an historic day for elephants and conservation. The Wildlife Conservation Society and the 96 Elephants campaign praises N.J. Governor Chris Christie for signing into law a statewide ban on ivory sales."
"Elephants are threatened today by illegal hunting for their ivory. Every day in Africa, about 96 elephants are killed illegally for their ivory. This is causing population declines across large swathes of the continent. A major challenge to halting the illegal ivory trade is the lack of effective law enforcement controls along the trade chain from Africa, through the transit states, and to the end consumer markets. Legal domestic ivory markets are an enforcement challenge and provide cover for laundering of ivory from elephants killed illegally in Africa. Once ivory is within a country's borders, it becomes almost impossible to distinguish legal from illegal ivory. As long as demand for ivory remains high and enforcement efforts are low, the legal trade will continue to serve as a front and criminal syndicates will continue to drive elephant poaching across Africa. Today’s ban is a major step in ending this trade that currently threatens elephants with extinction across much of their range."
The recent federal ivory ban enacted by the Obama Administration is an excellent first step in stopping trade into the U.S and between states. However, state moratoria are still needed to close loopholes not covered in the federal ban. Only through federal and state cooperation will we truly end the ivory trade in the U.S., which has one of the largest ivory markets in the world.
Recent efforts to weaken the federal ban by the anti-ivory ban groups make it more important than ever for states to stand up and show that there is broad based support for this effort across the country. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47671
"The state of New Jersey has enacted a statewide ban on sales of Ivory.
The following statement was issued by John Calvelli, WCS Executive Vice President of Public Affairs and Director of the 96 Elephants Campaign:
"Today is an historic day for elephants and conservation. The Wildlife Conservation Society and the 96 Elephants campaign praises N.J. Governor Chris Christie for signing into law a statewide ban on ivory sales."
"Elephants are threatened today by illegal hunting for their ivory. Every day in Africa, about 96 elephants are killed illegally for their ivory. This is causing population declines across large swathes of the continent. A major challenge to halting the illegal ivory trade is the lack of effective law enforcement controls along the trade chain from Africa, through the transit states, and to the end consumer markets. Legal domestic ivory markets are an enforcement challenge and provide cover for laundering of ivory from elephants killed illegally in Africa. Once ivory is within a country's borders, it becomes almost impossible to distinguish legal from illegal ivory. As long as demand for ivory remains high and enforcement efforts are low, the legal trade will continue to serve as a front and criminal syndicates will continue to drive elephant poaching across Africa. Today’s ban is a major step in ending this trade that currently threatens elephants with extinction across much of their range."
The recent federal ivory ban enacted by the Obama Administration is an excellent first step in stopping trade into the U.S and between states. However, state moratoria are still needed to close loopholes not covered in the federal ban. Only through federal and state cooperation will we truly end the ivory trade in the U.S., which has one of the largest ivory markets in the world.
Recent efforts to weaken the federal ban by the anti-ivory ban groups make it more important than ever for states to stand up and show that there is broad based support for this effort across the country. "
New Zoo Concept 'Boasts No Cages' - ENN/C2/BIG - Aug 6, 2014
- Alicia Graef -
www.care2.com/causes/the-zoo-of-the-future-has-no-cages-but-…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47673
"Danish architects are taking on the task of creating a zoo environment that will change what the face of captivity looks like in the future with the reveal of plans for what it's calling the "world's most advanced zoo."
The Givskud Zoo in Denmark has accepted a design from the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) that has no cages and will allow animals to live in environments that mimic their natural habitats. The first phase is expected to be completed by 2019, just in time for the park's 50th anniversary.
The project is being called "Zootopia" and, according to the architects, while creating a "framework for such diverse users and residents such as gorillas, wolves, bears, lions and elephants is an extremely complex task," they believe it will create "the best possible and freest possible environment for the animals' lives and relationships with each other and visitors."
"Rather than looking at a single animal alone in a cage, which is a very unnatural way of experiencing an animal, sometimes you're outnumbered by the animals and you see them in a real habitat," Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG, told USA Today.
Buildings designed for visitors will be camouflaged and cages and barriers will be removed to let animals roam freely. Instead, they'll use waterways or changes in elevation as natural barriers to separate them.
According to Slate, the architects have come up with a number of ways to hide visitors that may include using mirrors to deflect their presence and allowing visitors to view the captive wildlife on a hiking trail around the complex or by bike, boat or from above.
It looks pleasant in theory, but does giving a zoo a facelift fix the problems that anti-captivity advocates have with zoos? It might be an upgrade from the depressing enclosures found in most zoos, but still doesn't address unnecessarily keeping wild animals in captivity just so we can gawk at them. It also doesn't address the issue of keeping animals in an inappropriate climate, deal with breeding, selling and killing surplus animals, or do anything to really support in situ conservation for imperiled species, which they are in dire need of. "
- Alicia Graef -
www.care2.com/causes/the-zoo-of-the-future-has-no-cages-but-…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47673
"Danish architects are taking on the task of creating a zoo environment that will change what the face of captivity looks like in the future with the reveal of plans for what it's calling the "world's most advanced zoo."
The Givskud Zoo in Denmark has accepted a design from the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) that has no cages and will allow animals to live in environments that mimic their natural habitats. The first phase is expected to be completed by 2019, just in time for the park's 50th anniversary.
The project is being called "Zootopia" and, according to the architects, while creating a "framework for such diverse users and residents such as gorillas, wolves, bears, lions and elephants is an extremely complex task," they believe it will create "the best possible and freest possible environment for the animals' lives and relationships with each other and visitors."
"Rather than looking at a single animal alone in a cage, which is a very unnatural way of experiencing an animal, sometimes you're outnumbered by the animals and you see them in a real habitat," Bjarke Ingels, founder of BIG, told USA Today.
Buildings designed for visitors will be camouflaged and cages and barriers will be removed to let animals roam freely. Instead, they'll use waterways or changes in elevation as natural barriers to separate them.
According to Slate, the architects have come up with a number of ways to hide visitors that may include using mirrors to deflect their presence and allowing visitors to view the captive wildlife on a hiking trail around the complex or by bike, boat or from above.
It looks pleasant in theory, but does giving a zoo a facelift fix the problems that anti-captivity advocates have with zoos? It might be an upgrade from the depressing enclosures found in most zoos, but still doesn't address unnecessarily keeping wild animals in captivity just so we can gawk at them. It also doesn't address the issue of keeping animals in an inappropriate climate, deal with breeding, selling and killing surplus animals, or do anything to really support in situ conservation for imperiled species, which they are in dire need of. "
A " "Plan" to make renewables cheaper than coal, within 10 years"
http://globe-net.com/plan-make-renewables-cheaper-coal-withi…
"
- Three weeks before the UN Secretary-General’s extraordinary meeting of world leaders in New York to tackle climate change, a leading British scientist unveils plans for a global low-carbon fund on a par with the Apollo Moon programme. -
LONDON, 2 September 2014 – There are prospects of significant progress in the response of world governments to climate change, according to a former UK Government chief scientist, Sir David King.
“There are signs that a leadership role is beginning to emerge”, he told a conference in London held by the Green Economy Coalition.
Sir David also announced that he and a colleague are working with governments to raise funds to help all countries, including developing countries, to switch to renewable energy. Their scheme hopes to raise nearly as much as the cost of the Apollo programme, NASA’s moon-landing project.
“President Obama is getting ready to commit the US to action, and last week the Chinese Prime Minister, Li Kichiang, announced that his country’s emissions had fallen by 5% in a year”, he said.
“The US and China are positioning themselves for an agreement. And that’s not all. The first speech by the new leader of India, Narendra Modi, spoke of his determination ‘to solarise’ the economy.
“Brazil’s emissions, including from deforestation, have fallen from 16.5 tonnes per person to 6.5 tonnes since 2005. Across the Andes in Peru, where the UN climate convention negotiations will take place in December, they know well enough about climate change.
“From Lima they can see the ice retreating up the mountains. At its lowest point it is now 1,000 metres above where it reached to 30 years ago..”
Sir David praised the UK’s commitment to cut greenhouse emissions by 80% by 2050, compared with their 1990 levels. He said the target – matched by Mexico – was likely to be met. The biggest climate challenge confronting the UK, he said, was from rising sea levels.
Some critics say, despite this, that the UK Government is dragging its feet, especially on supporting renewable energy. With a colleague, the economist Professor Lord Richard Layard, Sir David is working on a scheme to raise money to address this.
“It’s called the Global Apollo Programme”, he explained. “We are urging all governments to form a Commission to spend 0.02% of their GDP, which should raise US$10-20 bn p. a. over 10 years, to fund RD&D for low-carbon technology.
“We are encouraging governments to launch the Programme at the UN during Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Summit on 23 September. The objective is that by 2020 renewable power should be cheaper than coal in all sunny parts of the world, and by 2025 in all parts of the world.”
Sir David, who for seven years was the UK Government’s chief scientist, is now its Foreign Secretary’s special representative for climate change. Asked if he were hopeful about progress to tackle climate change, he replied: “I’m in this job because I’m an optimist.”
His hopes were echoed by another speaker, Hunter Lovins, president of the Colorado-based Natural Capitalism Solutions. She told the Climate News Network: “We can do it. But it’s going to be tough. So will we do it?
“I don’t agree with the exponents of the idea of near-term human extinction (NTHE), who say we face total collapse by around 2030 or 2035.
‘”What we need is to find incentives for business, to get big countries behind solar+, the idea David King is working on – combining renewables and efficiency, with back-up where it’s needed.”
Professor Lovins told the conference: “Business-as-usual is going to get really ugly. What’s the narrative we can produce to compete with neo-liberalism?” – Climate News Network "
http://globe-net.com/plan-make-renewables-cheaper-coal-withi…
"
- Three weeks before the UN Secretary-General’s extraordinary meeting of world leaders in New York to tackle climate change, a leading British scientist unveils plans for a global low-carbon fund on a par with the Apollo Moon programme. -
LONDON, 2 September 2014 – There are prospects of significant progress in the response of world governments to climate change, according to a former UK Government chief scientist, Sir David King.
“There are signs that a leadership role is beginning to emerge”, he told a conference in London held by the Green Economy Coalition.
Sir David also announced that he and a colleague are working with governments to raise funds to help all countries, including developing countries, to switch to renewable energy. Their scheme hopes to raise nearly as much as the cost of the Apollo programme, NASA’s moon-landing project.
“President Obama is getting ready to commit the US to action, and last week the Chinese Prime Minister, Li Kichiang, announced that his country’s emissions had fallen by 5% in a year”, he said.
“The US and China are positioning themselves for an agreement. And that’s not all. The first speech by the new leader of India, Narendra Modi, spoke of his determination ‘to solarise’ the economy.
“Brazil’s emissions, including from deforestation, have fallen from 16.5 tonnes per person to 6.5 tonnes since 2005. Across the Andes in Peru, where the UN climate convention negotiations will take place in December, they know well enough about climate change.
“From Lima they can see the ice retreating up the mountains. At its lowest point it is now 1,000 metres above where it reached to 30 years ago..”
Sir David praised the UK’s commitment to cut greenhouse emissions by 80% by 2050, compared with their 1990 levels. He said the target – matched by Mexico – was likely to be met. The biggest climate challenge confronting the UK, he said, was from rising sea levels.
Some critics say, despite this, that the UK Government is dragging its feet, especially on supporting renewable energy. With a colleague, the economist Professor Lord Richard Layard, Sir David is working on a scheme to raise money to address this.
“It’s called the Global Apollo Programme”, he explained. “We are urging all governments to form a Commission to spend 0.02% of their GDP, which should raise US$10-20 bn p. a. over 10 years, to fund RD&D for low-carbon technology.
“We are encouraging governments to launch the Programme at the UN during Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Summit on 23 September. The objective is that by 2020 renewable power should be cheaper than coal in all sunny parts of the world, and by 2025 in all parts of the world.”
Sir David, who for seven years was the UK Government’s chief scientist, is now its Foreign Secretary’s special representative for climate change. Asked if he were hopeful about progress to tackle climate change, he replied: “I’m in this job because I’m an optimist.”
His hopes were echoed by another speaker, Hunter Lovins, president of the Colorado-based Natural Capitalism Solutions. She told the Climate News Network: “We can do it. But it’s going to be tough. So will we do it?
“I don’t agree with the exponents of the idea of near-term human extinction (NTHE), who say we face total collapse by around 2030 or 2035.
‘”What we need is to find incentives for business, to get big countries behind solar+, the idea David King is working on – combining renewables and efficiency, with back-up where it’s needed.”
Professor Lovins told the conference: “Business-as-usual is going to get really ugly. What’s the narrative we can produce to compete with neo-liberalism?” – Climate News Network "
“Toward a Sustainable City report”, The "2050 Imperative–Carbon Neutral Cities" - INfC/USDN/AIA - 2014
http://usdn.org/uploads/cms/documents/state-of-innovation.pd…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://usdn.org/uploads/cms/documents/state-of-innovation.pd…
www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/public/documents/pdf/aiab104435.p…
http://usdn.org/uploads/cms/documents/state-of-innovation.pd…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://usdn.org/uploads/cms/documents/state-of-innovation.pd…
www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/public/documents/pdf/aiab104435.p…
'Global warming pioneer' calls for CO2 to be taken from atmosphere, +stored underground - P.org/EAoG - Aug 28, 2014
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-global-co2-atmosphere-undergrou…
http://phys.org/news/2014-08-global-co2-atmosphere-undergrou…
New Database "Tracks Ecological Health Impacts, of Dams on World’s Rivers" - CT/YE360 - Sep 2, 2014
www.internationalrivers.org/worldsrivers/
www.internationalrivers.org/resources/china%E2%80%99s-hydrop…http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/02/new-database-tracks-ecolo…
"A newly launched online database illustrates the impacts of nearly 6,000 dams on the world’s 50 major river basins, ranking their ecological health according to indicators of river fragmentation, water quality, and biodiversity.
The “State of the World’s Rivers” project was developed by the advocacy organization International Rivers and created using Google Earth. Users can compare the health of individual river basins, see the locations of existing and planned dams, and explore 10 of the most significant river basins in more depth.
For example, as this map of China’s Yangtze basin shows, at least 374 dams already exist in the basin, and at least another 167 are under construction or planned to be built. The ecological health of the region is showing signs of collapse, the database entry says: A 2014 study found that fish species in the Yangtze drastically decreased from 143 to 17 over the course of one year, due to overfishing and dam construction.
The 6,000 dams represented in the database are a small percentage of the more than 50,000 large dams that impact the world’s rivers, the organization notes. "
www.internationalrivers.org/worldsrivers/
www.internationalrivers.org/resources/china%E2%80%99s-hydrop…http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/02/new-database-tracks-ecolo…
"A newly launched online database illustrates the impacts of nearly 6,000 dams on the world’s 50 major river basins, ranking their ecological health according to indicators of river fragmentation, water quality, and biodiversity.
The “State of the World’s Rivers” project was developed by the advocacy organization International Rivers and created using Google Earth. Users can compare the health of individual river basins, see the locations of existing and planned dams, and explore 10 of the most significant river basins in more depth.
For example, as this map of China’s Yangtze basin shows, at least 374 dams already exist in the basin, and at least another 167 are under construction or planned to be built. The ecological health of the region is showing signs of collapse, the database entry says: A 2014 study found that fish species in the Yangtze drastically decreased from 143 to 17 over the course of one year, due to overfishing and dam construction.
The 6,000 dams represented in the database are a small percentage of the more than 50,000 large dams that impact the world’s rivers, the organization notes. "
Earth Overshoot Day: We Are Overstepping Nature’s Limits; Overshoot Day reminds us that we are using natural resources faster than the Earth can replenish them - WWF - Aug 20, 2013
http://worldwildlife.org/pages/today-is-earth-overshoot-day?…
http://worldwildlife.org/blogs/science-driven/posts/overshoo…
https://worldwildlife.org/blogs/on-balance/posts/balancing-a…
http://worldwildlife.org/initiatives/transforming-business
"In less than nine months, we have now used more natural resources than what it takes the planet 12 months to produce. For the remainder of 2013, we will be living on resources borrowed from future generations.
This year—Earth Overshoot Day—the approximate date human resource demands exceed nature's budget—fell on August 20. Two days earlier than last year. In fact, since 2001, Overshoot Day has moved ahead by an average of 3 days per year.
And by 2050, the global population is expected to reach 9 billion—only increasing pressure on Earth's natural resources. On this finite planet, we need to change the way we think about everything, but especially about where and how we live, work and travel, along with what and how much we consume.
Overshoot Day is a bold indication that now is the time to make a change. Small actions can make a big difference. We each play an important role in creating a world where we all live within our ecological limits. "
http://worldwildlife.org/pages/today-is-earth-overshoot-day?…
http://worldwildlife.org/blogs/science-driven/posts/overshoo…
https://worldwildlife.org/blogs/on-balance/posts/balancing-a…
http://worldwildlife.org/initiatives/transforming-business
"In less than nine months, we have now used more natural resources than what it takes the planet 12 months to produce. For the remainder of 2013, we will be living on resources borrowed from future generations.
This year—Earth Overshoot Day—the approximate date human resource demands exceed nature's budget—fell on August 20. Two days earlier than last year. In fact, since 2001, Overshoot Day has moved ahead by an average of 3 days per year.
And by 2050, the global population is expected to reach 9 billion—only increasing pressure on Earth's natural resources. On this finite planet, we need to change the way we think about everything, but especially about where and how we live, work and travel, along with what and how much we consume.
Overshoot Day is a bold indication that now is the time to make a change. Small actions can make a big difference. We each play an important role in creating a world where we all live within our ecological limits. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.537.041 von JACKYONE am 16.08.14 22:31:23
Hubble telescope 'spots signs of water, on five planets'; Two studies " "suggest" distant worlds have atmospheres with water", but some aren't places you'd want to visit anytime soon - CN - Dec 4, 2013
- T. Hornyak -
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57614438-76/hubble-telesco…
"If you dream of colonizing distant worlds, here's welcome news: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted signs of water on five faraway planets, according to two studies.
You may not want to move in, though. At least one of the planets, WASP-19b, is an extremely hot, Jupiter-style world with a poisonous atmosphere featuring hydrogen cyanide.
All five worlds have hazy atmospheres that yielded faint signatures of water, adding to previous findings of water outside our solar system and possibly environments that support alien life.
The planets -- WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b, and XO-1b -- are circling nearby stars.
Scientists used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to examine infrared wavelengths for water signatures, which can show up when looking at starlight as it passes through planet atmospheres.
"To actually detect the atmosphere of an exoplanet is extraordinarily difficult," L. Drake Deming of the University of Maryland said in a NASA release. "But we were able to pull out a very clear signal, and it is water."
Deming and colleagues reported results for HD209458b and XO-1b in Astrophysical Journal. Meanwhile, another group led by Avi Mandell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center described results for WASP-12b, WASP-17b, and WASP-19b in the journal. "
Hubble telescope 'spots signs of water, on five planets'; Two studies " "suggest" distant worlds have atmospheres with water", but some aren't places you'd want to visit anytime soon
- CN - Dec 4, 2013- T. Hornyak -
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57614438-76/hubble-telesco…
"If you dream of colonizing distant worlds, here's welcome news: NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has spotted signs of water on five faraway planets, according to two studies.
You may not want to move in, though. At least one of the planets, WASP-19b, is an extremely hot, Jupiter-style world with a poisonous atmosphere featuring hydrogen cyanide.
All five worlds have hazy atmospheres that yielded faint signatures of water, adding to previous findings of water outside our solar system and possibly environments that support alien life.
The planets -- WASP-17b, HD209458b, WASP-12b, WASP-19b, and XO-1b -- are circling nearby stars.
Scientists used Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to examine infrared wavelengths for water signatures, which can show up when looking at starlight as it passes through planet atmospheres.
"To actually detect the atmosphere of an exoplanet is extraordinarily difficult," L. Drake Deming of the University of Maryland said in a NASA release. "But we were able to pull out a very clear signal, and it is water."
Deming and colleagues reported results for HD209458b and XO-1b in Astrophysical Journal. Meanwhile, another group led by Avi Mandell of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center described results for WASP-12b, WASP-17b, and WASP-19b in the journal. "
Innovative Recycling Program 'Turns Bottles, Into Subway Rides' - ENN/TP - Sep 3, 2014
- Lauren Zanolli -
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47787
"Forget your reusable bottle at home this morning and find yourself towing an unwanted plastic bottle? If you are in Beijing, you are in luck — you could trade in that empty bottle for a subway ticket.
"Reverse vending machines" in subway stations around the city allow riders to deposit polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles in exchange for a commuter pass or mobile phone credit.
Donors receive 5 fen to 1 yuan (about 16 cents) for each PET bottle, depending on its weight and composition. Incom Recycling, which is owned by Asia's largest PET processor, Incom Resources Recovery, first introduced the system to Beijing subway stops in late 2012, with 10 machines across the city. The company has since expanded to include 34 machines, and it plans to install as many as 3,000 across the city, according to local media reports.
The machines would seem like a great way to encourage recycling in a city of upwards of 20 million. Except that Beijing doesn't have a plastics recycling problem — it already has a 90 percent recycling rate for PET bottles, above most cities around the world. This is not because recycling is a regular behavior in Beijing (or the rest of China), but because there are countless migrant workers who pick through the city's waste and collect plastic bottles, which are then processed and repurposed by large companies like Incom, or at one of thousands of small recycling workshops.
Incom intends to use the machines to bypass informal collectors and earn additional revenue from the machines in the form of advertisements, according to a 2012 story by the Guardian. As Shanghai-based author and Bloomberg columnist Adam Minter has remarked, in contrast to the West, recycling is more of an economic activity than an environmental pursuit in China.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, Triple Pundit. "
- Lauren Zanolli -
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47787
"Forget your reusable bottle at home this morning and find yourself towing an unwanted plastic bottle? If you are in Beijing, you are in luck — you could trade in that empty bottle for a subway ticket.
"Reverse vending machines" in subway stations around the city allow riders to deposit polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles in exchange for a commuter pass or mobile phone credit.
Donors receive 5 fen to 1 yuan (about 16 cents) for each PET bottle, depending on its weight and composition. Incom Recycling, which is owned by Asia's largest PET processor, Incom Resources Recovery, first introduced the system to Beijing subway stops in late 2012, with 10 machines across the city. The company has since expanded to include 34 machines, and it plans to install as many as 3,000 across the city, according to local media reports.
The machines would seem like a great way to encourage recycling in a city of upwards of 20 million. Except that Beijing doesn't have a plastics recycling problem — it already has a 90 percent recycling rate for PET bottles, above most cities around the world. This is not because recycling is a regular behavior in Beijing (or the rest of China), but because there are countless migrant workers who pick through the city's waste and collect plastic bottles, which are then processed and repurposed by large companies like Incom, or at one of thousands of small recycling workshops.
Incom intends to use the machines to bypass informal collectors and earn additional revenue from the machines in the form of advertisements, according to a 2012 story by the Guardian. As Shanghai-based author and Bloomberg columnist Adam Minter has remarked, in contrast to the West, recycling is more of an economic activity than an environmental pursuit in China.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, Triple Pundit. "
"Six Strategies "Could" End Global Water Stress, by 2050, Scientists Say" - CT/YE360/N.com, YALE - Sep 3, 2014
- Cheryl Katz -
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/new_desalination_technologies_s…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/03/six-strategies-could-end-…
www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n9/full/ngeo2241.html?WT.ec_i…
"Global water stress could be alleviated by the year 2050 if countries work to implement six key strategies ranging from building more reservoirs to controlling population growth, according to research from Canada and the Netherlands.
Water stress is defined as occurring when more than 40 percent of the water from a region’s rivers is unavailable because it is already being used — a situation that currently affects roughly one-third of the global population.
Writing in Nature Geoscience, the scientists propose six steps they believe can help reduce water stress: planting crops that use water and nutrients more efficiently; using more efficient irrigation methods; improving the efficiency of water use in homes, industry, and municipalities; limiting the rate of population growth so global population stays below 8.5 billion by 2050; increasing reservoir water storage capacity; and intensifying water desalination operations, by 50-fold. "
- Cheryl Katz -
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/new_desalination_technologies_s…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/03/six-strategies-could-end-…
www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n9/full/ngeo2241.html?WT.ec_i…
"Global water stress could be alleviated by the year 2050 if countries work to implement six key strategies ranging from building more reservoirs to controlling population growth, according to research from Canada and the Netherlands.
Water stress is defined as occurring when more than 40 percent of the water from a region’s rivers is unavailable because it is already being used — a situation that currently affects roughly one-third of the global population.
Writing in Nature Geoscience, the scientists propose six steps they believe can help reduce water stress: planting crops that use water and nutrients more efficiently; using more efficient irrigation methods; improving the efficiency of water use in homes, industry, and municipalities; limiting the rate of population growth so global population stays below 8.5 billion by 2050; increasing reservoir water storage capacity; and intensifying water desalination operations, by 50-fold. "
New software "helps us choose products, ingredients, based on sustainability" - CT/TP/UL - Sep 3, 2014
- Alexis Petru -
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47793
"How can a manufacturer reformulate a cleaning product to contain fewer harmful chemicals, and how can a retailer stock its shelves with more eco-friendly merchandise? UL (Underwriters Laboratories), a product safety testing and certification company, thinks it may have a solution: a set of data tools that helps businesses search and choose ingredients and products based on their environmental and social responsibility profiles.
Managed by UL's recently launched Information & Insights division, the collection of tools build upon several databases with information on product ingredients and the consumer product index GoodGuide — all of which UL acquired — to allow manufacturers and retailers to essentially track products and materials across the supply chain.
UL's search engine Prospector allows engineers and designers to look up materials they might want to use to create new products or reformulate existing ones — like developing a shampoo that rinses faster or a toothpaste that also whitens teeth. But, in addition to searching for ingredients that change the abilities or characteristics of a product, engineers can also identify materials that are more sustainable — ingredients that are free of certain chemicals, have received an environmental certification or comply with environmental regulations.
The Prospector database is especially suited for chemical-containing products at this time, he said, including personal care products, household and industrial cleaners, lubricants, and sealing and binding agents. But in the future, Guerville said that the company will be adding a platform for conflict materials and a search engine for materials used to make electronics and appliances.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate Triple Pundit. "
- Alexis Petru -
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47793
"How can a manufacturer reformulate a cleaning product to contain fewer harmful chemicals, and how can a retailer stock its shelves with more eco-friendly merchandise? UL (Underwriters Laboratories), a product safety testing and certification company, thinks it may have a solution: a set of data tools that helps businesses search and choose ingredients and products based on their environmental and social responsibility profiles.
Managed by UL's recently launched Information & Insights division, the collection of tools build upon several databases with information on product ingredients and the consumer product index GoodGuide — all of which UL acquired — to allow manufacturers and retailers to essentially track products and materials across the supply chain.
UL's search engine Prospector allows engineers and designers to look up materials they might want to use to create new products or reformulate existing ones — like developing a shampoo that rinses faster or a toothpaste that also whitens teeth. But, in addition to searching for ingredients that change the abilities or characteristics of a product, engineers can also identify materials that are more sustainable — ingredients that are free of certain chemicals, have received an environmental certification or comply with environmental regulations.
The Prospector database is especially suited for chemical-containing products at this time, he said, including personal care products, household and industrial cleaners, lubricants, and sealing and binding agents. But in the future, Guerville said that the company will be adding a platform for conflict materials and a search engine for materials used to make electronics and appliances.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate Triple Pundit. "
'Climate-smart agriculture' "requires 'three-pronged global research agenda' " - NW/A&FS/UoC/USDA/BMC, CALIFORNIA - Sep 5, 2014
www.agricultureandfoodsecurity.com/content/3/1/11
http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2014/08/26/climate-sm…
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=37222.php?utm_source=fee…
"Faced with climate change and diminishing opportunities to expand productive agricultural acreage, the world needs to invest in a global research agenda addressing farm and food systems, landscape and regional issues and institutional and policy matters if it is to meet the growing worldwide demand for food, fiber and fuel, suggests an international team of researchers.
In a paper appearing online in the journal Agriculture and Food Security
("Climate-smart agriculture global research agenda: scientific basis for action"), the authors summarize the findings of the second international Climate Smart Agriculture conference held in March 2013 at UC Davis.
“Climate-smart agriculture has become a global policy initiative for economic development, poverty reduction and food security,” says lead author Kerri Steenwerth, a U.S. Department of Agriculture soil scientist and adjunct professor in the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology.
“It makes sense for farmers, consumers and food businesses because it is focused on the long-term sustainability of supply chains, and applies both to farmers’ fields and to the natural landscape,” she said.
The objectives recommended in the new paper set the stage for a stronger emphasis on moving knowledge into action and involving researchers in helping communities and societies to change and adapt.
Steenwerth has posted a blog entry about the paper on the Biomed Central blog. The blog and the paper were supported by the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
A third global science conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture is scheduled to be held March 16-18, 2015 in Montpellier, France.
Source: University of California - Davis "
www.agricultureandfoodsecurity.com/content/3/1/11
http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2014/08/26/climate-sm…
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=37222.php?utm_source=fee…
"Faced with climate change and diminishing opportunities to expand productive agricultural acreage, the world needs to invest in a global research agenda addressing farm and food systems, landscape and regional issues and institutional and policy matters if it is to meet the growing worldwide demand for food, fiber and fuel, suggests an international team of researchers.
In a paper appearing online in the journal Agriculture and Food Security
("Climate-smart agriculture global research agenda: scientific basis for action"), the authors summarize the findings of the second international Climate Smart Agriculture conference held in March 2013 at UC Davis.
“Climate-smart agriculture has become a global policy initiative for economic development, poverty reduction and food security,” says lead author Kerri Steenwerth, a U.S. Department of Agriculture soil scientist and adjunct professor in the UC Davis Department of Viticulture and Enology.
“It makes sense for farmers, consumers and food businesses because it is focused on the long-term sustainability of supply chains, and applies both to farmers’ fields and to the natural landscape,” she said.
The objectives recommended in the new paper set the stage for a stronger emphasis on moving knowledge into action and involving researchers in helping communities and societies to change and adapt.
Steenwerth has posted a blog entry about the paper on the Biomed Central blog. The blog and the paper were supported by the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
A third global science conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture is scheduled to be held March 16-18, 2015 in Montpellier, France.
Source: University of California - Davis "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.710.152 von Popeye82 am 06.09.14 03:56:19
Climate Change: "Action, Trends & Implications, for Business"
www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/28491751
Climate Change: "Action, Trends & Implications, for Business"
www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/28491751
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.710.023 von Popeye82 am 06.09.14 00:57:31Tja, wenn du das in deutsch geschrieben hättest, dann könnte/würde ich dir auch antworten. Aber so ...
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.710.446 von JACKYONE am 06.09.14 08:37:10
Vielleicht können wir ja mal "deutsch" besprechen -Warum meinst Du das??
Für mich persönlich ist das -daaass die 'Kolonialisierung' anderer Planeten, von uns, passieren wird, jedenfalls- nicht so sehr die Frage ooooob es passieren wird(wenn wir uns bis dahin nicht, schon, selber zugrunde gerichtet haben), als vielmehr des Zeithorizontes. Und wie sich dass dann abspielen wi(/ü)rd(e).
Gruß
P.
Zitat von JACKYONE: Wer ernsthaft sowas meint :
ob die Marskolonialisierung letztlich alternativlos ist, was 'gut wäre'.
Und so weiter.
Hat m.M.n. eh ein Rad ab.
Vielleicht können wir ja mal "deutsch" besprechen -Warum meinst Du das??
Für mich persönlich ist das -daaass die 'Kolonialisierung' anderer Planeten, von uns, passieren wird, jedenfalls- nicht so sehr die Frage ooooob es passieren wird(wenn wir uns bis dahin nicht, schon, selber zugrunde gerichtet haben), als vielmehr des Zeithorizontes. Und wie sich dass dann abspielen wi(/ü)rd(e).
Gruß
P.
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.711.298 von Popeye82 am 06.09.14 11:25:15Bleib lieber bei copy&paste.
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.712.750 von egbertklon am 06.09.14 18:27:40
Aus welchen Gründen?
Aus welchen Gründen?
2013 Global Food Policy Report - IFPRI, WASHINGTON - Mar 11, 2014
- IFPRI’s flagship report examines the major food policy issues, developments, +decisions of '13. It puts into perspective the year’s food policy successes +setbacks, +suggests how to advance policies that will improve the food situation for poor people in developing countries.
Contributions by IFPRI researchers +other leading food policy experts draw on rigorous research +consider a wide range of crucial questions:
- What is the direction of the global development agenda, as the world approaches the '15 deadline of the Millennium Development Goals?
- What are the best policies +investments to ensure we can end hunger +undernutrition by '25?
- How effective will India’s landmark National Food Security Act be, in ensuring access to adequate food @affordable prices?
- What policies, investments, +technologies will do most to sustainably increase agricultural productivity, to link smallholder farmers to markets +to ensure that their products are safe +nutritious?
- How do we get the politics of nutrition right, to create an environment in which policies promote food +nutrition security?
- What have been the major developments in regions +countries where poor +hungry people reside?
The '13 Global Food Policy Report includes data for several key indicators related to food policy, including country-level data on hunger, agricultural research spending +food policy research capacity. It also features illustrative figures, tables +a timeline of food policy issues, actions +events in '13. ...-
www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/gfpr2013.pdf
www.ifpri.org/publication/2013-global-food-policy-report
- IFPRI’s flagship report examines the major food policy issues, developments, +decisions of '13. It puts into perspective the year’s food policy successes +setbacks, +suggests how to advance policies that will improve the food situation for poor people in developing countries.
Contributions by IFPRI researchers +other leading food policy experts draw on rigorous research +consider a wide range of crucial questions:
- What is the direction of the global development agenda, as the world approaches the '15 deadline of the Millennium Development Goals?
- What are the best policies +investments to ensure we can end hunger +undernutrition by '25?
- How effective will India’s landmark National Food Security Act be, in ensuring access to adequate food @affordable prices?
- What policies, investments, +technologies will do most to sustainably increase agricultural productivity, to link smallholder farmers to markets +to ensure that their products are safe +nutritious?
- How do we get the politics of nutrition right, to create an environment in which policies promote food +nutrition security?
- What have been the major developments in regions +countries where poor +hungry people reside?
The '13 Global Food Policy Report includes data for several key indicators related to food policy, including country-level data on hunger, agricultural research spending +food policy research capacity. It also features illustrative figures, tables +a timeline of food policy issues, actions +events in '13. ...-
www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/gfpr2013.pdf
www.ifpri.org/publication/2013-global-food-policy-report
EPA Proposes New Standards for Landfills, Hopes to Reduce Methane Emissions - ENN/EPA - Jul 2, 2014
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/A62338C1569BC4698…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47548
"As part of the President's Climate Action Plan — Strategy to Reduce Methane Emissions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing updates to its air standards for new municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills. These updates would require certain landfills to capture additional landfill gas, which would reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and help further reduce pollution that harms public health.
Non-hazardous waste from homes, business and institutions ends up in municipal solid waste landfills, where it decomposes and breaks down to form landfill gas, which includes carbon dioxide, a number of air toxics and methane. Methane has a global warming potential 25 times that of carbon dioxide.
"Reducing methane emissions is a powerful way to take action on climate change," said Administrator Gina McCarthy. "This latest step from the President's methane strategy builds on our progress to date and takes steps to cut emissions from landfills through common-sense standards."
This proposal would require new MSW landfills subject to the rule to begin controlling landfill gas at a lower emissions threshold than currently required. Under the proposal, landfills would capture two-thirds of their methane and air toxics emissions by 2023 — 13 percent more than required under current rules. EPA estimates the net nationwide annual costs of complying with the additional requirements in the proposed rule would be $471,000 in 2023.
Today, methane accounts for nearly 9 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane in the country, accounting for 18 percent of methane emissions in 2012. Regulatory and voluntary programs, including the agency's Landfill Methane Outreach Program, have helped reduce emissions from landfills by 30 percent from 1990 to 2012. However, without additional actions, methane emissions are projected to increase through 2030.
The EPA has also issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) seeking broad public input on whether and how to update current emissions guidelines for existing landfills to further reduce their emissions, including methane. The agency is considering updating those guidelines based on a several factors, including significant changes that have occurred in the landfill industry since the original guidelines were issued in 1996. Nearly 1,000 MSW landfills in the U.S. currently are subject to either the 1996 emission guidelines for existing landfills or the 1996 NSPS for new landfills. "
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/A62338C1569BC4698…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47548
"As part of the President's Climate Action Plan — Strategy to Reduce Methane Emissions, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing updates to its air standards for new municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills. These updates would require certain landfills to capture additional landfill gas, which would reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and help further reduce pollution that harms public health.
Non-hazardous waste from homes, business and institutions ends up in municipal solid waste landfills, where it decomposes and breaks down to form landfill gas, which includes carbon dioxide, a number of air toxics and methane. Methane has a global warming potential 25 times that of carbon dioxide.
"Reducing methane emissions is a powerful way to take action on climate change," said Administrator Gina McCarthy. "This latest step from the President's methane strategy builds on our progress to date and takes steps to cut emissions from landfills through common-sense standards."
This proposal would require new MSW landfills subject to the rule to begin controlling landfill gas at a lower emissions threshold than currently required. Under the proposal, landfills would capture two-thirds of their methane and air toxics emissions by 2023 — 13 percent more than required under current rules. EPA estimates the net nationwide annual costs of complying with the additional requirements in the proposed rule would be $471,000 in 2023.
Today, methane accounts for nearly 9 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and landfills are the third-largest source of human-related methane in the country, accounting for 18 percent of methane emissions in 2012. Regulatory and voluntary programs, including the agency's Landfill Methane Outreach Program, have helped reduce emissions from landfills by 30 percent from 1990 to 2012. However, without additional actions, methane emissions are projected to increase through 2030.
The EPA has also issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) seeking broad public input on whether and how to update current emissions guidelines for existing landfills to further reduce their emissions, including methane. The agency is considering updating those guidelines based on a several factors, including significant changes that have occurred in the landfill industry since the original guidelines were issued in 1996. Nearly 1,000 MSW landfills in the U.S. currently are subject to either the 1996 emission guidelines for existing landfills or the 1996 NSPS for new landfills. "
"Insights Magazine"
http://insights.ifpri.info/
http://insights.ifpri.info/
Using global standards, to measure China's environmental industry
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
Smog in India Damaged Enough Crops to Feed 94,000,000, roughly one-third of the country’s impoverished population, Study Says - CT/YE360/GRL/AMC, WASHINGTON - Sep 11, 2014
http://news.agu.org/press-release/ozone-pollution-in-india-k…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/10/smog-in-india-damaged-eno…
"Ground-level ozone, the main component of smog, damaged 6.7 million tons of Indian crops worth an estimated $1.3 billion in a single year, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters.
That’s enough wheat, rice and other staple crops to feed 94 million people — roughly one-third of the country’s impoverished population. Arising from a combination of vehicle emissions, cooking stoves, and industrial sources, plant-damaging ozone has left many of India’s fast-developing cities among the most polluted in the world, according to the country’s Air Monitoring Center.
The number of vehicles there has nearly tripled in the past 10 years, rising from 50 million in 2003 to 130 million in 2013, and the country currently has no air quality standards to protect crops from ozone pollution. The researchers say the findings should be used to guide new ozone emission standards for the country. "
http://news.agu.org/press-release/ozone-pollution-in-india-k…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/10/smog-in-india-damaged-eno…
"Ground-level ozone, the main component of smog, damaged 6.7 million tons of Indian crops worth an estimated $1.3 billion in a single year, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters.
That’s enough wheat, rice and other staple crops to feed 94 million people — roughly one-third of the country’s impoverished population. Arising from a combination of vehicle emissions, cooking stoves, and industrial sources, plant-damaging ozone has left many of India’s fast-developing cities among the most polluted in the world, according to the country’s Air Monitoring Center.
The number of vehicles there has nearly tripled in the past 10 years, rising from 50 million in 2003 to 130 million in 2013, and the country currently has no air quality standards to protect crops from ozone pollution. The researchers say the findings should be used to guide new ozone emission standards for the country. "
U.S. Renewable Energy Growth in 2014 Dwarfs Fossil Fuel Plant Additions - CT/YE360/EIA - Sep 11, 2014
www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=17891
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/11/u-s-renewable-energy-grow…
"The U.S. this year has significantly scaled back coal and natural gas power plant additions compared to 2013, and solar and wind power capacity is far outpacing the 2013 installation rate, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
No utility-scale coal plants were added in the first six months of 2014, whereas more than 1,500 megawatts of coal-fired power capacity had been added during the same period last year. Natural gas additions were cut roughly in half compared to the first half of 2013, while wind additions more than doubled and solar power increased by 70 percent.
The only coal plants scheduled to come online in 2014 are the Kemper plant in Mississippi, which will capture its own carbon emissions, and a small conventional steam coal plant in North Dakota, reflecting the challenging market for coal due to impending federal environmental regulations and competition from natural gas. "
www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=17891
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/11/u-s-renewable-energy-grow…
"The U.S. this year has significantly scaled back coal and natural gas power plant additions compared to 2013, and solar and wind power capacity is far outpacing the 2013 installation rate, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
No utility-scale coal plants were added in the first six months of 2014, whereas more than 1,500 megawatts of coal-fired power capacity had been added during the same period last year. Natural gas additions were cut roughly in half compared to the first half of 2013, while wind additions more than doubled and solar power increased by 70 percent.
The only coal plants scheduled to come online in 2014 are the Kemper plant in Mississippi, which will capture its own carbon emissions, and a small conventional steam coal plant in North Dakota, reflecting the challenging market for coal due to impending federal environmental regulations and competition from natural gas. "
" 'Leading Global Investors' Gather @UN on Urgency for Boosting Clean Energy, to Curb Climate Change" - C/CalSTRS/U.N./BBNEF, NEW YORK - Jan 15, 2014
- Peyton Fleming, Aaron Pickering, Cortney Piper -
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/leading-global-investors-…
www.ceres.org/issues/clean-trillion/clean-trillion
www.ceres.org/resources/reports/investing-in-the-clean-trill…
www.ceres.org/investor-network/investor-summit
"Nearly 500 leading investors meeting today at the United Nations see major growth potential for ramping up green bonds and other clean energy investments to the levels necessary in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Despite a drop in global clean energy investments in 2013, institutional investors expressed strong agreement on the urgency for boosting investments in low-carbon technologies. Much of the discussion focused on elevating clean energy investments by an additional $1 trillion per year in order to limit global warming to two degrees. Ceres announced a Clean Trillion paper with 10 recommendations for investors, companies and policymakers to scale up clean energy investments to $500 billion per year by 2020 and $1 trillion per year by 2030.
“Quite simply, there’s a huge clean energy investment gap,” said Jack Ehnes, CEO of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), the nation’s second largest public pension fund managing $146 billion in assets. “Meeting the $1 trillion a year goal will be a challenge, but it is where we need to be in order to protect and grow our portfolios and to ensure the long-term sustainability of our planet.”
Ceres acknowledged the barriers to investing an additional $36 trillion in clean energy between now and 2050 – the levels the International Energy Agency has called for to limit global warming – but also focused on the opportunities associated with clean energy investments and the risks posed to institutional investors’ portfolios by not taking action.
“Cost competitive renewable technologies and attractive investment opportunities exist right now, but we’re still not seeing clean energy deployment at the scale we need to put a dent in climate change,” said Ceres president Mindy Lubber, whose group helped organize the Investor Summit on Climate Risk in collaboration with the UN Foundation and the UN Office for Partnerships. “Companies and investors must support the adoption of the necessary policies that that will open the floodgates for investment capital from all asset classes to flow into clean energy.”
Today’s event comes in advance of the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit in September, where he will seek to raise ambition, including among business and investors, towards a new universal agreement on climate change by 2015. The investors were urged today by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to continue seeking opportunities to invest profitably in clean energy solutions and support the international climate process.
"Governments and investors have pivotal, mutually supportive roles to play in accelerating the transition to the low carbon economy —one that can combat climate change, generate jobs and tackle a range of challenges from natural resource scarcities to health-hazardous air pollution,” she said. “Smart policies, creative incentives and innovative financial instruments by governments are already catalyzing a shift: it is time to scale these up world-wide. Meanwhile investors need certainty, a phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies in order to level the playing field and full disclosure of companies ‘carbon footprints’ in order to make informed decisions."
Bloomberg New Energy Finance released new research data at the Summit showing that global clean energy investment was $254 billion in 2013, an 11 percent drop from the revised $286 billion in 2012. BNEF attributed the decline to a continued sharp reduction in cost of photovoltaic systems and impacts on investor confidence due to policy shifts regarding renewable power in Europe and the U.S.
A number of positive trends emerged, however. Investment in clean energy via the public markets more than doubled as rising share prices restored some confidence in the shares of solar and wind manufacturers. Investors also showed enthusiasm about new areas such as electric vehicles and renewable power project funds.
“Despite the drop in global investments in 2013, it is possible to close the investment gap by first, bringing capital costs down for clean energy projects and second, more properly pricing fossil fuel capital costs which are artificially low,” said Mark Fulton, senior fellow for Ceres who authored the Ceres paper, Investing in the Clean Trillion: Closing the Clean Energy Investment Gap. “There needs to be a global push to put the necessary financing vehicles and policies in place to bring capital costs down and enable the capital markets to realize clean energy's vast potential.”
The Ceres paper is available at www.ceres.org/cleantrillion. Recommendations include:
Mobilize Investor Action to Scale Up Clean Energy Investment
1. Develop capacity to boost clean energy investments and consider setting a goal such as 5 percent portfolio-wide clean energy investments
2. Elevate scrutiny of fossil fuel companies’ potential carbon asset risk exposure
3. Engage portfolio companies on the business case for energy efficiency and renewable energy sourcing, as well as on financing vehicles to support such efforts
4. Support efforts to standardize and quantify clean energy investment data and products to improve market transparency
Promote Green Banking and Debt Capital Markets
5. Encourage "green banking" to maximize private capital flows into clean energy
6. Support issuances of asset-backed securities to expand debt financing for clean energy projects
7. Support development bank finance and technical assistance for emerging economies
Reform Climate, Energy and Financial Policies
8. Support regulatory reforms to electric utility business models to accelerate deployment of clean energy sources and technologies
9. Support government policies that result in a strong price on carbon pollution from fossil fuels and phase out fossil fuel subsidies
10. Support policies to de-risk deployment of clean energy sources and technologies
In support of green banking and debt capital markets, a number of banks – including Ceres’ Company Network member Bank of America – published the “Green Bond Principles,” the first-ever voluntary disclosure standards for issuing green bonds.
“Through their cooperation on the Green Bond Principles, the banks are promoting transparency and integrity in the development of the green bond market,” Lubber said. “This is the type of thinking that needs to be encouraged if we are to reach the Clean Trillion goal.”
For more information, visit www.ceres.org/cleantrillion and http://www.ceres.org/investor-network/investor-summit." target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.ceres.org/investor-network/investor-summit.
About Ceres
Ceres is a nonprofit organization mobilizing business and investor leadership on climate change, water scarcity and other sustainability challenges. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $11 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), an advocacy coalition of nearly 30 businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation. For more information, visit http://www.ceres.org or follow on Twitter @CeresNews. "
- Peyton Fleming, Aaron Pickering, Cortney Piper -
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/leading-global-investors-…
www.ceres.org/issues/clean-trillion/clean-trillion
www.ceres.org/resources/reports/investing-in-the-clean-trill…
www.ceres.org/investor-network/investor-summit
"Nearly 500 leading investors meeting today at the United Nations see major growth potential for ramping up green bonds and other clean energy investments to the levels necessary in order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Despite a drop in global clean energy investments in 2013, institutional investors expressed strong agreement on the urgency for boosting investments in low-carbon technologies. Much of the discussion focused on elevating clean energy investments by an additional $1 trillion per year in order to limit global warming to two degrees. Ceres announced a Clean Trillion paper with 10 recommendations for investors, companies and policymakers to scale up clean energy investments to $500 billion per year by 2020 and $1 trillion per year by 2030.
“Quite simply, there’s a huge clean energy investment gap,” said Jack Ehnes, CEO of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS), the nation’s second largest public pension fund managing $146 billion in assets. “Meeting the $1 trillion a year goal will be a challenge, but it is where we need to be in order to protect and grow our portfolios and to ensure the long-term sustainability of our planet.”
Ceres acknowledged the barriers to investing an additional $36 trillion in clean energy between now and 2050 – the levels the International Energy Agency has called for to limit global warming – but also focused on the opportunities associated with clean energy investments and the risks posed to institutional investors’ portfolios by not taking action.
“Cost competitive renewable technologies and attractive investment opportunities exist right now, but we’re still not seeing clean energy deployment at the scale we need to put a dent in climate change,” said Ceres president Mindy Lubber, whose group helped organize the Investor Summit on Climate Risk in collaboration with the UN Foundation and the UN Office for Partnerships. “Companies and investors must support the adoption of the necessary policies that that will open the floodgates for investment capital from all asset classes to flow into clean energy.”
Today’s event comes in advance of the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Summit in September, where he will seek to raise ambition, including among business and investors, towards a new universal agreement on climate change by 2015. The investors were urged today by Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to continue seeking opportunities to invest profitably in clean energy solutions and support the international climate process.
"Governments and investors have pivotal, mutually supportive roles to play in accelerating the transition to the low carbon economy —one that can combat climate change, generate jobs and tackle a range of challenges from natural resource scarcities to health-hazardous air pollution,” she said. “Smart policies, creative incentives and innovative financial instruments by governments are already catalyzing a shift: it is time to scale these up world-wide. Meanwhile investors need certainty, a phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies in order to level the playing field and full disclosure of companies ‘carbon footprints’ in order to make informed decisions."
Bloomberg New Energy Finance released new research data at the Summit showing that global clean energy investment was $254 billion in 2013, an 11 percent drop from the revised $286 billion in 2012. BNEF attributed the decline to a continued sharp reduction in cost of photovoltaic systems and impacts on investor confidence due to policy shifts regarding renewable power in Europe and the U.S.
A number of positive trends emerged, however. Investment in clean energy via the public markets more than doubled as rising share prices restored some confidence in the shares of solar and wind manufacturers. Investors also showed enthusiasm about new areas such as electric vehicles and renewable power project funds.
“Despite the drop in global investments in 2013, it is possible to close the investment gap by first, bringing capital costs down for clean energy projects and second, more properly pricing fossil fuel capital costs which are artificially low,” said Mark Fulton, senior fellow for Ceres who authored the Ceres paper, Investing in the Clean Trillion: Closing the Clean Energy Investment Gap. “There needs to be a global push to put the necessary financing vehicles and policies in place to bring capital costs down and enable the capital markets to realize clean energy's vast potential.”
The Ceres paper is available at www.ceres.org/cleantrillion. Recommendations include:
Mobilize Investor Action to Scale Up Clean Energy Investment
1. Develop capacity to boost clean energy investments and consider setting a goal such as 5 percent portfolio-wide clean energy investments
2. Elevate scrutiny of fossil fuel companies’ potential carbon asset risk exposure
3. Engage portfolio companies on the business case for energy efficiency and renewable energy sourcing, as well as on financing vehicles to support such efforts
4. Support efforts to standardize and quantify clean energy investment data and products to improve market transparency
Promote Green Banking and Debt Capital Markets
5. Encourage "green banking" to maximize private capital flows into clean energy
6. Support issuances of asset-backed securities to expand debt financing for clean energy projects
7. Support development bank finance and technical assistance for emerging economies
Reform Climate, Energy and Financial Policies
8. Support regulatory reforms to electric utility business models to accelerate deployment of clean energy sources and technologies
9. Support government policies that result in a strong price on carbon pollution from fossil fuels and phase out fossil fuel subsidies
10. Support policies to de-risk deployment of clean energy sources and technologies
In support of green banking and debt capital markets, a number of banks – including Ceres’ Company Network member Bank of America – published the “Green Bond Principles,” the first-ever voluntary disclosure standards for issuing green bonds.
“Through their cooperation on the Green Bond Principles, the banks are promoting transparency and integrity in the development of the green bond market,” Lubber said. “This is the type of thinking that needs to be encouraged if we are to reach the Clean Trillion goal.”
For more information, visit www.ceres.org/cleantrillion and http://www.ceres.org/investor-network/investor-summit." target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://www.ceres.org/investor-network/investor-summit.
About Ceres
Ceres is a nonprofit organization mobilizing business and investor leadership on climate change, water scarcity and other sustainability challenges. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $11 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), an advocacy coalition of nearly 30 businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation. For more information, visit http://www.ceres.org or follow on Twitter @CeresNews. "
PAGE toolkit "provides practical guidance, on transitioning to a green economy", UNEP has released three new reports to guide countries interested in advancing their national green economy transition. Produced under the Partnership for Action on Green Economy(PAGE), the "Green Economy Toolkit for Policymakers" reports provide practical guidance on how to formulate +assess policies, measure progress +model future effects of a green economy transition - GGK/UNEP/PAGE - Sep14
- Melissa Gorelick, Emily Benson -
Melissa.Gorelick (at) unep.org
254 20 762 3088
Emily.benson (at) greeneconomycoalition.org
www.unep.org/greeneconomy/Portals/88/documents/GEI%20Highlig…
www.unep.org/greeneconomy/Portals/88/documents/GEI%20Highlig…
www.unep.org/greeneconomy/Portals/88/documents/GEI%20Highlig…
- Melissa Gorelick, Emily Benson -
Melissa.Gorelick (at) unep.org
254 20 762 3088
Emily.benson (at) greeneconomycoalition.org
www.unep.org/greeneconomy/Portals/88/documents/GEI%20Highlig…
www.unep.org/greeneconomy/Portals/88/documents/GEI%20Highlig…
www.unep.org/greeneconomy/Portals/88/documents/GEI%20Highlig…
The 'risks +opportunities of stranded assets', The emergence of carbon pricing +concerns about the lock-in of carbon-intensive technologies has helped bring forward the issue of stranded assets as a sustainability concern. The report "China's Financial Markets: The Risks +Opportunities of Stranded Assets" by the University of Oxford's Stranded Assets Programme +the Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System discusses opportunities, to secure an optimal rate of asset stranding, avoid technological lock-ins, +ensure a gradual transition pathway - GGK/UoO/UNEP/IISD/SSEE, OXFORD - Sep14
- Ben Caldecott, Nick Robins -
- "Stranded assets” are assets that have suffered from unanticipated or premature write-downs, devaluations, or conversion to liabilities. Over the course of the last two decades, the challenges surrounding technological innovation, investor behaviour, +business resilience have become magnified in the context of environmental change. In particular, the issue of stranded assets has emerged as a sustainability concern, beyond regulatory action on competition policy. Evidence shows that asset values are being impacted across a wide range of sectors +countries. For example, air pollution +water scarcity in China threaten coal-fired power generation, which has changed coal demand +affected global coal prices.
Chinese decisions to move away from a high pollution +high resource intensive economies +build an ‘eco-civilisation’ will have implications both for existing assets, as well as the trajectory of future capital investment. This paper suggests that the shift could bring about opportunities to secure an optimal rate of asset stranding, to avoid technological lock-ins, +maintain a smooth +gradual transition pathway. The paper also shares lessons from international experiences, through five case studies where environment-related risks are stranding or threatening to strand assets in different sectors. ...-
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
- Ben Caldecott, Nick Robins -
- "Stranded assets” are assets that have suffered from unanticipated or premature write-downs, devaluations, or conversion to liabilities. Over the course of the last two decades, the challenges surrounding technological innovation, investor behaviour, +business resilience have become magnified in the context of environmental change. In particular, the issue of stranded assets has emerged as a sustainability concern, beyond regulatory action on competition policy. Evidence shows that asset values are being impacted across a wide range of sectors +countries. For example, air pollution +water scarcity in China threaten coal-fired power generation, which has changed coal demand +affected global coal prices.
Chinese decisions to move away from a high pollution +high resource intensive economies +build an ‘eco-civilisation’ will have implications both for existing assets, as well as the trajectory of future capital investment. This paper suggests that the shift could bring about opportunities to secure an optimal rate of asset stranding, to avoid technological lock-ins, +maintain a smooth +gradual transition pathway. The paper also shares lessons from international experiences, through five case studies where environment-related risks are stranding or threatening to strand assets in different sectors. ...-
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
Practical approaches to reducing disaster risk +capitalising opportunities, Part one of UNEP FI Principles for Sustainable Insurance(PSI) Initiative's Global Resilience Project, "Building disaster-resilient communities +economics", assesses the effectiveness of risk reduction measures, +determines what factors drive success +present obstacles. Analysing >300 data +information sources on risk reduction measures, the report identifies inconsistencies, which make it difficult to compare +presents a challenge to drawing meaningful insights on the effectiveness of each risk reduction measure. The report concludes that for data to be useful on a global scale, it must be consistent, standardised +globally accepted - GGK/UNEP/PSI - Jul14
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
"Mainstreaming climate change, into public expenditure policy", The report "Climate Change Public Expenditure +Institutional Review Sourcebook" by the World Bank, provides practitioners with the tools +information needed, to respond to the public expenditure policy +management challenges arising from climate change. Through a series of notes +supporting materials, the report provides practical +applicable guidance for staff of central finance agencies, development agencies, environmental agencies +other international organisations, working on climate change issues. The report includes case studies from Poland, Macedonia, United Kingdom, Nigeria, Nepal, Australia, United States, Turkey, the Caribbean, Mexico, Malawi, Honduras, China, Republic of Korea, Uganda, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, France, Morocco, Viet Nam +India - GGK/WB - May14
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
"Building a blue-green economy, for 'Small Island Developing States', UNEP's new Global Environment Outlook for Small Island Developing States(SIDS) explores the unique characteristics of SIDS, e.g. abundance of renewable resources +cultural assets, in relation to the challenges they face, such as isolation, remoteness, climate change +natural disasters. Built on combinations of realistic outlooks, this report presents four island-centric futures: the blue-green economy; technology leapfrogging; priority to island community +culture; +reconnecting with nature, to help individual states consider policy choices, that best respond to their needs - GGK/UNEP - Aug14
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
"Making energy efficiency bankable, in India"; Acknowledging that India's energy deficit cannot be addressed without a focus on energy efficiency, a new report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development(IISD) outlines ten ideas for making the sector bankable. The report, "10 Big Ideas for Making Energy Efficiency Bankable in India", presents ideas which are practical, do not require large budgets +are implementable in the immediate term - GGK/IISD - Aug14
- Oshani Perera, Mariana Hug Silva, Tilmann Liebert, Shruti Sharma, Carlos Dominguez -
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
- Oshani Perera, Mariana Hug Silva, Tilmann Liebert, Shruti Sharma, Carlos Dominguez -
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
Strengthening links, between development +climate finance; The study "Financing Recovery for Resilience" by UNDP, assesses whether the financing practice of recovery efforts +the transition from crisis to sustainable development in fragile +conflict-affected states are consistent. The recommendations of this study are based on a mapping +comparative analysis of humanitarian, development +climate adaptation pooled financing mechanisms, @the global +country level. The study highlights practical steps to enhance the effectiveness of country-level development pooled financing mechanisms for recovery, by: i) coverage -better leveraging the potential of pooled funds, to manage risk +enable an early release of development finance, in fragile +conflict-affected countries; ii) capitalization -consolidating the large number of small recovery pooled funds into a smaller number of larger pooled funds, to create a critical mass of resources that can coordinate recovery interventions across humanitarian, development +climate adaptation assistance; +iii) coherence -promoting a common theory of change across recovery efforts, +incorporating these efforts into a broader resilience framework, where appropriate - GGK/UNDP/UN/MPTFO/OCHA/PBSO/UNDG-ECHA WGT/ODI/FAO/DOCO/UNICEF/WHO/DSRSG/HC/RC - Jun14
- Fiona Bayat-Renoux, Yannick Glemarec -
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
- Fiona Bayat-Renoux, Yannick Glemarec -
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
‘Two-thirds of energy efficiency potential unrealised’ under current policies - ELN/IEA - Sep 9, 2014
- Priyanka Shrestha -
www.energylivenews.com/2014/09/09/two-thirds-of-energy-effic…
"
Around two-thirds of energy efficiency potential will be unrealised between now and 2035 under existing policies, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
It believes that’s partly because energy efficiency is “routinely and significantly undervalued”.
The IEA’s new report says the benefits of energy efficiency “go well beyond the simple scaling back of energy demand”.
It shows energy efficiency has the potential to support economic and social growth, advance environmental sustainability as well as ensure energy system security.
The analysis predicts uptake of energy efficiency investments to boost economic output through 2035 by $18 trillion – larger than the current size of the economies of the US, Canada and Mexico combined.
Maria van der Hoeven, IEA Executive Director said: “This report lays out the case for governments to invest more time in measuring the impacts of energy efficiency policies, to improve understanding of their role in boosting economic and social development and to facilitate policy design that maximises the benefits prioritised by each country.”
Investment in the energy efficiency market reached $300 billion in 2012. "
- Priyanka Shrestha -
www.energylivenews.com/2014/09/09/two-thirds-of-energy-effic…
"
Around two-thirds of energy efficiency potential will be unrealised between now and 2035 under existing policies, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
It believes that’s partly because energy efficiency is “routinely and significantly undervalued”.
The IEA’s new report says the benefits of energy efficiency “go well beyond the simple scaling back of energy demand”.
It shows energy efficiency has the potential to support economic and social growth, advance environmental sustainability as well as ensure energy system security.
The analysis predicts uptake of energy efficiency investments to boost economic output through 2035 by $18 trillion – larger than the current size of the economies of the US, Canada and Mexico combined.
Maria van der Hoeven, IEA Executive Director said: “This report lays out the case for governments to invest more time in measuring the impacts of energy efficiency policies, to improve understanding of their role in boosting economic and social development and to facilitate policy design that maximises the benefits prioritised by each country.”
Investment in the energy efficiency market reached $300 billion in 2012. "
Japan: 'solar islands' replace nuclear power - ENN/TE - Sep 16, 2014
- John Major -
www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2550618/japan_solar_…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47833
"As Japan seeks to end reliance on nuclear power, one of the answers is floating 'solar islands', writes Jon Major. A 70MW solar island opened last year, and two additional plants have just been announced.
Two companies in Japan recently announced they are to begin building two large solar power islands that will float on reservoirs.
This follows smartphone maker Kyocera's Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega Solar power plant, the country's largest at 70 megawatts, which opened in late 2013 and is found floating in the sea just off the coast of southern Japan.
The two new solar islands, to be built by Kyocera and commercial partners, will form a network of thirty 2MW stations - adding another 60MW of solar capacity.
The move comes as Japan looks to move on from the Fukushima disaster of 2011 and meet the energy needs of its 127m people without relying on nuclear power.
Shattered confidence in nuclear power
Before the incident around 30% of the country's power was generated from nuclear, with plans to push this to 40%. But Fukushima destroyed public confidence in nuclear power, and with earthquakes in regions containing reactors highly likely, Japan is now looking for alternatives.
Solar power is an obvious solution for relatively resource-poor nations. It is clean, cost-competitive, has no restrictions on where it can be used and has the capability to make up for the energy shortfall.
A small fact that solar researchers love to trot out is that enough sunlight falls on the earth's landmass around every 40 minutes to power the planet for a year. To put this another way, if we covered a fraction of the Sahara desert in solar panels we could power the world many times over.
The technology already exists, so producing enough solar power comes primarily down to one thing: space. For countries such as the USA with lots of sparsely populated land this is not an issue, and there have already been a large number of solar farms installed around the country.
For Japan, the answer is offshore
But Japan where space is limited, more inventive solutions are required. This is the principle reason behind the decision to move their solar power generation offshore.
While the land is highly congested, and therefore expensive, the sea is largely unused. It therefore makes a good degree of sense to use this space for floating power plants. "
- John Major -
www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2550618/japan_solar_…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47833
"As Japan seeks to end reliance on nuclear power, one of the answers is floating 'solar islands', writes Jon Major. A 70MW solar island opened last year, and two additional plants have just been announced.
Two companies in Japan recently announced they are to begin building two large solar power islands that will float on reservoirs.
This follows smartphone maker Kyocera's Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega Solar power plant, the country's largest at 70 megawatts, which opened in late 2013 and is found floating in the sea just off the coast of southern Japan.
The two new solar islands, to be built by Kyocera and commercial partners, will form a network of thirty 2MW stations - adding another 60MW of solar capacity.
The move comes as Japan looks to move on from the Fukushima disaster of 2011 and meet the energy needs of its 127m people without relying on nuclear power.
Shattered confidence in nuclear power
Before the incident around 30% of the country's power was generated from nuclear, with plans to push this to 40%. But Fukushima destroyed public confidence in nuclear power, and with earthquakes in regions containing reactors highly likely, Japan is now looking for alternatives.
Solar power is an obvious solution for relatively resource-poor nations. It is clean, cost-competitive, has no restrictions on where it can be used and has the capability to make up for the energy shortfall.
A small fact that solar researchers love to trot out is that enough sunlight falls on the earth's landmass around every 40 minutes to power the planet for a year. To put this another way, if we covered a fraction of the Sahara desert in solar panels we could power the world many times over.
The technology already exists, so producing enough solar power comes primarily down to one thing: space. For countries such as the USA with lots of sparsely populated land this is not an issue, and there have already been a large number of solar farms installed around the country.
For Japan, the answer is offshore
But Japan where space is limited, more inventive solutions are required. This is the principle reason behind the decision to move their solar power generation offshore.
While the land is highly congested, and therefore expensive, the sea is largely unused. It therefore makes a good degree of sense to use this space for floating power plants. "
Most Polluted Countries - ENN/C2/WHO - Sep 16, 2014
- Lizabeth Paulat -
www.care2.com/causes/the-top-5-most-polluted-countries-in-th…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47832
"The WHO has released a new study ranking countries with the worst air pollution. When we consider air pollution most of us will automatically think of China. However, it was nowhere to be found in the top 10 offenders. This, by the way, is not because they’ve suddenly cleaned up their act, but rather because this study ranked countries as a whole, rather than cities.
So here are the top 5 countries with the worst air pollution, and what they are trying to do to combat it.
1. Pakistan
Pakistan made #1 on the list with a PM 2.5 pollution level of 101 ug/m3. Now, that might not make sense so let me break it down: PM 2.5 stands for the size of the particles of pollution. The size (2.5) is frequently cited as the most detrimental because it can travel deep into lungs and cause a variety of ailments. Good examples of these particles are smoke, mold and dust. The ug/m3 part stands for micrograms per unit meter of air. So Pakistan has 101 micrograms of PM 2.5 pollutants per unit meter of air.
This level of pollution can be fatal to certain people with compromised respiratory systems and is blamed for killing thousands each year. Such pollutants also cause at least 80,000 hospitalizations in Pakistan alone. Although Pakistan has hosted a number of green air initiatives, and Coca-Cola has even led the fight in establishing better air quality, the country continues to suffer from some of the worst pollution on the planet.
Part of this is because Pakistan is dealing with crippling security threats on an everyday basis. Recent attacks on Karachi’s International Airport and Taliban offenses from the Afghan border mean that much of the government budget is devoted to security rather than health and the environment. Because of this, Pakistanis will continue to suffer a host of complications due to pollution.
2. Qatar
Qatar ranks in as the second worst country with 92 units of PM 2.5 micrograms per unit meter of air. Heavy construction in a relatively small area, combined with one of the biggest growing international airports have converged to create truly terrible air quality. However, Qatar is doing something about this.
The Sahara Forest Project, which is somewhat oddly named as the desert in Qatar is not the Sahara (not even close), is using state of the art techniques to plant trees, bushes, and bring sustainable water and energy designs to the miles of desert that surround the city’s countryside. Further, by trapping seawater and evaporating it into the air, they are looking to reduce desert temperatures to create a more humid climate. If it is successful, it could help bring down the pollution levels in Qatar substantially.
Although some flinch at the idea of removing a desert ecosystem that has existed for thousands of years, projects such as these have been accomplished before, in desertification areas of Northern Africa. The results have actually been positive, showing little impact on overall environmental stability.
3. Afghanistan
Afghanistan comes in just after Qatar with a PM 2.5 level of 84 micrograms per unit meter of air. Part of this naturally has to do with the recent war. Rubble, creating a mix of toxic building materials in the air, along with bombs, smoke, generators which run on diesel, and air travel in and out of the country have come together in a disastrous mix of toxic pollutants.
Sadly, not a whole lot is planned for invigorating the air quality of the country. Although Afghanistan does have a Green Club, a lot of the activities are simply raising awareness for the problem as actual funds to institute programs are near impossible to find.
4. Bangladesh
This is one of the few nations where air quality has fallen steadily over the past few years, the air here has a PM 2.5 level of 79 micrograms per unit meter of air. Air quality is something which sends thousands of Bangladeshis to hospitals every year, especially in urban areas where massive factories have sprung up.
Part of this is because the country provides very cheap labor and industry, which has led to a deregulation of sorts in the country. Because of loose standards for the environment, companies can save labor money but create a large environmental impact.
Enter the Bangladesh Green Roof Movement. Started by local groups, this is a movement which could have a great impact on the country. By planting gardens they not only help with food sustainability, but help reduce the pollution levels inside the country. While Bangladesh has a long way to go, it’s heartening to see that the citizens are taking it upon themselves to try to create a greener future.
5. Iran
Iran rounds out the top five most polluted countries with a PM 2.5 level of 76 micrograms per unit meter of air. Part of the reason for this is simply a lack of quality products. The gasoline used is often poor quality, the building materials used contain asbestos, and overcrowding and a large youth population has led to congested streets.
However, with such a large youth population, Iran has also started championing some interesting environmental movements. Demonstrations where people line up inside of public parks with breathing masks on have spread on social media. Although environmental issues are often the bastion of upper-middle class people in developing nations, in Iran’s case citizens from all walks of life have gotten involved. This includes villagers renouncing poor cooking methods and poaching.
Although the current president of Iran has remained fairly mum on the environment, most agree he is far more open to it than Iran’s former president. This has given the Iranian youth hope that environmental consciousness improves as their country moves forward. "
- Lizabeth Paulat -
www.care2.com/causes/the-top-5-most-polluted-countries-in-th…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47832
"The WHO has released a new study ranking countries with the worst air pollution. When we consider air pollution most of us will automatically think of China. However, it was nowhere to be found in the top 10 offenders. This, by the way, is not because they’ve suddenly cleaned up their act, but rather because this study ranked countries as a whole, rather than cities.
So here are the top 5 countries with the worst air pollution, and what they are trying to do to combat it.
1. Pakistan
Pakistan made #1 on the list with a PM 2.5 pollution level of 101 ug/m3. Now, that might not make sense so let me break it down: PM 2.5 stands for the size of the particles of pollution. The size (2.5) is frequently cited as the most detrimental because it can travel deep into lungs and cause a variety of ailments. Good examples of these particles are smoke, mold and dust. The ug/m3 part stands for micrograms per unit meter of air. So Pakistan has 101 micrograms of PM 2.5 pollutants per unit meter of air.
This level of pollution can be fatal to certain people with compromised respiratory systems and is blamed for killing thousands each year. Such pollutants also cause at least 80,000 hospitalizations in Pakistan alone. Although Pakistan has hosted a number of green air initiatives, and Coca-Cola has even led the fight in establishing better air quality, the country continues to suffer from some of the worst pollution on the planet.
Part of this is because Pakistan is dealing with crippling security threats on an everyday basis. Recent attacks on Karachi’s International Airport and Taliban offenses from the Afghan border mean that much of the government budget is devoted to security rather than health and the environment. Because of this, Pakistanis will continue to suffer a host of complications due to pollution.
2. Qatar
Qatar ranks in as the second worst country with 92 units of PM 2.5 micrograms per unit meter of air. Heavy construction in a relatively small area, combined with one of the biggest growing international airports have converged to create truly terrible air quality. However, Qatar is doing something about this.
The Sahara Forest Project, which is somewhat oddly named as the desert in Qatar is not the Sahara (not even close), is using state of the art techniques to plant trees, bushes, and bring sustainable water and energy designs to the miles of desert that surround the city’s countryside. Further, by trapping seawater and evaporating it into the air, they are looking to reduce desert temperatures to create a more humid climate. If it is successful, it could help bring down the pollution levels in Qatar substantially.
Although some flinch at the idea of removing a desert ecosystem that has existed for thousands of years, projects such as these have been accomplished before, in desertification areas of Northern Africa. The results have actually been positive, showing little impact on overall environmental stability.
3. Afghanistan
Afghanistan comes in just after Qatar with a PM 2.5 level of 84 micrograms per unit meter of air. Part of this naturally has to do with the recent war. Rubble, creating a mix of toxic building materials in the air, along with bombs, smoke, generators which run on diesel, and air travel in and out of the country have come together in a disastrous mix of toxic pollutants.
Sadly, not a whole lot is planned for invigorating the air quality of the country. Although Afghanistan does have a Green Club, a lot of the activities are simply raising awareness for the problem as actual funds to institute programs are near impossible to find.
4. Bangladesh
This is one of the few nations where air quality has fallen steadily over the past few years, the air here has a PM 2.5 level of 79 micrograms per unit meter of air. Air quality is something which sends thousands of Bangladeshis to hospitals every year, especially in urban areas where massive factories have sprung up.
Part of this is because the country provides very cheap labor and industry, which has led to a deregulation of sorts in the country. Because of loose standards for the environment, companies can save labor money but create a large environmental impact.
Enter the Bangladesh Green Roof Movement. Started by local groups, this is a movement which could have a great impact on the country. By planting gardens they not only help with food sustainability, but help reduce the pollution levels inside the country. While Bangladesh has a long way to go, it’s heartening to see that the citizens are taking it upon themselves to try to create a greener future.
5. Iran
Iran rounds out the top five most polluted countries with a PM 2.5 level of 76 micrograms per unit meter of air. Part of the reason for this is simply a lack of quality products. The gasoline used is often poor quality, the building materials used contain asbestos, and overcrowding and a large youth population has led to congested streets.
However, with such a large youth population, Iran has also started championing some interesting environmental movements. Demonstrations where people line up inside of public parks with breathing masks on have spread on social media. Although environmental issues are often the bastion of upper-middle class people in developing nations, in Iran’s case citizens from all walks of life have gotten involved. This includes villagers renouncing poor cooking methods and poaching.
Although the current president of Iran has remained fairly mum on the environment, most agree he is far more open to it than Iran’s former president. This has given the Iranian youth hope that environmental consciousness improves as their country moves forward. "
Why "Are Billions of Dollars in Precious Metals Wasting Away, in Landfills Around the World?" - CT - Jun 29, 2014
- Dave Kruchinin, CEO of eCycle Best -
http://cleantechies.com/2014/06/29/why-are-billions-of-dolla…
"Mining for precious metals like gold, silver, and copper is extremely costly. Not only does it require a huge amount of energy and have a devastating impact on the environment, it also puts human life at risk.
Still, these metals are what enable our precious smartphones and tablets to work so efficiently, so we have to get them from somewhere. But what if that somewhere was old gadgets we no longer want instead of deep within the Earth?
E-waste often contains more rare metals than mined ores. Studies show e-waste has 10 to 50 times the copper content than copper ore, and a phone contains 5 to 10 times the gold content than gold ore. Harvesting these precious metals from unwanted or broken gadgets is called urban mining, and it’s growing in popularity.
BlueOak Resources, a San Francisco start-up, recently broke ground on its first “urban mining refinery,” a facility that will extract precious materials from e-waste. If all goes as planned with the Arkansas location, BlueOak will built similar refineries across the country, each one processing e-waste from the surrounding area.
If properly processed, urban mining can be extremely profitable and good for the environment at the same time. We hope that device manufacturers like Apple and Dell need to do their part by making products that are easy to disassemble, separate, and recycle.
"
- Dave Kruchinin, CEO of eCycle Best -
http://cleantechies.com/2014/06/29/why-are-billions-of-dolla…
"Mining for precious metals like gold, silver, and copper is extremely costly. Not only does it require a huge amount of energy and have a devastating impact on the environment, it also puts human life at risk.
Still, these metals are what enable our precious smartphones and tablets to work so efficiently, so we have to get them from somewhere. But what if that somewhere was old gadgets we no longer want instead of deep within the Earth?
E-waste often contains more rare metals than mined ores. Studies show e-waste has 10 to 50 times the copper content than copper ore, and a phone contains 5 to 10 times the gold content than gold ore. Harvesting these precious metals from unwanted or broken gadgets is called urban mining, and it’s growing in popularity.
BlueOak Resources, a San Francisco start-up, recently broke ground on its first “urban mining refinery,” a facility that will extract precious materials from e-waste. If all goes as planned with the Arkansas location, BlueOak will built similar refineries across the country, each one processing e-waste from the surrounding area.
If properly processed, urban mining can be extremely profitable and good for the environment at the same time. We hope that device manufacturers like Apple and Dell need to do their part by making products that are easy to disassemble, separate, and recycle.
"
New Analysis Points To Pollution As The Largest Cause of Death, in Low- +Middle-Income Countries; Global Alliance Urges Higher Priority For Comprehensive Approach to Pollution in SDGs - ENN/GAHP/BSI/UN, NEW YORK - Jun 13, 2014
www.enn.com/press_releases/4276
www.gahp.net/new/
www.gahp.net/new/pollutionthelargestcauseofdeath/
www.gahp.net/new/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/SDG-Health-Targe…
www.gahp.net/new/resources/pollution-and-health/gahp-poisone…
"The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) has released a new analysis of data that points to pollution as the largest factor in disease and death in the developing world, killing more than 8.4 million people each year. But pollution has a low priority in the current draft of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the U.N.'s new plan for development assistance for the next 15 years.
The analysis, based on new data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and others, determine that 7.4 million deaths were due to pollution sources from air, water, sanitation and hygiene. WHO figures released in May 2014 count deaths from outdoor and indoor air pollution at 6.58 million; water contamination, lack of sanitation and hygiene at 842,000.
The analysis by GAHP attributes an additional one million deaths to toxic chemical and industrial wastes from large and small producers in formal and informal sectors of economies in poor countries.
The total number of deaths, 8.4 million, is largest death factor in the world. In fact, pollution causes almost three times more deaths than malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis combined (1.5 million deaths from HIV; 600,000 from malaria; and 900,000 from tuberculosis).
GAHP members worldwide have come together to urge the U.N. to spotlight pollution in the SDGs (see the growing list of supporters). A position paper and a draft of GAHP’s proposed revised SDG text have been created. These will be presented to the Open Working Group of the SDGs, meeting in New York City next week.
Spotlighting the Largest “Invisible” Killer in the Developing World
"There is a reason why pollution is sometimes called the invisible killer," says Richard Fuller, President of Pure Earth/Blacksmith Institute. "While it is the single largest risk factor, unfortunately, its impact is difficult to track because health statistics measure disease, not pollution.”
Fuller adds, “Pollution causes diseases like cancers, lung infections, and heart disease amongst others. Hospitals don't measure what caused those diseases. But contaminated water, soil and air result in millions of additional diseases and deaths. These are deaths we can avoid, if we prioritize addressing pollution."
Fernando Lugris, Ambassador and Deputy Director, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Uruguay adds, "The problem is that the current SDGs include mention only of air pollution in the health goal and ignore other causes like chemicals and waste. Since the SDGs will determine what the world pays attention to and funds over the next fifteen years, the importance of having all forms of pollution addressed is enormous. The SDGs set the agenda. We need to make sure pollution is adequately covered."
John Pwamang of the Ghana Environment Protection Agency notes, "We have identified over 200 places with contaminated air, soil or water that are putting at risk some 6 million people. These include places with lead poisoning from recycling used lead-acid or car batteries, and e-waste dismantling areas, where cables are burnt in the open air and the toxic smoke poisons whole neighborhoods. Plus we have poor sanitation in our villages, and air pollution from vehicle exhausts in our cities."
For a Vast Majority of Deaths in Poor Countries, Solutions are Available
It is no surprise that the overwhelming majority of deaths from pollution are in low and middle-countries, where the world's worst polluted places are located. The Poisoned Poor, like Seynabou Mbengue who lost five of her children to pollution, are unable to move to less polluted communities or escape from the toxic jobs that sustain them economically.
In the U.S., like other western countries, life-threatening pollution is mostly a thing of the past. The U.S. has well-developed legislative and regulatory systems, and technical expertise to deal with the problem.
Now, the task is to transfer technical know-how from the wealthy countries to those in need; poorer countries with millions of deaths and diseases that can and should be avoided. GAHP was created to undertake this exact mandate.
A comprehensive approach to all forms of pollution is critical. Many communities in poor countries are assaulted simultaneously with different combinations of these harmful pollutants, whether as airborne particles, industrial wastes discharged into rivers used for drinking and bathing, pesticides or herbicides on crops absorbed into food and seeping into ground water, to name just a few. Not only do these combined substances cause disability and disease today, but the neurotoxic and transgenerational threats they pose to children under age 5, babies in-utero and the future reproductive health of women cries out for priority status in the SDGs.
About the GAHP
The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) is a collaborative body of bilateral, multilateral, and international agencies, country governments, academia and civil society that assists low-and middle-income countries to reduce the human health impacts of chemicals, waste and toxic pollution. GAHP’s members include the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, European Commission, GIZ, the Ministries of Environment of Mexico, Ghana, Indonesia, Madagascar, Peru, Philippines, Senegal and Uruguay, UNIDO, UNEP and UNDP, among others. Pure Earth/Blacksmith Institute serves as Secretariat for the GAHP.
For more information visit www.gahp.net, or email info@gahp.net.
Contact Info:
Magdalene Sim, mag@blacksmithinstitute.org
Angela Bernhardt, angela@pureearth.org "
www.enn.com/press_releases/4276
www.gahp.net/new/
www.gahp.net/new/pollutionthelargestcauseofdeath/
www.gahp.net/new/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/SDG-Health-Targe…
www.gahp.net/new/resources/pollution-and-health/gahp-poisone…
"The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) has released a new analysis of data that points to pollution as the largest factor in disease and death in the developing world, killing more than 8.4 million people each year. But pollution has a low priority in the current draft of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the U.N.'s new plan for development assistance for the next 15 years.
The analysis, based on new data from the World Health Organization (WHO) and others, determine that 7.4 million deaths were due to pollution sources from air, water, sanitation and hygiene. WHO figures released in May 2014 count deaths from outdoor and indoor air pollution at 6.58 million; water contamination, lack of sanitation and hygiene at 842,000.
The analysis by GAHP attributes an additional one million deaths to toxic chemical and industrial wastes from large and small producers in formal and informal sectors of economies in poor countries.
The total number of deaths, 8.4 million, is largest death factor in the world. In fact, pollution causes almost three times more deaths than malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis combined (1.5 million deaths from HIV; 600,000 from malaria; and 900,000 from tuberculosis).
GAHP members worldwide have come together to urge the U.N. to spotlight pollution in the SDGs (see the growing list of supporters). A position paper and a draft of GAHP’s proposed revised SDG text have been created. These will be presented to the Open Working Group of the SDGs, meeting in New York City next week.
Spotlighting the Largest “Invisible” Killer in the Developing World
"There is a reason
why pollution is sometimes called the invisible killer," says Richard Fuller, President of Pure Earth/Blacksmith Institute. "While it is the single largest risk factor, unfortunately, its impact is difficult to track because health statistics measure disease, not pollution.”Fuller adds, “Pollution causes diseases like cancers, lung infections, and heart disease amongst others. Hospitals don't measure what caused those diseases. But contaminated water, soil and air result in millions of additional diseases and deaths. These are deaths we can avoid, if we prioritize addressing pollution."
Fernando Lugris, Ambassador and Deputy Director, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Government of Uruguay adds, "The problem is that the current SDGs include mention only of air pollution in the health goal and ignore other causes like chemicals and waste. Since the SDGs will determine what the world pays attention to and funds over the next fifteen years, the importance of having all forms of pollution addressed is enormous. The SDGs set the agenda. We need to make sure pollution is adequately covered."
John Pwamang of the Ghana Environment Protection Agency notes, "We have identified over 200 places with contaminated air, soil or water that are putting at risk some 6 million people. These include places with lead poisoning from recycling used lead-acid or car batteries, and e-waste dismantling areas, where cables are burnt in the open air and the toxic smoke poisons whole neighborhoods. Plus we have poor sanitation in our villages, and air pollution from vehicle exhausts in our cities."
For a Vast Majority of Deaths in Poor Countries, Solutions are Available
It is no surprise that the overwhelming majority of deaths from pollution are in low and middle-countries, where the world's worst polluted places are located. The Poisoned Poor, like Seynabou Mbengue who lost five of her children to pollution, are unable to move to less polluted communities or escape from the toxic jobs that sustain them economically.
In the U.S., like other western countries, life-threatening pollution is mostly a thing of the past. The U.S. has well-developed legislative and regulatory systems, and technical expertise to deal with the problem.
Now, the task is to transfer technical know-how from the wealthy countries to those in need; poorer countries with millions of deaths and diseases that can and should be avoided. GAHP was created to undertake this exact mandate.
A comprehensive approach to all forms of pollution is critical. Many communities in poor countries are assaulted simultaneously with different combinations of these harmful pollutants, whether as airborne particles, industrial wastes discharged into rivers used for drinking and bathing, pesticides or herbicides on crops absorbed into food and seeping into ground water, to name just a few. Not only do these combined substances cause disability and disease today, but the neurotoxic and transgenerational threats they pose to children under age 5, babies in-utero and the future reproductive health of women cries out for priority status in the SDGs.
About the GAHP
The Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP) is a collaborative body of bilateral, multilateral, and international agencies, country governments, academia and civil society that assists low-and middle-income countries to reduce the human health impacts of chemicals, waste and toxic pollution. GAHP’s members include the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, European Commission, GIZ, the Ministries of Environment of Mexico, Ghana, Indonesia, Madagascar, Peru, Philippines, Senegal and Uruguay, UNIDO, UNEP and UNDP, among others. Pure Earth/Blacksmith Institute serves as Secretariat for the GAHP.
For more information visit www.gahp.net, or email info@gahp.net.
Contact Info:
Magdalene Sim, mag@blacksmithinstitute.org
Angela Bernhardt, angela@pureearth.org "
"Tech Companies Lead in Move, to Renewable Energy" - CT/3BLM/GP - Jun 27, 2014
www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/planet3/PDFs/clickingclean…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/06/27/tech-companies-lead-in-mo…
"If the Internet was a country , its electricity use would rank sixth highest in the world . That huge power demand, and the potential to drive a renewable energy solution to its sourcing is the basis for Greenpeace’s report on tech companies that are moving toward one hundred percent renewable energy to power the Internet . For the report, Clicking Clean: How Internet Companies are Creating the Green internet, Greenpeace has evaluated 19 tech companies, including a review of over 300 data centers that make up their electricity supply chains. Five companies—Apple, Facebook, and Google, along with B2B companies Rackspace and Salesforce—have committed to a goal of powering their operations with one hundred percent renewable energy.
Apple has reached the one hundred percent goal in its power for its iCloud. It also operates the largest privately owned solar installation in the U.S at its North Carolina data center. Google has invested in wind energy; so has Facebook. Microsoft was noted for its carbon neutrality effort, for which it increased its renewables by 70 percent from 2011 to 2012. And SAP’s recent announcement that it would power all its data centers and facilities worldwide with one hundred percent sustainable electricity by the end of this year came too late to be included in the report, but the company’s targets are in line with those of the other leaders on Greenpeace’s Clean Energy list. For companies built on innovation, a focus on renewable energy seems like a natural move. "
www.greenpeace.org/usa/Global/usa/planet3/PDFs/clickingclean…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/06/27/tech-companies-lead-in-mo…
"If the Internet was a country
, its electricity use would rank sixth highest in the world . That huge power demand, and the potential to drive a renewable energy solution to its sourcing is the basis for Greenpeace’s report on tech companies that are moving toward one hundred percent renewable energy to power the Internet . For the report, Clicking Clean: How Internet Companies are Creating the Green internet, Greenpeace has evaluated 19 tech companies, including a review of over 300 data centers that make up their electricity supply chains. Five companies—Apple, Facebook, and Google, along with B2B companies Rackspace and Salesforce—have committed to a goal of powering their operations with one hundred percent renewable energy.Apple has reached the one hundred percent goal in its power for its iCloud. It also operates the largest privately owned solar installation in the U.S at its North Carolina data center. Google has invested in wind energy; so has Facebook. Microsoft was noted for its carbon neutrality effort, for which it increased its renewables by 70 percent from 2011 to 2012. And SAP’s recent announcement that it would power all its data centers and facilities worldwide with one hundred percent sustainable electricity by the end of this year came too late to be included in the report, but the company’s targets are in line with those of the other leaders on Greenpeace’s Clean Energy list. For companies built on innovation, a focus on renewable energy seems like a natural move. "
China 'develops rules, on curbing world's highest ammonia emission levels' - ECNS/C/CN - Sep 5, 2014
www.ecns.cn/cns-wire/2014/09-05/133330.shtml
"
- The photo taken on August 11 shows a blanket of brown haze has settled over Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan province. (Photo: Chinanews.com) -
China's environmental authority has issued a guidance note on ammonia emission inventories as one of the main precursors to high levels of pollutant particulate matter in the air, according to caixin.com.
China has become the world's largest emitter of ammonia over the past 20 years. Last year, a study by scholars at Harvard showed the country emitted 1,020 tons of ammonia between 2005 and 2008, compared to 340 tons in the US and 376 tons in the EU.
Ammonia, the only alkaline gas in the atmosphere, can dissolve in water and react with sulfur dioxide as well as nitric oxide to produce secondary particles such as ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate, which account for 40 to 60 percent of Particulate Matter 2.5.
The guidance lists seven main sources of ammonia emission, which include farming, livestock and poultry rearing, biomass burning, the chemical industry, human waste, motor emissions and waste disposal. The first two sources make up over 70 percent of the total. "
www.ecns.cn/cns-wire/2014/09-05/133330.shtml
"
- The photo taken on August 11 shows a blanket of brown haze has settled over Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan province. (Photo: Chinanews.com) -
China's environmental authority has issued a guidance note on ammonia emission inventories as one of the main precursors to high levels of pollutant particulate matter in the air, according to caixin.com.
China has become the world's largest emitter of ammonia over the past 20 years. Last year, a study by scholars at Harvard showed the country emitted 1,020 tons of ammonia between 2005 and 2008, compared to 340 tons in the US and 376 tons in the EU.
Ammonia, the only alkaline gas in the atmosphere, can dissolve in water and react with sulfur dioxide as well as nitric oxide to produce secondary particles such as ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate, which account for 40 to 60 percent of Particulate Matter 2.5.
The guidance lists seven main sources of ammonia emission, which include farming, livestock and poultry rearing, biomass burning, the chemical industry, human waste, motor emissions and waste disposal. The first two sources make up over 70 percent of the total. "
Rice institute developed 44 new or improved rice varieties, in 2013 - FN-A/IRRI - Feb 27, 2014
- RJ Whitehead -
www.foodnavigator-asia.com/Policy/Rice-institute-developed-4…
- RJ Whitehead -
www.foodnavigator-asia.com/Policy/Rice-institute-developed-4…
Tackling Climate Change "Could Pay Off in 'as Little as 15 Years', Report Finds" - CT/Ye260/GCoE&C - Sep 17, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/17/tackling-climate-change-c…
"Limiting greenhouse gas emissions globally over the next 15 years is both economically feasible and likely to save money, according to a new report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. Between 2015 and 2030, nations are expected to invest roughly $90 trillion in urban, land-use and energy infrastructure, the analysis estimated.
Steering those investments toward renewable energy, efficiency improvements, and other low-emission technologies would make that global investment more costly, the panel of government and business leaders conceded — but only marginally, adding about $4 trillion overall. But these costs could eventually be offset by the lowered operating costs associated with renewable power, the report suggested.
Although they are difficult to quantify, health care savings associated with improved air quality would also offset costs. According to the report, the biggest challenges for governments will be enacting stronger rules and economic policies that favor low-carbon development, such as cutting the $600 billion that countries currently spend on fossil fuel subsidies.
The report highlights the plunging costs of renewable energy — solar technology costs have been cut in half since 2010, for example — and argues that limiting urban sprawl and deforestation are essential steps in combating climate change. "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/17/tackling-climate-change-c…
"Limiting greenhouse gas emissions globally over the next 15 years is both economically feasible and likely to save money, according to a new report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate. Between 2015 and 2030, nations are expected to invest roughly $90 trillion in urban, land-use and energy infrastructure, the analysis estimated.
Steering those investments toward renewable energy, efficiency improvements, and other low-emission technologies would make that global investment more costly, the panel of government and business leaders conceded — but only marginally, adding about $4 trillion overall. But these costs could eventually be offset by the lowered operating costs associated with renewable power, the report suggested.
Although they are difficult to quantify, health care savings associated with improved air quality would also offset costs. According to the report, the biggest challenges for governments will be enacting stronger rules and economic policies that favor low-carbon development, such as cutting the $600 billion that countries currently spend on fossil fuel subsidies.
The report highlights the plunging costs of renewable energy — solar technology costs have been cut in half since 2010, for example — and argues that limiting urban sprawl and deforestation are essential steps in combating climate change. "
" "About those 62,000 unregulated chemicals..."
For ten years, I've helped lead UCS's efforts to combat corporate and political influence on science.
I'm reaching out today because we have an opportunity to grow this important work—an opportunity unlike any we've had before—and we need you to help us seize it.
A longtime donor has challenged us to raise an additional $200,000 for our Center for Science and Democracy by September 30. If we can do it, the donor will contribute $1,000,000 in new funding to support the Center's work.
Will you please make a special gift now to help unlock $1 million to defend the role of science in public life?
Do you remember hearing the news from West Virginia earlier this year? 10,000 gallons of a toxic chemical used to process coal—MCHM—spilled into the Elk River, contaminating the drinking water of 300,000 people.1
Fear and confusion reigned. Pregnant women were allowed to drink the water one day, and told the next that it wasn't safe.2 The UCS Center for Science and Democracy organized West Virginia scientists to pressure the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ensure scientists were being heard, since even first responders didn't know what they were dealing with.3
And why didn't they? Because federal law exempts 62,000 chemicals from safety tests. A law shaped by the big chemical companies grandfathered in any chemical on the books before 1977—including MCHM.
The last time the government tried to ban one of these chemicals? 1989, when it banned asbestos—and then saw the ban partially overturned in court just two years later.
This is the type of "nothing to see here, keep moving along" level of oversight the chemical industry wants to keep in place. Your support and the challenge grant we've been offered give us the best chance to ramp up our campaigns to expose the truth about what's happening and put science back into policy making.
Can you make a special gift right now to help unlock $1 million in funding to champion science and safety over corporate interests?
After West Virginia, you'd think that Congress would try to tighten up chemical safety laws. Nope. Leaders in the House of Representatives are actually pushing a bill that would give the public LESS scientific information about the chemicals in our communities.
We've written to Congress, outlining the many ways this legislation fails the American public, and we continue to fight it.4 We're also working directly with agencies like the CDC and EPA to make sure their scientists can freely share their expertise—not be muzzled by any political or commercial agenda. And we're connecting scientists and experts with community organizations around the country to evaluate the local threats they face—like the release of toxic chemicals by factories in their communities.
The Center for Science and Democracy is founded on the conviction that science and human health should trump politics. That's where we stand, and that's what you stand for as a UCS supporter.
I hope you'll exercise your belief in science and the difference we can make when we fight for transparency, informed citizens, and the facts by making a special, tax-deductible gift today.
Sincerely,
Michael Halpern
Michael Halpern
Center for Science and Democracy
Union of Concerned Scientists
1. http://blog.ucsusa.org/west-virginia-scientists-to-epa-cdc-a…
2. http://blog.ucsusa.org/is-the-water-safe-the-west-virginia-c…
3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin/memo-to-congress…
4. http://saferchemicals.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/pdf/u… [PDF] "
For ten years, I've helped lead UCS's efforts to combat corporate and political influence on science.
I'm reaching out today because we have an opportunity to grow this important work—an opportunity unlike any we've had before—and we need you to help us seize it.
A longtime donor has challenged us to raise an additional $200,000 for our Center for Science and Democracy by September 30. If we can do it, the donor will contribute $1,000,000 in new funding to support the Center's work.
Will you please make a special gift now to help unlock $1 million to defend the role of science in public life?
Do you remember hearing the news from West Virginia earlier this year? 10,000 gallons of a toxic chemical used to process coal—MCHM—spilled into the Elk River, contaminating the drinking water of 300,000 people.1
Fear and confusion reigned. Pregnant women were allowed to drink the water one day, and told the next that it wasn't safe.2 The UCS Center for Science and Democracy organized West Virginia scientists to pressure the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ensure scientists were being heard, since even first responders didn't know what they were dealing with.3
And why didn't they? Because federal law exempts 62,000 chemicals from safety tests. A law shaped by the big chemical companies grandfathered in any chemical on the books before 1977—including MCHM.
The last time the government tried to ban one of these chemicals? 1989, when it banned asbestos—and then saw the ban partially overturned in court just two years later.
This is the type of "nothing to see here, keep moving along" level of oversight the chemical industry wants to keep in place. Your support and the challenge grant we've been offered give us the best chance to ramp up our campaigns to expose the truth about what's happening and put science back into policy making.
Can you make a special gift right now to help unlock $1 million in funding to champion science and safety over corporate interests?
After West Virginia, you'd think that Congress would try to tighten up chemical safety laws. Nope. Leaders in the House of Representatives are actually pushing a bill that would give the public LESS scientific information about the chemicals in our communities.
We've written to Congress, outlining the many ways this legislation fails the American public, and we continue to fight it.4 We're also working directly with agencies like the CDC and EPA to make sure their scientists can freely share their expertise—not be muzzled by any political or commercial agenda. And we're connecting scientists and experts with community organizations around the country to evaluate the local threats they face—like the release of toxic chemicals by factories in their communities.
The Center for Science and Democracy is founded on the conviction that science and human health should trump politics. That's where we stand, and that's what you stand for as a UCS supporter.
I hope you'll exercise your belief in science and the difference we can make when we fight for transparency, informed citizens, and the facts by making a special, tax-deductible gift today.
Sincerely,
Michael Halpern
Michael Halpern
Center for Science and Democracy
Union of Concerned Scientists
1. http://blog.ucsusa.org/west-virginia-scientists-to-epa-cdc-a…
2. http://blog.ucsusa.org/is-the-water-safe-the-west-virginia-c…
3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elliott-negin/memo-to-congress…
4. http://saferchemicals.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/pdf/u… [PDF] "
Malaysia's 'Smart Villages' +other great ideas, for sustainable development - ENN/EA/MI-GGfHT/SDSN - Sep 18, 2014
- Ms. Mastura Ishak, Terry Collins -
mastura@might.org.my
+60-14-665-1303
tc@tca.tc
416-538-8712
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-09/tca-mv091414.php
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47844
"As nations zero in on the UN's post-2015 global Sustainable Development Goals, innovations being successfully pioneered and demonstrated in Malaysia offer several proven tactical ideas for improving the world, says an influential international sustainable development networking organization.
The UN's Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), through its Malaysian chapter, cites ways in which the country is "rising to the challenge," including the construction of ingenious, self-sustaining "smart" villages -- each lifting about 100 families out of poverty and into affordable homes and employment.
Meanwhile, guides for minimizing the carbon footprint of cities while promoting healthy lifestyles, and using science to extract new wealth from palm biomass waste are among other creative initiatives underway in Malaysia that help light a path for emerging economy countries.
High-tech "smart villages" under construction in Malaysia are lifting incomes for scores of rural families while promoting environmental sustainability.
Each community consists of about 100 affordable homes, high-tech educational, training and recreational facilities, with an integrated, sustainable farm system providing villagers with food and employment -- on average tripling monthly income to about US $475.
Three villages are completed, four more are in progress and 11 more are planned in rural Malaysia for completion next year. Nine of the villages are in areas settled under Malaysia's Federal Land Development Authority -- a government agency founded to help resettle poor families in newly-developed areas with smallholder farms growing cash crops.
The smart villages -- designed, built (on about 50 acres each) and initially managed by Malaysia's IRIS corporation -- feature 1,000 square-foot homes built largely from post-consumer materials, each home constructed in just 10 days at a cost of under $20,000.
The innovative farming operations include a cascading series of fish tanks. Aquafarmed at the top of the water ladder are fish species sensitive to water quality, next tilapia, then guppies and finally algae, the latter two used to feed the larger fish.
Filtered fish tank wastewater then irrigates trees, grain fields, and high-value plants grown in "Autopots" - a three piece container featuring a smart valve that detects soil moisture levels and releases water precisely as required, reducing the need for fertilizer and pesticides. Worms from plants compost are fed to free-range chickens.
This system optimizes nutrient absorption, minimizes waste and enables crops to be grown in previously non-arable land. Premium produce sold at market include Golden Melon, Butterhead Lettuce, Misai Kuching (herbal tea), Jade Perch fish and the free-range chickens.
The village's solar-generated power is complemented by biomass energy and mini-hydro electricity. A community hall, resource centre, places of worship, playgrounds and educational facilities equipped with 4G Internet service support both e-learning and e-health services.
Image shows ingenious, self-sustaining 'smart' village. Each can lift about 100 families out of poverty and into affordable homes and employment.
Credit: MIGHT (Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology) "
- Ms. Mastura Ishak, Terry Collins -
mastura@might.org.my
+60-14-665-1303
tc@tca.tc
416-538-8712
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-09/tca-mv091414.php
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47844
"As nations zero in on the UN's post-2015 global Sustainable Development Goals, innovations being successfully pioneered and demonstrated in Malaysia offer several proven tactical ideas for improving the world, says an influential international sustainable development networking organization.
The UN's Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), through its Malaysian chapter, cites ways in which the country is "rising to the challenge," including the construction of ingenious, self-sustaining "smart" villages -- each lifting about 100 families out of poverty and into affordable homes and employment.
Meanwhile, guides for minimizing the carbon footprint of cities while promoting healthy lifestyles, and using science to extract new wealth from palm biomass waste are among other creative initiatives underway in Malaysia that help light a path for emerging economy countries.
High-tech "smart villages" under construction in Malaysia are lifting incomes for scores of rural families while promoting environmental sustainability.
Each community consists of about 100 affordable homes, high-tech educational, training and recreational facilities, with an integrated, sustainable farm system providing villagers with food and employment -- on average tripling monthly income to about US $475.
Three villages are completed, four more are in progress and 11 more are planned in rural Malaysia for completion next year. Nine of the villages are in areas settled under Malaysia's Federal Land Development Authority -- a government agency founded to help resettle poor families in newly-developed areas with smallholder farms growing cash crops.
The smart villages -- designed, built (on about 50 acres each) and initially managed by Malaysia's IRIS corporation -- feature 1,000 square-foot homes built largely from post-consumer materials, each home constructed in just 10 days at a cost of under $20,000.
The innovative farming operations include a cascading series of fish tanks. Aquafarmed at the top of the water ladder are fish species sensitive to water quality, next tilapia, then guppies and finally algae, the latter two used to feed the larger fish.
Filtered fish tank wastewater then irrigates trees, grain fields, and high-value plants grown in "Autopots" - a three piece container featuring a smart valve that detects soil moisture levels and releases water precisely as required, reducing the need for fertilizer and pesticides. Worms from plants compost are fed to free-range chickens.
This system optimizes nutrient absorption, minimizes waste and enables crops to be grown in previously non-arable land. Premium produce sold at market include Golden Melon, Butterhead Lettuce, Misai Kuching (herbal tea), Jade Perch fish and the free-range chickens.
The village's solar-generated power is complemented by biomass energy and mini-hydro electricity. A community hall, resource centre, places of worship, playgrounds and educational facilities equipped with 4G Internet service support both e-learning and e-health services.
Image shows ingenious, self-sustaining 'smart' village. Each can lift about 100 families out of poverty and into affordable homes and employment.
Credit: MIGHT (Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology) "
Pollinators are important to nutrition, especially in poorer regions - ENN/RSB, P/UoL/SWIftE, LEEDS - Sep 17, 2014
www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/3583/global_importance_of_polli…
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1794/2014…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47841
"Declines in populations of pollinators, such as bees and wasps, may be a key threat to nutrition in some of the most poorly fed parts of the globe, according to new research.
A major study, published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B and co-authored by a University of Leeds academic, looked at the importance of pollinators to 115 of the most common food crops worldwide and the importance of those crops in delivering vital nutrients to vulnerable populations.
The research, the first to study the relationship between nutrition and pollination across the globe, found some regions where disruptions in pollination could have serious implications for human health.
Deficiencies in ”�micronutrients’—nutrients such as iron and vitamins that are required by the body in small quantities - are three times as prevalent where production of micronutrients is heavily dependent upon pollinators, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the Middle East.
In Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America, almost 50% of plant-derived vitamin A production relies on pollination.
Dr Guy Ziv, co-author of the study and lecturer on ecosystem services in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds, said: "Populations of pollinators are declining across the globe. Whether this is because of intensive land use, pests, disease or climate change, it is time to devote more resources to the study and protection of these insects. Our study highlights the need of more globally coordinated effort, especially in developing countries where capacity is limited."
Dr Becky Chaplin-Kramer, research associate at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the lead author of the study, said: "A disruption in pollination services certainly has a price-tag, estimates go as high as $390 billion annually, but the cost to our nutrition could be even greater."
"This means pollinator declines could hit hardest on the very people who can afford to lose the least in terms of nutrition," she said. "
www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/3583/global_importance_of_polli…
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1794/2014…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47841
"Declines in populations of pollinators, such as bees and wasps, may be a key threat to nutrition in some of the most poorly fed parts of the globe, according to new research.
A major study, published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B and co-authored by a University of Leeds academic, looked at the importance of pollinators to 115 of the most common food crops worldwide and the importance of those crops in delivering vital nutrients to vulnerable populations.
The research, the first to study the relationship between nutrition and pollination across the globe, found some regions where disruptions in pollination could have serious implications for human health.
Deficiencies in ”�micronutrients’—nutrients such as iron and vitamins that are required by the body in small quantities - are three times as prevalent where production of micronutrients is heavily dependent upon pollinators, such as Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the Middle East.
In Southeast Asia and parts of Latin America, almost 50% of plant-derived vitamin A production relies on pollination.
Dr Guy Ziv, co-author of the study and lecturer on ecosystem services in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds, said: "Populations of pollinators are declining across the globe. Whether this is because of intensive land use, pests, disease or climate change, it is time to devote more resources to the study and protection of these insects. Our study highlights the need of more globally coordinated effort, especially in developing countries where capacity is limited."
Dr Becky Chaplin-Kramer, research associate at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the lead author of the study, said: "A disruption in pollination services certainly has a price-tag, estimates go as high as $390 billion annually, but the cost to our nutrition could be even greater."
"This means pollinator declines could hit hardest on the very people who can afford to lose the least in terms of nutrition," she said. "
Protected Areas Do Work, Says Study - ENN/MB/PO/MU, MONASH - Sep 16, 2014
- Jeremy Hance -
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0915-hance-pas-biodiversity.ht…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47839
"Protected areas are working. That's the conclusion of a new analysis of over 80 different studies on the efficacy of parks and nature reserves in safeguarding wildlife. Published in the open access journal, PLOS ONE, the new study finds that in general protected areas house higher abundances of wildlife as well as greater biodiversity than adjacent areas.
"This positive conservation outcome provides some hard data to show that investing in protected areas for biodiversity conservation is worthwhile," lead author Bernard Coetzee with Monash University in Australia told mongabay.com.
The research found that on average both the abundance and number of species were higher for mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and arthropods inside protected areas rather than beyond their borders. Findings for plants proved more variable with the researchers reporting a "non-significant" difference between plants inside protected areas and out.
"'Non-significant' means that we do not have enough data, or the data is too variable, to say with certainty if there is more, or less, biodiversity conserved inside to outside reserves," said Coetzee. "It does not mean protected areas are ineffective at conservation—it more likely means that some work better than others."
Regionally, Coetzee and his team also found that protected areas were largely effective across the board. The only exception was South America, where the team also found a 'non-significant' difference.
"This pattern is not straightforward to interpret," said Coetzee. "One explanation may be hunting pressure. Some studies included in our analysis found higher rates of poaching inside protected areas, which diminishes large mammal populations inside reserves. While primary forest is irreplaceable for conservation, other studies, particularly those done in South America, have shown that land use areas under low extraction, or regenerating forests, can contribute to some degree to conservation—which means that overall the effect of protected areas designation will not be as statistically marked in South America as in other regions."
However, Coetzee stresses that the findings in South America may also be due to a lower sample size on that continent.
"Other studies with higher sample sizes, across primary forest and not just protected areas like our study, found a much more positive signal for South America. Combined, our results suggest that not transforming primary habitat is the best strategy to conserve biodiversity, and much of that is achieved by designating protected areas."
Interestingly, the study further found that the protected area location and size appeared to have little to do with its ability to safeguard biodiversity. In addition, socio-economic conditions by country also revealed little impact in the study.
"There is no doubt that in general, larger protected areas benefit biodiversity more than small ones, and also that socio-economic and political factors will ultimately help shape the fate of biodiversity," said Coetzee, but he added that their results also prove "that biodiversity benefits by protected area establishment itself, as protected areas offset at least some of the pressures to biodiversity."
Currently protected areas cover nearly 12 percent of the world's land surface (but less than 3 percent of the oceans). In fact terrestrial protected areas are often viewed as one of the biggest conservation successes on the planet over the last century. Yet many protected areas remain threatened by underfunding and poor management, as well as illegal logging, poaching, mining, the fossil fuel industry, climate change and other impacts. "
- Jeremy Hance -
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0915-hance-pas-biodiversity.ht…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47839
"Protected areas are working. That's the conclusion of a new analysis of over 80 different studies on the efficacy of parks and nature reserves in safeguarding wildlife. Published in the open access journal, PLOS ONE, the new study finds that in general protected areas house higher abundances of wildlife as well as greater biodiversity than adjacent areas.
"This positive conservation outcome provides some hard data to show that investing in protected areas for biodiversity conservation is worthwhile," lead author Bernard Coetzee with Monash University in Australia told mongabay.com.
The research found that on average both the abundance and number of species were higher for mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and arthropods inside protected areas rather than beyond their borders. Findings for plants proved more variable with the researchers reporting a "non-significant" difference between plants inside protected areas and out.
"'Non-significant' means that we do not have enough data, or the data is too variable, to say with certainty if there is more, or less, biodiversity conserved inside to outside reserves," said Coetzee. "It does not mean protected areas are ineffective at conservation—it more likely means that some work better than others."
Regionally, Coetzee and his team also found that protected areas were largely effective across the board. The only exception was South America, where the team also found a 'non-significant' difference.
"This pattern is not straightforward to interpret," said Coetzee. "One explanation may be hunting pressure. Some studies included in our analysis found higher rates of poaching inside protected areas, which diminishes large mammal populations inside reserves. While primary forest is irreplaceable for conservation, other studies, particularly those done in South America, have shown that land use areas under low extraction, or regenerating forests, can contribute to some degree to conservation—which means that overall the effect of protected areas designation will not be as statistically marked in South America as in other regions."
However, Coetzee stresses that the findings in South America may also be due to a lower sample size on that continent.
"Other studies with higher sample sizes, across primary forest and not just protected areas like our study, found a much more positive signal for South America. Combined, our results suggest that not transforming primary habitat is the best strategy to conserve biodiversity, and much of that is achieved by designating protected areas."
Interestingly, the study further found that the protected area location and size appeared to have little to do with its ability to safeguard biodiversity. In addition, socio-economic conditions by country also revealed little impact in the study.
"There is no doubt that in general, larger protected areas benefit biodiversity more than small ones, and also that socio-economic and political factors will ultimately help shape the fate of biodiversity," said Coetzee, but he added that their results also prove "that biodiversity benefits by protected area establishment itself, as protected areas offset at least some of the pressures to biodiversity."
Currently protected areas cover nearly 12 percent of the world's land surface (but less than 3 percent of the oceans). In fact terrestrial protected areas are often viewed as one of the biggest conservation successes on the planet over the last century. Yet many protected areas remain threatened by underfunding and poor management, as well as illegal logging, poaching, mining, the fossil fuel industry, climate change and other impacts. "
The Earth’s biosphere is booming, data suggests that CO2 is the cause
“The growth of the vegetation in these middle and high latitude areas is mainly limited by temperature. Many studies correlating NDVI with land surface temperature indicate warming might be the most important factor accounting for the LAI increase in this area. Warming, causes longer active growing season length and higher growth magnitude, therefore leads to increase in LAI in this area.”....
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-i…
“The growth of the vegetation in these middle and high latitude areas is mainly limited by temperature. Many studies correlating NDVI with land surface temperature indicate warming might be the most important factor accounting for the LAI increase in this area. Warming, causes longer active growing season length and higher growth magnitude, therefore leads to increase in LAI in this area.”....
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/24/the-earths-biosphere-i…
Global Population "May Surpass 13,000,000,000, by End of Century" - ENN/MB/S/UoW, WASHINGTON - Sep 18, 2014
- Jeremy Hance -
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0918-hance-13-billion.html
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47850
"By 2100, over 13 billion people could be walking the planet. That's the conclusion of a new study published today in Science, which employed UN data to explore the probability of various population scenarios. The new study further demolishes the long-held theory that human population growth will quit growing by mid-century and then fall.
"Analysis of these data reveals that, contrary to previous literature, world population is unlikely to stop growing this century," reads the paper.
It's worth noting that 13 billion is at the very high end of the researcher's projections and, therefore, unlikely, but hardly impossible. The scientists estimated that there is an 80 percent probability the global population fall somewhere between 9.6 and 12.3 billion in 2100, meaning there is a ten percent chance that population will be above 12.3 billion.
Going further, there was a 95 percent probability that the population will be between 9.0 and 13.2 billion, putting the chances of a population exceeding 13.25 billion at 2.5 percent.
The results follow a revision by the UN last year of population projections, which first reported that global population rates were not behaving as expected, due largely to stubbornly high fertility rates in Africa.
"What's new is that we are able to quantify the confidence that underlie the projected population growth. Earlier projections were strictly based on scenarios, so there was no uncertainty," explained lead author Patrick Gerland with the Population Division at the United Nation. "This work provides a more statistically driven assessment that allows us to say how likely particular outcomes are."
So, the most likely scenario? Around 10.9 billion, which is a 55 percent increase over today's current population.
Prior to recent revisions, many demographers believed global population would essentially take care of itself. Due to declining fertility rates, populations would peak somewhere between 2050 and 2100 before dropping slowly. Increasingly, experts say that's no longer the case.
"Population growth was a major world concern up to the 1990s, but then fell down the world's agenda in favor of other important issues such as climate change and the HIV/AIDS epidemic," co-author Adrian Raftery with the University of Washington told mongabay.com. "This seems now to have been premature, especially as too rapid population growth can make other problems worse. There's a need for the world to focus again on population issues and policies that can support families and governments in lowering fertility." "
- Jeremy Hance -
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0918-hance-13-billion.html
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47850
"By 2100, over 13 billion people could be walking the planet. That's the conclusion of a new study published today in Science, which employed UN data to explore the probability of various population scenarios. The new study further demolishes the long-held theory that human population growth will quit growing by mid-century and then fall.
"Analysis of these data reveals that, contrary to previous literature, world population is unlikely to stop growing this century," reads the paper.
It's worth noting that 13 billion is at the very high end of the researcher's projections and, therefore, unlikely, but hardly impossible. The scientists estimated that there is an 80 percent probability the global population fall somewhere between 9.6 and 12.3 billion in 2100, meaning there is a ten percent chance that population will be above 12.3 billion.
Going further, there was a 95 percent probability that the population will be between 9.0 and 13.2 billion, putting the chances of a population exceeding 13.25 billion at 2.5 percent.
The results follow a revision by the UN last year of population projections, which first reported that global population rates were not behaving as expected, due largely to stubbornly high fertility rates in Africa.
"What's new is that we are able to quantify the confidence that underlie the projected population growth. Earlier projections were strictly based on scenarios, so there was no uncertainty," explained lead author Patrick Gerland with the Population Division at the United Nation. "This work provides a more statistically driven assessment that allows us to say how likely particular outcomes are."
So, the most likely scenario? Around 10.9 billion, which is a 55 percent increase over today's current population.
Prior to recent revisions, many demographers believed global population would essentially take care of itself. Due to declining fertility rates, populations would peak somewhere between 2050 and 2100 before dropping slowly. Increasingly, experts say that's no longer the case.
"Population growth was a major world concern up to the 1990s, but then fell down the world's agenda in favor of other important issues such as climate change and the HIV/AIDS epidemic," co-author Adrian Raftery with the University of Washington told mongabay.com. "This seems now to have been premature, especially as too rapid population growth can make other problems worse. There's a need for the world to focus again on population issues and policies that can support families and governments in lowering fertility." "
Analysis of ancient Egyptian art sheds light, on changing ecosystem - ENN/PNAS/BU, BRISTOL - Sep 19, 2014
www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2014/september/artworks-trace-ecologi…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47852
"Depictions of animals in ancient Egyptian artefacts have helped scientists assemble a detailed record of the large mammals that lived in the Nile Valley over the past 6,000 years. A new analysis of this record shows that species extinctions, probably caused by a drying climate and growing human population in the region, have made the ecosystem progressively less stable.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that local extinctions of mammal species led to a steady decline in the stability of the animal communities in the Nile Valley. When there were many species in the community, the loss of any one species had relatively little impact on the functioning of the ecosystem, whereas it is now much more sensitive to perturbations, according to first author Justin Yeakel, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute.
Around six millennia ago, there were 37 species of large-bodied mammals in Egypt, but only eight species remain today. Among the species recorded in artwork from the late Predynastic Period (before 3,100 BC) but no longer found in Egypt are lions, wild dogs, elephants, oryx, hartebeest, and giraffe.
"What was once a rich and diverse mammalian community is very different now," Yeakel said. "As the number of species declined, one of the primary things that was lost was the ecological redundancy of the system. There were multiple species of gazelles and other small herbivores, which are important because so many different predators prey on them. When there are fewer of those small herbivores, the loss of any one species has a much greater effect on the stability of the system and can lead to additional extinctions." "
www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2014/september/artworks-trace-ecologi…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47852
"Depictions of animals in ancient Egyptian artefacts have helped scientists assemble a detailed record of the large mammals that lived in the Nile Valley over the past 6,000 years. A new analysis of this record shows that species extinctions, probably caused by a drying climate and growing human population in the region, have made the ecosystem progressively less stable.
The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that local extinctions of mammal species led to a steady decline in the stability of the animal communities in the Nile Valley. When there were many species in the community, the loss of any one species had relatively little impact on the functioning of the ecosystem, whereas it is now much more sensitive to perturbations, according to first author Justin Yeakel, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute.
Around six millennia ago, there were 37 species of large-bodied mammals in Egypt, but only eight species remain today. Among the species recorded in artwork from the late Predynastic Period (before 3,100 BC) but no longer found in Egypt are lions, wild dogs, elephants, oryx, hartebeest, and giraffe.
"What was once a rich and diverse mammalian community is very different now," Yeakel said. "As the number of species declined, one of the primary things that was lost was the ecological redundancy of the system. There were multiple species of gazelles and other small herbivores, which are important because so many different predators prey on them. When there are fewer of those small herbivores, the loss of any one species has a much greater effect on the stability of the system and can lead to additional extinctions." "
The "Future of 'Vertical Farming' " - ENN/PL/PI/PS - Sep 19, 2014
- Allison Winter -
www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/innovations/data/00267
www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/esther-dyson-extols-the…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47849
"From big company agricultural farming, to communal farming or even personal agronomy, the business of growing crops for an expanding global population will be crucial in the near future.
The two most important resources needed to run these farms are one, water, and two, land. But these resources often come at a premium, especially with growing populations and increased food demand. Farmers and researchers have already started leaning towards genetic engineering and industrial processing to help with their crop yields, but a new solution in agribusiness is emerging. Vertical farming.
"Vertical farming" was coined back in 1915, but the practice has not yet become mainstream. That is, until now. Stacked greenhouses that use artificial light to grow crops have numerous benefits and the business itself is starting to take off.
Last year, PlantLab began the construction of a $22-million, 200,000-square-foot headquarters, including multiple plant production units (PPUs) and research units.
PlantLab's claims that a PPU the size of a city block and just a few stories high could produce the same volume of high-quality crops as a large farm, while consuming fewer resources. Water used for the plants does not evaporate or runoff, and because of this, PPUs consume only about 10 percent as much water as traditional farms. Other benefits include no pesticides and that the plants are protected from weather-related problems.
PPUs allow production to occur locally (thereby reducing transport costs and wastage) and on demand, under controllable conditions. In other words, any kind of fruit or vegetable can be grown anywhere, year-round.
Not only do PPUs offer major savings in terms of resources and transportation; they are also not prohibitively expensive to build. Indeed, for something like $100 million, a partner could purchase the required land and construct a 500,000-square-foot (46,450 m2) PPU, with ten growing levels about five feet apart.
The resulting farm would employ about 200 people for seeding, growing, harvesting, packaging, sales, logistics, maintenance, and management. And it would supply 50,000 people with a consistently high-quality seven-ounce daily requirement of fresh herbs, vegetables, and ground fruits like berries for at least ten years—all in less space that the average multi-story parking lot. This might sound expensive. But, at just $2,000 per person, the cost is far lower than the $8,000 the average American spends in annual health-care costs. Given that a PPU will last for at least a decade, and offer considerable health benefits to local populations, it is a small price to pay. "
- Allison Winter -
www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/innovations/data/00267
www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/esther-dyson-extols-the…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47849
"From big company agricultural farming, to communal farming or even personal agronomy, the business of growing crops for an expanding global population will be crucial in the near future.
The two most important resources needed to run these farms are one, water, and two, land. But these resources often come at a premium, especially with growing populations and increased food demand. Farmers and researchers have already started leaning towards genetic engineering and industrial processing to help with their crop yields, but a new solution in agribusiness is emerging. Vertical farming.
"Vertical farming" was coined back in 1915, but the practice has not yet become mainstream. That is, until now. Stacked greenhouses that use artificial light to grow crops have numerous benefits and the business itself is starting to take off.
Last year, PlantLab began the construction of a $22-million, 200,000-square-foot headquarters, including multiple plant production units (PPUs) and research units.
PlantLab's claims that a PPU the size of a city block and just a few stories high could produce the same volume of high-quality crops as a large farm, while consuming fewer resources. Water used for the plants does not evaporate or runoff, and because of this, PPUs consume only about 10 percent as much water as traditional farms. Other benefits include no pesticides and that the plants are protected from weather-related problems.
PPUs allow production to occur locally (thereby reducing transport costs and wastage) and on demand, under controllable conditions. In other words, any kind of fruit or vegetable can be grown anywhere, year-round.
Not only do PPUs offer major savings in terms of resources and transportation; they are also not prohibitively expensive to build. Indeed, for something like $100 million, a partner could purchase the required land and construct a 500,000-square-foot (46,450 m2) PPU, with ten growing levels about five feet apart.
The resulting farm would employ about 200 people for seeding, growing, harvesting, packaging, sales, logistics, maintenance, and management. And it would supply 50,000 people with a consistently high-quality seven-ounce daily requirement of fresh herbs, vegetables, and ground fruits like berries for at least ten years—all in less space that the average multi-story parking lot. This might sound expensive. But, at just $2,000 per person, the cost is far lower than the $8,000 the average American spends in annual health-care costs. Given that a PPU will last for at least a decade, and offer considerable health benefits to local populations, it is a small price to pay. "
Fall foliage may be delayed, but will last longer
www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S41/08/98E35/index.xml?s…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/geb.12206/abstrac…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47848
"The fall foliage season that prompts millions of Americans to undertake jaunts into the countryside each year could come much later and possibly last a little longer within a century, according to new research.
Climate change could postpone fall leaf peeping in some areas of the United States as summer temperatures linger later into the year, Princeton University researchers report in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography. For instance, the paper birch — a popular foliage tree that is the state tree of New Hampshire — could change color one to three weeks later by the end of the century, the researchers found. Although some trees will be less susceptible to the ongoing heat than the paper birch, the more southern the region, the more likely there is to be a greater overall delay in leaf coloration, the researchers found.
Trees need daily temperatures to be low enough and daylight hours to be short enough to produce the vivid vistas of fall, explained senior author David Medvigy, an assistant professor of geosciences and associated faculty member at the Princeton Environmental Institute. He and first author Su-Jong Jeong, a former Princeton postdoctoral student now at NASA, found that daily temperature and daylight hours can not only be used to predict the timing of leaf coloration, but that the influence of these factors depends on the individual tree species and the specific geographic area.
"We're really interested in understanding how these systems will change as we experience global warming or climate change," Medvigy said. "What these results are suggesting is that different locations will change in different ways, and that these differences are actually going to be quite interesting."
Aside from fall foliage and its economic importance to many areas, the research has broad implications for predicting growing seasons, agricultural productivity and ecosystem productivity, Medvigy said. In particular, a delay in when leaves change color could affect how much carbon an ecosystem removes from the atmosphere, which would partially combat the climate change that caused the delay in the first place, he said.
"When plants have green leaves, they're doing photosynthesis and taking carbon out of the atmosphere," Medvigy said. "The longer you have green leaves, the more carbon dioxide you can take out of the atmosphere. At least, that's how the current thinking goes. So, figuring this out could potentially be important for understanding the impacts of climate change." "
www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S41/08/98E35/index.xml?s…
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/geb.12206/abstrac…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47848
"The fall foliage season that prompts millions of Americans to undertake jaunts into the countryside each year could come much later and possibly last a little longer within a century, according to new research.
Climate change could postpone fall leaf peeping in some areas of the United States as summer temperatures linger later into the year, Princeton University researchers report in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography. For instance, the paper birch — a popular foliage tree that is the state tree of New Hampshire — could change color one to three weeks later by the end of the century, the researchers found. Although some trees will be less susceptible to the ongoing heat than the paper birch, the more southern the region, the more likely there is to be a greater overall delay in leaf coloration, the researchers found.
Trees need daily temperatures to be low enough and daylight hours to be short enough to produce the vivid vistas of fall, explained senior author David Medvigy, an assistant professor of geosciences and associated faculty member at the Princeton Environmental Institute. He and first author Su-Jong Jeong, a former Princeton postdoctoral student now at NASA, found that daily temperature and daylight hours can not only be used to predict the timing of leaf coloration, but that the influence of these factors depends on the individual tree species and the specific geographic area.
"We're really interested in understanding how these systems will change as we experience global warming or climate change," Medvigy said. "What these results are suggesting is that different locations will change in different ways, and that these differences are actually going to be quite interesting."
Aside from fall foliage and its economic importance to many areas, the research has broad implications for predicting growing seasons, agricultural productivity and ecosystem productivity, Medvigy said. In particular, a delay in when leaves change color could affect how much carbon an ecosystem removes from the atmosphere, which would partially combat the climate change that caused the delay in the first place, he said.
"When plants have green leaves, they're doing photosynthesis and taking carbon out of the atmosphere," Medvigy said. "The longer you have green leaves, the more carbon dioxide you can take out of the atmosphere. At least, that's how the current thinking goes. So, figuring this out could potentially be important for understanding the impacts of climate change." "
Shift to Mass Transit "Cooooould Have 'Major Economic +Climate Benefits' ", Expanding public transportation +infrastructure, that 'promotes walking +biking throughout the world’s cities', could save $100,000,000,000,000, +cut 'transportation-related carbon emissions' by 40 percent, by 2050, according to an analysis by researchers @the University of California, Davis, +the Institute for Transportation +Development Policy - CT/YE360/UoC/IfT&DP - Sep 19, 2014
http://photos.ucdavis.edu/viewphoto.php?&albumId=478293&imag…
http://photos.ucdavis.edu/viewphoto.php?&albumId=478293&imag…
www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=11027
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/19/shift-to-mass-transit-cou…
"Expanding public transportation and infrastructure that promotes walking and biking throughout the world’s cities could save $100 trillion and cut transportation-related carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2050, according to an analysis by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.
Urban transportation accounted for roughly one-quarter of all transportation-related emissions in 2010, the report said, and these emissions could double by 2050 as growth continues in major cities in China, India, and other developing countries.
This chart compares projected urban transportation-related emissions in 2050 under two scenarios: “business as usual,” shown in red, and the “high shift” scenario, shown in green. Under the “high shift” scenario, countries make major improvements in urban mass transit and infrastructure that promotes walking and biking. Transportation-related emissions from 2010, in black, are shown for comparison. (Image source: UC-Davis, ITDP)
If China alone were to develop extensive bus rapid transit and commuter transit networks, its predicted transportation-related emissions in 2050 could be cut by 40 percent, the analysis found.
The U.S. — currently the world’s largest contributor to urban transportation-related emissions — is seeing declines in that sector as population growth slows, vehicle fuel efficiency improves, and people drive less. But those emissions cuts could accelerate sharply, to half the levels currently predicted for 2050, if urban mass transit were improved.
Redirecting funds from road construction, parking garages, and other infrastructure elements that encourage car ownership to public transportation would save trillions in public and private dollars, the analysis found. "
http://photos.ucdavis.edu/viewphoto.php?&albumId=478293&imag…
http://photos.ucdavis.edu/viewphoto.php?&albumId=478293&imag…
www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=11027
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/19/shift-to-mass-transit-cou…
"Expanding public transportation and infrastructure that promotes walking and biking throughout the world’s cities could save $100 trillion and cut transportation-related carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2050, according to an analysis by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy.
Urban transportation accounted for roughly one-quarter of all transportation-related emissions in 2010, the report said, and these emissions could double by 2050 as growth continues in major cities in China, India, and other developing countries.
This chart compares projected urban transportation-related emissions in 2050 under two scenarios: “business as usual,” shown in red, and the “high shift” scenario, shown in green. Under the “high shift” scenario, countries make major improvements in urban mass transit and infrastructure that promotes walking and biking. Transportation-related emissions from 2010, in black, are shown for comparison. (Image source: UC-Davis, ITDP)
If China alone were to develop extensive bus rapid transit and commuter transit networks, its predicted transportation-related emissions in 2050 could be cut by 40 percent, the analysis found.
The U.S. — currently the world’s largest contributor to urban transportation-related emissions — is seeing declines in that sector as population growth slows, vehicle fuel efficiency improves, and people drive less. But those emissions cuts could accelerate sharply, to half the levels currently predicted for 2050, if urban mass transit were improved.
Redirecting funds from road construction, parking garages, and other infrastructure elements that encourage car ownership to public transportation would save trillions in public and private dollars, the analysis found. "
Trees Growing 'Significantly Faster' in Warming Climate, Study Finds, An analysis of data spanning 140 years from one of the world’s oldest forest study sites 'indicates' that trees have been growing significantly faster +stands have become larger since the 1960s. The study, published in Nature Communications, was based on 600.000 individual tree surveys conducted since 1870 @a central European forest study site - CT/YE360/NC - Sep 22, 2014
www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140912/ncomms5967/full/ncomms5967…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/22/trees-growing-significant…
"An analysis of data spanning 140 years from one of the world’s oldest forest study sites indicates that trees have been growing significantly faster and stands have become larger since the 1960s.
The study, published in Nature Communications, was based on 600,000 individual tree surveys conducted since 1870 at a central European forest study site. European beech and Norway spruce, the dominant tree species in the experimental plots, grew 77 and 32 percent faster, respectively, than they did 50 years ago, the analysis found.
The study also found that stands of trees increased in volume by 30 percent for beech and 10 percent for spruce trees. The trends are primarily due to rising temperatures and longer growing seasons, the researchers say, although increasing carbon dioxide and nitrogen levels in the atmosphere could also play a role.
The stages of tree development haven’t changed, the researchers say; instead, trees are moving through their development trajectory much faster than before. The changes could affect other plants and animals in the forest ecosystem that rely on specific phases of forest development. Those species may need to become more mobile to survive, the study says. "
www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140912/ncomms5967/full/ncomms5967…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/22/trees-growing-significant…
"An analysis of data spanning 140 years from one of the world’s oldest forest study sites indicates that trees have been growing significantly faster and stands have become larger since the 1960s.
The study, published in Nature Communications, was based on 600,000 individual tree surveys conducted since 1870 at a central European forest study site. European beech and Norway spruce, the dominant tree species in the experimental plots, grew 77 and 32 percent faster, respectively, than they did 50 years ago, the analysis found.
The study also found that stands of trees increased in volume by 30 percent for beech and 10 percent for spruce trees. The trends are primarily due to rising temperatures and longer growing seasons, the researchers say, although increasing carbon dioxide and nitrogen levels in the atmosphere could also play a role.
The stages of tree development haven’t changed, the researchers say; instead, trees are moving through their development trajectory much faster than before. The changes could affect other plants and animals in the forest ecosystem that rely on specific phases of forest development. Those species may need to become more mobile to survive, the study says. "
China to boost carbon emissions to record levels, this year - CER/R - Sep 22, 2014
www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/21/us-un-climatechange-carbo…
www.chinaeconomicreview.com/node/66344
"China's growth will drive carbon dioxide emissions to record levesls this year, keeping the world far short of the cuts needed to prevent a 2-degree Celsius rise in average temperatues that could have catastrophic effects around the globe, Reuters reported, citing a study.
More than half of proven fossil fuel reserves may have to stay in the ground if governments are serious about the pledge to cut emissions, the Global Carbon Project report said, with emissions set to climb by 2.5% in 2014 to a new record 37 billion tons. Emissions by China alone have soared to eclipse those of the United States and European union combined. "
www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/21/us-un-climatechange-carbo…
www.chinaeconomicreview.com/node/66344
"China's growth will drive carbon dioxide emissions to record levesls this year, keeping the world far short of the cuts needed to prevent a 2-degree Celsius rise in average temperatues that could have catastrophic effects around the globe, Reuters reported, citing a study.
More than half of proven fossil fuel reserves may have to stay in the ground if governments are serious about the pledge to cut emissions, the Global Carbon Project report said, with emissions set to climb by 2.5% in 2014 to a new record 37 billion tons. Emissions by China alone have soared to eclipse those of the United States and European union combined. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.861.294 von Popeye82 am 24.09.14 11:35:32
Investors "Secure 'Groundbreaking Corporate Commitments to Protect Forests, Reduce Carbon Emissions', Record-high number of shareholder resolutions filed in '14 proxy season drive more aggressive action by top companies on climate-related issues" - C - Aug 14, 2014
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/investors-secure-groundbr…
" Aaron Pickering — Ceres | pickering@ceres.org | phone: 617-247-0700 ext. 148 | cell: 508-951-0919
Peyton Fleming — Ceres | fleming@ceres.org | phone: 617-247-0700 x 120 | cell: 617-733-6660
Boston, MA Aug 14, 2014
In response to nearly 150 climate-related resolutions filed by institutional investors during the 2014 proxy season, 20 major international corporations have committed to set goals to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or sustainably source palm oil –a leading driver of global deforestation, which causes nearly 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions according to the Environmental Protection Agency. An additional 45 corporate commitments were secured related to sustainability reporting, energy efficiency and carbon asset risk.
A group of investors achieved major commitments from the following companies to source 100 percent fully traceable, responsibly produced palm oil: ConAgra, J.M. Smucker Co., Kellogg, General Mills, Mondelez, Panera and Safeway. The companies – food and beverage firms, supermarket companies and grocery store chains – include some of the top 10 purchasers in the $44 billion palm oil industry, which has proliferated the past few decades as palm oil has become the most widely used vegetable oil in the world. Over the last year, suppliers of more than 55 percent of the world’s palm oil committed to produce or trade 100% deforestation-free palm oil.
Investors that secured the palm oil commitments include: Clean Yield, Domini, Social Investments, Green Century Capital Management, The New York State Comptroller’s Office, Trillium, and members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR).
These recent corporate commitments, including today’s announcement from ConAgra, demonstrate a remarkable shift for the industry. Just days before ConAgra finalized the agreement with Green Century and the New York State Common Retirement Fund, ConAgra’s major supplier Cargill – the largest importer of palm oil into the United States – announced that it would no longer buy palm oil from suppliers engaged in deforestation. The momentum for change in the palm industry began building this year, when the Kellogg Co. first announced it would purchase only deforestation-free palm oil, and Wilmar – the world’s largest supplier of the commodity – adopted a zero deforestation policy. These commitments are expected to have a major impact on reducing carbon emissions as fewer carbon-rich forests and peatlands are cleared for new palm oil production. When such deforestation occurs, the sequestered carbon is released into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
Wilmar’s commitment alone, which was publicly supported by 40 investors in a letter organized by Green Century, will reduce CO2 emissions by an estimated 1.5 billion tons by 2020 – the equivalent of annual CO2 emissions from all of Central and South America.
“Palm oil is used in so many products we buy, but shoppers can’t see that it’s often harvested in ways that destroy rainforests and lead to climate change,” said New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, whose office was a lead filer of the resolutions with ConAgra and Safeway. “The companies that agreed to our proposal and adopted new policies have protected themselves and their shareholders from the risk of being associated with unsustainable environmental practices.”
“Companies are on the hot seat to reduce their carbon pollution if they want consumer and investor support,” stated Leslie Samuelrich, President of Green Century Capital Management, which secured the first deforestation free commitment from Kellogg’s, and co-filed the shareholder proposals at ConAgra & Smuckers. “We expect more companies to follow suit and build sustainable supply chains and protect the environment upon which their businesses and all of us depend,” stated Samuelrich.
This year’s record number of climate-related resolutions demonstrates that investors are boosting their attention to the risks and opportunities that climate change poses to their portfolio companies. Investors – many of whom are members of Ceres’ Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR) and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) – secured commitments from 13 companies relating to setting company-wide goals for reducing GHG emissions.
One of the strongest commitments came from Colgate-Palmolive, a leading consumer product company, following dialogue with Walden Asset Management. In its 2013 sustainability report, Colgate stated, “Given the urgent need for action on climate change…we consulted with Walden Asset Management to develop rigorous goals for the next phase of our strategy. We are pleased to announce our commitment to reduce carbon emissions on an absolute basis by 25 percent compared to 2002, with a longer‐term goal of a 50 percent absolute reduction by 2050 compared to 2002. These goals…will allow us to play our part in limiting global warming to 2°C, as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
“The successes this season show that when investors set the bar high, the companies in their portfolios strive harder to integrate sustainability into their business practices,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, which helped coordinate the filing of the resolutions. “These productive investor-company dialogues often help companies build a positive reputation and achieve high returns on investments in greenhouse gas reduction initiatives.”
Other commitments resulting from the 2014 proxy season include:
- 15 companies agreed to issue comprehensive, annual sustainability reports in response to resolutions from a variety of investors.
- Five companies committed to work with their key suppliers to get the suppliers to issue annual sustainability reports in response to resolutions filed by the New York City Comptroller’s Office.
- Seven companies agreed to enhance energy efficiency in response to resolutions from the California State Teachers Retirement System.
For more information and to view these shareholder resolutions, visit http://www.ceres.org/investor-network/resolutions.
About Ceres
Ceres is an advocate for sustainability leadership. Ceres mobilizes a powerful coalition of investors, companies and public interest groups to accelerate and expand the adoption of sustainable business practices and solutions to build a healthy global economy. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $13 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP), an advocacy coalition of nearly 30 businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation. For more information, visit www.ceres.org or follow on Twitter @CeresNews. "
Investors "Secure 'Groundbreaking Corporate Commitments to Protect Forests, Reduce Carbon Emissions', Record-high number of shareholder resolutions filed in '14 proxy season drive more aggressive action by top companies on climate-related issues" - C - Aug 14, 2014
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/investors-secure-groundbr…
" Aaron Pickering — Ceres | pickering@ceres.org | phone: 617-247-0700 ext. 148 | cell: 508-951-0919
Peyton Fleming — Ceres | fleming@ceres.org | phone: 617-247-0700 x 120 | cell: 617-733-6660
Boston, MA Aug 14, 2014
In response to nearly 150 climate-related resolutions filed by institutional investors during the 2014 proxy season, 20 major international corporations have committed to set goals to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or sustainably source palm oil –a leading driver of global deforestation, which causes nearly 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions according to the Environmental Protection Agency. An additional 45 corporate commitments were secured related to sustainability reporting, energy efficiency and carbon asset risk.
A group of investors achieved major commitments from the following companies to source 100 percent fully traceable, responsibly produced palm oil: ConAgra, J.M. Smucker Co., Kellogg, General Mills, Mondelez, Panera and Safeway. The companies – food and beverage firms, supermarket companies and grocery store chains – include some of the top 10 purchasers in the $44 billion palm oil industry, which has proliferated the past few decades as palm oil has become the most widely used vegetable oil in the world. Over the last year, suppliers of more than 55 percent of the world’s palm oil committed to produce or trade 100% deforestation-free palm oil.
Investors that secured the palm oil commitments include: Clean Yield, Domini, Social Investments, Green Century Capital Management, The New York State Comptroller’s Office, Trillium, and members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR).
These recent corporate commitments, including today’s announcement from ConAgra, demonstrate a remarkable shift for the industry. Just days before ConAgra finalized the agreement with Green Century and the New York State Common Retirement Fund, ConAgra’s major supplier Cargill – the largest importer of palm oil into the United States – announced that it would no longer buy palm oil from suppliers engaged in deforestation. The momentum for change in the palm industry began building this year, when the Kellogg Co. first announced it would purchase only deforestation-free palm oil, and Wilmar – the world’s largest supplier of the commodity – adopted a zero deforestation policy. These commitments are expected to have a major impact on reducing carbon emissions as fewer carbon-rich forests and peatlands are cleared for new palm oil production. When such deforestation occurs, the sequestered carbon is released into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
Wilmar’s commitment alone, which was publicly supported by 40 investors in a letter organized by Green Century, will reduce CO2 emissions by an estimated 1.5 billion tons by 2020 – the equivalent of annual CO2 emissions from all of Central and South America.
“Palm oil is used in so many products we buy, but shoppers can’t see that it’s often harvested in ways that destroy rainforests and lead to climate change,” said New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, whose office was a lead filer of the resolutions with ConAgra and Safeway. “The companies that agreed to our proposal and adopted new policies have protected themselves and their shareholders from the risk of being associated with unsustainable environmental practices.”
“Companies are on the hot seat to reduce their carbon pollution if they want consumer and investor support,” stated Leslie Samuelrich, President of Green Century Capital Management, which secured the first deforestation free commitment from Kellogg’s, and co-filed the shareholder proposals at ConAgra & Smuckers. “We expect more companies to follow suit and build sustainable supply chains and protect the environment upon which their businesses and all of us depend,” stated Samuelrich.
This year’s record number of climate-related resolutions demonstrates that investors are boosting their attention to the risks and opportunities that climate change poses to their portfolio companies. Investors – many of whom are members of Ceres’ Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR) and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) – secured commitments from 13 companies relating to setting company-wide goals for reducing GHG emissions.
One of the strongest commitments came from Colgate-Palmolive, a leading consumer product company, following dialogue with Walden Asset Management. In its 2013 sustainability report, Colgate stated, “Given the urgent need for action on climate change…we consulted with Walden Asset Management to develop rigorous goals for the next phase of our strategy. We are pleased to announce our commitment to reduce carbon emissions on an absolute basis by 25 percent compared to 2002, with a longer‐term goal of a 50 percent absolute reduction by 2050 compared to 2002. These goals…will allow us to play our part in limiting global warming to 2°C, as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change."
“The successes this season show that when investors set the bar high, the companies in their portfolios strive harder to integrate sustainability into their business practices,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres and director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk, which helped coordinate the filing of the resolutions. “These productive investor-company dialogues often help companies build a positive reputation and achieve high returns on investments in greenhouse gas reduction initiatives.”
Other commitments resulting from the 2014 proxy season include:
- 15 companies agreed to issue comprehensive, annual sustainability reports in response to resolutions from a variety of investors.
- Five companies committed to work with their key suppliers to get the suppliers to issue annual sustainability reports in response to resolutions filed by the New York City Comptroller’s Office.
- Seven companies agreed to enhance energy efficiency in response to resolutions from the California State Teachers Retirement System.
For more information and to view these shareholder resolutions, visit http://www.ceres.org/investor-network/resolutions.
About Ceres
Ceres is an advocate for sustainability leadership. Ceres mobilizes a powerful coalition of investors, companies and public interest groups to accelerate and expand the adoption of sustainable business practices and solutions to build a healthy global economy. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $13 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP), an advocacy coalition of nearly 30 businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation. For more information, visit www.ceres.org or follow on Twitter @CeresNews. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.861.294 von Popeye82 am 24.09.14 11:35:32
Planet Set to Reach CO2 Threshold in 30 Years, Researchers Say - CT/YE360 - Sep 24, 2014
www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/14/hl-full.htm
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/24/planet-set-to-reach-co2-t…
"Only 1.2 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide can be emitted in the future if nations are to avoid causing the global mean surface temperature to rise more than 2 degrees C beyond the pre-industrial average, according to researchers with the Global Carbon Project.
- Historical (black dots) and projected (red dots) global CO2 emissions in trillions of metric tons. (Image credit: Friedlingstein et al., Nature Geoscience 2014) -
Combined historical and future carbon dioxide emissions must remain below 3.2 trillion metric tons to have a 66-percent chance of keeping that temperature increase below 2 degrees C — the internationally accepted benchmark for restraining global warming. But two-thirds of this allotment has already been emitted, and at the current pace of emissions, the global population will burn through the rest within the next 30 years, the researchers conclude.
CO2 emissions rose 2.3 percent in 2013 and are on track to increase by another 2.5 percent in 2014, according to the report, which was released ahead of tomorrow’s UN climate summit in New York. China and the U.S. were the leading emitters in 2013 and were responsible for 28 percent and 14 percent, respectively, of global CO2 emissions. "
Planet Set to Reach CO2 Threshold in 30 Years, Researchers Say - CT/YE360 - Sep 24, 2014
www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/14/hl-full.htm
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/24/planet-set-to-reach-co2-t…
"Only 1.2 trillion metric tons of carbon dioxide can be emitted in the future if nations are to avoid causing the global mean surface temperature to rise more than 2 degrees C beyond the pre-industrial average, according to researchers with the Global Carbon Project.
- Historical (black dots) and projected (red dots) global CO2 emissions in trillions of metric tons. (Image credit: Friedlingstein et al., Nature Geoscience 2014) -
Combined historical and future carbon dioxide emissions must remain below 3.2 trillion metric tons to have a 66-percent chance of keeping that temperature increase below 2 degrees C — the internationally accepted benchmark for restraining global warming. But two-thirds of this allotment has already been emitted, and at the current pace of emissions, the global population will burn through the rest within the next 30 years, the researchers conclude.
CO2 emissions rose 2.3 percent in 2013 and are on track to increase by another 2.5 percent in 2014, according to the report, which was released ahead of tomorrow’s UN climate summit in New York. China and the U.S. were the leading emitters in 2013 and were responsible for 28 percent and 14 percent, respectively, of global CO2 emissions. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.871.500 von Popeye82 am 25.09.14 10:59:40
looong auf Müüüüülleimer.
Und Komposthaufen.
Seattle Assesses Fine, for Wasting Food
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47874
"The push for increased sustainable methods can be seen everywhere these days — certainly when it comes to local efforts to pare down on what we toss in the landfill.
Massachusetts' ongoing effort to increase composting throughout the state is one such example, which will require any company or facility that disposes of at least a ton of organic material a week to compost its food scraps and other compostable materials. The disposal ban takes effect on Oct. 1 and affects more than 1,500 businesses, hospitals, public offices and facilities. Connecticut and Vermont have similar bans for wasting food that exceeds a 2-ton limit on organic waste per week.
The city of Seattle has also embraced the composting idea with a bit more of a creative edge: In an effort to encourage residents to stop wasting food, the city council passed an ordinance this last Monday that allows households to be fined $1 each time that garbage collectors find more than 10 percent of organic waste in their garbage bins.
Private garbage collectors will have permission to eyeball the garbage bins and decide independently if the resident has exceeded the limit. If so, the homeowner will receive a note tacked to the bin telling the household to expect a $1 fine on the next bill. "
looong auf Müüüüülleimer.
Und Komposthaufen.
Seattle Assesses Fine, for Wasting Food
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47874
"The push for increased sustainable methods can be seen everywhere these days — certainly when it comes to local efforts to pare down on what we toss in the landfill.
Massachusetts' ongoing effort to increase composting throughout the state is one such example, which will require any company or facility that disposes of at least a ton of organic material a week to compost its food scraps and other compostable materials. The disposal ban takes effect on Oct. 1 and affects more than 1,500 businesses, hospitals, public offices and facilities. Connecticut and Vermont have similar bans for wasting food that exceeds a 2-ton limit on organic waste per week.
The city of Seattle has also embraced the composting idea with a bit more of a creative edge: In an effort to encourage residents to stop wasting food, the city council passed an ordinance this last Monday that allows households to be fined $1 each time that garbage collectors find more than 10 percent of organic waste in their garbage bins.
Private garbage collectors will have permission to eyeball the garbage bins and decide independently if the resident has exceeded the limit. If so, the homeowner will receive a note tacked to the bin telling the household to expect a $1 fine on the next bill. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.879.792 von Popeye82 am 26.09.14 00:52:28
New maps of the polar regions reveal uuuuunseen world beneath the ice, +highlight dramatic decline in Arctic sea ice cover
www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_bas/news/news_story.php?id=2776
- An oblique view of the bed beneath the Antarctic ice sheet with areas below sea level shown as blue, lower areas in green, and mountainous areas in brown and white. (Credit: BAS) -
New maps of the polar regions reveal uuuuunseen world beneath the ice, +highlight dramatic decline in Arctic sea ice cover
www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_bas/news/news_story.php?id=2776
- An oblique view of the bed beneath the Antarctic ice sheet with areas below sea level shown as blue, lower areas in green, and mountainous areas in brown and white. (Credit: BAS) -
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.879.801 von Popeye82 am 26.09.14 00:57:36
Ozone +arising temperatures combined will affect food security - ENN/MIT - Jul 28, 2014
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/climate-change-air-pollution-…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47642
"A new study shows that interactions between increasing temperature and air pollution can be quite significant, when it comes to addressing food security.
Conducted in part by researchers at MIT, a study looked in detail at global production of four leading food crops — rice, wheat, corn, and soy. It predicts that effects will vary considerably from region to region, and that some of the crops are much more strongly affected by one or the other of the factors: For example, wheat is very sensitive to ozone exposure, while corn is much more adversely affected by heat.
Colette Heald, associate professor of civic and environmental engineering at MIT, explains that while it's known that both higher temperatures and ozone pollution can damage plants and reduce crop yields, "nobody has looked at these together." And while rising temperatures are widely discussed, the impact of air quality on crops is less recognized.
The effects are likely to vary widely by region, the study predicts. In the United States, tougher air-quality regulations are expected to lead to a sharp decline in ozone pollution, mitigating its impact on crops. But in other regions, the outcome "will depend on domestic air-pollution policies," Heald says. "An air-quality cleanup would improve crop yields."
Overall, with all other factors being equal, warming may reduce crop yields globally by about 10 percent by 2050, the study found. But the effects of ozone pollution are more complex — some crops are more strongly affected by it than others — which suggests that pollution-control measures could play a major role in determining outcomes.
While heat and ozone can each damage plants independently, the factors also interact. For example, warmer temperatures significantly increase production of ozone from the reactions, in sunlight, of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides. Because of these interactions, the team found that 46 percent of damage to soybean crops that had previously been attributed to heat is actually caused by increased ozone.
Under some scenarios, the researchers found that pollution-control measures could make a major dent in the expected crop reductions following climate change. For example, while global food production was projected to fall by 15 percent under one scenario, larger emissions decreases projected in an alternate scenario reduce that drop to 9 percent. "
Ozone +arising temperatures combined will affect food security - ENN/MIT - Jul 28, 2014
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/climate-change-air-pollution-…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47642
"A new study shows that interactions between increasing temperature and air pollution can be quite significant, when it comes to addressing food security.
Conducted in part by researchers at MIT, a study looked in detail at global production of four leading food crops — rice, wheat, corn, and soy. It predicts that effects will vary considerably from region to region, and that some of the crops are much more strongly affected by one or the other of the factors: For example, wheat is very sensitive to ozone exposure, while corn is much more adversely affected by heat.
Colette Heald, associate professor of civic and environmental engineering at MIT, explains that while it's known that both higher temperatures and ozone pollution can damage plants and reduce crop yields, "nobody has looked at these together." And while rising temperatures are widely discussed, the impact of air quality on crops is less recognized.
The effects are likely to vary widely by region, the study predicts. In the United States, tougher air-quality regulations are expected to lead to a sharp decline in ozone pollution, mitigating its impact on crops. But in other regions, the outcome "will depend on domestic air-pollution policies," Heald says. "An air-quality cleanup would improve crop yields."
Overall, with all other factors being equal, warming may reduce crop yields globally by about 10 percent by 2050, the study found. But the effects of ozone pollution are more complex — some crops are more strongly affected by it than others — which suggests that pollution-control measures could play a major role in determining outcomes.
While heat and ozone can each damage plants independently, the factors also interact. For example, warmer temperatures significantly increase production of ozone from the reactions, in sunlight, of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides. Because of these interactions, the team found that 46 percent of damage to soybean crops that had previously been attributed to heat is actually caused by increased ozone.
Under some scenarios, the researchers found that pollution-control measures could make a major dent in the expected crop reductions following climate change. For example, while global food production was projected to fall by 15 percent under one scenario, larger emissions decreases projected in an alternate scenario reduce that drop to 9 percent. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.879.843 von Popeye82 am 26.09.14 01:40:06
Sooo Much Energy Storage Data, Sooooo Much to Do with It! - CT/EEM - Sep 25, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/25/so-much-energy-storage-da…
"There’s a ton of data available from energy storage units, smart meters, weather forecasters, and other data producers. Ideally, this data can be used to forecast demand and weather, integrate renewable energy, shape customer usage, prevent outages, and cope with outages once they happen.
But how can we integrate and analyze all this data to make the best use of it?
One company, Space-Time Insight, says it has come up with a unique answer that allows users to combine real-time data from lots of different sources, including weather forecasts and energy storage units.
And what’s the advantage? By pulling together information from all these different sources, we can do good things for the grid, ratepayers, and the environment.
“Our technology visualizes and analyzes data and correlates it with other data, such as data about the weather or from smart meters,” says Steve Ehrlich, senior vice president of Space-Time Insight. “The technology will help battery systems perform over time so they can be better managed and deliver more efficient power.”
So, what does all that mean? Here are a few examples.
“If there’s high system-wide demand, this will allow various players to participate in demand response.” By analyzing the available information, utilities can offer discounts, rebates, and the best options for dispatching resources, for example.
In addition, the “predictive analysis” capabilities could help energy managers decide how to use a microgrid or energy storage system. “If there’s a crisis, you might want to de-couple the microgrid from the wider system so it can operate independently for a period of time.” The system lends understanding to what is happening now and what could happen in the future, he added.
The “predictive analysis” comes in especially handy when combining data with weather data.
“The system will give information about what kind of weather I expect tomorrow, what I need from my demand response system to accommodate my position, and which companies are best for participating in demand response. The analysis helps decide what to do, based on the conditions,” said Ehrlich.
It may be hard to visualize what this company is doing in time and space, but here’s how Ehrlich explains what’s unique about the company: “The technology is unique because data from all these different systems is coming at different times and in different formats. The technology correlates weather events with data coming from storage systems and other places.” Without the technology, there would be no logical connection point between say, weather predictions, and energy storage data, he said.
So, does a system this sophisticated actually make decisions for its users?
No, but it could.
“Most companies prefer that a person press the button,” he said. “For now, the technology presents data, gives options, and outlines the steps that need to be taken.”
Do you know about similar systems that can help manage microgrids and energy storage, integrate renewable energy, and protect the environment? Tell us about them!
Article by Lisa Cohn. This article is published under a cross licensing agreement with EnergyEfficiencyMarkets.com "
Sooo Much Energy Storage Data, Sooooo Much to Do with It! - CT/EEM - Sep 25, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/25/so-much-energy-storage-da…
"There’s a ton of data available from energy storage units, smart meters, weather forecasters, and other data producers. Ideally, this data can be used to forecast demand and weather, integrate renewable energy, shape customer usage, prevent outages, and cope with outages once they happen.
But how can we integrate and analyze all this data to make the best use of it?
One company, Space-Time Insight, says it has come up with a unique answer that allows users to combine real-time data from lots of different sources, including weather forecasts and energy storage units.
And what’s the advantage? By pulling together information from all these different sources, we can do good things for the grid, ratepayers, and the environment.
“Our technology visualizes and analyzes data and correlates it with other data, such as data about the weather or from smart meters,” says Steve Ehrlich, senior vice president of Space-Time Insight. “The technology will help battery systems perform over time so they can be better managed and deliver more efficient power.”
So, what does all that mean? Here are a few examples.
“If there’s high system-wide demand, this will allow various players to participate in demand response.” By analyzing the available information, utilities can offer discounts, rebates, and the best options for dispatching resources, for example.
In addition, the “predictive analysis” capabilities could help energy managers decide how to use a microgrid or energy storage system. “If there’s a crisis, you might want to de-couple the microgrid from the wider system so it can operate independently for a period of time.” The system lends understanding to what is happening now and what could happen in the future, he added.
The “predictive analysis” comes in especially handy when combining data with weather data.
“The system will give information about what kind of weather I expect tomorrow, what I need from my demand response system to accommodate my position, and which companies are best for participating in demand response. The analysis helps decide what to do, based on the conditions,” said Ehrlich.
It may be hard to visualize what this company is doing in time and space, but here’s how Ehrlich explains what’s unique about the company: “The technology is unique because data from all these different systems is coming at different times and in different formats. The technology correlates weather events with data coming from storage systems and other places.” Without the technology, there would be no logical connection point between say, weather predictions, and energy storage data, he said.
So, does a system this sophisticated actually make decisions for its users?
No, but it could.
“Most companies prefer that a person press the button,” he said. “For now, the technology presents data, gives options, and outlines the steps that need to be taken.”
Do you know about similar systems that can help manage microgrids and energy storage, integrate renewable energy, and protect the environment? Tell us about them!
Article by Lisa Cohn. This article is published under a cross licensing agreement with EnergyEfficiencyMarkets.com "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.865.125 von Popeye82 am 24.09.14 16:58:04
"What a remarkable week. With the People's Climate March and the UN Climate Summit garnering global attention, Ceres mobilized many of the world's largest investors and companies to take important leadership during Climate Week. More than ever before, the business community was loud and clear about the urgency for climate action, making strong commitments to reduce their own impact while advocating for strong national and global policies to tackle climate change. This is a huge step forward and I'm proud of the role Ceres had in mobilizing major business and investor support for global climate action.
Here are a few highlights from our whirlwind week:
Mobilizing Investor Action on Climate
Ceres mobilized nearly 350 investors representing $24 trillion in assets to call on world leaders to adopt strong climate polices in order to accelerate global clean energy investments. The Global Investor Statement , spearheaded by Ceres and investor groups based in Europe, Asia and Australia, was delivered to the 120 heads of state and other leaders attending the Climate Summit, and was referenced by the UN Secretary General and the President of the World Bank. The statement calls for a meaningful price on carbon and an end to fossil fuel subsidies.
- People's Climate March NYC
Andrew Burton/Getty Images -
Investing in Soluuuuutions
CalSTRS, a Ceres member and the country's 2nd largest public pension fund, announced it will more than double its clean energy investments in the next five years and will invest significantly more if strong carbon policies are enacted.
CalPERS, the nation's largest public pension fund announced its support for a carbon price and pledged to measure and disclose the carbon footprint of its investment portfolio.
Growing the Climate Declaration
Business giants PepsiCo and Kellogg's signed onto Ceres' Climate Declaration, a corporate call to action for strong climate policies that now has more than 1,000 company signatories. Check out the new Climate Declaration website we launched during Climate Week, showcasing how companies are going beyond signing the Climate Declaration to reduce their own climate impacts and advocating for national action to tackle climate change. Visit us at www.climatedeclaration.us.
Building Corporate Support for Climate and Energy Policy
Food giant Nestlé joined the Ceres' policy coalition, Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP), teaming up with General Mills, Kellogg's, Unilever and 29 other major brands that are working with Ceres to advocate for state and national climate and clean energy policies.
The Truuue Cost of Coal
The Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI), in collaboration with Ceres and Bloomberg, launched a new report on financial risks that investors face from unchecked coal production in China and other parts of the world. The meeting included major institutional investors, including CalPERS and the New York State Comptroller's office, both members of Ceres' Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR).
Reducing Deforestation
Forty companies, including Kellogg's and Nestlé, announced significant new commitments to reduce and eventually eliminate tropical deforestation from unsustainable palm oil production. The commitments come on the heels of strong investor pressure, supported by Ceres, which helped move consumer brand companies and their key suppliers - Cargill and Wilmar, among those - to tackle this issue far more aggressively. Unsustainable palm oil production causes deforestation, which results in enormous amounts of sequestered carbon being released into the atmosphere. Wilmar's commitment alone is expected to reduce CO2 remissions by an estimated 1.5 billion tons by 2020.
Throughout the week, our core messages and achievements were reported in dozens of additional media outlets, including Fortune, the Associated Press, NPR's All Things Considered, and even tweeted by President Barack Obama to his 47 million followers.
The actions and events of the last week are inspiring and give me hope that we can move with the urgency needed to limit global temperature increases and avoid catastrophic climate change. For the past 25 years, Ceres has been mobilizing investors and companies to recognize and act on the economic and environmental risks of climate change. And this week was proof that our efforts are having a real impact.
But our work isn't done. Ceres will be building on the momentum of Climate Week to mobilize even more business leadership in the run up to the climate negotiations taking place in Paris next year.
We appreciate your partnership and thank you for all that you are doing to help support a sustainable global economy that can protect the health of our planet for future generations.
Onward,
Mindy
Mindy Lubber
President
Ceres"
"What a remarkable week. With the People's Climate March and the UN Climate Summit garnering global attention, Ceres mobilized many of the world's largest investors and companies to take important leadership during Climate Week. More than ever before, the business community was loud and clear about the urgency for climate action, making strong commitments to reduce their own impact while advocating for strong national and global policies to tackle climate change. This is a huge step forward and I'm proud of the role Ceres had in mobilizing major business and investor support for global climate action.
Here are a few highlights from our whirlwind week:
Mobilizing Investor Action on Climate
Ceres mobilized nearly 350 investors representing $24 trillion in assets to call on world leaders to adopt strong climate polices in order to accelerate global clean energy investments. The Global Investor Statement , spearheaded by Ceres and investor groups based in Europe, Asia and Australia, was delivered to the 120 heads of state and other leaders attending the Climate Summit, and was referenced by the UN Secretary General and the President of the World Bank. The statement calls for a meaningful price on carbon and an end to fossil fuel subsidies.
- People's Climate March NYC
Andrew Burton/Getty Images -
Investing in Soluuuuutions
CalSTRS, a Ceres member and the country's 2nd largest public pension fund, announced it will more than double its clean energy investments in the next five years and will invest significantly more if strong carbon policies are enacted.
CalPERS, the nation's largest public pension fund announced its support for a carbon price and pledged to measure and disclose the carbon footprint of its investment portfolio.
Growing the Climate Declaration
Business giants PepsiCo and Kellogg's signed onto Ceres' Climate Declaration, a corporate call to action for strong climate policies that now has more than 1,000 company signatories. Check out the new Climate Declaration website we launched during Climate Week, showcasing how companies are going beyond signing the Climate Declaration to reduce their own climate impacts and advocating for national action to tackle climate change. Visit us at www.climatedeclaration.us.
Building Corporate Support for Climate and Energy Policy
Food giant Nestlé joined the Ceres' policy coalition, Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP), teaming up with General Mills, Kellogg's, Unilever and 29 other major brands that are working with Ceres to advocate for state and national climate and clean energy policies.
The Truuue Cost of Coal
The Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI), in collaboration with Ceres and Bloomberg, launched a new report on financial risks that investors face from unchecked coal production in China and other parts of the world. The meeting included major institutional investors, including CalPERS and the New York State Comptroller's office, both members of Ceres' Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR).
Reducing Deforestation
Forty companies, including Kellogg's and Nestlé, announced significant new commitments to reduce and eventually eliminate tropical deforestation from unsustainable palm oil production. The commitments come on the heels of strong investor pressure, supported by Ceres, which helped move consumer brand companies and their key suppliers - Cargill and Wilmar, among those - to tackle this issue far more aggressively. Unsustainable palm oil production causes deforestation, which results in enormous amounts of sequestered carbon being released into the atmosphere. Wilmar's commitment alone is expected to reduce CO2 remissions by an estimated 1.5 billion tons by 2020.
Throughout the week, our core messages and achievements were reported in dozens of additional media outlets, including Fortune, the Associated Press, NPR's All Things Considered, and even tweeted by President Barack Obama to his 47 million followers.
The actions and events of the last week are inspiring and give me hope that we can move with the urgency needed to limit global temperature increases and avoid catastrophic climate change. For the past 25 years, Ceres has been mobilizing investors and companies to recognize and act on the economic and environmental risks of climate change. And this week was proof that our efforts are having a real impact.
But our work isn't done. Ceres will be building on the momentum of Climate Week to mobilize even more business leadership in the run up to the climate negotiations taking place in Paris next year.
We appreciate your partnership and thank you for all that you are doing to help support a sustainable global economy that can protect the health of our planet for future generations.
Onward,
Mindy
Mindy Lubber
President
Ceres"
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.879.801 von Popeye82 am 26.09.14 00:57:36
World’s Largest Coal Company Plan’s Billion Dollar Solar Plant, in India - CT/YE360 - Sep 26, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/26/worlds-largest-coal-compa…
"Continuing its push to increase investment in renewable energy, India’s energy ministry is working with the state-controlled coal mining company Coal India Limited — the largest coal mining operation in the world — to install solar power projects worth $1.2 billion.
The company is in the process of selecting sites for solar plants, which are expected to have a combined total energy-generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts, the Times of India reports. India currently has roughly 2,200 megawatts of grid-connected solar power capacity, so Coal India Limited’s contribution would be a substantial increase.
When prime minister Narendra Modi took office earlier this year, he pledged to bring electricity to the homes of the nation’s entire population of 1.2 billion — 400 million of whom lack any access to electricity — within the next five years, largely through solar installations. "
World’s Largest Coal Company Plan’s Billion Dollar Solar Plant, in India - CT/YE360 - Sep 26, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/26/worlds-largest-coal-compa…
"Continuing its push to increase investment in renewable energy, India’s energy ministry is working with the state-controlled coal mining company Coal India Limited — the largest coal mining operation in the world — to install solar power projects worth $1.2 billion.
The company is in the process of selecting sites for solar plants, which are expected to have a combined total energy-generating capacity of 1,000 megawatts, the Times of India reports. India currently has roughly 2,200 megawatts of grid-connected solar power capacity, so Coal India Limited’s contribution would be a substantial increase.
When prime minister Narendra Modi took office earlier this year, he pledged to bring electricity to the homes of the nation’s entire population of 1.2 billion — 400 million of whom lack any access to electricity — within the next five years, largely through solar installations. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.890.415 von Popeye82 am 27.09.14 12:38:54
Peabody urges advanced coal use in energy poverty, emissions fight, In light of the 20th United Nations(UN) Climate Conference held this week in New York, US coal producer Peabody Energy on Fri urged the greater use of advanced coal to fight energy inequality +improved emissions. The NYSE-listed company cited the UN’s Millennium Goals developed a decade ago, which called for a rapid halving of extreme global poverty by '15. Today about 3,500,000,000 people lived without adequate energy access, which represented half the world's population
www.miningweekly.com/article/peabody-urge-advanced-coal-use-…
"TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – In light of the 20th United Nations (UN) Climate Conference held this week in New York, US coal producer Peabody Energy on Friday urged the greater use of advanced coal to fight energy inequality and improved emissions.
The NYSE-listed company cited the UN’s Millennium Goals developed a decade ago, which called for a rapid halving of extreme global poverty by 2015. Today about 3.5-billion people lived without adequate energy access, which represented half the world's population.
Billions in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa spend their days foraging for wood or biomass for fuel to cook meals or heat dwellings, which in turn resulted in health and fire risks.
Peabody said that household air pollution from indoor fires was estimated to be the fourth-leading cause of death in the world.
"It's time we recognise energy poverty as the most serious crisis we face and reject climate alarmism that stalls solutions for energy access that would improve health, longevity and quality of life for tens of millions of citizens around the world. The best way to reduce carbon and further human development is to accelerate deployment of today's advanced coal technologies that provide continued environmental improvement,” Peabody chairperson and CEO Gregory Boyce argued in a statement.
He added that reasonable people could disagree on the urgency of addressing concerns about carbon, but that no one could question the crisis the world faced when more than four-million people died each year from indoor air pollution as a result of energy poverty.
Boyce said the ultimate human suffering from energy poverty extends to vaccines that were not kept cold, hospitals that lacked proper electricity, food that spoilt from a lack of refrigeration, water that was not purified and the effects of poor sanitation.
"If we are really serious about helping the impoverished, then we should be supporting activities to provide abundant low-cost energy for the billions in the world who lack it. As the world's policy makers consider long-term energy actions, it is encouraging that more nations are realising the harm done to people due to poor carbon policies, demonstrating important lessons for today's US and global leaders.”
Boyce observed that choices of fuels and policies mattered as witnessed by actions globally. For instance Australia repealed its carbon tax, which the Prime Minister called a "useless, destructive tax, which damaged jobs, hurt families' cost of living and didn't actually help the environment."
Japan had also stepped up support for coal-fuelled power plants both domestically and overseas, calling for greater use of advanced coal technology that reduces carbon dioxide emissions.
In India, the new Prime Minister pledged to make electricity available to every household by 2022, while China, as the world's largest coal user, was deploying technology to reduce emissions.
Boyce went further to note that Canada was reducing emissions without a penalising carbon tax, while Europe's renewable strategy was being pared back as the continent was threatened by Russia's energy security challenge.
"At a time when the world is bringing on line one new 500 MW coal plant every three days, calls to divest from fossil fuels from a tiny fraction of global investors are misguided and anti-poor. All investors should be calling for more advanced coal use to alleviate energy poverty and drive major environmental gains,” Boyce said.
IMPROVED LIFE QUALITY
Peabody said that fossil fuels helped people live longer and better, and that repeated studies had demonstrated coal was the backbone of the global economy, with a direct correlation between greater coal use and greater gross domestic product.
The benefits of fossil fuel energy to society outweighed the social costs of carbon by a magnitude of 50 to 500 times, according to the study, ‘The Social Costs of Carbon? No, the Social Benefits of Carbon,’ prepared by Management Information Systems.
"We have deep concerns over flawed electricity policies designed to eliminate clean and efficient electricity from coal, which supplies over 40% of US power and has increasingly lower emissions. Studies clearly show these policies, if enacted, would only cause price increases with greater reliability risks and no substantive improvement under climate theory. These policies destroy manufacturing jobs, increase energy poverty, hurt real people and ruin hope for a better life,” Boyce said.
Coal is expected to fuel more energy growth than any other fuel over the next 20 years based on the International Energy Agency's current policy scenario. More than 70-million people were expected to be added to cities each year through 2020 as populations continued to fight poverty by migrating to urban centres.
Peabody argued that coal was the least expensive and most reliable major form of electricity generation to meet these rising energy needs. The World Bank had also has said coal would be critical in helping Africa meet power demands.
Coal had been the world's fastest-growing major fuel for more than a decade, and was expected to overtake oil as the world's largest energy source in coming years.
Edited by: Creamer Media Reporter "
Peabody urges advanced coal use in energy poverty, emissions fight, In light of the 20th United Nations(UN) Climate Conference held this week in New York, US coal producer Peabody Energy on Fri urged the greater use of advanced coal to fight energy inequality +improved emissions. The NYSE-listed company cited the UN’s Millennium Goals developed a decade ago, which called for a rapid halving of extreme global poverty by '15. Today about 3,500,000,000 people lived without adequate energy access, which represented half the world's population
www.miningweekly.com/article/peabody-urge-advanced-coal-use-…
"TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – In light of the 20th United Nations (UN) Climate Conference held this week in New York, US coal producer Peabody Energy on Friday urged the greater use of advanced coal to fight energy inequality and improved emissions.
The NYSE-listed company cited the UN’s Millennium Goals developed a decade ago, which called for a rapid halving of extreme global poverty by 2015. Today about 3.5-billion people lived without adequate energy access, which represented half the world's population.
Billions in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa spend their days foraging for wood or biomass for fuel to cook meals or heat dwellings, which in turn resulted in health and fire risks.
Peabody said that household air pollution from indoor fires was estimated to be the fourth-leading cause of death in the world.
"It's time we recognise energy poverty as the most serious crisis we face and reject climate alarmism that stalls solutions for energy access that would improve health, longevity and quality of life for tens of millions of citizens around the world. The best way to reduce carbon and further human development is to accelerate deployment of today's advanced coal technologies that provide continued environmental improvement,” Peabody chairperson and CEO Gregory Boyce argued in a statement.
He added that reasonable people could disagree on the urgency of addressing concerns about carbon, but that no one could question the crisis the world faced when more than four-million people died each year from indoor air pollution as a result of energy poverty.
Boyce said the ultimate human suffering from energy poverty extends to vaccines that were not kept cold, hospitals that lacked proper electricity, food that spoilt from a lack of refrigeration, water that was not purified and the effects of poor sanitation.
"If we are really serious about helping the impoverished, then we should be supporting activities to provide abundant low-cost energy for the billions in the world who lack it. As the world's policy makers consider long-term energy actions, it is encouraging that more nations are realising the harm done to people due to poor carbon policies, demonstrating important lessons for today's US and global leaders.”
Boyce observed that choices of fuels and policies mattered as witnessed by actions globally. For instance Australia repealed its carbon tax, which the Prime Minister called a "useless, destructive tax, which damaged jobs, hurt families' cost of living and didn't actually help the environment."
Japan had also stepped up support for coal-fuelled power plants both domestically and overseas, calling for greater use of advanced coal technology that reduces carbon dioxide emissions.
In India, the new Prime Minister pledged to make electricity available to every household by 2022, while China, as the world's largest coal user, was deploying technology to reduce emissions.
Boyce went further to note that Canada was reducing emissions without a penalising carbon tax, while Europe's renewable strategy was being pared back as the continent was threatened by Russia's energy security challenge.
"At a time when the world is bringing on line one new 500 MW coal plant every three days, calls to divest from fossil fuels from a tiny fraction of global investors are misguided and anti-poor. All investors should be calling for more advanced coal use to alleviate energy poverty and drive major environmental gains,” Boyce said.
IMPROVED LIFE QUALITY
Peabody said that fossil fuels helped people live longer and better, and that repeated studies had demonstrated coal was the backbone of the global economy, with a direct correlation between greater coal use and greater gross domestic product.
The benefits of fossil fuel energy to society outweighed the social costs of carbon by a magnitude of 50 to 500 times, according to the study, ‘The Social Costs of Carbon? No, the Social Benefits of Carbon,’ prepared by Management Information Systems.
"We have deep concerns over flawed electricity policies designed to eliminate clean and efficient electricity from coal, which supplies over 40% of US power and has increasingly lower emissions. Studies clearly show these policies, if enacted, would only cause price increases with greater reliability risks and no substantive improvement under climate theory. These policies destroy manufacturing jobs, increase energy poverty, hurt real people and ruin hope for a better life,” Boyce said.
Coal is expected to fuel more energy growth than any other fuel over the next 20 years based on the International Energy Agency's current policy scenario. More than 70-million people were expected to be added to cities each year through 2020 as populations continued to fight poverty by migrating to urban centres.
Peabody argued that coal was the least expensive and most reliable major form of electricity generation to meet these rising energy needs. The World Bank had also has said coal would be critical in helping Africa meet power demands.
Coal had been the world's fastest-growing major fuel for more than a decade, and was expected to overtake oil as the world's largest energy source in coming years.
Edited by: Creamer Media Reporter "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.472.850 von Popeye82 am 08.08.14 20:39:04
RFF Policy Leadership Forum: A Conversation with Gina McCarthy, Administrator, US Environmental Protection Agency: Economics +the Environment
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/A-Conversation-with-EPA-Administrat…
www.rff.org/Documents/Events/RFF-Sept25-GinaMcCarthyPLF.pdf
RFF Policy Leadership Forum: A Conversation with Gina McCarthy, Administrator, US Environmental Protection Agency: Economics +the Environment
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/A-Conversation-with-EPA-Administrat…
www.rff.org/Documents/Events/RFF-Sept25-GinaMcCarthyPLF.pdf
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.890.439 von Popeye82 am 27.09.14 12:49:20
National Lab "Shows Another Year of Double Digit Solar Price Reduction", We work to make solar more affordable +more accessible to more Americans, +today we’re celebrating 'another marker, on the path to success'. According to a new study released this week by the research gurus @Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the cost of going solar in the United States continued its rapid decline" - CT/TVSI/DoE/LBNL, BERKELEY - Sep 19, 2014
http://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-6350e.pdf
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/19/national-lab-shows-anothe…
"We work to make solar more affordable and more accessible to more Americans, and today we’re celebrating another marker on the path to success. According to a new study released this week by the research gurus at Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the cost of going solar in the United States continued its rapid decline in 2013 and the first half of this year. We teamed up with our partners at SEIA to celebrate this progress.
“In just a few years, American ingenuity and smart policy have made solar a true success story. These price declines mean that solar power is now an affordable option for families, schools, businesses and utilities alike,” said our executive director Adam Browning. “The result is that solar and its many grid, economic and environmental benefits are shining in communities across the country.”
“This report highlights yet another reason why solar energy has become such a remarkable American success story. Today, solar provides 143,000 good-paying jobs nationwide, pumps nearly $15 billion a year into the U.S. economy and is helping to significantly reduce pollution,” said SEIA president and CEO Rhone Resch. “There are now more than half a million American homes, businesses and schools with installed solar, and this is good news for freedom of energy choice as well as for our environment.”
This is the seventh edition of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s “Tracking the Sun,” an annual report on solar photovoltaic (PV) costs in the U.S. This year’s report examined more than 300,000 PV systems installed between 1998 and 2013 and preliminary data from the first half of 2014. Key findings include:
- Installed prices continued their significant decline in 2013, falling year-over-year by 12-15% depending on system size.
- Partial data for the first six months of 2014 indicate that installed prices have continued to fall, with the median installed price of projects tracked in the nation’s largest solar market, California, declining by an additional 6-11% depending on system size.
- Solar installed costs declined even as PV modules pricing remained relatively steady, indicating success in efforts targeting non-module soft costs – which include marketing and customer acquisition, system design, installation labor, and the various costs associated with permitting and inspections.
- Cash incentives provided through state and utility PV incentive programs (i.e., rebates and performance based incentives) have fallen by 85% to 95% since their peak a decade ago.
Galen Barbose, one of the report’s authors at LBNL, notes that these findings mark the fourth consecutive year of significant cost reductions for the U.S. solar industry. And WE note that, it’s truly inspiring to see how far solar has come in the years since his team released the first Tracking the Sun report just seven years ago. Low costs have driven adoption, which in turn brought costs down further in a virtuous cycle of tremendous solar growth. Today, solar is the fastest-growing source of renewable energy in the United States, employing 143,000 Americans, pumping $15 billion a year into the U.S. economy and helping to reduce pollution. Solar is helping drive a quiet energy revolution that puts customers in charge of their power supply and energy bills like never before. It’s awesome, and the real transformation is yet to come. Let’s do this! "
National Lab "Shows Another Year of Double Digit Solar Price Reduction", We work to make solar more affordable +more accessible to more Americans, +today we’re celebrating 'another marker, on the path to success'. According to a new study released this week by the research gurus @Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the cost of going solar in the United States continued its rapid decline" - CT/TVSI/DoE/LBNL, BERKELEY - Sep 19, 2014
http://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-6350e.pdf
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/19/national-lab-shows-anothe…
"We work to make solar more affordable and more accessible to more Americans, and today we’re celebrating another marker on the path to success. According to a new study released this week by the research gurus at Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the cost of going solar in the United States continued its rapid decline in 2013 and the first half of this year. We teamed up with our partners at SEIA to celebrate this progress.
“In just a few years, American ingenuity and smart policy have made solar a true success story. These price declines mean that solar power is now an affordable option for families, schools, businesses and utilities alike,” said our executive director Adam Browning. “The result is that solar and its many grid, economic and environmental benefits are shining in communities across the country.”
“This report highlights yet another reason why solar energy has become such a remarkable American success story. Today, solar provides 143,000 good-paying jobs nationwide, pumps nearly $15 billion a year into the U.S. economy and is helping to significantly reduce pollution,” said SEIA president and CEO Rhone Resch. “There are now more than half a million American homes, businesses and schools with installed solar, and this is good news for freedom of energy choice as well as for our environment.”
This is the seventh edition of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s “Tracking the Sun,” an annual report on solar photovoltaic (PV) costs in the U.S. This year’s report examined more than 300,000 PV systems installed between 1998 and 2013 and preliminary data from the first half of 2014. Key findings include:
- Installed prices continued their significant decline in 2013, falling year-over-year by 12-15% depending on system size.
- Partial data for the first six months of 2014 indicate that installed prices have continued to fall, with the median installed price of projects tracked in the nation’s largest solar market, California, declining by an additional 6-11% depending on system size.
- Solar installed costs declined even as PV modules pricing remained relatively steady, indicating success in efforts targeting non-module soft costs – which include marketing and customer acquisition, system design, installation labor, and the various costs associated with permitting and inspections.
- Cash incentives provided through state and utility PV incentive programs (i.e., rebates and performance based incentives) have fallen by 85% to 95% since their peak a decade ago.
Galen Barbose, one of the report’s authors at LBNL, notes that these findings mark the fourth consecutive year of significant cost reductions for the U.S. solar industry. And WE note that, it’s truly inspiring to see how far solar has come in the years since his team released the first Tracking the Sun report just seven years ago. Low costs have driven adoption, which in turn brought costs down further in a virtuous cycle of tremendous solar growth. Today, solar is the fastest-growing source of renewable energy in the United States, employing 143,000 Americans, pumping $15 billion a year into the U.S. economy and helping to reduce pollution. Solar is helping drive a quiet energy revolution that puts customers in charge of their power supply and energy bills like never before. It’s awesome, and the real transformation is yet to come. Let’s do this! "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.891.315 von Popeye82 am 27.09.14 17:03:28
Join Resources for the Future(RFF) +the Electric Power Research Institute(EPRI) for: Assessing State Goals +Challenges, under EPA's Clean Power Plan, Tuesday, Oct 14, '14 12:45 - 2:30 p.m. EDT
- Since the release of EPA's Clean Power Plan in early Jun, state policymakers have been assessing how the proposed rule will impact their unique state +regional circumstances. @this seminar, research experts +state regulators will explore several challenges to implementing the rule, including whether rate-based emissions targets should be converted to mass-based targets +, iiiiif so, how; whether credit can be or should be given for states that have already taken early action on low-carbon energy programs; +how these challenges might differ by region, among others.
Speakers include:
- Anthony Paul, Center Fellow, Resources for the Future(moderator)
- Vic Niemeyer, Technical Executive, Electric Power Research Institute
- G. Vinson Hellwig, Chief, Air Quality Division, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
- David Cash, Commissioner, Department of Environmental Protection, Commonwealth of Massachusetts(invited) ...-
www.rff.org/live/
www.rff.org/centers/climate_and_electricity_policy/Pages/Sem…
Join Resources for the Future(RFF) +the Electric Power Research Institute(EPRI) for: Assessing State Goals +Challenges, under EPA's Clean Power Plan, Tuesday, Oct 14, '14 12:45 - 2:30 p.m. EDT
- Since the release of EPA's Clean Power Plan in early Jun, state policymakers have been assessing how the proposed rule will impact their unique state +regional circumstances. @this seminar, research experts +state regulators will explore several challenges to implementing the rule, including whether rate-based emissions targets should be converted to mass-based targets +, iiiiif so, how; whether credit can be or should be given for states that have already taken early action on low-carbon energy programs; +how these challenges might differ by region, among others.
Speakers include:
- Anthony Paul, Center Fellow, Resources for the Future(moderator)
- Vic Niemeyer, Technical Executive, Electric Power Research Institute
- G. Vinson Hellwig, Chief, Air Quality Division, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
- David Cash, Commissioner, Department of Environmental Protection, Commonwealth of Massachusetts(invited) ...-
www.rff.org/live/
www.rff.org/centers/climate_and_electricity_policy/Pages/Sem…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.871.500 von Popeye82 am 25.09.14 10:59:40
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.472.850 von Popeye82 am 08.08.14 20:39:04
Living Planet Report, "Species +spaces, people +places" - WWF/GFN/ZSoL, GENEVA - Sep 30, 2014
- Humanity’s demand on the planet is >50 percent larger than what nature can renew, according to Global Footprint Network’s latest data, published in the '14 edition of the Living Planet Report. The biennial report, produced by WWF in collaboration with Global Footprint Network +the Zoological Society of London, was launched today in Geneva, Switzerland.
Released just over a week after the UN Climate Summit in New York City +massive marches around the world, the report shows that for the past 40 years, humanity’s demand on nature has exceeded what our planet can replenish. During the same period, vertebrate wildlife populations have declined on average by >half, as measured by the Living Planet Index.
“It is no coincidence that our Ecological Footprint has climbed while biodiversity has plummeted. Overshoot is a core pressure on biodiversity, +WWF is the leading conservation organization recognizing +addressing this link,” said Mathis Wackernagel, President +Co-founder of Global Footprint Network. “Living within the budget of nature is not just beneficial for our own welfare and resilience but also for the well-being of countless other species on our planet.”
According to Global Footprint Network’s calculations, it would take 1.5 Earths to renew all the ecological services humanity demands: food +fiber production, accommodation of built structures as well as the sequestration of CO2 from fossil fuel burning. In other words, it now takes more than a year +six months for Earth to replenish what humanity demands in one year. Global overshoot is possible because we can cut timber more quickly than trees regrow, pump freshwater faster than groundwater restocks, +release CO2 faster than nature can sequester it.
While humanity’s cropland +fishing Footprints have increased, carbon has been the dominant component of humanity’s Ecological Footprint for >half a century. +for most years, it has been on an upward trend. Carbon accounted for >half the global Ecological Footprint, @53 percent, in '10, the latest year the most complete dataset is available. Land used for food production is another major factor in humanity's increasing Footprint.
Comparing the Ecological Footprint of Countries
Examining the Ecological Footprint @the per-person level shows that people living in different countries vary greatly in their demand on Earth's ecosystems. For example, if everyone in the world lived like the average resident of Kuwait, which presently has the world's highest per capita Footprint, we would need the equivalent of 6 planets to regenerate our resources +absorb the CO2 emissions. If everyone lived like a resident of the United States, we would need the resources of 4 planets.
Countries with the largest Ecological Footprints per person include: Kuwait, Qatar, Denmark, Belgium, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, United States of America, Bahrain +Sweden. Conversely, Haiti, Eritrea, +Timor-Leste are among the countries with the smallest Ecological Footprints, under 0.6 global hectares(1½ acres) +, in most cases, too small to meet basic requirements for food, shelter, infrastructure +sanitation. These countries may well need to increase their access to resources if they are to bring large segments of the population out of poverty.
You can check out your country’s data on our website @
www.footprintnetwork.org/nations by choosing your country from the dropdown menu.
Who has the greatest natural capital?
Analysis of biocapacity also reveals vast differences between countries. About 60 percent of the world’s biocapacity is found within the borders of just 10 countries: Brazil, China, the United States, Russia, India, Canada, Australia, Indonesia, Argentina +Congo.
But a biocapacity-wealthy nation does not necessarily have a biocapacity “reserve.” Even in nations with high biocapacity, local, national +international demand can exceed availability. Indeed, despite technological advances, agricultural inputs +irrigation that have boosted the average yields/hectare of productive area, especially for cropland, biocapacity per capita has fallen from 3.2 in 1961 to 1.7 global hectares in '10 globally. The main driver has been population growth.
“Particularly for low-income communities, it is imperative to have access to ecological assets, since those communities are @a significant economic disadvantage to compete for more resources on the world market,” said Wackernagel. “Resource access is therefore a key factor to enable lasting development."
What can you do?
Please help spread the word about the findings in the Living Planet Report through your social media network by sharing our Facebook +Twitter posts with the hashtag #LPR2014.
You can calculate your own personal Ecological Footprint +explore how to lower it with our online calculator @ www.footprintnetwork.org/calculator. Also, support our efforts to make the calculator available to millions more people around the world through a mobile app. Stay tuned for more details in October, when we launch a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the calculator mobile app.
Thank you for supporting Global Footprint Network!
Contents
FOREWORD
Introduction
At a glance
CHAPTER 1: THE STATE OF THE PLANET
The Living Planet Index®
The Ecological Footprint
The Water Footprint
People, consumption +development
CHAPTER 2: DEVELOPING THE PICTURE
Panning out: the planetary picture
Zooming in
CHAPTER 3: WHY WE SHOULD CARE
Ecosystem services +their value
Food, water +energy
Healthy communities
CHAPTER 4: ONE PLANET SOLUTIONS
Southern Chile: protection, production +people
Mountain gorillas: communities +conservation
Belize: valuing natural capital
South Africa: plantations +wetlands
Great Barrier Reef: land, rivers +sea
Denmark: winds of change
We love cities
THE PATH AHEAD
APPENDIX
Living Planet Index® FAQ
Ecological Footprint FAQ
Water Footprint FAQ
Glossary +abbreviations
REFERENCES ...-
www.footprintnetwork.org/images/article_uploads/Living_Plane…
Living Planet Report, "Species +spaces, people +places" - WWF/GFN/ZSoL, GENEVA - Sep 30, 2014
- Humanity’s demand on the planet is >50 percent larger than what nature can renew, according to Global Footprint Network’s latest data, published in the '14 edition of the Living Planet Report. The biennial report, produced by WWF in collaboration with Global Footprint Network +the Zoological Society of London, was launched today in Geneva, Switzerland.
Released just over a week after the UN Climate Summit in New York City +massive marches around the world, the report shows that for the past 40 years, humanity’s demand on nature has exceeded what our planet can replenish. During the same period, vertebrate wildlife populations have declined on average by >half, as measured by the Living Planet Index.
“It is no coincidence that our Ecological Footprint has climbed while biodiversity has plummeted. Overshoot is a core pressure on biodiversity, +WWF is the leading conservation organization recognizing +addressing this link,” said Mathis Wackernagel, President +Co-founder of Global Footprint Network. “Living within the budget of nature is not just beneficial for our own welfare and resilience but also for the well-being of countless other species on our planet.”
According to Global Footprint Network’s calculations, it would take 1.5 Earths to renew all the ecological services humanity demands: food +fiber production, accommodation of built structures as well as the sequestration of CO2 from fossil fuel burning. In other words, it now takes more than a year +six months for Earth to replenish what humanity demands in one year. Global overshoot is possible because we can cut timber more quickly than trees regrow, pump freshwater faster than groundwater restocks, +release CO2 faster than nature can sequester it.
While humanity’s cropland +fishing Footprints have increased, carbon has been the dominant component of humanity’s Ecological Footprint for >half a century. +for most years, it has been on an upward trend. Carbon accounted for >half the global Ecological Footprint, @53 percent, in '10, the latest year the most complete dataset is available. Land used for food production is another major factor in humanity's increasing Footprint.
Comparing the Ecological Footprint of Countries
Examining the Ecological Footprint @the per-person level shows that people living in different countries vary greatly in their demand on Earth's ecosystems. For example, if everyone in the world lived like the average resident of Kuwait, which presently has the world's highest per capita Footprint, we would need the equivalent of 6 planets to regenerate our resources +absorb the CO2 emissions. If everyone lived like a resident of the United States, we would need the resources of 4 planets.
Countries with the largest Ecological Footprints per person include: Kuwait, Qatar, Denmark, Belgium, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, United States of America, Bahrain +Sweden. Conversely, Haiti, Eritrea, +Timor-Leste are among the countries with the smallest Ecological Footprints, under 0.6 global hectares(1½ acres) +, in most cases, too small to meet basic requirements for food, shelter, infrastructure +sanitation. These countries may well need to increase their access to resources if they are to bring large segments of the population out of poverty.
You can check out your country’s data on our website @
www.footprintnetwork.org/nations by choosing your country from the dropdown menu.
Who has the greatest natural capital?
Analysis of biocapacity also reveals vast differences between countries. About 60 percent of the world’s biocapacity is found within the borders of just 10 countries: Brazil, China, the United States, Russia, India, Canada, Australia, Indonesia, Argentina +Congo.
But a biocapacity-wealthy nation does not necessarily have a biocapacity “reserve.” Even in nations with high biocapacity, local, national +international demand can exceed availability. Indeed, despite technological advances, agricultural inputs +irrigation that have boosted the average yields/hectare of productive area, especially for cropland, biocapacity per capita has fallen from 3.2 in 1961 to 1.7 global hectares in '10 globally. The main driver has been population growth.
“Particularly for low-income communities, it is imperative to have access to ecological assets, since those communities are @a significant economic disadvantage to compete for more resources on the world market,” said Wackernagel. “Resource access is therefore a key factor to enable lasting development."
What can you do?
Please help spread the word about the findings in the Living Planet Report through your social media network by sharing our Facebook +Twitter posts with the hashtag #LPR2014.
You can calculate your own personal Ecological Footprint +explore how to lower it with our online calculator @ www.footprintnetwork.org/calculator. Also, support our efforts to make the calculator available to millions more people around the world through a mobile app. Stay tuned for more details in October, when we launch a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for the calculator mobile app.
Thank you for supporting Global Footprint Network!
Contents
FOREWORD
Introduction
At a glance
CHAPTER 1: THE STATE OF THE PLANET
The Living Planet Index®
The Ecological Footprint
The Water Footprint
People, consumption +development
CHAPTER 2: DEVELOPING THE PICTURE
Panning out: the planetary picture
Zooming in
CHAPTER 3: WHY WE SHOULD CARE
Ecosystem services +their value
Food, water +energy
Healthy communities
CHAPTER 4: ONE PLANET SOLUTIONS
Southern Chile: protection, production +people
Mountain gorillas: communities +conservation
Belize: valuing natural capital
South Africa: plantations +wetlands
Great Barrier Reef: land, rivers +sea
Denmark: winds of change
We love cities
THE PATH AHEAD
APPENDIX
Living Planet Index® FAQ
Ecological Footprint FAQ
Water Footprint FAQ
Glossary +abbreviations
REFERENCES ...-
www.footprintnetwork.org/images/article_uploads/Living_Plane…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.891.366 von Popeye82 am 27.09.14 17:19:09
kann ich nicht beurteilen, aber wäre in meinen Augen großartig.
Das Kohle, jetzt, -nur- für 36% der Elektrizitätserzeugung zuständing ist bezweifele ich aber.
Solar power to replace coal as world's top electricity source by 2050 —IEA, Coal currently generates about 36% of global electric power, according to the energy watchdog - M.com/IEA - Sep 29, 2014
- C. Jamasmie -
www.iea.org/media/freepublications/technologyroadmaps/solar/…
www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/techno…
www.mining.com/solar-power-to-replace-coal-as-worlds-top-ele…
"Solar energy could be the top source of electricity by 2050, aided by dropping costs of the equipment needed to generate it, said Monday the U.S. International Energy Agency (IEA).
According to West’s energy watchdog two latest reports, solar photovoltaic (PV) systems could generate up to 16% of the world’s electricity by 2050, while solar thermal electricity (STE) – from “concentrating” solar power plants – could provide a further 11%.
The agency adds that more solar power generating capacity has been added since 2010 than in the previous four decades.
Coal currently generates about 36% of global electric power, according to an IEA report released previously. But the figure varies widely by region, reaching as high as 80% in China and South Africa, and about 25% in Japan.
Solar power to replace coal as world's top electricity source by 2050 — IEA
The agency predicts that up to 4,600 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity could be installed by 2050, up from about 150 gigawatts at present, requiring an average annual investment of $225 billion per year.
Last week at a UN climate summit in New York over 120 heads of state gave their backing to efforts to ramp up financing for renewables and formulate a new emissions reduction treaty, set to be signed off next year. "
kann ich nicht beurteilen, aber wäre in meinen Augen großartig.
Das Kohle, jetzt, -nur- für 36% der Elektrizitätserzeugung zuständing ist bezweifele ich aber.
Solar power to replace coal as world's top electricity source by 2050 —IEA, Coal currently generates about 36% of global electric power, according to the energy watchdog - M.com/IEA - Sep 29, 2014
- C. Jamasmie -
www.iea.org/media/freepublications/technologyroadmaps/solar/…
www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/techno…
www.mining.com/solar-power-to-replace-coal-as-worlds-top-ele…
"Solar energy could be the top source of electricity by 2050, aided by dropping costs of the equipment needed to generate it, said Monday the U.S. International Energy Agency (IEA).
According to West’s energy watchdog two latest reports, solar photovoltaic (PV) systems could generate up to 16% of the world’s electricity by 2050, while solar thermal electricity (STE) – from “concentrating” solar power plants – could provide a further 11%.
The agency adds that more solar power generating capacity has been added since 2010 than in the previous four decades.
Coal currently generates about 36% of global electric power, according to an IEA report released previously. But the figure varies widely by region, reaching as high as 80% in China and South Africa, and about 25% in Japan.
Solar power to replace coal as world's top electricity source by 2050 — IEA
The agency predicts that up to 4,600 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity could be installed by 2050, up from about 150 gigawatts at present, requiring an average annual investment of $225 billion per year.
Last week at a UN climate summit in New York over 120 heads of state gave their backing to efforts to ramp up financing for renewables and formulate a new emissions reduction treaty, set to be signed off next year. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.904.005 von Popeye82 am 30.09.14 00:02:01
1st large-scale power plant with carbon capture, This week, Canadian utility SaskPower officially unveils the 1st commercial-scale, coal-fired power plant to capture carbon dioxide. Doug Vine notes SaskPower will sell its captured CO2 for use in enhanced oil recovery, a financial incentive that lowers the cost of this critical technology - C2ES - Sep 29, 2014
- Doug Vine -
www.c2es.org/blog/vined/saskpower-unveils-first-commercial-s…
"For the first time ever, a large-scale, coal-fired power plant is capturing carbon dioxide to keep it from being released into the atmosphere – a milestone for a technology critical to addressing climate change.
Canadian electric utility SaskPower has switched on unit 3 at its Boundary Dam power plant, about 10 miles from the North Dakota border, and will hold an official grand opening Oct. 2. Following a $1.2 billion retrofit, the 46-year-old, 110-megawatt coal unit is now on course toward capturing 90 percent of its carbon emissions. Other upgrades reduce nitrous oxide emissions and capture 100 percent of the unit’s sulfur dioxide emissions.
Numerous commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology projects have been deployed in the industrial sector. In the power sector, demonstration-scale projects have been deployed, but this is the first commercial-scale project.
We will need to construct hundreds of such projects (along with other zero- and lower-emitting technologies) if greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced to levels that avoid the worst effects of climate change. According to the International Energy Agency, more than 440 terawatt-hours (TWh) of CCS must be generated between 2020 and 2035 to give us a chance of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. To get a sense of that scale, SaskPower’s unit 3 can produce up to 1 TWh of electricity per year.
The Boundary Dam project is important not just because it’s the first of its kind, but because it demonstrates a way to help make carbon capture technology economically viable -- by turning unwanted pollutants into valuable commodities. SaskPower has agreed to transport and sell its captured carbon dioxide (CO2) to an oilfield operated by Cenovus for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations. The captured CO2 helps coax additional production from declining oil fields and results in the permanent storage of the CO2 underground. (In addition, captured sulfur dioxide emissions will be used to produce 50 tons per day of sulfuric acid for industrial customers, and SaskPower will sell the plant’s coal combustion residuals, also known as coal ash, for use in construction products like drywall and concrete.)
Selling captured carbon dioxide for use in enhanced oil recovery provides a vital revenue stream for CCS projects, helping offset high investment costs, particularly for first-movers like SaskPower. In fact, most existing or planned carbon capture projects in the world today are taking advantage of CO2-EOR. In the process, they are helping to advance the technology and demonstrate its broader potential in curbing carbon emissions.
Other factors also came together to make this project work, including the fact that SaskPower has an abundant source of inexpensive lignite coal near the power plant, and if need be, SaskPower can securely store its CO2 emissions in a nearby, deep-underground saline formation. Available storage will be critical for all CCS projects in the near-term, especially if an EOR option is not available.
SaskPower refurbished the coal unit at a cost of $300 million. Building the capture facility was projected to cost around $790 million, of which the Canadian government contributed $220 million.
When I visited the plant earlier this year, SaskPower acknowledged that the capture facility had been over-engineered to ensure it would deliver on its targeted 90 percent capture rate. Right-sizing future capture facilities and applying lessons learned during construction of this facility mean the costs for similar projects will come down over time, which is critical to wider deployment and lower global CO2 emissions.
That’s important because coal-fired electricity generation is not going away anytime soon. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in an analysis of its recently proposed carbon limits for existing power plants, projects coal will still supply more than 30 percent of U.S electricity in 2030, down only 9 percentage points from today’s levels. Meanwhile, coal use in the developing world is soaring. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s International Energy Outlook, coal consumption in developing countries, led by China and India, is expected to increase 70 percent by 2040.
With more than 2,300 coal-fired power plants around the world, deployment of post-combustion carbon capture and storage technology like what’s in use at the Boundary Dam power plant is an important way to reduce greenhouse gases and a significant step in the right direction. "
1st large-scale power plant with carbon capture, This week, Canadian utility SaskPower officially unveils the 1st commercial-scale, coal-fired power plant to capture carbon dioxide. Doug Vine notes SaskPower will sell its captured CO2 for use in enhanced oil recovery, a financial incentive that lowers the cost of this critical technology - C2ES - Sep 29, 2014
- Doug Vine -
www.c2es.org/blog/vined/saskpower-unveils-first-commercial-s…
"For the first time ever, a large-scale, coal-fired power plant is capturing carbon dioxide to keep it from being released into the atmosphere – a milestone for a technology critical to addressing climate change.
Canadian electric utility SaskPower has switched on unit 3 at its Boundary Dam power plant, about 10 miles from the North Dakota border, and will hold an official grand opening Oct. 2. Following a $1.2 billion retrofit, the 46-year-old, 110-megawatt coal unit is now on course toward capturing 90 percent of its carbon emissions. Other upgrades reduce nitrous oxide emissions and capture 100 percent of the unit’s sulfur dioxide emissions.
Numerous commercial-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology projects have been deployed in the industrial sector. In the power sector, demonstration-scale projects have been deployed, but this is the first commercial-scale project.
We will need to construct hundreds of such projects (along with other zero- and lower-emitting technologies) if greenhouse gas emissions are to be reduced to levels that avoid the worst effects of climate change. According to the International Energy Agency, more than 440 terawatt-hours (TWh) of CCS must be generated between 2020 and 2035 to give us a chance of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. To get a sense of that scale, SaskPower’s unit 3 can produce up to 1 TWh of electricity per year.
The Boundary Dam project is important not just because it’s the first of its kind, but because it demonstrates a way to help make carbon capture technology economically viable -- by turning unwanted pollutants into valuable commodities. SaskPower has agreed to transport and sell its captured carbon dioxide (CO2) to an oilfield operated by Cenovus for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations. The captured CO2 helps coax additional production from declining oil fields and results in the permanent storage of the CO2 underground. (In addition, captured sulfur dioxide emissions will be used to produce 50 tons per day of sulfuric acid for industrial customers, and SaskPower will sell the plant’s coal combustion residuals, also known as coal ash, for use in construction products like drywall and concrete.)
Selling captured carbon dioxide for use in enhanced oil recovery provides a vital revenue stream for CCS projects, helping offset high investment costs, particularly for first-movers like SaskPower. In fact, most existing or planned carbon capture projects in the world today are taking advantage of CO2-EOR. In the process, they are helping to advance the technology and demonstrate its broader potential in curbing carbon emissions.
Other factors also came together to make this project work, including the fact that SaskPower has an abundant source of inexpensive lignite coal near the power plant, and if need be, SaskPower can securely store its CO2 emissions in a nearby, deep-underground saline formation. Available storage will be critical for all CCS projects in the near-term, especially if an EOR option is not available.
SaskPower refurbished the coal unit at a cost of $300 million. Building the capture facility was projected to cost around $790 million, of which the Canadian government contributed $220 million.
When I visited the plant earlier this year, SaskPower acknowledged that the capture facility had been over-engineered to ensure it would deliver on its targeted 90 percent capture rate. Right-sizing future capture facilities and applying lessons learned during construction of this facility mean the costs for similar projects will come down over time, which is critical to wider deployment and lower global CO2 emissions.
That’s important because coal-fired electricity generation is not going away anytime soon. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in an analysis of its recently proposed carbon limits for existing power plants, projects coal will still supply more than 30 percent of U.S electricity in 2030, down only 9 percentage points from today’s levels. Meanwhile, coal use in the developing world is soaring. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s International Energy Outlook, coal consumption in developing countries, led by China and India, is expected to increase 70 percent by 2040.
With more than 2,300 coal-fired power plants around the world, deployment of post-combustion carbon capture and storage technology like what’s in use at the Boundary Dam power plant is an important way to reduce greenhouse gases and a significant step in the right direction. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.912.927 von Popeye82 am 30.09.14 20:45:43
Companies step up @climate summit, Leading companies announced initiatives +partnerships @the U.N. Summit to reduce methane emissions, mobilize clean energy investment, expand access to renewable energy, +improve energy efficiency. C2ES joined >1.000 companies +governments in voicing support for carbon pricing - C2ES - Sep 25, 2014
- Bob Perciasepe -
www.c2es.org/blog/perciasepeb/companies-are-part-equation-ad…
"While the focus in New York this week has been on world leaders pledging to act on climate change, business leaders also stepped up to be part of the climate solution.
In recent years, many companies have acknowledged the risks of climate change and worked to improve their energy efficiency and sustainability. This week, companies announced new efforts to fund clean energy, reduce carbon emissions, and support a price on carbon.
For example, Bank of America announced an initiative to spur at least $10 billion of new investment in clean energy projects. Hewlett Packard announced plans to reduce emissions intensity of its product portfolio by 40 percent from 2010 levels by 2020.
Many companies joined together to take a stand:
- More than 1,000 businesses joined 73 countries and 22 states, provinces and cities in signing a World Bank statement in favor of a price on carbon emissions. Among them are several members of the C2ES Business Environmental Leadership Council: Alstom, Areva, Bayer, BP, Holcim, Johnson Controls, National Grid, PG&E, Rio Tinto and Royal Dutch Shell.
- Forty companies, including the largest in the highly carbon-intensive palm oil trade, pledged to help stop tropical deforestation.
- A coalition of companies in food storage announced they will reduce emissions, including replacing a type of refrigerant that acts as a powerful greenhouse gas.
- Six international energy companies agreed to partner with more than a dozen national governments to reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Why are these businesses acting on the climate issue? Because their success depends on it.
Companies already face real climate risks as increasingly frequent and intense heat waves, coastal flooding, and other types of extreme weather disrupt supply and distribution chains, damage facilities, and raise costs.
Many companies also see opportunity in innovating and investing in clean energy and energy efficiency as we move toward a lower-carbon future that would let us escape the most severe impacts of climate change.
Company announcements this week -- followed up by action -- are significant. Alone, however, they’re not enough. It will also take government action at all levels – local, state, national, and international – to set the policies and goals that will enable us to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, develop clean energy, and boost resilience to climate impacts so that both our environment and economy can thrive.
When we can bring businesses and governments together on climate issues, we are likely to end up with swifter, more effective actions that will stick. We hope that the recent commitments made this week will serve as a signal to policymakers that now is the time to act, and that business partners are ready and willing to be a part of the solution. "
Companies step up @climate summit, Leading companies announced initiatives +partnerships @the U.N. Summit to reduce methane emissions, mobilize clean energy investment, expand access to renewable energy, +improve energy efficiency. C2ES joined >1.000 companies +governments in voicing support for carbon pricing - C2ES - Sep 25, 2014
- Bob Perciasepe -
www.c2es.org/blog/perciasepeb/companies-are-part-equation-ad…
"While the focus in New York this week has been on world leaders pledging to act on climate change, business leaders also stepped up to be part of the climate solution.
In recent years, many companies have acknowledged the risks of climate change and worked to improve their energy efficiency and sustainability. This week, companies announced new efforts to fund clean energy, reduce carbon emissions, and support a price on carbon.
For example, Bank of America announced an initiative to spur at least $10 billion of new investment in clean energy projects. Hewlett Packard announced plans to reduce emissions intensity of its product portfolio by 40 percent from 2010 levels by 2020.
Many companies joined together to take a stand:
- More than 1,000 businesses joined 73 countries and 22 states, provinces and cities in signing a World Bank statement in favor of a price on carbon emissions. Among them are several members of the C2ES Business Environmental Leadership Council: Alstom, Areva, Bayer, BP, Holcim, Johnson Controls, National Grid, PG&E, Rio Tinto and Royal Dutch Shell.
- Forty companies, including the largest in the highly carbon-intensive palm oil trade, pledged to help stop tropical deforestation.
- A coalition of companies in food storage announced they will reduce emissions, including replacing a type of refrigerant that acts as a powerful greenhouse gas.
- Six international energy companies agreed to partner with more than a dozen national governments to reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
Why are these businesses acting on the climate issue? Because their success depends on it.
Companies already face real climate risks as increasingly frequent and intense heat waves, coastal flooding, and other types of extreme weather disrupt supply and distribution chains, damage facilities, and raise costs.
Many companies also see opportunity in innovating and investing in clean energy and energy efficiency as we move toward a lower-carbon future that would let us escape the most severe impacts of climate change.
Company announcements this week -- followed up by action -- are significant. Alone, however, they’re not enough. It will also take government action at all levels – local, state, national, and international – to set the policies and goals that will enable us to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, develop clean energy, and boost resilience to climate impacts so that both our environment and economy can thrive.
When we can bring businesses and governments together on climate issues, we are likely to end up with swifter, more effective actions that will stick. We hope that the recent commitments made this week will serve as a signal to policymakers that now is the time to act, and that business partners are ready and willing to be a part of the solution. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.904.284 von Popeye82 am 30.09.14 06:54:23
"Solar +the New(democratic) Energy Economy" - CT - Sep 29, 2014
- J. Farrell -
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/29/solar-and-the-new-democra…
"I spent three days recently with some of the biggest minds behind the “new economy” movement because their core theme – economic democracy – fits like a glove over ILSR’s work on democratic energy.
The big takeaway? Solar power is the spark to energize a new energy economy from the bottom up.
This new solar-sparked energy system will look entirely different from the old energy economy, because the technology to meet the energy needs of the 20th century are fundamentally different from those needed to meet the needs of the 21st century.
Building out the original electric grid in the early 1900s was a monumental task, requiring vast amounts of capital to finance poles, wires, and power plants. Since we only needed one electric grid, and since government saw electricity as a luxury at the time, it led to a market dominated by first natural and then regulated, corporate monopolies. Without competition, it was easier to finance grid infrastructure and to build ever-larger power plants to serve endlessly increasing demand.
For the first 50 years or so, this arrangement served the public and private interests, driving down the cost of electricity and expanding access.* But beginning with the Energy Crisis in the 1970s, the public and private interests in the electricity system have steadily diverged. Utility companies continued to pursue more and more electricity sales even as efficiency became a clear least cost supply. Utilities kept building fossil fuel power plants even as it became clear that wind and solar power could dramatically shrink the environmental footprint of electricity generation at competitive cost. Finally, utilities have fiercely defended their market turf, even as customer ownership of small-scale power generation has proven that communities no longer need a private utility to manage all of their energy dollars.
Solar power is the catalyst for the new energy economy because customers can for the first time cost-effectively supply electricity from their own home or business. Solar provides more utility than energy efficiency, which is limited to reducing energy consumption (even if it is the lowest cost resource). Solar provides more opportunity than large-scale renewable energy, which can at best reduce pollution and wholesale energy costs. Decentralized solar is democratic because it provides both political and economic power by allowing people, individually and collectively, to challenge the utility monopoly over energy supply.
For the first time in forever (sorry, parent of young kids here), solar offers communities a chance to reverse the flow of energy dollars out of their community. Every megawatt of solar installed adds $2.5 million dollars and 20 construction jobs to the local economy. In its 25-year lifetime, a locally owned solar project will redirect an additional $5.4 million of electricity spending back into local pockets. With new (crowd financed and maintenance free) solar loans, solar ownership is getting easier than ever. And with expanding opportunities for community solar projects, solar is increasingly available to the 75% of Americans who don’t own a sunny rooftop.
Despite solar’s small size (the individual panels are often just 200-300 Watts each), its cumulative impact is very large. In 2013, for example, rooftop solar power on homes represented 7% of all new power generation in the United States. In Germany, 80% or more of the 36,000 megawatts of solar energy is supplied by projects 100 kilowatts and smaller, each less than the size of grocery store roof.
Decentralized, rooftop solar could provide enormous amounts of electricity, 15% or more of total electricity sales in most states.
It’s not just electrons, but competitive pricing that makes solar attractive. By 2022, 312,000 megawatts of solar could be installed across the United States at prices competitive with utility retail rates. It could be higher, but this conservative estimate limits solar to 20% of each utility’s total sales.
Altogether, this 312,000 megawatts of cost-competitive, unsubsidized solar would supply over 9% of total electricity sales in the United States, redirecting nearly $33 billion in electricity spending back into local communities.
Solar isn’t just energy for the economy, but it provides power for the people. And while solar energy systems may derive their energy from the top down (sunshine), decentralized solar power promises to build a new energy economy from the ground up.
*Note: at least to urban areas. It took federal intervention via the Rural Electrification Administration to get electricity to farms and rural communities. "
"Solar +the New(democratic) Energy Economy" - CT - Sep 29, 2014
- J. Farrell -
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/29/solar-and-the-new-democra…
"I spent three days recently with some of the biggest minds behind the “new economy” movement because their core theme – economic democracy – fits like a glove over ILSR’s work on democratic energy.
The big takeaway? Solar power is the spark to energize a new energy economy from the bottom up.
This new solar-sparked energy system will look entirely different from the old energy economy, because the technology to meet the energy needs of the 20th century are fundamentally different from those needed to meet the needs of the 21st century.
Building out the original electric grid in the early 1900s was a monumental task, requiring vast amounts of capital to finance poles, wires, and power plants. Since we only needed one electric grid, and since government saw electricity as a luxury at the time, it led to a market dominated by first natural and then regulated, corporate monopolies. Without competition, it was easier to finance grid infrastructure and to build ever-larger power plants to serve endlessly increasing demand.
For the first 50 years or so, this arrangement served the public and private interests, driving down the cost of electricity and expanding access.* But beginning with the Energy Crisis in the 1970s, the public and private interests in the electricity system have steadily diverged. Utility companies continued to pursue more and more electricity sales even as efficiency became a clear least cost supply. Utilities kept building fossil fuel power plants even as it became clear that wind and solar power could dramatically shrink the environmental footprint of electricity generation at competitive cost. Finally, utilities have fiercely defended their market turf, even as customer ownership of small-scale power generation has proven that communities no longer need a private utility to manage all of their energy dollars.
Solar power is the catalyst for the new energy economy because customers can for the first time cost-effectively supply electricity from their own home or business. Solar provides more utility than energy efficiency, which is limited to reducing energy consumption (even if it is the lowest cost resource). Solar provides more opportunity than large-scale renewable energy, which can at best reduce pollution and wholesale energy costs. Decentralized solar is democratic because it provides both political and economic power by allowing people, individually and collectively, to challenge the utility monopoly over energy supply.
For the first time in forever (sorry, parent of young kids here), solar offers communities a chance to reverse the flow of energy dollars out of their community. Every megawatt of solar installed adds $2.5 million dollars and 20 construction jobs to the local economy. In its 25-year lifetime, a locally owned solar project will redirect an additional $5.4 million of electricity spending back into local pockets. With new (crowd financed and maintenance free) solar loans, solar ownership is getting easier than ever. And with expanding opportunities for community solar projects, solar is increasingly available to the 75% of Americans who don’t own a sunny rooftop.
Despite solar’s small size (the individual panels are often just 200-300 Watts each), its cumulative impact is very large. In 2013, for example, rooftop solar power on homes represented 7% of all new power generation in the United States. In Germany, 80% or more of the 36,000 megawatts of solar energy is supplied by projects 100 kilowatts and smaller, each less than the size of grocery store roof.
Decentralized, rooftop solar could provide enormous amounts of electricity, 15% or more of total electricity sales in most states.
It’s not just electrons, but competitive pricing that makes solar attractive. By 2022, 312,000 megawatts of solar could be installed across the United States at prices competitive with utility retail rates. It could be higher, but this conservative estimate limits solar to 20% of each utility’s total sales.
Altogether, this 312,000 megawatts of cost-competitive, unsubsidized solar would supply over 9% of total electricity sales in the United States, redirecting nearly $33 billion in electricity spending back into local communities.
Solar isn’t just energy for the economy, but it provides power for the people. And while solar energy systems may derive their energy from the top down (sunshine), decentralized solar power promises to build a new energy economy from the ground up.
*Note: at least to urban areas. It took federal intervention via the Rural Electrification Administration to get electricity to farms and rural communities. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.913.164 von Popeye82 am 30.09.14 21:12:31
Cellulosic Ethanol 'Finally Beginning to Reach Scale', There was big news in Emmetsburg, Iowa this month—the opening of a major cellulosic ethanol plant. The plant, which is the 1st commercial-scale cellulosic facility in the US, is a joint venture between Poet +Royal DSM. Code-named Project Liberty, the plant was christened in a ceremony featuring His Majesty Willem-Alexander, King of the Netherlands - CT/JM/3BLM - Sep 29, 2014
www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/business/energy-environment/big-f…
www.businessweek.com/news/2014-09-25/granbio-begins-producti…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/29/cellulosic-ethanol-finall…
"There was big news in Emmetsburg, Iowa this month—the opening of a major cellulosic ethanol plant. The plant, which is the first commercial-scale cellulosic facility in the US, is a joint venture between Poet and Royal DSM. Code-named Project Liberty, the plant was christened in a ceremony featuring His Majesty Willem-Alexander, King of the Netherlands, along with a host of others including U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Deputy Under Secretary Michael Knotek of the Department of Energy, and Iowa Governor Terry Branstad.
The plant will initially process 570 million pounds of biomass, primarily crop residue in the form of corn stover, each year, converting it to 20 million gallons of ethanol. At full capacity those numbers will increase to 770 and 25 million, respectively.
Traditional corn ethanol production uses the age-old process of distilling starches into alcohol, the same way that distilled spirits are made. The ability to convert the leaves and stalks and other waste material containing lignocellulose was something that had never been done before. The science was difficult and it has taken longer than expected, leading the EPA to revise the numbers in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a mandate for the production of bio-fuels to help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
Concerns have been raised as to the implications of removing potential nutrition from the soil. This is offset, at least in part, by the fact that crop densities have nearly doubled over the past thirty years. Additionally, only 17% of the residue is currently being taken. Studies have shown a range of impact between a slight decrease in yield to an actual increase.
The entire bio-ethanol program has been under attack since its inception from a variety of sources including the oil industry, which fears the loss of business, environmentalists who are concerned about water and air pollution, and consumer, food industry and anti-hunger groups who have expressed concern that using crops and/or cropland for fuel production could lead to higher prices or worse. This latter concern was realized to some degree last year, with the Midwestern drought leading to a falloff in production. The good news was that much of the shortfall, which primarily impacted animal feed prices, was offset by increased production in other parts of the world. Then of course, there are those people who don’t like the government telling them anything.
People don’t like the heavy-handed RFS, but considering that we are talking about a brand new technology trying to go up against the megalithic oil industry, there is no way it could ever happen without that kind of support. Considering what’s at stake in terms of climate, and in terms of energy security, this is far too important for the government not to get involved in.
Central to the argument has been the fact that by the time all the agricultural inputs are added up: the fertilizers, tractors, and material handling operations, especially if virgin forest is cut down to create the needed acreage, the energy produced from corn ethanol is not a lot more that what went into producing it and carbon impact could be worse.
The move from corn ethanol to cellulosic ethanol changes the math considerably, basically due to the fact that without changing the inputs required to grow the corn, you are now producing significantly more ethanol by utilizing other parts of the plant. Cellulosic ethanol can also be produced from just about any type of plant material from yard clippings, to forestry residues to wheat straw (which is currently being used in Italy) to a variety of fast-growing energy grasses.
This week also saw the opening of a GranBio cellulosic ethanol plant in the Brazilian state of Alagoas. The $190 million plant is expected to produce 22 million gallons per year from sugarcane waste. It is said to be the first cellulosic plant in the Southern Hemisphere.
Central to the pro-ethanol side of the argument is the fact that the plants remove carbon from the air in order to grow, so that when they are burned (or converted to ethanol and then burned) they are merely returning the same carbon into the air. Thus they are often considered carbon neutral in this regard, though there are other carbon emissions associated with its production. But the fuel itself is inherently different from fossil fuel which releases carbon that had been sequestered underground millions of years ago and would have otherwise remained there.
Another point that is often overlooked in the ethanol conversation is the fact that ethanol has a higher octane rating than gasoline. This means that when used in a properly configured engine, with a higher compression ratio than today’s cars have, it can actually produce more power per gallon. That is why Formula 1 race cars run on ethanol.
Then there is the fact that large scale agriculture, regardless of what is being grown, takes a heavy toll on the environment, especially considering the heavy reliance on chemicals that is employed today.
Yes, this has been a long process, producing a homegrown industry to begin to replace what the oil industry has created over a century’s time (with much government support), and the early stages were not pretty. There are issues to be resolved, to be sure, including the problem with older model cars that contain materials that are incompatible with ethanol. And these first numbers are less than a tiny fraction of the billions of gallons originally promised. However, the cries to shut it down now are, in my opinion misplaced, given how close we finally are to the goal. We need to take the long term view as well as a system perspective. A system of this size and complexity takes time to get the bugs out. Much learning has occurred and there will be major benefits. Car companies are already developing engines with higher compression ratios that will be in a position to take advantage of new higher octane fuels. And much oil that would have otherwise been imported and burned, producing a great deal greenhouse gas along with other pollutants, has already been left in the ground with, hopefully, lots more of the same in the years to come.
Article by RP Siegel of Justmeans, appearing courtesy 3BL Media. "
Cellulosic Ethanol 'Finally Beginning to Reach Scale', There was big news in Emmetsburg, Iowa this month—the opening of a major cellulosic ethanol plant. The plant, which is the 1st commercial-scale cellulosic facility in the US, is a joint venture between Poet +Royal DSM. Code-named Project Liberty, the plant was christened in a ceremony featuring His Majesty Willem-Alexander, King of the Netherlands - CT/JM/3BLM - Sep 29, 2014
www.nytimes.com/2014/09/20/business/energy-environment/big-f…
www.businessweek.com/news/2014-09-25/granbio-begins-producti…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/29/cellulosic-ethanol-finall…
"There was big news in Emmetsburg, Iowa this month—the opening of a major cellulosic ethanol plant. The plant, which is the first commercial-scale cellulosic facility in the US, is a joint venture between Poet and Royal DSM. Code-named Project Liberty, the plant was christened in a ceremony featuring His Majesty Willem-Alexander, King of the Netherlands, along with a host of others including U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Deputy Under Secretary Michael Knotek of the Department of Energy, and Iowa Governor Terry Branstad.
The plant will initially process 570 million pounds of biomass, primarily crop residue in the form of corn stover, each year, converting it to 20 million gallons of ethanol. At full capacity those numbers will increase to 770 and 25 million, respectively.
Traditional corn ethanol production uses the age-old process of distilling starches into alcohol, the same way that distilled spirits are made. The ability to convert the leaves and stalks and other waste material containing lignocellulose was something that had never been done before. The science was difficult and it has taken longer than expected, leading the EPA to revise the numbers in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a mandate for the production of bio-fuels to help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
Concerns have been raised as to the implications of removing potential nutrition from the soil. This is offset, at least in part, by the fact that crop densities have nearly doubled over the past thirty years. Additionally, only 17% of the residue is currently being taken. Studies have shown a range of impact between a slight decrease in yield to an actual increase.
The entire bio-ethanol program has been under attack since its inception from a variety of sources including the oil industry, which fears the loss of business, environmentalists who are concerned about water and air pollution, and consumer, food industry and anti-hunger groups who have expressed concern that using crops and/or cropland for fuel production could lead to higher prices or worse. This latter concern was realized to some degree last year, with the Midwestern drought leading to a falloff in production. The good news was that much of the shortfall, which primarily impacted animal feed prices, was offset by increased production in other parts of the world. Then of course, there are those people who don’t like the government telling them anything.
People don’t like the heavy-handed RFS, but considering that we are talking about a brand new technology trying to go up against the megalithic oil industry, there is no way it could ever happen without that kind of support. Considering what’s at stake in terms of climate, and in terms of energy security, this is far too important for the government not to get involved in.
Central to the argument has been the fact that by the time all the agricultural inputs are added up: the fertilizers, tractors, and material handling operations, especially if virgin forest is cut down to create the needed acreage, the energy produced from corn ethanol is not a lot more that what went into producing it and carbon impact could be worse.
The move from corn ethanol to cellulosic ethanol changes the math considerably, basically due to the fact that without changing the inputs required to grow the corn, you are now producing significantly more ethanol by utilizing other parts of the plant. Cellulosic ethanol can also be produced from just about any type of plant material from yard clippings, to forestry residues to wheat straw (which is currently being used in Italy) to a variety of fast-growing energy grasses.
This week also saw the opening of a GranBio cellulosic ethanol plant in the Brazilian state of Alagoas. The $190 million plant is expected to produce 22 million gallons per year from sugarcane waste. It is said to be the first cellulosic plant in the Southern Hemisphere.
Central to the pro-ethanol side of the argument is the fact that the plants remove carbon from the air in order to grow, so that when they are burned (or converted to ethanol and then burned) they are merely returning the same carbon into the air. Thus they are often considered carbon neutral in this regard, though there are other carbon emissions associated with its production. But the fuel itself is inherently different from fossil fuel which releases carbon that had been sequestered underground millions of years ago and would have otherwise remained there.
Another point that is often overlooked in the ethanol conversation is the fact that ethanol has a higher octane rating than gasoline. This means that when used in a properly configured engine, with a higher compression ratio than today’s cars have, it can actually produce more power per gallon. That is why Formula 1 race cars run on ethanol.
Then there is the fact that large scale agriculture, regardless of what is being grown, takes a heavy toll on the environment, especially considering the heavy reliance on chemicals that is employed today.
Yes, this has been a long process, producing a homegrown industry to begin to replace what the oil industry has created over a century’s time (with much government support), and the early stages were not pretty. There are issues to be resolved, to be sure, including the problem with older model cars that contain materials that are incompatible with ethanol. And these first numbers are less than a tiny fraction of the billions of gallons originally promised. However, the cries to shut it down now are, in my opinion misplaced, given how close we finally are to the goal. We need to take the long term view as well as a system perspective. A system of this size and complexity takes time to get the bugs out. Much learning has occurred and there will be major benefits. Car companies are already developing engines with higher compression ratios that will be in a position to take advantage of new higher octane fuels. And much oil that would have otherwise been imported and burned, producing a great deal greenhouse gas along with other pollutants, has already been left in the ground with, hopefully, lots more of the same in the years to come.
Article by RP Siegel of Justmeans, appearing courtesy 3BL Media. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.913.041 von Popeye82 am 30.09.14 20:55:57
Causes of California drought linked to climate change, Stanford scientists say - ENN/SU, STANFORD - Sep 29, 2014
- Ker Than -
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/september/drought-climate…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47885
"The atmospheric conditions associated with the unprecedented drought currently afflicting California are "very likely" linked to human-caused climate change, Stanford scientists write in a new research paper.
In a new study, a team led by Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh used a novel combination of computer simulations and statistical techniques to show that a persistent region of high atmospheric pressure hovering over the Pacific Ocean that diverted storms away from California was much more likely to form in the presence of modern greenhouse gas concentrations.
The research, published on Sept. 29 as a supplement to this month's issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is one of the most comprehensive studies to investigate the link between climate change and California's ongoing drought.
"Our research finds that extreme atmospheric high pressure in this region — which is strongly linked to unusually low precipitation in California — is much more likely to occur today than prior to the human emission of greenhouse gases that began during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s," said Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
The exceptional drought currently crippling California is by some metrics the worst in state history. Combined with unusually warm temperatures and stagnant air conditions, the lack of precipitation has triggered a dangerous increase in wildfires and incidents of air pollution across the state. A recent report estimated that the water shortage would result in direct and indirect agricultural losses of at least $2.2 billion and lead to the loss of more than 17,000 seasonal and part-time jobs in 2014 alone. Such impacts prompted California Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a drought emergency and the federal government to designate all 58 California counties as "natural disaster areas."
Scientists agree that the immediate cause of the drought is a particularly stubborn "blocking ridge" over the northeastern Pacific — popularly known as the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, or "Triple R" — that prevented winter storms from reaching California during the 2013 and 2014 rainy seasons. "
Causes of California drought linked to climate change, Stanford scientists say - ENN/SU, STANFORD - Sep 29, 2014
- Ker Than -
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/september/drought-climate…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47885
"The atmospheric conditions associated with the unprecedented drought currently afflicting California are "very likely" linked to human-caused climate change, Stanford scientists write in a new research paper.
In a new study, a team led by Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh used a novel combination of computer simulations and statistical techniques to show that a persistent region of high atmospheric pressure hovering over the Pacific Ocean that diverted storms away from California was much more likely to form in the presence of modern greenhouse gas concentrations.
The research, published on Sept. 29 as a supplement to this month's issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is one of the most comprehensive studies to investigate the link between climate change and California's ongoing drought.
"Our research finds that extreme atmospheric high pressure in this region — which is strongly linked to unusually low precipitation in California — is much more likely to occur today than prior to the human emission of greenhouse gases that began during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s," said Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
The exceptional drought currently crippling California is by some metrics the worst in state history. Combined with unusually warm temperatures and stagnant air conditions, the lack of precipitation has triggered a dangerous increase in wildfires and incidents of air pollution across the state. A recent report estimated that the water shortage would result in direct and indirect agricultural losses of at least $2.2 billion and lead to the loss of more than 17,000 seasonal and part-time jobs in 2014 alone. Such impacts prompted California Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a drought emergency and the federal government to designate all 58 California counties as "natural disaster areas."
Scientists agree that the immediate cause of the drought is a particularly stubborn "blocking ridge" over the northeastern Pacific — popularly known as the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge, or "Triple R" — that prevented winter storms from reaching California during the 2013 and 2014 rainy seasons. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.913.878 von Popeye82 am 30.09.14 22:40:20
New MIT report predicts serious future warming - ENN/MIT, MASSACHUSETTS - Sep 30, 2014
- Audrey Resutek -
http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/2014%20Energy%20%26%20Clim…
http://globalchange.mit.edu/research/publications/other/spec…
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/climate-energy-outlook-explor…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/climate-energy-outlook-explor…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47887
"Global temperature is likely to rise 3.3-5.6 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, unless international climate negotiations in Paris next year are more effective than expected, according to a report released Monday by the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. The predicted temperature increase surpasses the threshold identified by the United Nations as necessary to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change, altering precipitation patterns and heightening the pressures of population and economic growth.
"Our world is rapidly changing," says John Reilly, co-director of the MIT Joint Program and a coauthor of the report. "We need to understand the nature of the risks we're facing so we can prepare for them."
Publication of the report, "2014 Climate and Energy Outlook," comes on the heels of last week's UN Climate Summit in New York City, where more than 120 heads of state gathered in preparation for climate negotiations next year. The agreement that comes out of the 2015 talks will inform global climate action after 2020, when existing measures agreed to in Copenhagen and Cancun expire.
The outlook report extends the existing measures after they end to evaluate global changes under possible post-2020 climate action. It uses UN population data and projects economic growth to explore the connections between socioeconomic factors and changing climate, land use, and water.
"Population and economic growth are key drivers of change," Reilly says. "Developing countries like China and India are growing fast, and will play a big role in future emissions. They're also facing the unique challenge of trying to plan for this growth under a changing climate." "
New MIT report predicts serious future warming - ENN/MIT, MASSACHUSETTS - Sep 30, 2014
- Audrey Resutek -
http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/2014%20Energy%20%26%20Clim…
http://globalchange.mit.edu/research/publications/other/spec…
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/climate-energy-outlook-explor…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/climate-energy-outlook-explor…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47887
"Global temperature is likely to rise 3.3-5.6 degrees Celsius by the end of this century, unless international climate negotiations in Paris next year are more effective than expected, according to a report released Monday by the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. The predicted temperature increase surpasses the threshold identified by the United Nations as necessary to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change, altering precipitation patterns and heightening the pressures of population and economic growth.
"Our world is rapidly changing," says John Reilly, co-director of the MIT Joint Program and a coauthor of the report. "We need to understand the nature of the risks we're facing so we can prepare for them."
Publication of the report, "2014 Climate and Energy Outlook," comes on the heels of last week's UN Climate Summit in New York City, where more than 120 heads of state gathered in preparation for climate negotiations next year. The agreement that comes out of the 2015 talks will inform global climate action after 2020, when existing measures agreed to in Copenhagen and Cancun expire.
The outlook report extends the existing measures after they end to evaluate global changes under possible post-2020 climate action. It uses UN population data and projects economic growth to explore the connections between socioeconomic factors and changing climate, land use, and water.
"Population and economic growth are key drivers of change," Reilly says. "Developing countries like China and India are growing fast, and will play a big role in future emissions. They're also facing the unique challenge of trying to plan for this growth under a changing climate." "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.913.971 von Popeye82 am 30.09.14 22:56:53
dazu Papier, dazu
2014 Energy and Climate Outlook - MIT, MASSACHUSETTS - Sep14
- "Exploring Global Changes"
The 2014 Energy and Climate Outlook continues a process, started in 2012, of providing an annual update on the direction the planet is heading in terms of economic growth and the implications for resource use and the environment. We use the MIT Integrated Global System Model (IGSM), a framework developed in the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, to provide an integrated look at energy, land, water, climate, atmosphere, and oceans. As in the previous editions of the Outlook*, we provide a projection of the future based on an assessment of current policies, while recognizing that our projections of environmental change indicate that further policy measures are needed to stabilize our relationship with the planet. This scenario is a description and certainly not a prescription or recommendation.
The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change combines cutting-edge scientific research with independent policy analysis to provide a solid foundation for the public and private decisions needed to mitigate and adapt to unavoidable global environmental changes. Being data-driven, the Joint Program uses extensive Earth system and economic data and models to produce quantitative analysis and predictions of the risks of climate change and the challenges of limiting human influence on the environment—essential knowledge for the international dialogue toward a global response to climate change.
To this end, the Joint Program brings together an interdisciplinary group from two established MIT research centers: the Center for Global Change Science (CGCS) and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR). These two centers—along with collaborators from the Marine Biology Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole and short– and long-term visitors—provide the united vision needed to solve global challenges.
At the heart of much of the program’s work lies MIT’s Integrated Global System Model. Through this integrated model, the program seeks to discover new interactions among natural and human climate system components; objectively assess uncertainty in economic and climate projections; critically and quantitatively analyze environmental management and policy proposals; understand complex connections among the many forces that will shape our future; and improve methods to model, monitor and verify greenhouse gas emissions and climatic impacts.
This Energy and Climate Outlook Report is intended to communicate research results and improve public understanding of global environment and energy challenges, thereby contributing to informed debate about climate change and the economic and social implications of policy alternatives.
Ronald G. Prinn and John M. Reilly
Program Co-Directors
* Previous Outlook reports are available on our website:
http://globalchange.mit.edu/research/publications/other/outl… ...-
http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/2014%20Energy%20%26%20Clim…
dazu Papier, dazu
2014 Energy and Climate Outlook - MIT, MASSACHUSETTS - Sep14
- "Exploring Global Changes"
The 2014 Energy and Climate Outlook continues a process, started in 2012, of providing an annual update on the direction the planet is heading in terms of economic growth and the implications for resource use and the environment. We use the MIT Integrated Global System Model (IGSM), a framework developed in the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, to provide an integrated look at energy, land, water, climate, atmosphere, and oceans. As in the previous editions of the Outlook*, we provide a projection of the future based on an assessment of current policies, while recognizing that our projections of environmental change indicate that further policy measures are needed to stabilize our relationship with the planet. This scenario is a description and certainly not a prescription or recommendation.
The MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change combines cutting-edge scientific research with independent policy analysis to provide a solid foundation for the public and private decisions needed to mitigate and adapt to unavoidable global environmental changes. Being data-driven, the Joint Program uses extensive Earth system and economic data and models to produce quantitative analysis and predictions of the risks of climate change and the challenges of limiting human influence on the environment—essential knowledge for the international dialogue toward a global response to climate change.
To this end, the Joint Program brings together an interdisciplinary group from two established MIT research centers: the Center for Global Change Science (CGCS) and the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR). These two centers—along with collaborators from the Marine Biology Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole and short– and long-term visitors—provide the united vision needed to solve global challenges.
At the heart of much of the program’s work lies MIT’s Integrated Global System Model. Through this integrated model, the program seeks to discover new interactions among natural and human climate system components; objectively assess uncertainty in economic and climate projections; critically and quantitatively analyze environmental management and policy proposals; understand complex connections among the many forces that will shape our future; and improve methods to model, monitor and verify greenhouse gas emissions and climatic impacts.
This Energy and Climate Outlook Report is intended to communicate research results and improve public understanding of global environment and energy challenges, thereby contributing to informed debate about climate change and the economic and social implications of policy alternatives.
Ronald G. Prinn and John M. Reilly
Program Co-Directors
* Previous Outlook reports are available on our website:
http://globalchange.mit.edu/research/publications/other/outl… ...-
http://globalchange.mit.edu/files/2014%20Energy%20%26%20Clim…
New research in Thailand finds birds +bats key, to reforestation efforts
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47888
"Tropical forest restoration projects are exciting research sites for scientists studying factors that affect ecosystem recovery. Here, scientists are trying to understand plant community succession, i.e. the process of recovery after cleared lands are abandoned and allowed to regrow naturally. One of the most important components of this recovery process is seed dispersal, since seeds from nearby forests allow a deforested habitat to become populated again by native plants and trees.
Animals play a huge role in seed dispersal in the tropics, especially birds and fruit bats. Both of these animals create 'seed rain' across different habitats as they ingest fruits at one location, and then deposit seeds at another through their feces. In regenerating areas, seed rain is thought to occur mainly by bats when they fly over grassy open areas, and mainly by birds when they are perched under shrubs and trees. Some forest restoration techniques involve clearing out remnant shrubs and trees before planting new tree seedlings in order to reduce competition. But a novel study in mongabay.com's open-access journal Tropical Conservation Science, challenges this practice, asserting that without remnant shrubs and trees, the birds will not show up.
Led by Tuanjit Sritongchuay with the Prince of Songkla University, the researchers placed 60 seed traps within a 20-hectare clearing in southern Thailand consisting of several different microhabitats ranging from shrub-like vegetation to tree-like vegetation. Later the scientists compared differences in seed abundance and species richness. They also counted the number of birds and bats observed on the days when seeds were collected, and made a note of which plants the birds were perching on.
They found that different microhabitats contained very different seed rain abundance and seed species richness, with the highest amount of seed rain found under the shrubs and the highest species richness found under the trees. Two families of birds, bulbuls and flowerpeckers, were the main seed dispersers at trees and shrubs, while bats were the main seed dispersers over the grassland patches. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47888
"Tropical forest restoration projects are exciting research sites for scientists studying factors that affect ecosystem recovery. Here, scientists are trying to understand plant community succession, i.e. the process of recovery after cleared lands are abandoned and allowed to regrow naturally. One of the most important components of this recovery process is seed dispersal, since seeds from nearby forests allow a deforested habitat to become populated again by native plants and trees.
Animals play a huge role in seed dispersal in the tropics, especially birds and fruit bats. Both of these animals create 'seed rain' across different habitats as they ingest fruits at one location, and then deposit seeds at another through their feces. In regenerating areas, seed rain is thought to occur mainly by bats when they fly over grassy open areas, and mainly by birds when they are perched under shrubs and trees. Some forest restoration techniques involve clearing out remnant shrubs and trees before planting new tree seedlings in order to reduce competition. But a novel study in mongabay.com's open-access journal Tropical Conservation Science, challenges this practice, asserting that without remnant shrubs and trees, the birds will not show up.
Led by Tuanjit Sritongchuay with the Prince of Songkla University, the researchers placed 60 seed traps within a 20-hectare clearing in southern Thailand consisting of several different microhabitats ranging from shrub-like vegetation to tree-like vegetation. Later the scientists compared differences in seed abundance and species richness. They also counted the number of birds and bats observed on the days when seeds were collected, and made a note of which plants the birds were perching on.
They found that different microhabitats contained very different seed rain abundance and seed species richness, with the highest amount of seed rain found under the shrubs and the highest species richness found under the trees. Two families of birds, bulbuls and flowerpeckers, were the main seed dispersers at trees and shrubs, while bats were the main seed dispersers over the grassland patches. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.914.160 von Popeye82 am 30.09.14 23:40:15
Climate change more of a risk to the Greenland Ice Sheet, than thought - ENN/UoC/NC, CAMBRIDGE - Sep 29, 2014
www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/greenland-ice-sheet-more-vulnera…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47882
"A new model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge has shown that despite its apparent stability, the massive ice sheet covering most of Greenland is more sensitive to climate change than earlier estimates have suggested, which would accelerate the rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities worldwide.
In addition to assessing the impact of the increasing levels of meltwater created and spilled into the ocean each year as the climate continues to warm, the new model also takes into account the role that the soft, spongy ground beneath the ice sheet plays in its changing dynamics. Details are published today (29 September) in the journal Nature Communications.
The Greenland Ice Sheet, which is the second-largest ice sheet in the world, covers 1.7 million square kilometres - an area roughly eight times the size of the United Kingdom - and contains enough ice to raise sea levels by more than seven metres if it were to be lost altogether.
Currently, due to surface melting alone, it is losing ice at a net annual rate of 200 gigatonnes, equating to 0.6 millimetres of sea level rise. A similarly large, but ultimately more uncertain source of sea level rise is tied to a net annual ice loss caused by increased movement of the ice sheet, which results in more ice being discharged into the ocean. Globally, sea levels are rising at three millimetres annually.
Large ice sheets such as in Greenland are far from stationary. Different parts of the ice often move at different speeds, causing ice to shear, a phenomenon known as ice flow.
Photo shows researcher negotiating a large fracture while gathering field data (photo by Poul Christoffersen) "
Climate change more of a risk to the Greenland Ice Sheet, than thought - ENN/UoC/NC, CAMBRIDGE - Sep 29, 2014
www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/greenland-ice-sheet-more-vulnera…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47882
"A new model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge has shown that despite its apparent stability, the massive ice sheet covering most of Greenland is more sensitive to climate change than earlier estimates have suggested, which would accelerate the rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities worldwide.
In addition to assessing the impact of the increasing levels of meltwater created and spilled into the ocean each year as the climate continues to warm, the new model also takes into account the role that the soft, spongy ground beneath the ice sheet plays in its changing dynamics. Details are published today (29 September) in the journal Nature Communications.
The Greenland Ice Sheet, which is the second-largest ice sheet in the world, covers 1.7 million square kilometres - an area roughly eight times the size of the United Kingdom - and contains enough ice to raise sea levels by more than seven metres if it were to be lost altogether.
Currently, due to surface melting alone, it is losing ice at a net annual rate of 200 gigatonnes, equating to 0.6 millimetres of sea level rise. A similarly large, but ultimately more uncertain source of sea level rise is tied to a net annual ice loss caused by increased movement of the ice sheet, which results in more ice being discharged into the ocean. Globally, sea levels are rising at three millimetres annually.
Large ice sheets such as in Greenland are far from stationary. Different parts of the ice often move at different speeds, causing ice to shear, a phenomenon known as ice flow.
Photo shows researcher negotiating a large fracture while gathering field data (photo by Poul Christoffersen) "
NYC Releases Its 3rd Annual Benchmarking Report - NYC/IMT, NEW YORK - Sep 26, 2014
- Last week, in alignment with commitments from Mayor Bill de Blasio +the New York City Council to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions(GHG) by 80 percent from '05 levels, by the year 2050, the City released its 3rd annual Local Law 84 Benchmarking Report.
The new report analyzes a trove of building energy use data from '12, collected from >23.000 buildings, representing >2.100,000,000 square feet of space.
It shows an increasing number of building owners are consistently reporting their energy +water use to the city, +that the data collected is allowing the city to identify construction types +systems characteristics to better direct policies +programs toward the greatest energy efficiency opportunities.
Be sure to read some of our key takeaways from the new report in IMT’s new blog post, “New York Puts Building Energy Use in the Spotlight,” +read the full report here ...-
www.nyc.gov/html/planyc/downloads/pdf/publications/2014_nyc_…
www.imt.org/news/the-current/new-york-puts-building-energy-u…
- Last week, in alignment with commitments from Mayor Bill de Blasio +the New York City Council to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions(GHG) by 80 percent from '05 levels, by the year 2050, the City released its 3rd annual Local Law 84 Benchmarking Report.
The new report analyzes a trove of building energy use data from '12, collected from >23.000 buildings, representing >2.100,000,000 square feet of space.
It shows an increasing number of building owners are consistently reporting their energy +water use to the city, +that the data collected is allowing the city to identify construction types +systems characteristics to better direct policies +programs toward the greatest energy efficiency opportunities.
Be sure to read some of our key takeaways from the new report in IMT’s new blog post, “New York Puts Building Energy Use in the Spotlight,” +read the full report here ...-
www.nyc.gov/html/planyc/downloads/pdf/publications/2014_nyc_…
www.imt.org/news/the-current/new-york-puts-building-energy-u…
"Clean Energy Won!", During the 1st Obama Administration, Mr. Silver led both the federal government’s $50,000,000,000 clean energy investment fund +its $20,000,000,000 fund focused on electric vehicles - AltEnergyMag - Sep 29, 2014
- Jonathan Silver -
http://altenergymag.com/emagazine/2014/10/clean-energy-won/2…
"
Members of Congress are now back home and deep in campaign mode. Their shaking hands, kissing babies and holding debates. But, at least on the topic of energy, the debate is over. Clean energy won.
What Americans want is clear. Despite the histrionics on Capitol Hill, the disdain of the fossil fuel industry and the misplaced focus by the media on the politics of the fight, clean energy is on its way to becoming the dominant form of power generation in this country.
The trend is unmistakable. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, wind, solar, geothermal, biofuel and hydro now generate 13% of the energy we use. Nuclear adds another 19%. Almost a third of all our domestic power now comes from carbon-free and renewable sources.
Since 2007, US coal consumption, driven largely by the lower cost of natural gas, has fallen by more than 20%. New EPA regulations, based on the social, or true, cost of carbon, will further reduce the use of coal. This, too, will increase the use of renewables.
Natural gas, is, itself, becoming more expensive relative to renewables. The cost of fracked gas is already increasing as regulatory protocols are established and infrastructure and transport costs increase. Just ask New England homeowners, where natural gas prices spiked six times higher than normal last winter.
At the same time, the cost of renewables continues to fall. Solar panel costs have fallen by more than 70% in the last 5 years and panel efficiencies are increasing. New panel composites, wind turbine designs, and battery storage chemistries are reducing manufacturing costs quickly. Installation costs are also dropping.
As costs come down and concerns around energy security increase, public support for renewable energy has grown. A recent poll by Yale University found that 87% of Americans believe Congress should make developing sources of clean energy a priority and 68% think we should regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Similarly, a Gallup poll found that more than 70% of all Americans thought the US should put more emphasis on solar and wind energy production. By contrast, only 31% believe we should focus more resources on coal.
The data is even more pronounced by cohort. A League of Conservation Voters poll found that more than 80% of American youth support an aggressive climate change agenda, with its strong implications for clean energy. A National Council of La Raza poll found that 90% of Latinos favor clean energy over fossil fuel and 83% say that coal and oil are “a thing of the past”. Both groups will play a major role in energy decision-making in the future.
Consumers are speaking with their wallets. There is a 6-month backlog for the Tesla S and the Chevy Volt. With higher CAFE standards pushing manufacturers towards hybrids and EVs, today nearly every car manufacturer in the world offers some form of hybrid or electric vehicle and the US market for hybrid vehicles, the largest in the world, is doubling every 3-4 years.
Why? With no gas bills and lower maintenance, the total cost of ownership of an electric vehicle is now about 1/3 lower than the price of a traditional car. Vehicle range issues are now mostly a matter of perception. Most of the EV’s on the road today can travel more than 100 miles on a single charge, but 99% of all trips in cars are less than 70 miles and 15% are less than 1 mile.
There are also more charging stations than many realize. Recargo, a company providing data on public charging stations, covers over 20,000 locations in the US and Canada. Even Disney World has electric charging stations!
Energy conservation has also gone mainstream. Over 53 million smart meters have been deployed. Building owners increasingly use sophisticated energy management tools to cut costs. Last year, Google bought Nest, a smart home technology company, for more than $3 billion and OPower, a public company which provides consumers with energy use data has a market cap of over $700 million.
The financial markets have taken notice. In 2013, the NEX, a global index of publicly traded clean energy companies, was up almost 54% while the S&P rose 30%. Yieldcos from NRG, Pattern Energy and others have had successful IPOs. Municipal “green” bond offerings are oversubscribed and investors have put hundreds of millions of dollars into residential solar roof-top loan administrators like Renewable Funding and Renovate America.
Wall Street and Main Street have voted. They voted for a clean energy economy. Washington would do well to listen to the voters and support this important and rapidly growing sector.
Jonathan Silver
Mr. Silver is one of the country’s leading investors in clean energy. He currently advises numerous investment groups, financial institutions and corporations on clean-tech opportunities and, during the Obama Administration, led both the federal government’s $50 billion clean energy investment fund and its $20 billion fund focused on electric vehicles.
The fund underwrote financing for some of the largest and most complex energy projects in the country, including the world's largest wind farm; two of the of the world's largest solar thermal power plants; the next generation of wind and solar manufacturing companies; the nation's first nuclear power plant in three decades; several large geothermal projects; and one of the country's first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants. His group also made investments in such leading electric vehicle manufacturers as Tesla and the Nissan Leaf. Several of these transactions won “deal of the year” awards from industry trade publications.
Mr. Silver has been named one of the country's top-ten "influencers" in the greentech industry.
Mr. Silver is a member of the boards of energy efficiency company, EEmax, a leading player in the tankless water heating industry and Sol Systems, a boutique energy investment bank and the largest SREC (solar renewable energy credit) aggregator in the US. He is also on the boards of American Forests, the nation’s oldest forest conservation organization and SELF, the Solar Electric Light Fund, which promotes solar electrification in developing countries.
Mr. Silver was the co-founder of Core Capital Partners, a successful venture capital firm and Managing Director, and the Chief Operating Officer, of Tiger Management, one of the country's largest and most successful hedge funds. He began his career at McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm.
Mr. Silver has also served as a senior policy advisor to four U.S. Cabinet Secretaries: Energy, Commerce, Interior and Treasury and has served on, or chaired, numerous corporate and non-profit boards.
Twitter - twitter.com/JMSilver_energy "
- Jonathan Silver -
http://altenergymag.com/emagazine/2014/10/clean-energy-won/2…
"
Members of Congress are now back home and deep in campaign mode. Their shaking hands, kissing babies and holding debates. But, at least on the topic of energy, the debate is over. Clean energy won.
What Americans want is clear. Despite the histrionics on Capitol Hill, the disdain of the fossil fuel industry and the misplaced focus by the media on the politics of the fight, clean energy is on its way to becoming the dominant form of power generation in this country.
The trend is unmistakable. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, wind, solar, geothermal, biofuel and hydro now generate 13% of the energy we use. Nuclear adds another 19%. Almost a third of all our domestic power now comes from carbon-free and renewable sources.
Since 2007, US coal consumption, driven largely by the lower cost of natural gas, has fallen by more than 20%. New EPA regulations, based on the social, or true, cost of carbon, will further reduce the use of coal. This, too, will increase the use of renewables.
Natural gas, is, itself, becoming more expensive relative to renewables. The cost of fracked gas is already increasing as regulatory protocols are established and infrastructure and transport costs increase. Just ask New England homeowners, where natural gas prices spiked six times higher than normal last winter.
At the same time, the cost of renewables continues to fall. Solar panel costs have fallen by more than 70% in the last 5 years and panel efficiencies are increasing. New panel composites, wind turbine designs, and battery storage chemistries are reducing manufacturing costs quickly. Installation costs are also dropping.
As costs come down and concerns around energy security increase, public support for renewable energy has grown. A recent poll by Yale University found that 87% of Americans believe Congress should make developing sources of clean energy a priority and 68% think we should regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. Similarly, a Gallup poll found that more than 70% of all Americans thought the US should put more emphasis on solar and wind energy production. By contrast, only 31% believe we should focus more resources on coal.
The data is even more pronounced by cohort. A League of Conservation Voters poll found that more than 80% of American youth support an aggressive climate change agenda, with its strong implications for clean energy. A National Council of La Raza poll found that 90% of Latinos favor clean energy over fossil fuel and 83% say that coal and oil are “a thing of the past”. Both groups will play a major role in energy decision-making in the future.
Consumers are speaking with their wallets. There is a 6-month backlog for the Tesla S and the Chevy Volt. With higher CAFE standards pushing manufacturers towards hybrids and EVs, today nearly every car manufacturer in the world offers some form of hybrid or electric vehicle and the US market for hybrid vehicles, the largest in the world, is doubling every 3-4 years.
Why? With no gas bills and lower maintenance, the total cost of ownership of an electric vehicle is now about 1/3 lower than the price of a traditional car. Vehicle range issues are now mostly a matter of perception. Most of the EV’s on the road today can travel more than 100 miles on a single charge, but 99% of all trips in cars are less than 70 miles and 15% are less than 1 mile.
There are also more charging stations than many realize. Recargo, a company providing data on public charging stations, covers over 20,000 locations in the US and Canada. Even Disney World has electric charging stations!
Energy conservation has also gone mainstream. Over 53 million smart meters have been deployed. Building owners increasingly use sophisticated energy management tools to cut costs. Last year, Google bought Nest, a smart home technology company, for more than $3 billion and OPower, a public company which provides consumers with energy use data has a market cap of over $700 million.
The financial markets have taken notice. In 2013, the NEX, a global index of publicly traded clean energy companies, was up almost 54% while the S&P rose 30%. Yieldcos from NRG, Pattern Energy and others have had successful IPOs. Municipal “green” bond offerings are oversubscribed and investors have put hundreds of millions of dollars into residential solar roof-top loan administrators like Renewable Funding and Renovate America.
Wall Street and Main Street have voted. They voted for a clean energy economy. Washington would do well to listen to the voters and support this important and rapidly growing sector.
Jonathan Silver
Mr. Silver is one of the country’s leading investors in clean energy. He currently advises numerous investment groups, financial institutions and corporations on clean-tech opportunities and, during the Obama Administration, led both the federal government’s $50 billion clean energy investment fund and its $20 billion fund focused on electric vehicles.
The fund underwrote financing for some of the largest and most complex energy projects in the country, including the world's largest wind farm; two of the of the world's largest solar thermal power plants; the next generation of wind and solar manufacturing companies; the nation's first nuclear power plant in three decades; several large geothermal projects; and one of the country's first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plants. His group also made investments in such leading electric vehicle manufacturers as Tesla and the Nissan Leaf. Several of these transactions won “deal of the year” awards from industry trade publications.
Mr. Silver has been named one of the country's top-ten "influencers" in the greentech industry.
Mr. Silver is a member of the boards of energy efficiency company, EEmax, a leading player in the tankless water heating industry and Sol Systems, a boutique energy investment bank and the largest SREC (solar renewable energy credit) aggregator in the US. He is also on the boards of American Forests, the nation’s oldest forest conservation organization and SELF, the Solar Electric Light Fund, which promotes solar electrification in developing countries.
Mr. Silver was the co-founder of Core Capital Partners, a successful venture capital firm and Managing Director, and the Chief Operating Officer, of Tiger Management, one of the country's largest and most successful hedge funds. He began his career at McKinsey and Company, a global management consulting firm.
Mr. Silver has also served as a senior policy advisor to four U.S. Cabinet Secretaries: Energy, Commerce, Interior and Treasury and has served on, or chaired, numerous corporate and non-profit boards.
Twitter - twitter.com/JMSilver_energy "
“Technically feasible” for Canada to dig for crude '+be part of global solution, to climate change', Canada can continue to exploit its vast oil +gas reserves, while @the same time doing its part to limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius, according to a report released @last week’s Climate Summit in New York. It won’t be business as usual, however, with the Canadian economy requiring steep emissions reductions across the entire economy, says the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project(DDPP) - CGT/DDPP/CS, NEW YORK - Oct 1, 2014
www.canadiangreentech.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=a…
www.canadiangreentech.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=a…
Demolish, re-use, recycle +rebuild, Some 380,000,000 tonnes of construction +demolition waste are generated every year +most of it ends up in landfills. Re-using +recycling components +materials is good for the environment +saves money, but industry has been less than enthusiastic. An EU-funded research project has laid the foundations for change -it is promoting concrete, ceramics, gypsum +plastics recycling around Europe - NW/EC, IRCOW - Oct 1, 2014
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=37588.php?utm_source=fee…
"Some 380 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste are generated every year and most of it ends up in landfills. Re-using and recycling components and materials is good for the environment and saves money, but industry has been less than enthusiastic. An EU-funded research project has laid the foundations for change - it is promoting concrete, ceramics, gypsum and plastics recycling around Europe.
Recycling and re-using parts from old buildings makes sense – it creates less waste, makes construction cheaper and reduces the use of raw resources (more than 50% of all materials extracted from the earth are currently transformed into construction materials and products).
The EU thinks it makes sense too, and in 2008 set a target: by 2020, the recovery of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste should rise to 70% – as measured by weight. But the industry has not followed suit.
There is a certain stigma attached to re-use, says Amaia Lisbona of Tecnalia in Spain, the company at the helm of the IRCOW project. “While it is trendy to re-use things in some sectors, like clothing, this is not the case in the construction sector, particularly in southern Europe,” she says.
Additional barriers are perceptions over quality (a component, whether it’s a door, window frame or sink etc., doesn’t come with tracking paperwork or certification) and unwillingness on the side of architects and contractors to take risks.
The IRCOW project prepared the ground for take-up with a study on these barriers, a demo online platform with stock exchange function, new recycling technologies and products and policy recommendations.
Concrete solutions
The project also carried out five case studies in Spain, Sweden, Poland and Belgium to test technologies, materials and processes in real-life conditions. In Bilbao, the IRCOW team took part in the selective demolition of a 1970s industrial building. “We were able to evaluate the impact of the demolition process (traditional or selective) and on-site recycling versus transportation to a fixed treatment plant,” says David Garcia, also of Tecnalia.
Stony material such as concrete and ceramics were collected, crushed and sieved on site, producing coarse and fine aggregates. These were then used to manufacture a range of concretes – one was used to create a slab that showed no signs of damage two years later.
Further indications of the concrete’s properties came when workers in Antwerp, Belgium, were asked to install IRCOW concrete. They didn’t notice a difference and were surprised to hear that the concrete was recycled. It is fitting, then, that the Belgian region of Flanders, home to Antwerp, plans to become a European leader in the recycling of cellular concrete (thermally insulating concrete weighing in at just 20% of the weight of standard concrete) by 2020.
Manufacturing using recycled cellular concrete is at least 40% cheaper than using products made from raw materials. An agreement was signed at the final IRCOW conference between the demolition and construction sectors, plus all stakeholders in between. Flanders generates 50 000-100 000 tonnes of cellular concrete waste per year, of which 30 000 should be recycled in 2014 thanks to the agreement.
Second life for old gypsum plaster
Another of IRCOW’s successes is the manufacture of gypsum plasterboard (used for partitions, wall linings, ceilings, roofs and floors) from recycled gypsum. While other research groups have been investigating the recyclability of gypsum left over from manufacturing, the recycling of ‘dirty’ gypsum from construction and demolition waste was unique to IRCOW.
The result will contribute to guaranteeing closed material loops . Using an advanced sorting system and a near-infrared camera that recognises materials based on how light reflects off them, the team developed a way to identify and then extract gypsum from old plaster and other gypsum elements.
The sorted and recycled gypsum is dehydrated through heating before it is mixed with ordinary gypsum mineral to create new plasterboard. What makes the breakthrough even more exciting is that the gypsum can be recycled many times over.
The building sector has been particularly interested in concrete and gypsum recycling. Project partners are planning to market one of the recycled concrete mixes and technology manufacturing composites containing high levels of recycled construction and demolition waste materials (mineral wool, plastic, gypsum and wood) developed within IRCOW.
Meanwhile the IRCOW team has submitted a new funding proposal to continue this research, and in particular selective demolition and the technologies needed to recycle different types of waste.
Source: European Commission "
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=37588.php?utm_source=fee…
"Some 380 million tonnes of construction and demolition waste are generated every year and most of it ends up in landfills. Re-using and recycling components and materials is good for the environment and saves money, but industry has been less than enthusiastic. An EU-funded research project has laid the foundations for change - it is promoting concrete, ceramics, gypsum and plastics recycling around Europe.
Recycling and re-using parts from old buildings makes sense – it creates less waste, makes construction cheaper and reduces the use of raw resources (more than 50% of all materials extracted from the earth are currently transformed into construction materials and products).
The EU thinks it makes sense too, and in 2008 set a target: by 2020, the recovery of non-hazardous construction and demolition waste should rise to 70% – as measured by weight. But the industry has not followed suit.
There is a certain stigma attached to re-use, says Amaia Lisbona of Tecnalia in Spain, the company at the helm of the IRCOW project. “While it is trendy to re-use things in some sectors, like clothing, this is not the case in the construction sector, particularly in southern Europe,” she says.
Additional barriers are perceptions over quality (a component, whether it’s a door, window frame or sink etc., doesn’t come with tracking paperwork or certification) and unwillingness on the side of architects and contractors to take risks.
The IRCOW project prepared the ground for take-up with a study on these barriers, a demo online platform with stock exchange function, new recycling technologies and products and policy recommendations.
Concrete solutions
The project also carried out five case studies in Spain, Sweden, Poland and Belgium to test technologies, materials and processes in real-life conditions. In Bilbao, the IRCOW team took part in the selective demolition of a 1970s industrial building. “We were able to evaluate the impact of the demolition process (traditional or selective) and on-site recycling versus transportation to a fixed treatment plant,” says David Garcia, also of Tecnalia.
Stony material such as concrete and ceramics were collected, crushed and sieved on site, producing coarse and fine aggregates. These were then used to manufacture a range of concretes – one was used to create a slab that showed no signs of damage two years later.
Further indications of the concrete’s properties came when workers in Antwerp, Belgium, were asked to install IRCOW concrete. They didn’t notice a difference and were surprised to hear that the concrete was recycled. It is fitting, then, that the Belgian region of Flanders, home to Antwerp, plans to become a European leader in the recycling of cellular concrete (thermally insulating concrete weighing in at just 20% of the weight of standard concrete) by 2020.
Manufacturing using recycled cellular concrete is at least 40% cheaper than using products made from raw materials. An agreement was signed at the final IRCOW conference between the demolition and construction sectors, plus all stakeholders in between. Flanders generates 50 000-100 000 tonnes of cellular concrete waste per year, of which 30 000 should be recycled in 2014 thanks to the agreement.
Second life for old gypsum plaster
Another of IRCOW’s successes is the manufacture of gypsum plasterboard (used for partitions, wall linings, ceilings, roofs and floors) from recycled gypsum. While other research groups have been investigating the recyclability of gypsum left over from manufacturing, the recycling of ‘dirty’ gypsum from construction and demolition waste was unique to IRCOW.
The result will contribute to guaranteeing closed material loops . Using an advanced sorting system and a near-infrared camera that recognises materials based on how light reflects off them, the team developed a way to identify and then extract gypsum from old plaster and other gypsum elements.
The sorted and recycled gypsum is dehydrated through heating before it is mixed with ordinary gypsum mineral to create new plasterboard. What makes the breakthrough even more exciting is that the gypsum can be recycled many times over.
The building sector has been particularly interested in concrete and gypsum recycling. Project partners are planning to market one of the recycled concrete mixes and technology manufacturing composites containing high levels of recycled construction and demolition waste materials (mineral wool, plastic, gypsum and wood) developed within IRCOW.
Meanwhile the IRCOW team has submitted a new funding proposal to continue this research, and in particular selective demolition and the technologies needed to recycle different types of waste.
Source: European Commission "
Climate Change +Food Security - ENN/TP/FAO/UN, CS, NEW YORK - Oct 1, 2014
- Bill DiBenedetto -
www.triplepundit.com/2014/10/climate-change-requires-new-app…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47891
"If coping with climate change is central to achieving a sustainable future for the global population, then food security lies at the heart of this effort, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said last week in a speech at the United Nations Climate Summit last week.
"We cannot call development sustainable while hunger still robs over 800 million people of the opportunity to lead a decent life," he said in a reference to the latest U.N. report on world hunger, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014.
The report found that while the number of people who experience chronic hunger was reduced by 100 million over the past decade, there are still some 805 million people that go without enough to eat on a regular basis.
Despite overall progress, the 57-page report says, "marked differences" across regions persist. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest prevalence of undernourishment, with only modest progress in recent years: Around one in four people in the region remains undernourished. Asia, the most populous region in the world, still has the highest number of undernourished people. "Southern Asia has made slow progress in hunger reduction, while more rapid progress has been achieved in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia with the latter having already met the WFS hunger target," Graziano da Silva said. "
- Bill DiBenedetto -
www.triplepundit.com/2014/10/climate-change-requires-new-app…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47891
"If coping with climate change is central to achieving a sustainable future for the global population, then food security lies at the heart of this effort, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said last week in a speech at the United Nations Climate Summit last week.
"We cannot call development sustainable while hunger still robs over 800 million people of the opportunity to lead a decent life," he said in a reference to the latest U.N. report on world hunger, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2014.
The report found that while the number of people who experience chronic hunger was reduced by 100 million over the past decade, there are still some 805 million people that go without enough to eat on a regular basis.
Despite overall progress, the 57-page report says, "marked differences" across regions persist. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest prevalence of undernourishment, with only modest progress in recent years: Around one in four people in the region remains undernourished. Asia, the most populous region in the world, still has the highest number of undernourished people. "Southern Asia has made slow progress in hunger reduction, while more rapid progress has been achieved in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia with the latter having already met the WFS hunger target," Graziano da Silva said. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.472.850 von Popeye82 am 08.08.14 20:39:04
New report "shows best ways to achieve green growth" - GGBP/EF/ECF/UKAID - Jul 1, 2014
- Identifying best practices worldwide, a new report launched today provides key insights into the design +implementation of green growth. The report by the Green Growth Best Practice(GGBP) initiative is the 1st comprehensive international assessment of practical experiences, in pursuing green growth across all levels of government. It is the culmination of over a year of work by >75 green growth practitioners +researchers, who analysed >60 cases from around the world. The report "is designed to be used by governments, development assistance agencies, +other stakeholders, in helping them transition their economies, away from fossil fuels in ways that result in sustainable growth" ...-
www.ecofys.com/files/files/ggbp-2014-green-growth-in-practic…
New report "shows best ways to achieve green growth" - GGBP/EF/ECF/UKAID - Jul 1, 2014
- Identifying best practices worldwide, a new report launched today provides key insights into the design +implementation of green growth. The report by the Green Growth Best Practice(GGBP) initiative is the 1st comprehensive international assessment of practical experiences, in pursuing green growth across all levels of government. It is the culmination of over a year of work by >75 green growth practitioners +researchers, who analysed >60 cases from around the world. The report "is designed to be used by governments, development assistance agencies, +other stakeholders, in helping them transition their economies, away from fossil fuels in ways that result in sustainable growth" ...-
www.ecofys.com/files/files/ggbp-2014-green-growth-in-practic…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.904.203 von Popeye82 am 30.09.14 04:40:16
Half of the Planet’s Animals Lost Since 1970, Report Says - CT/YE360/WWF/BBC/ZSL/GFN/WFN - Oct 2, 2014
wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet…
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29418983
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/02/half-of-the-planets-anima…
"
The number of animals on the planet has fallen 52 percent in the last 40 years, according to an analysis by the conservation organization World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The group’s Living Planet Index, which tracked the populations of more than 10,000 vertebrate species from 1970 to 2010, revealed major declines in key populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish.
The situation is most dire in developing countries, the report said, where wildlife populations have fallen on average by 58 percent. Latin America saw the biggest declines, with more than 80 percent of the region’s animals lost since 1970.
Globally, freshwater populations have plummeted 76 percent. This year’s numbers are worse than those calculated in the last report in 2012, which found declines of 30 percent since 1970.
The organization attributed this to new statistical weighting, which it said better represents each region’s biodiversity, though other researchers have been critical of the new methodology. Habitat loss and degradation was cited as the primary cause of biodiversity loss. "
Half of the Planet’s Animals Lost Since 1970, Report Says - CT/YE360/WWF/BBC/ZSL/GFN/WFN - Oct 2, 2014
wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/all_publications/living_planet…
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29418983
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/02/half-of-the-planets-anima…
"
The number of animals on the planet has fallen 52 percent in the last 40 years, according to an analysis by the conservation organization World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The group’s Living Planet Index, which tracked the populations of more than 10,000 vertebrate species from 1970 to 2010, revealed major declines in key populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish.
The situation is most dire in developing countries, the report said, where wildlife populations have fallen on average by 58 percent. Latin America saw the biggest declines, with more than 80 percent of the region’s animals lost since 1970.
Globally, freshwater populations have plummeted 76 percent. This year’s numbers are worse than those calculated in the last report in 2012, which found declines of 30 percent since 1970.
The organization attributed this to new statistical weighting, which it said better represents each region’s biodiversity, though other researchers have been critical of the new methodology. Habitat loss and degradation was cited as the primary cause of biodiversity loss. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.912.927 von Popeye82 am 30.09.14 20:45:43
kann man mal gespannt sein, ob das "feasible" ist.
Canada launches $1,250,000,000 large-scale carbon capture +storage plant, The project, 1st of its kind in the world, aims to demonstrate that the so-called “clean coal” technologies are feasible
http://saskpowerccs.com/ccs-projects/boundary-dam-carbon-cap…
www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2014/october/iea…
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/saskpower-set-to-unveil-…
www.mining.com/canada-launches-1-25bn-large-scale-carbon-cap…
"
Canadian power utility SaskPower has unveiled the world’s first large-scale coal-fired power station equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in the province of Saskatchewan.
The move, hailed by the industry as a turning point in combating climate change, will help the potash-rich province to trap about 90% of its emissions, or about 1m tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said in a statement the project represents a “historic milestone” on the road to a low-carbon energy world, and should prove that capturing carbon emissions from a big coal plant is possible.
SaskPower’s project aims to demonstrate that the so-called “clean coal” technologies are feasible for conventional power plants that use the fossil fuel as a fuel in the generation of electricity.
“Carbon capture and storage is the only known technology that will enable us to continue to use fossil fuels and also decarbonise the energy sector,” the IEA executive said. “I wish the plant operator every success in showing the world that large-scale capture of CO2 from a power station is indeed not science fiction, but today’s reality.”
Countries around the world have poured over $20 billion into similar projects in recent years, in an effort to develop carbon capture and storage technologies, known as CCS.
High costs
Despite the benefits, experts say the new technology comes with a very high price tag.
“[If] you transfer the cost in terms of electricity prices, prices have to go up by 80 %," Asian Development Bank executive Ashok Bhargava told CBC. “Nobody can afford that. So they have to come down within a level of 25 to 30%."
Additionally, some environmental campaigners argue that the pursuit of CCS is a wasteful sideshow that will divert money from cleaner forms of renewable energy, such as wind farms, extending the coal industry’s life instead of ending it.
- Courtesy of SaskPower. -
But experts note that one of the advantages of this technology is that it doesn’t require all new infrastructure, unlike such renewable technologies as solar and wind farms.
SaskPower's goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at its Unit # 3 power station by 90 per cent per year, or about one million tonnes of the greenhouse gas.
The project includes some $240 million in funding from the federal government.
Saskatchewan has no plans to phase out coal, which — according to SaskPower — supplies 47% of its electricity. "
kann man mal gespannt sein, ob das "feasible" ist.
Canada launches $1,250,000,000 large-scale carbon capture +storage plant, The project, 1st of its kind in the world, aims to demonstrate that the so-called “clean coal” technologies are feasible
http://saskpowerccs.com/ccs-projects/boundary-dam-carbon-cap…
www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2014/october/iea…
www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/saskpower-set-to-unveil-…
www.mining.com/canada-launches-1-25bn-large-scale-carbon-cap…
"
Canadian power utility SaskPower has unveiled the world’s first large-scale coal-fired power station equipped with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology in the province of Saskatchewan.
The move, hailed by the industry as a turning point in combating climate change, will help the potash-rich province to trap about 90% of its emissions, or about 1m tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Maria van der Hoeven, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said in a statement the project represents a “historic milestone” on the road to a low-carbon energy world, and should prove that capturing carbon emissions from a big coal plant is possible.
SaskPower’s project aims to demonstrate that the so-called “clean coal” technologies are feasible for conventional power plants that use the fossil fuel as a fuel in the generation of electricity.
“Carbon capture and storage is the only known technology that will enable us to continue to use fossil fuels and also decarbonise the energy sector,” the IEA executive said. “I wish the plant operator every success in showing the world that large-scale capture of CO2 from a power station is indeed not science fiction, but today’s reality.”
Countries around the world have poured over $20 billion into similar projects in recent years, in an effort to develop carbon capture and storage technologies, known as CCS.
High costs
Despite the benefits, experts say the new technology comes with a very high price tag.
“[If] you transfer the cost in terms of electricity prices, prices have to go up by 80 %," Asian Development Bank executive Ashok Bhargava told CBC. “Nobody can afford that. So they have to come down within a level of 25 to 30%."
Additionally, some environmental campaigners argue that the pursuit of CCS is a wasteful sideshow that will divert money from cleaner forms of renewable energy, such as wind farms, extending the coal industry’s life instead of ending it.
- Courtesy of SaskPower. -
But experts note that one of the advantages of this technology is that it doesn’t require all new infrastructure, unlike such renewable technologies as solar and wind farms.
SaskPower's goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at its Unit # 3 power station by 90 per cent per year, or about one million tonnes of the greenhouse gas.
The project includes some $240 million in funding from the federal government.
Saskatchewan has no plans to phase out coal, which — according to SaskPower — supplies 47% of its electricity. "
Global clean energy investment sustains its recovery - NW - Oct 2, 2014
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=37603.php?utm_source=fee…
"World clean energy investment in the first three quarters of this year was 16% ahead of the same period of 2013, at $175.1bn(1), making it almost certain that 2014 will produce a bounce-back in dollars invested after two years of decline.
Authoritative figures published today by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, based on its real-time data transactions and projects, show that clean energy investment in the July-to-September quarter was $55bn, up 12% from the $48.9bn achieved in Q3 2013. The third quarter is generally weaker than the second quarter, as it was this year, with the Q3 total 16% down on a strong $65.2bn in Q2 2014.
The highlight of the third quarter was a leap in Chinese solar investment to a new record of $12.2bn, up from $7.5bn in Q3 2013 and $8bn in Q2 2014. China is building a large number of utility-scale photovoltaic projects linked to its main transmission grid, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts that its solar installations will total 13-14GW in 2014, nearly a third of the world total.
There were other strong investment figures in Q3 from Japan, at 8.6bn, up 17% from the same quarter in 2013, with solar again the dominant renewable energy source. Other countries showing a bounce in investment in the latest quarter were Canada, France and India, while there were significant projects financed in a number of new markets, including Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
Michael Liebreich, chairman of the advisory board at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, commented: “It is heartening to see investment heading for an up-year in 2014 after two down-years, thanks in large part to the greatly enhanced competitiveness of solar, and to some extent wind.
“However, there is no room for complacency because clean energy investment of between $200bn and $300bn a year is not large enough to herald the rapid transformation of the power system that experts say is required if the world is to see a peak in CO2 emissions around 2020. There is still too much policy instability holding back investor confidence.”
The Q3 2014 figures showed global asset finance for clean energy projects such as wind farms, solar parks and geothermal plants reaching $33.3bn, up slightly from $32.8bn in the third quarter of last year. Investment in small-scale projects such as rooftop solar was $18.3bn, up from $13.9bn a year earlier, while equity capital raised by specialist clean energy companies on the public markets was $2.7bn, up from $2bn in Q3 2013. Venture capital and private equity investment was $918m in Q3 2014, up from a multi-year low of $592m in the same quarter of 2013.
Among the eye-catching asset finance deals of the July-to-September period were $1.1bn for the 231MW Shizen Energy Setouchi PV project in Japan, an estimated $850m for the 530MW Huanghe Hydropower Gonghe Longyangxia PV plant phase two in China, and $642m for the 60MW Dublin waste-to-energy project in Ireland.
Public market transactions included a $620m secondary share issue by Chinese PV manufacturer Hareon Solar Technology, a $577m initial public offering by US renewable energy generator TerraForm Power, and a $305m issue by Spanish wind turbine maker Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica. The biggest venture and private equity transactions were $250m for Mexican wind developer Zuma Energia, and $80m for Chinese LED lighting specialist Lattice Power.
A regional breakdown of clean energy investment showed the continuing troubles of the sector in Europe, where just $8.8bn was committed last quarter, the lowest figure for over eight years, down from $12.1bn a year ago. There was a notably weak total from the UK, at $789m, down from $3.1bn a year earlier as policy uncertainties took a toll. Germany was at $1.5bn compared to $1.6bn in Q3 2013, and Italy at just $262m compared to $1bn, reflecting the impact on investor confidence of retroactive cuts in support for existing solar projects. France saw a rise to $1.4bn from $951m in Q3 2013.
The US saw clean energy investment of $7.3bn in Q3 2014, well down from
$10.7bn in Q2 but up from $5.7bn in the third quarter of last year. Overall Chinese clean energy investment was $19.9bn in Q3, up from $15.1bn a year earlier, while India’s investment totalled $2bn, up from $1.3bn. Canadian investment was $1.9bn, up from $1.3bn, and Brazil’s was $863m, up slightly from $830m but still one of that country’s weakest quarterly figures for many years.
Luke Mills, associate, clean energy economics at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said: “The third quarter data owed a lot to solar in China and Japan. We would expect to see a broader range of countries and technologies attracting investment in the billions of dollars in the fourth quarter, traditionally the busiest of the year for clean energy.”
Note: Bloomberg New Energy Finance has made revisions to past years’ totals for investment, to reflect additional information. These do not affect the historical trend. The revised figures show global clean energy investment including R&D and energy smart technology asset finance(2) rising from $60.4bn in 2004 to $205.2bn in 2008, marking time at $205.8bn in 2009, before increasing again to $272.6bn in 2010 and a peak of $317.1bn in 2011, and then falling back to $284.6bn in 2012 and 250.7bn in 2013.
(1) This three-quarter tally excludes research and development and energy smart technologies asset finance, which are only estimated annually.
(2) EST asset finance includes smart grid and storage investments.
Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance "
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=37603.php?utm_source=fee…
"World clean energy investment in the first three quarters of this year was 16% ahead of the same period of 2013, at $175.1bn(1), making it almost certain that 2014 will produce a bounce-back in dollars invested after two years of decline.
Authoritative figures published today by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, based on its real-time data transactions and projects, show that clean energy investment in the July-to-September quarter was $55bn, up 12% from the $48.9bn achieved in Q3 2013. The third quarter is generally weaker than the second quarter, as it was this year, with the Q3 total 16% down on a strong $65.2bn in Q2 2014.
The highlight of the third quarter was a leap in Chinese solar investment to a new record of $12.2bn, up from $7.5bn in Q3 2013 and $8bn in Q2 2014. China is building a large number of utility-scale photovoltaic projects linked to its main transmission grid, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance forecasts that its solar installations will total 13-14GW in 2014, nearly a third of the world total.
There were other strong investment figures in Q3 from Japan, at 8.6bn, up 17% from the same quarter in 2013, with solar again the dominant renewable energy source. Other countries showing a bounce in investment in the latest quarter were Canada, France and India, while there were significant projects financed in a number of new markets, including Myanmar and Sri Lanka.
Michael Liebreich, chairman of the advisory board at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, commented: “It is heartening to see investment heading for an up-year in 2014 after two down-years, thanks in large part to the greatly enhanced competitiveness of solar, and to some extent wind.
“However, there is no room for complacency because clean energy investment of between $200bn and $300bn a year is not large enough to herald the rapid transformation of the power system that experts say is required if the world is to see a peak in CO2 emissions around 2020. There is still too much policy instability holding back investor confidence.”
The Q3 2014 figures showed global asset finance for clean energy projects such as wind farms, solar parks and geothermal plants reaching $33.3bn, up slightly from $32.8bn in the third quarter of last year. Investment in small-scale projects such as rooftop solar was $18.3bn, up from $13.9bn a year earlier, while equity capital raised by specialist clean energy companies on the public markets was $2.7bn, up from $2bn in Q3 2013. Venture capital and private equity investment was $918m in Q3 2014, up from a multi-year low of $592m in the same quarter of 2013.
Among the eye-catching asset finance deals of the July-to-September period were $1.1bn for the 231MW Shizen Energy Setouchi PV project in Japan, an estimated $850m for the 530MW Huanghe Hydropower Gonghe Longyangxia PV plant phase two in China, and $642m for the 60MW Dublin waste-to-energy project in Ireland.
Public market transactions included a $620m secondary share issue by Chinese PV manufacturer Hareon Solar Technology, a $577m initial public offering by US renewable energy generator TerraForm Power, and a $305m issue by Spanish wind turbine maker Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica. The biggest venture and private equity transactions were $250m for Mexican wind developer Zuma Energia, and $80m for Chinese LED lighting specialist Lattice Power.
A regional breakdown of clean energy investment showed the continuing troubles of the sector in Europe, where just $8.8bn was committed last quarter, the lowest figure for over eight years, down from $12.1bn a year ago. There was a notably weak total from the UK, at $789m, down from $3.1bn a year earlier as policy uncertainties took a toll. Germany was at $1.5bn compared to $1.6bn in Q3 2013, and Italy at just $262m compared to $1bn, reflecting the impact on investor confidence of retroactive cuts in support for existing solar projects. France saw a rise to $1.4bn from $951m in Q3 2013.
The US saw clean energy investment of $7.3bn in Q3 2014, well down from
$10.7bn in Q2 but up from $5.7bn in the third quarter of last year. Overall Chinese clean energy investment was $19.9bn in Q3, up from $15.1bn a year earlier, while India’s investment totalled $2bn, up from $1.3bn. Canadian investment was $1.9bn, up from $1.3bn, and Brazil’s was $863m, up slightly from $830m but still one of that country’s weakest quarterly figures for many years.
Luke Mills, associate, clean energy economics at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said: “The third quarter data owed a lot to solar in China and Japan. We would expect to see a broader range of countries and technologies attracting investment in the billions of dollars in the fourth quarter, traditionally the busiest of the year for clean energy.”
Note: Bloomberg New Energy Finance has made revisions to past years’ totals for investment, to reflect additional information. These do not affect the historical trend. The revised figures show global clean energy investment including R&D and energy smart technology asset finance(2) rising from $60.4bn in 2004 to $205.2bn in 2008, marking time at $205.8bn in 2009, before increasing again to $272.6bn in 2010 and a peak of $317.1bn in 2011, and then falling back to $284.6bn in 2012 and 250.7bn in 2013.
(1) This three-quarter tally excludes research and development and energy smart technologies asset finance, which are only estimated annually.
(2) EST asset finance includes smart grid and storage investments.
Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.940.130 von Popeye82 am 03.10.14 14:54:17
Sediment from melting Greenland glaciers visible, in satellite images - ENN/NASA/IPCC - Oct 3, 2014
- R. Greenway -
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=84464&eocn…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=84464&eocn…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47898
"The glaciers on Greenland are melting, and this is releasing visible plumes of sediments to surrounding waters. NASA has released some new images showing these plumes.
Toward the end of the 21st century, melting from the Greenland Ice Sheet could result in global sea level rise of 4-21 centimeters (2-8 inches), according to the Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Toward refining that estimate, some scientists are taking a close look at the colorful plumes that pepper the ocean around Greenland's perimeter.
About half of the mass lost from the Greenland Ice Sheet is from icebergs calving from glaciers; the other half is lost via meltwater runoff either from the top of the ice or from below (subglacial). According to Vena Chu of University of California, Los Angeles, one of the biggest science questions relating to the ice sheet is: what is the contribution to sea level rise from meltwater?
Measuring the amount of meltwater leaving the ice sheet—as opposed to water that is stored or refrozen after melting—is a huge challenge. One way to better understand the hydrology of the ice sheet is by observing the buoyant bits of dust, minerals, and soil that exit the fjords of large glaciers. "The sediment wonderfully stands out behind the blue marine waters," Chu said, "and makes it easy to see in remotely sensed satellite imagery."
Scientists working in 2008 in Greenland's Kangerlussuaq Fjord found that higher sediment concentrations coincided with lower salinity levels in coastal waters, confirming that the presence of a sediment plume is a strong marker for subglacial freshwater leaving the ice sheet. Subsequent research showed that satellite imagery can be used to map the size and location of these sediment plumes.
"This is especially important in fjords of marine-terminating glaciers, where we have no way of measuring the amount of runoff, as opposed to land-terminating glaciers that end in rivers, where it is difficult but possible to measure runoff more traditionally," Chu said.
The image above, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite on September 9, 2014, shows sediment plumes from meltwater exiting glaciers in southwest Greenland. "
Sediment from melting Greenland glaciers visible, in satellite images - ENN/NASA/IPCC - Oct 3, 2014
- R. Greenway -
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=84464&eocn…" target="_blank" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=84464&eocn…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47898
"The glaciers on Greenland are melting, and this is releasing visible plumes of sediments to surrounding waters. NASA has released some new images showing these plumes.
Toward the end of the 21st century, melting from the Greenland Ice Sheet could result in global sea level rise of 4-21 centimeters (2-8 inches), according to the Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Toward refining that estimate, some scientists are taking a close look at the colorful plumes that pepper the ocean around Greenland's perimeter.
About half of the mass lost from the Greenland Ice Sheet is from icebergs calving from glaciers; the other half is lost via meltwater runoff either from the top of the ice or from below (subglacial). According to Vena Chu of University of California, Los Angeles, one of the biggest science questions relating to the ice sheet is: what is the contribution to sea level rise from meltwater?
Measuring the amount of meltwater leaving the ice sheet—as opposed to water that is stored or refrozen after melting—is a huge challenge. One way to better understand the hydrology of the ice sheet is by observing the buoyant bits of dust, minerals, and soil that exit the fjords of large glaciers. "The sediment wonderfully stands out behind the blue marine waters," Chu said, "and makes it easy to see in remotely sensed satellite imagery."
Scientists working in 2008 in Greenland's Kangerlussuaq Fjord found that higher sediment concentrations coincided with lower salinity levels in coastal waters, confirming that the presence of a sediment plume is a strong marker for subglacial freshwater leaving the ice sheet. Subsequent research showed that satellite imagery can be used to map the size and location of these sediment plumes.
"This is especially important in fjords of marine-terminating glaciers, where we have no way of measuring the amount of runoff, as opposed to land-terminating glaciers that end in rivers, where it is difficult but possible to measure runoff more traditionally," Chu said.
The image above, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite on September 9, 2014, shows sediment plumes from meltwater exiting glaciers in southwest Greenland. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.942.992 von Popeye82 am 04.10.14 02:50:15
California Becomes 1st State to Ban Plastic Bags - ENN/C2 - Oct 2, 2014
- K. Mathews -
www.care2.com/causes/success-california-bans-plastic-bags-th…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47897
"It's official: California is now the first state in the country to institute a statewide plastic bag ban! Though it took years for state legislators to pass this bill plus an additional month that felt like an eternity for the governor to sign the bill into law, environmentalists can finally rejoice in the knowledge that grocery store plastic bags will soon be a thing of the past.
Analysts expect the legislation will eliminate at least 13 billion plastic bags per year. Don't expect to see a change immediately, however: the ban won't go into effect until next July. Liquor and convenience stores will have until July of 2016 to switch to paper or reusable bags.
Don't expect pandemonium when the bags disappear from stores — plenty of local California communities have proven that it's not nearly the inconvenience that naysayers declare. Approximately 25% of Californians already live in an area where single-use plastic bags are forbidden.
So far, impacted citizens generally approve of the bans. Researchers found that while only 10% of people brought reusable bags before they were removed from stores, around 70% started doing it (or skipping bags altogether) once bags came with a surcharge. Sure, the government had to nudge Californians to act more responsibly, but they met the challenge with few complaints.
That hasn't stopped the plastic bag industry from threatening action. Organizations representing affected companies plan to put a proposition on the ballot two years from now for voters to decide whether the bag ban should be revoked. In the meantime, the group hopes to prevent the ban from taking hold until after voters have their say, though the courts will have to decide if their request holds water.
California hasn't disregarded the plastic bag industry altogether, either. The legislation includes a stipulation for the state to loan millions to companies that produce bags so they can expand their businesses to come up with more sustainable alternatives. "
California Becomes 1st State to Ban Plastic Bags - ENN/C2 - Oct 2, 2014
- K. Mathews -
www.care2.com/causes/success-california-bans-plastic-bags-th…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47897
"It's official: California is now the first state in the country to institute a statewide plastic bag ban! Though it took years for state legislators to pass this bill plus an additional month that felt like an eternity for the governor to sign the bill into law, environmentalists can finally rejoice in the knowledge that grocery store plastic bags will soon be a thing of the past.
Analysts expect the legislation will eliminate at least 13 billion plastic bags per year. Don't expect to see a change immediately, however: the ban won't go into effect until next July. Liquor and convenience stores will have until July of 2016 to switch to paper or reusable bags.
Don't expect pandemonium when the bags disappear from stores — plenty of local California communities have proven that it's not nearly the inconvenience that naysayers declare. Approximately 25% of Californians already live in an area where single-use plastic bags are forbidden.
So far, impacted citizens generally approve of the bans. Researchers found that while only 10% of people brought reusable bags before they were removed from stores, around 70% started doing it (or skipping bags altogether) once bags came with a surcharge. Sure, the government had to nudge Californians to act more responsibly, but they met the challenge with few complaints.
That hasn't stopped the plastic bag industry from threatening action. Organizations representing affected companies plan to put a proposition on the ballot two years from now for voters to decide whether the bag ban should be revoked. In the meantime, the group hopes to prevent the ban from taking hold until after voters have their say, though the courts will have to decide if their request holds water.
California hasn't disregarded the plastic bag industry altogether, either. The legislation includes a stipulation for the state to loan millions to companies that produce bags so they can expand their businesses to come up with more sustainable alternatives. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.942.998 von Popeye82 am 04.10.14 02:55:41
No longer able to find sea ice, walruses turn to land, Throng of 35.000 walruses is largest ever recorded on land, sign of warming arctic - ENN/MB/PLOS ONE - Oct 2, 2014
- Morgan Erickson-Davis -
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/1001-morgan-walrus-throng.html
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47896
"A mass of thousands of walruses were spotted hauled up on land in northwest Alaska during NOAA aerial surveys earlier this week. An estimated 35,000 occupied a single beach — a record number illustrating a trend in an unnatural behavior scientists say is due to global warming.
- Tens of thousands of walruses assemble on a beach near Point Lay, Alaska. Photo by NOAA. -
Walruses (Odobenus rosmarus)—iconic arctic mammals that are only distantly related to seals—traditionally use sea ice to rest, breed, and give birth, and as a vantage from which to spot mollusks and other food sources. However, as their habitat warms and sea ice melts, walruses are forced to come to land more often and in greater numbers.
This latest mass of walruses was found during NOAA’s annual arctic marine mammal aerial survey. Previous surveys also found large groups, with 30,000 spotted in 2011. The behavior is something of a new trend, with the first large-scale land haulout observed in 2007 near where the walruses congregated last week.
- Before sea ice started to melt, large-scale beach haulouts like this were never documented. Photo by NOAA. -
"Large walrus haulouts along the Alaskan coasts in the northeastern Chukchi Sea are a relatively new phenomenon," Megan Ferguson, marine mammal scientist with NOAA Fisheries, said in a 2013 statement.
Little is known scientifically about walrus populations and the health of the species in the Pacific. However, Atlantic walruses were heavily exploited by sealers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—nearly leading to local extinction. Commercial walrus harvesting is now illegal throughout their range, which is somewhat circumpolar, extending from eastern Canada through parts of the Russian arctic to Alaska. However, moderated hunting is allowed to persist, with between 4,000 and 7,000 Pacific walruses harvested per year throughout the 1990s. It is unclear what effect, if any, this hunting is having on the species since it is listed as Knowledge Deficient by the IUCN.
Another, likely greater, threat to walruses is global warming. This year, sea ice in the arctic reached one of its lowest points since satellite monitoring began in 1979, and is expected to decline ever-further.
"A nearly ice-free summer is now forecasted to occur as early as 2016," write the authors of a study published earlier this year in PLOS ONE. "Such large-scale, precipitous environmental changes will be detrimental for many species dependent on sea ice habitats."
One of those sea ice-dependent species is the walrus. "
No longer able to find sea ice, walruses turn to land, Throng of 35.000 walruses is largest ever recorded on land, sign of warming arctic - ENN/MB/PLOS ONE - Oct 2, 2014
- Morgan Erickson-Davis -
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/1001-morgan-walrus-throng.html
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47896
"A mass of thousands of walruses were spotted hauled up on land in northwest Alaska during NOAA aerial surveys earlier this week. An estimated 35,000 occupied a single beach — a record number illustrating a trend in an unnatural behavior scientists say is due to global warming.
- Tens of thousands of walruses assemble on a beach near Point Lay, Alaska. Photo by NOAA. -
Walruses (Odobenus rosmarus)—iconic arctic mammals that are only distantly related to seals—traditionally use sea ice to rest, breed, and give birth, and as a vantage from which to spot mollusks and other food sources. However, as their habitat warms and sea ice melts, walruses are forced to come to land more often and in greater numbers.
This latest mass of walruses was found during NOAA’s annual arctic marine mammal aerial survey. Previous surveys also found large groups, with 30,000 spotted in 2011. The behavior is something of a new trend, with the first large-scale land haulout observed in 2007 near where the walruses congregated last week.
- Before sea ice started to melt, large-scale beach haulouts like this were never documented. Photo by NOAA. -
"Large walrus haulouts along the Alaskan coasts in the northeastern Chukchi Sea are a relatively new phenomenon," Megan Ferguson, marine mammal scientist with NOAA Fisheries, said in a 2013 statement.
Little is known scientifically about walrus populations and the health of the species in the Pacific. However, Atlantic walruses were heavily exploited by sealers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—nearly leading to local extinction. Commercial walrus harvesting is now illegal throughout their range, which is somewhat circumpolar, extending from eastern Canada through parts of the Russian arctic to Alaska. However, moderated hunting is allowed to persist, with between 4,000 and 7,000 Pacific walruses harvested per year throughout the 1990s. It is unclear what effect, if any, this hunting is having on the species since it is listed as Knowledge Deficient by the IUCN.
Another, likely greater, threat to walruses is global warming. This year, sea ice in the arctic reached one of its lowest points since satellite monitoring began in 1979, and is expected to decline ever-further.
"A nearly ice-free summer is now forecasted to occur as early as 2016," write the authors of a study published earlier this year in PLOS ONE. "Such large-scale, precipitous environmental changes will be detrimental for many species dependent on sea ice habitats."
One of those sea ice-dependent species is the walrus. "
World Bank 'Highlights $1,600,000,000,000 Cleantech 'Market for Opportunity', for SMEs' - CT/3BLM/WB - Oct 3, 2014
www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2014/09/24/new-report-iden…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/03/world-bank-highlights-1-6…
"Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a major driver of economic development and job creation, particularly in the developing countries. In comparison to other business sectors, jobs in the clean technology sector are relatively safer, better paid and involve higher skills. Governments as well as private business organizations must turn a strategic focus on the cleantech sector to realize its full growth potential.
A new World Bank report titled, “Building Competitive Green Industries: the Climate and Clean Technology Opportunity for Developing Countries,” points out that a vast market opportunity to the tune of $1.6 trillion is waiting to be seized in clean technology in the developing countries. According to the report, China with a potential market size of $415 billion, Latin America with $349 billion, and Africa with $235 billion are the largest markets for SMEs in clean technology.
Cleantech has emerged as a major global market in recent years. Over the next decade, the total investment in cleantech in developing countries will be about $6.4 trillion, out of which $1.6 trillion will be accessible to SMEs. According to the World Bank, these investments will go in sectors such as solar panels, onshore wind, waste water treatment, bio-energy, electric vehicles, and small hydro. This can build a sustainable and wealth-producing sector of the economy in the developing world.
The report recommends that strategic actions by public and private sector companies can support green entrepreneurship in this growing market for SMEs in the cleantech business. Cleantech SMEs face serious hurdles in the developing world, particularly with regard to accessing early and growth stage financing. The report outlines a range of practical instruments that policymakers can use to extend greater support to SMEs in this sector. These instruments relate to key areas such as innovative finance, entrepreneurship and business acceleration, market development, technology development, and the legal and regulatory framework.
A focus on the clean technology market opportunities in the developing countries can produce a strong social impact. The report cites the example of Kenya, where about 80 percent of the population is not served by the power grid. SMEs and local entrepreneurs in this market are addressing the need for power through innovative solutions in solar and biogas technologies. This not only creates jobs, but also provides climate-friendly off-grid power to the economically weakest 40 percent of the population.
Article by Vikas Vij of Justmeans, appearing courtesy 3BL Media. "
www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2014/09/24/new-report-iden…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/03/world-bank-highlights-1-6…
"Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a major driver of economic development and job creation, particularly in the developing countries. In comparison to other business sectors, jobs in the clean technology sector are relatively safer, better paid and involve higher skills. Governments as well as private business organizations must turn a strategic focus on the cleantech sector to realize its full growth potential.
A new World Bank report titled, “Building Competitive Green Industries: the Climate and Clean Technology Opportunity for Developing Countries,” points out that a vast market opportunity to the tune of $1.6 trillion is waiting to be seized in clean technology in the developing countries. According to the report, China with a potential market size of $415 billion, Latin America with $349 billion, and Africa with $235 billion are the largest markets for SMEs in clean technology.
Cleantech has emerged as a major global market in recent years. Over the next decade, the total investment in cleantech in developing countries will be about $6.4 trillion, out of which $1.6 trillion will be accessible to SMEs. According to the World Bank, these investments will go in sectors such as solar panels, onshore wind, waste water treatment, bio-energy, electric vehicles, and small hydro. This can build a sustainable and wealth-producing sector of the economy in the developing world.
The report recommends that strategic actions by public and private sector companies can support green entrepreneurship in this growing market for SMEs in the cleantech business. Cleantech SMEs face serious hurdles in the developing world, particularly with regard to accessing early and growth stage financing. The report outlines a range of practical instruments that policymakers can use to extend greater support to SMEs in this sector. These instruments relate to key areas such as innovative finance, entrepreneurship and business acceleration, market development, technology development, and the legal and regulatory framework.
A focus on the clean technology market opportunities in the developing countries can produce a strong social impact. The report cites the example of Kenya, where about 80 percent of the population is not served by the power grid. SMEs and local entrepreneurs in this market are addressing the need for power through innovative solutions in solar and biogas technologies. This not only creates jobs, but also provides climate-friendly off-grid power to the economically weakest 40 percent of the population.
Article by Vikas Vij of Justmeans, appearing courtesy 3BL Media. "
CO2 emissions bury the UN summit, A four minute film for WBCSD - CCS: a 2 degree solution The film shows actual quantities of global fossil fuel consumption +carbon emissions, +the part that carbon capture +storage can play in limiting global climate change to 2 degrees
www.carbonvisuals.com/media/item/735/559/Methodology-CCS_a_2…
www.carbonvisuals.com/work/wbcsd?utm_source=Carbon+Visuals+I…
www.carbonvisuals.com/media/item/735/559/Methodology-CCS_a_2…
www.carbonvisuals.com/work/wbcsd?utm_source=Carbon+Visuals+I…
Carbon storage 'could lead the northeast's industrial renaissance', Regional business plan uses Teesside's historic pipe network to channel CO2 into huge storage facilities in the North Sea
www.theguardian.com/big-energy-debate/2014/sep/22/carbon-sto…
"
- The infrastructure left behind by the historic ICI chemicals plant on Teeside could lay the foundations for a green industrial renaissance for the region. Photograph: Steve Eason/Getty Images -
In the greenhouses of North Bank Growers in Billingham, county Durham, tomatoes grow fat with the help of infusions of CO2 from the GrowHow fertilizer plant a couple of miles down the road.
GrowHow also provides heat to keep England’s most northerly greenhouses at a tomato-ripening temperature, through a separate pipeline that dates from the days when Imperial Chemicals Industries ruled the roost in Teesside. Teesside is still home to 58% the UK chemicals industry, though ICI was dismantled in 2008. Chemicals and industrial plants operating on former ICI sites at Billingham, North Tees and South Tees are responsible for the region having the biggest per capita CO2 emissions in the UK.
GrowHow doesn’t just want to produce low-carbon tomatoes. A group of Tees companies, backed by local enterprise partnership Tees Valley Unlimited (TVU), believe the pipeline network that was laid down to link ICI’s sprawling chemicals complex could become the basis for a green industrial renaissance in the northeast.
Sarah Tennison, low carbon economy manager for TVU, says new pipelines along the existing corridors can carry CO2 from local industries, transporting the gas to a port used by SSI steelworks at Redcar, from where it would be pumped through undersea pipelines to a storage site in the North Sea.
Last December, TVU secured £1m in funding from the Department of Energy and Climate Change to develop a business model for the industrial carbon capture and storage project. “For quite a few of us in heavy industry, our feedstock contains a lot of carbon, so we emit a lot of carbon,” says Keith Brudenell, site operations manager for GrowHow, which produces fertiliser using ammonia.
GrowHow is one of the most CO2-efficient fertiliser producers in Europe, but it still produces 1.15 tonnes per tonne of fertiliser. An industrial carbon capture and storage (CSS) network in Teesside would allow GrowHow to cut its carbon footprint by 69%.
In the UK, the debate over carbon has centred on the need to cut emissions from our power stations. Industrial carbon capture lags far behind, despite warnings from the UNFCCC and the International Energy Agency that the steel and iron, cement, refineries and chemicals industries – which account for 20% of global CO2 emissions – have few other options to cut emissions their carbon footprint. “CCS is absolutely critical for the industrial sector,” says Luke Warren, chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association.
In the last 10 months the issue has appeared on the UK radar. A government-commissioned report on the techno-economic potential for industrial CCS found it could allow for “deep reductions” in the 112m tonnes emitted from the carbon-intensive business sectors every year.
Mark Lewis is technical manager of the North East Process Industry Cluster, a group set up to promote Teesside’s industries and make them more efficient. Its existing projects include using CO2 and waste heat from GrowHow to support greenhouses, and slag from SSI’s blast furnace in road construction.
He says the pipework laid down by ICI, ready availability of CO2 and the work Teesside’s process industries has already done in integrating their feedstocks and raw materials make it the ideal place to build an industrial CCS network. “It’s a very small area, and all the energy-intensive industry are within sight of each other compared to other [industrial] areas, which are much more spread out,” Lewis says. “If policy says we have to cut CO2 emissions, and industry has to play its part, here is the most logical place to do it.”
One thing Teesside doesn’t have is a power plant CCS project, such as the White Rose project 100 miles south at Drax, which will provide 2m tonnes a year and be transported by pipeline to the 542 saline aquifer for storage in the Southern North Sea. A planned CCS project at a Teesside coal power plant by Progressive Energy failed to make the government’s final cut.
Regional development agency Yorkshire Forward wants White Rose to be the anchor project for an industrial CCS project in the heavily industrialised Humber valley, but the focus in Yorkshire is on getting the power project off the ground.
Steve Murphy, finance director of energy consultancy Pale Blue Dot, which is co-ordinating the Teesside project, says transport and storage is the biggest challenge for any industrial CCS project. TVU will look at the feasibility of storing an initial 4m tonnes a year from GrowHow, SSI steel and two other companies at either the 542 aquifer (where the White Rose project also proposes to store CO2) or much further away in Shell’s depleted Goldeneye gas field in the Central North Sea, storage site for the Peterhead CCS project. On paper, both should have spare capacity.
But all comes down to whether the industry will be able to overcome investors’ concerns about the high cost and risk involved. Power stations are able to pass on the higher operating costs from CCS to consumers in higher utility bills – not something industry can do.
A recent paper from DECC suggested that the government is considering intervention to support industrial CCS. “The Tees Valley project will play a key role in putting a number on the cost of industrial CCS, and what that might mean for investors,” Murphy adds.
One big barrier will be establishing who will be responsible for any leakage of CO2 – trickier in industrial CCS than for power plants because of the greater number of actors involved. “There is a very low probability [of leakage], but it would have serious [financial] consequences,” Murphy says.
The stakes for the planet are high in getting this right. And so are the stakes for industrial regions like Teesside.
“The petrochemicals industry took hundreds of years to build up, and it will take another 100 to replace it,” says Mark Lewis of industrial membership body Nepic. “If we want to decarbonise, CCS is the only way to do it – apart from shutting up shop and moving production elsewhere.” "
www.theguardian.com/big-energy-debate/2014/sep/22/carbon-sto…
"
- The infrastructure left behind by the historic ICI chemicals plant on Teeside could lay the foundations for a green industrial renaissance for the region. Photograph: Steve Eason/Getty Images -
In the greenhouses of North Bank Growers in Billingham, county Durham, tomatoes grow fat with the help of infusions of CO2 from the GrowHow fertilizer plant a couple of miles down the road.
GrowHow also provides heat to keep England’s most northerly greenhouses at a tomato-ripening temperature, through a separate pipeline that dates from the days when Imperial Chemicals Industries ruled the roost in Teesside. Teesside is still home to 58% the UK chemicals industry, though ICI was dismantled in 2008. Chemicals and industrial plants operating on former ICI sites at Billingham, North Tees and South Tees are responsible for the region having the biggest per capita CO2 emissions in the UK.
GrowHow doesn’t just want to produce low-carbon tomatoes. A group of Tees companies, backed by local enterprise partnership Tees Valley Unlimited (TVU), believe the pipeline network that was laid down to link ICI’s sprawling chemicals complex could become the basis for a green industrial renaissance in the northeast.
Sarah Tennison, low carbon economy manager for TVU, says new pipelines along the existing corridors can carry CO2 from local industries, transporting the gas to a port used by SSI steelworks at Redcar, from where it would be pumped through undersea pipelines to a storage site in the North Sea.
Last December, TVU secured £1m in funding from the Department of Energy and Climate Change to develop a business model for the industrial carbon capture and storage project. “For quite a few of us in heavy industry, our feedstock contains a lot of carbon, so we emit a lot of carbon,” says Keith Brudenell, site operations manager for GrowHow, which produces fertiliser using ammonia.
GrowHow is one of the most CO2-efficient fertiliser producers in Europe, but it still produces 1.15 tonnes per tonne of fertiliser. An industrial carbon capture and storage (CSS) network in Teesside would allow GrowHow to cut its carbon footprint by 69%.
In the UK, the debate over carbon has centred on the need to cut emissions from our power stations. Industrial carbon capture lags far behind, despite warnings from the UNFCCC and the International Energy Agency that the steel and iron, cement, refineries and chemicals industries – which account for 20% of global CO2 emissions – have few other options to cut emissions their carbon footprint. “CCS is absolutely critical for the industrial sector,” says Luke Warren, chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association.
In the last 10 months the issue has appeared on the UK radar. A government-commissioned report on the techno-economic potential for industrial CCS found it could allow for “deep reductions” in the 112m tonnes emitted from the carbon-intensive business sectors every year.
Mark Lewis is technical manager of the North East Process Industry Cluster, a group set up to promote Teesside’s industries and make them more efficient. Its existing projects include using CO2 and waste heat from GrowHow to support greenhouses, and slag from SSI’s blast furnace in road construction.
He says the pipework laid down by ICI, ready availability of CO2 and the work Teesside’s process industries has already done in integrating their feedstocks and raw materials make it the ideal place to build an industrial CCS network. “It’s a very small area, and all the energy-intensive industry are within sight of each other compared to other [industrial] areas, which are much more spread out,” Lewis says. “If policy says we have to cut CO2 emissions, and industry has to play its part, here is the most logical place to do it.”
One thing Teesside doesn’t have is a power plant CCS project, such as the White Rose project 100 miles south at Drax, which will provide 2m tonnes a year and be transported by pipeline to the 542 saline aquifer for storage in the Southern North Sea. A planned CCS project at a Teesside coal power plant by Progressive Energy failed to make the government’s final cut.
Regional development agency Yorkshire Forward wants White Rose to be the anchor project for an industrial CCS project in the heavily industrialised Humber valley, but the focus in Yorkshire is on getting the power project off the ground.
Steve Murphy, finance director of energy consultancy Pale Blue Dot, which is co-ordinating the Teesside project, says transport and storage is the biggest challenge for any industrial CCS project. TVU will look at the feasibility of storing an initial 4m tonnes a year from GrowHow, SSI steel and two other companies at either the 542 aquifer (where the White Rose project also proposes to store CO2) or much further away in Shell’s depleted Goldeneye gas field in the Central North Sea, storage site for the Peterhead CCS project. On paper, both should have spare capacity.
But all comes down to whether the industry will be able to overcome investors’ concerns about the high cost and risk involved. Power stations are able to pass on the higher operating costs from CCS to consumers in higher utility bills – not something industry can do.
A recent paper from DECC suggested that the government is considering intervention to support industrial CCS. “The Tees Valley project will play a key role in putting a number on the cost of industrial CCS, and what that might mean for investors,” Murphy adds.
One big barrier will be establishing who will be responsible for any leakage of CO2 – trickier in industrial CCS than for power plants because of the greater number of actors involved. “There is a very low probability [of leakage], but it would have serious [financial] consequences,” Murphy says.
The stakes for the planet are high in getting this right. And so are the stakes for industrial regions like Teesside.
“The petrochemicals industry took hundreds of years to build up, and it will take another 100 to replace it,” says Mark Lewis of industrial membership body Nepic. “If we want to decarbonise, CCS is the only way to do it – apart from shutting up shop and moving production elsewhere.” "
Alberta 'could lead world in better carbon utilization, expert says', ConocoPhillips Canada exec Bob Mitchell said province has responsibility to lead carbon utilization development - CM, CCT, CALGARY - Sep 22, 2014
www.canadianmanufacturing.com/environment-and-safety/alberta…
"Alberta has the opportunity and responsibility to lead the world in hydrocarbon utilization, and not just in reducing the emissions intensity of energy production, developing carbon capture and long-term geologic storage projects, or fuel switching from hydrocarbons to renewables.
Instead, Bob Mitchell sees a world where hydrocarbons help elevate the livelihood and well-being of the globe as its population continues to increase.
“Quit running away from the climate change challenge as if it’s a threat. Look at it as an opportunity and we can do a lot,” Mitchell, senior director of innovating for performance and sustainability in ConocoPhillips Canada Resources Corp.’s oilsands business unit, told an Oilsands Review Speaker Series breakfast.
“I really think one of the problems we’ve had in society is not enough hope. We’ve spent too much time over the past 20 or 30 years being afraid of things, and the boogeyman around the corner is a great opportunity for us to get out there and create the future we want and if we do, it’s the future we deserve.”
Mitchell said Alberta needs a flue-gas capture and carbon dioxide commercialization centre—even a campus—where innovators and inventors can share ideas and concepts, kickstart innovation in important new areas and get more value out of the province’s hydrocarbons.
“We need to give people a place to prove, to de-risk technologies so we can apply them back in a commercial space,” he said. “If we do I really think the world will embrace this.”
Some “really cool things” can be made from carbon-based materials, said Mitchell, who two years ago was recognized for his leadership in Alberta’s oilsands sector with an Emerald Award, presented by the Alberta Emerald Foundation.
“The imagination runs wiiiiild and we have a real opportunity for Alberta to be in the lead in this world,” he said. “I think Alberta has the opportunity, and really, has the responsibility, to be a hydrocarbon utilizer-producer that the world needs.
“We have a great responsibility, a great opportunity and we just have to think differently about what we’re doing and make better use of the natural endowments we’ve got.”
Alberta could contribute the practice of diverting carbon into the food chain and, eventually, use excess carbon in 3D food printers, carbon-based materials for nano-filters and aerogels for electrodialysis to desalinate water, he suggested.
The province could also provide advanced carbon-based insulation and building materials, thereby creating new business opportunities and capitalizing on the chemical values of carbon and hydrogen, he said.
“Instead of emitting (carbon dioxide) and other things into the atmosphere, whether you believe in climate change or not, that is a wasted product. We need to do industrial synergies. We need to find ways to use those products instead of just releasing them,” said Mitchell, co-founder of the Oil Sands Leadership Initiative, which has been rolled into the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance and the Sustainable Communities Initiative.
“To do that we need to embrace open innovation, captivate innovators, facilitate collaboration and help ideas become reality by bridging the technology valley of death.”
It is up to the private sector to develop a carbon innovation campus; government is not going to take the lead on this, he said.
While current uses of hydrocarbons include transportation fuels, home heating and electricity generation, higher-value uses in the future may be 3D printing, graphene, ammonia and biofuel bicycles.
Graphene is a one-atom-thick miracle substance that’s stronger than steel and appears to be a super-conductor, Mitchell said.
“It seems to be a promising, promising product,” he continued.
He said “really smart people” are focused on energy efficiency and conservation, fuel-switching hydrocarbons to renewables, reducing the energy and emissions intensity of energy production, fuel switching from hydrocarbons to nuclear and fission, capture and long-term geologic storage, and capture and enhanced resource recovery—all of which have become mainstream.
But until recently what hasn’t been pursued are air capture and conversion, flue-gas capture and carbon dioxide conversion, and higher-value uses of hydrocarbons such as materials and clean fuels—realizing that there is more chemical value in hydrocarbons than there is thermal value, he noted.
“We can divert carbon dioxide … into the food chain by putting it into fertilizers (and) composting, but if you get futuristic, we could be printing using carbon molecules to actually make food like a 3D print,” he said.
Recently a 3D-printed hamburger was created, although Mitchell said tasters pronounced it “not the best hamburger in the world 
.”
Aerogels are the world’s lightest solid materials, composed of as much as 99.98 per cent air by volume.
Transparent, super-insulating silica aerogels exhibit the lowest thermal conductivity of any known solid.
Ultrahigh surface-area carbon aerogels power today’s fast-charging supercapacitors, and ultra-strong, bendable x-aerogels are the lowest-density structural materials ever developed.
A Calgary-based company is using electrodialysis with aerogel filters to desalinate water, said Mitchell.
Normally desalination takes a lot of energy but it is generating electricity, he said.
“It’s a really promising technology,” he said. “It was developed in the oilsands but it could be applicable around the world.”
Now, with advanced plastics and materials, lighter, stronger buildings might be able to deal with catastrophes such as earthquakes and hurricanes because carbon-based materials have the ability to sway better than steel and concrete do, he told the gathering.
At a time when cleaner, reliable power is needed, Mitchell imagines tacking on value-adding components to tailpipes and power plant smokestacks so that carbon emissions aren’t wasted but instead turned into useful products.
Hydrogen can be removed from hydrocarbons to make more hydrogen-rich fuels and other products so that the emissions are not contaminating the atmosphere and affecting peoples’ health, he said.
“The big one here to me is, if we do a better job of this and make better use of our hydrocarbons we reduce the need for conflict and tension over hydrocarbons because now everybody in the world can follow our example and find more livelihood out of what they’ve got,” he said.
The world can switch from having its carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere and land and acidifiying the oceans to one where it goes into products such as the BMW I3, which Mitchell said he has driven and is a “pretty neat,” mostly carbon-based electric vehicle, or an enclosed motorcycle that is currently in production.
“It’s got a gyroscope so it doesn’t tip over,” he said of the motorcycle.
Mitchell invited his audience to consider how they might contribute to this “new world,” adding they do not have to switch careers or do different things at work.
A self-professed collaborator by nature and experience, Mitchell belongs to a volunteer organization that meets after work and on weekends to advance technology and innovation because its members are passionate about these subjects.
“There is an opportunity for you to get into the open innovation world, play around, deal with people all around the world, throw your hunches out there,” he said. “Let’s embrace the opportunities.” "
www.canadianmanufacturing.com/environment-and-safety/alberta…
"Alberta has the opportunity and responsibility to lead the world in hydrocarbon utilization, and not just in reducing the emissions intensity of energy production, developing carbon capture and long-term geologic storage projects, or fuel switching from hydrocarbons to renewables.
Instead, Bob Mitchell sees a world where hydrocarbons help elevate the livelihood and well-being of the globe as its population continues to increase.
“Quit running away from the climate change challenge as if it’s a threat. Look at it as an opportunity and we can do a lot,” Mitchell, senior director of innovating for performance and sustainability in ConocoPhillips Canada Resources Corp.’s oilsands business unit, told an Oilsands Review Speaker Series breakfast.
“I really think one of the problems we’ve had in society is not enough hope. We’ve spent too much time over the past 20 or 30 years being afraid of things, and the boogeyman around the corner is a great opportunity for us to get out there and create the future we want and if we do, it’s the future we deserve.”
Mitchell said Alberta needs a flue-gas capture and carbon dioxide commercialization centre—even a campus—where innovators and inventors can share ideas and concepts, kickstart innovation in important new areas and get more value out of the province’s hydrocarbons.
“We need to give people a place to prove, to de-risk technologies so we can apply them back in a commercial space,” he said. “If we do I really think the world will embrace this.”
Some “really cool things” can be made from carbon-based materials, said Mitchell, who two years ago was recognized for his leadership in Alberta’s oilsands sector with an Emerald Award, presented by the Alberta Emerald Foundation.
“The imagination runs wiiiiild
and we have a real opportunity for Alberta to be in the lead in this world,” he said. “I think Alberta has the opportunity, and really, has the responsibility, to be a hydrocarbon utilizer-producer that the world needs.“We have a great responsibility, a great opportunity and we just have to think differently about what we’re doing and make better use of the natural endowments we’ve got.”
Alberta could contribute the practice of diverting carbon into the food chain and, eventually, use excess carbon in 3D food printers, carbon-based materials for nano-filters and aerogels for electrodialysis to desalinate water, he suggested.
The province could also provide advanced carbon-based insulation and building materials, thereby creating new business opportunities and capitalizing on the chemical values of carbon and hydrogen, he said.
“Instead of emitting (carbon dioxide) and other things into the atmosphere, whether you believe in climate change or not, that is a wasted product. We need to do industrial synergies. We need to find ways to use those products instead of just releasing them,” said Mitchell, co-founder of the Oil Sands Leadership Initiative, which has been rolled into the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance and the Sustainable Communities Initiative.
“To do that we need to embrace open innovation, captivate innovators, facilitate collaboration and help ideas become reality by bridging the technology valley of death.”
It is up to the private sector to develop a carbon innovation campus; government is not going to take the lead on this, he said.
While current uses of hydrocarbons include transportation fuels, home heating and electricity generation, higher-value uses in the future may be 3D printing, graphene, ammonia and biofuel bicycles.
Graphene is a one-atom-thick miracle substance that’s stronger than steel and appears to be a super-conductor, Mitchell said.
“It seems to be a promising, promising product,” he continued.
He said “really smart people” are focused on energy efficiency and conservation, fuel-switching hydrocarbons to renewables, reducing the energy and emissions intensity of energy production, fuel switching from hydrocarbons to nuclear and fission, capture and long-term geologic storage, and capture and enhanced resource recovery—all of which have become mainstream.
But until recently what hasn’t been pursued are air capture and conversion, flue-gas capture and carbon dioxide conversion, and higher-value uses of hydrocarbons such as materials and clean fuels—realizing that there is more chemical value in hydrocarbons than there is thermal value, he noted.
“We can divert carbon dioxide … into the food chain by putting it into fertilizers (and) composting, but if you get futuristic, we could be printing using carbon molecules to actually make food like a 3D print,” he said.
Recently a 3D-printed hamburger was created, although Mitchell said tasters pronounced it “not the best hamburger in the world
.”Aerogels are the world’s lightest solid materials, composed of as much as 99.98 per cent air by volume.
Transparent, super-insulating silica aerogels exhibit the lowest thermal conductivity of any known solid.
Ultrahigh surface-area carbon aerogels power today’s fast-charging supercapacitors, and ultra-strong, bendable x-aerogels are the lowest-density structural materials ever developed.
A Calgary-based company is using electrodialysis with aerogel filters to desalinate water, said Mitchell.
Normally desalination takes a lot of energy but it is generating electricity, he said.
“It’s a really promising technology,” he said. “It was developed in the oilsands but it could be applicable around the world.”
Now, with advanced plastics and materials, lighter, stronger buildings might be able to deal with catastrophes such as earthquakes and hurricanes because carbon-based materials have the ability to sway better than steel and concrete do, he told the gathering.
At a time when cleaner, reliable power is needed, Mitchell imagines tacking on value-adding components to tailpipes and power plant smokestacks so that carbon emissions aren’t wasted but instead turned into useful products.
Hydrogen can be removed from hydrocarbons to make more hydrogen-rich fuels and other products so that the emissions are not contaminating the atmosphere and affecting peoples’ health, he said.
“The big one here to me is, if we do a better job of this and make better use of our hydrocarbons we reduce the need for conflict and tension over hydrocarbons because now everybody in the world can follow our example and find more livelihood out of what they’ve got,” he said.
The world can switch from having its carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere and land and acidifiying the oceans to one where it goes into products such as the BMW I3, which Mitchell said he has driven and is a “pretty neat,” mostly carbon-based electric vehicle, or an enclosed motorcycle that is currently in production.
“It’s got a gyroscope so it doesn’t tip over,” he said of the motorcycle.
Mitchell invited his audience to consider how they might contribute to this “new world,” adding they do not have to switch careers or do different things at work.
A self-professed collaborator by nature and experience, Mitchell belongs to a volunteer organization that meets after work and on weekends to advance technology and innovation because its members are passionate about these subjects.
“There is an opportunity for you to get into the open innovation world, play around, deal with people all around the world, throw your hunches out there,” he said. “Let’s embrace the opportunities.” "
EPA chief says to expect 'changes' in final climate rule - TH/EPA - Sep 25, 2014
- Laura Barron-Lopez -
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/218975-epa-chie…
"There will be "changes" made in the Obama administration's proposal to cut carbon pollution from existing power plants, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Gina McCarthy.
"People who know me well enough know there are going to be changes between proposal and final because we listen," McCarthy said on Thursday.
Since unveiling the controversial regulation, the administration has put all hands on deck to pitch the new standards to lawmakers, state officials, environmentalists, coal advocates, utilities and more.
While McCarthy says the feedback has been "positive," and she is "excited" to see the end result, there has been relentless pushback from Republicans and industry types worried that the rule will put a strain on reliability, forcing energy sources offline.
"My goal is to make sure many of the states stand up as early as possible and say I can make this work for me, and my economy, and my energy sector," McCarthy said when asked about feedback at a Washington, D.C., event.
The problem the EPA is facing, she said, is how to explain to states the "difference between regulating under this [Clean Air Act] section and what Congress might do to adopt a cap-and-trade system."
From the "unprecedented" amount of outreach, meetings and phone calls the EPA has held, and will continue to hold even after the comment period closes, concerns have been raised over whether or not states that took "early action" to clean up pollution will be credited for it.
"Many states who have wanted us to recognize actions that have happened earlier and we are looking at that and we are taking those comments very seriously," she said.
But there are limitations and the rule is not designed to work like a cap-and-trade program, which rewards those who took steps to mitigate emissions before regulations were implemented.
"This is not about carbon offsets," she said. "It is about about applying the Clean Air Act in way that will be legally defensible but still achieve the reductions."
Opponents of the rule don't agree, and lawsuits against the EPA's rule for existing and future power plants have already sprung up.
"I think there are some significant missteps the EPA has taken in both the new and existing source rules that I think are legal flaws that they did not take into account," said Katie Sweeney, senior vice president of legal affairs for the National Mining Association (NMA).
Sweeney said she is "moderating optimistic" legal challenges the organization has joined against the rules will be successful, given the EPA's favorable track record with the courts.
Sweeney also said she doesn't believe McCarthy's statement that the final rule will change, either to address the coal industry's worries or even the woes of states that may be otherwise supportive of the rule.
"With all this rush it seems like they are unlikely to change the direction they are going in, but we would be happy if they did," she said, adding that the NMA would like to see no carbon capture requirement.
The EPA argues that the technology available to utilities and fossil-fuel power plants is something states should harness and use to make progress, rather than stay "mediocre."
"I'm not sure we could have done this five or 10 years ago, not because of public opinion, but because we did not have choices we have today," she said, noting the falling price of solar and new efficiency programs.
"This is really all about where states are today, where facilities are, what's available to them, and how far they can move forward," she said.
It comes down to whether or not the carbon pollution standards are "fair," McCarthy told reporters.
Some are saying "we are being asked to do too much," others that "someone is not being asked to do enough."
"We we'll take a look at these comments and we think there are some adjustments that could be made," she said.
The EPA recently extended the public comment period for the rule, which is expected to cut pollution from existing fossil fuel plants 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels.
People will now have until Dec. 1, and the EPA said it is working hard to finalize the rule by June of next year. "
- Laura Barron-Lopez -
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/218975-epa-chie…
"There will be "changes" made in the Obama administration's proposal to cut carbon pollution from existing power plants, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Gina McCarthy.
"People who know me well enough know there are going to be changes between proposal and final because we listen," McCarthy said on Thursday.
Since unveiling the controversial regulation, the administration has put all hands on deck to pitch the new standards to lawmakers, state officials, environmentalists, coal advocates, utilities and more.
While McCarthy says the feedback has been "positive," and she is "excited" to see the end result, there has been relentless pushback from Republicans and industry types worried that the rule will put a strain on reliability, forcing energy sources offline.
"My goal is to make sure many of the states stand up as early as possible and say I can make this work for me, and my economy, and my energy sector," McCarthy said when asked about feedback at a Washington, D.C., event.
The problem the EPA is facing, she said, is how to explain to states the "difference between regulating under this [Clean Air Act] section and what Congress might do to adopt a cap-and-trade system."
From the "unprecedented" amount of outreach, meetings and phone calls the EPA has held, and will continue to hold even after the comment period closes, concerns have been raised over whether or not states that took "early action" to clean up pollution will be credited for it.
"Many states who have wanted us to recognize actions that have happened earlier and we are looking at that and we are taking those comments very seriously," she said.
But there are limitations and the rule is not designed to work like a cap-and-trade program, which rewards those who took steps to mitigate emissions before regulations were implemented.
"This is not about carbon offsets," she said. "It is about about applying the Clean Air Act in way that will be legally defensible but still achieve the reductions."
Opponents of the rule don't agree, and lawsuits against the EPA's rule for existing and future power plants have already sprung up.
"I think there are some significant missteps the EPA has taken in both the new and existing source rules that I think are legal flaws that they did not take into account," said Katie Sweeney, senior vice president of legal affairs for the National Mining Association (NMA).
Sweeney said she is "moderating optimistic" legal challenges the organization has joined against the rules will be successful, given the EPA's favorable track record with the courts.
Sweeney also said she doesn't believe McCarthy's statement that the final rule will change, either to address the coal industry's worries or even the woes of states that may be otherwise supportive of the rule.
"With all this rush it seems like they are unlikely to change the direction they are going in, but we would be happy if they did," she said, adding that the NMA would like to see no carbon capture requirement.
The EPA argues that the technology available to utilities and fossil-fuel power plants is something states should harness and use to make progress, rather than stay "mediocre."
"I'm not sure we could have done this five or 10 years ago, not because of public opinion, but because we did not have choices we have today," she said, noting the falling price of solar and new efficiency programs.
"This is really all about where states are today, where facilities are, what's available to them, and how far they can move forward," she said.
It comes down to whether or not the carbon pollution standards are "fair," McCarthy told reporters.
Some are saying "we are being asked to do too much," others that "someone is not being asked to do enough."
"We we'll take a look at these comments and we think there are some adjustments that could be made," she said.
The EPA recently extended the public comment period for the rule, which is expected to cut pollution from existing fossil fuel plants 30 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels.
People will now have until Dec. 1, and the EPA said it is working hard to finalize the rule by June of next year. "
Lawrence Livermore finds ocean warming underestimated, by past analyses - ENN/LLNL/NCC - Oct 6, 2014
- Anne M. Stark -
www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2014/Oct/NR-14-10-02.html#.VD…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47904
www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2…
"Using satellite observations and a large suite of climate models, Lawrence Livermore scientists have found that long-term ocean warming in the upper 700 meters of Southern Hemisphere oceans has likely been underestimated.
"This underestimation is a result of poor sampling prior to the last decade and limitations of the analysis methods that conservatively estimated temperature changes in data-sparse regions," said LLNL oceanographer Paul Durack, lead author of a paper appearing in the October 5 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.
Ocean heat storage is important because it accounts for more than 90 percent of the Earth's excess heat that is associated with global warming. The observed ocean and atmosphere warming is a result of continuing greenhouse gas emissions. The Southern Hemisphere oceans make up 60 percent of the world's oceans.
The team found that climate models simulate the relative increase in sea surface height -- a leading indicator of climate change -- between Northern and Southern hemispheres is consistent with highly accurate altimeter observations. However, separating the simulated upper-ocean warming in the Northern and Southern hemispheres is inconsistent with observed estimates of ocean heat content change. These sea level and ocean heat content changes should be consistent, and suggest that until recent improvements occurred in the observational system in the early 21st century, Southern Hemisphere ocean heat content changes were likely underestimated.
Since 2004, automated profiling floats (named Argo) have been used to measure global ocean temperatures from the surface down to 2,000 meters. The 3,600 Argo floats currently observing the global ocean provide systematic coverage of the Southern Hemisphere for the first time. Argo float measurements over the last decade, as well as data from earlier measurements, show that the ocean has been gradually warming, according to Durack.
"Prior to 2004, research has been very limited by the poor measurement coverage," he said. "By using satellite data, along with a large suite of climate model simulations, our results suggest that global ocean warming has been underestimated by 24 to 58 percent. The conclusion that warming has been underestimated agrees with previous studies, however it's the first time that scientists have tried to estimate how much heat we've missed."
Akin to having a fleet of miniature research vessels, the global flotilla of more than 3,600 robotic profiling floats provides crucial information on upper layers of the world's ocean currents. Photo by Alicia Navidad/CSIRO. "
- Anne M. Stark -
www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2014/Oct/NR-14-10-02.html#.VD…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47904
www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate2…
"Using satellite observations and a large suite of climate models, Lawrence Livermore scientists have found that long-term ocean warming in the upper 700 meters of Southern Hemisphere oceans has likely been underestimated.
"This underestimation is a result of poor sampling prior to the last decade and limitations of the analysis methods that conservatively estimated temperature changes in data-sparse regions," said LLNL oceanographer Paul Durack, lead author of a paper appearing in the October 5 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.
Ocean heat storage is important because it accounts for more than 90 percent of the Earth's excess heat that is associated with global warming. The observed ocean and atmosphere warming is a result of continuing greenhouse gas emissions. The Southern Hemisphere oceans make up 60 percent of the world's oceans.
The team found that climate models simulate the relative increase in sea surface height -- a leading indicator of climate change -- between Northern and Southern hemispheres is consistent with highly accurate altimeter observations. However, separating the simulated upper-ocean warming in the Northern and Southern hemispheres is inconsistent with observed estimates of ocean heat content change. These sea level and ocean heat content changes should be consistent, and suggest that until recent improvements occurred in the observational system in the early 21st century, Southern Hemisphere ocean heat content changes were likely underestimated.
Since 2004, automated profiling floats (named Argo) have been used to measure global ocean temperatures from the surface down to 2,000 meters. The 3,600 Argo floats currently observing the global ocean provide systematic coverage of the Southern Hemisphere for the first time. Argo float measurements over the last decade, as well as data from earlier measurements, show that the ocean has been gradually warming, according to Durack.
"Prior to 2004, research has been very limited by the poor measurement coverage," he said. "By using satellite data, along with a large suite of climate model simulations, our results suggest that global ocean warming has been underestimated by 24 to 58 percent. The conclusion that warming has been underestimated agrees with previous studies, however it's the first time that scientists have tried to estimate how much heat we've missed."
Akin to having a fleet of miniature research vessels, the global flotilla of more than 3,600 robotic profiling floats provides crucial information on upper layers of the world's ocean currents. Photo by Alicia Navidad/CSIRO. "
First Hookworm Vaccine Passes Brazilian Safety Trial
www.scidev.net/global/medicine/news/first-hookworm-vaccine-p…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47915
"A vaccine for parasitic intestinal worms has been shown to be safe in Brazilian clinical trials, according to its US developer.
The trials were carried out in the city of Belo Horizonte, and the rural settlement of Americaninhas in eastern Brazil where there is a high risk of hookworm infection.
Hookworm parasites infect more than 600 million people worldwide, attaching themselves to the intestines to feed on blood. Infection can lead to iron deficiency and capillary damage, and may retard children’s growth and mental development.
Researchers from the Sabin Vaccine Institute Product Development Partnership found the vaccine was well tolerated by 102 healthy volunteers and blood tests showed that they developed an immune response. None of them had ever been exposed to hookworm before.
David Diemert, Sabin’s director of clinical trials, tells SciDev.Net: “A vaccine able to induce long-lasting immunity, which could be incorporated into existing vaccination programmes in countries like Brazil, would provide a sustainable solution to the problem of hookworm.”�
The vaccine’s active ingredient is a protein from the adult Necator americanus hookworm, the species that most commonly infects people. When patients are exposed to a harmless form of the protein, they develop antibodies that recognise it. In theory these would then be able to recognise the proteins — and mobilise the immune system — if the person was subsequently infected with worms.
Researchers say the vaccine could be an alternative way to deal with repeat infections. Brazil’s public health system distributes single dose anti-hookworm drugs to local people for free, but they are often reinfected by contaminated water. In theory, the vaccine could treat existing infections and provide lasting immunity.
Although it raises hopes of better hookworm control, it will still be several years before the vaccine has undergone all the tests necessary to be approved for use, says Diemert. But he hopes to have a licensed vaccine by 2020.
The Sabin initiative is part of the wider HOOKVAC consortium that is developing the vaccine. Another trial is expected to start this month in Gabon, where three in ten people have hookworms. "
www.scidev.net/global/medicine/news/first-hookworm-vaccine-p…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47915
"A vaccine for parasitic intestinal worms has been shown to be safe in Brazilian clinical trials, according to its US developer.
The trials were carried out in the city of Belo Horizonte, and the rural settlement of Americaninhas in eastern Brazil where there is a high risk of hookworm infection.
Hookworm parasites infect more than 600 million people worldwide, attaching themselves to the intestines to feed on blood. Infection can lead to iron deficiency and capillary damage, and may retard children’s growth and mental development.
Researchers from the Sabin Vaccine Institute Product Development Partnership found the vaccine was well tolerated by 102 healthy volunteers and blood tests showed that they developed an immune response. None of them had ever been exposed to hookworm before.
David Diemert, Sabin’s director of clinical trials, tells SciDev.Net: “A vaccine able to induce long-lasting immunity, which could be incorporated into existing vaccination programmes in countries like Brazil, would provide a sustainable solution to the problem of hookworm.”�
The vaccine’s active ingredient is a protein from the adult Necator americanus hookworm, the species that most commonly infects people. When patients are exposed to a harmless form of the protein, they develop antibodies that recognise it. In theory these would then be able to recognise the proteins — and mobilise the immune system — if the person was subsequently infected with worms.
Researchers say the vaccine could be an alternative way to deal with repeat infections. Brazil’s public health system distributes single dose anti-hookworm drugs to local people for free, but they are often reinfected by contaminated water. In theory, the vaccine could treat existing infections and provide lasting immunity.
Although it raises hopes of better hookworm control, it will still be several years before the vaccine has undergone all the tests necessary to be approved for use, says Diemert. But he hopes to have a licensed vaccine by 2020.
The Sabin initiative is part of the wider HOOKVAC consortium that is developing the vaccine. Another trial is expected to start this month in Gabon, where three in ten people have hookworms. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.891.315 von Popeye82 am 27.09.14 17:03:28
Nobel Laureate Mario Molina on Understanding Climate Risk, Please join Resources for the Future(RFF) +the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS) for a special lecture: "A Call to Action----Toward the Urgency of Understanding Climate Risk", Date Wed, Nov 12, 2014 4:00-5:00 p.m.
www.rff.org/live/
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/RFF-and-AAAS-Present-a-Conversation…
Nobel Laureate Mario Molina on Understanding Climate Risk, Please join Resources for the Future(RFF) +the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS) for a special lecture: "A Call to Action----Toward the Urgency of Understanding Climate Risk", Date Wed, Nov 12, 2014 4:00-5:00 p.m.
www.rff.org/live/
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/RFF-and-AAAS-Present-a-Conversation…
Poland will buy in to climate change plan, IF it gets aid
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47921
"Poland says it will need cash and help in curbing its emissions if it is to sign up for a new decade of EU green energy policy at talks this month, according to a document seen by Reuters.
The document shows the 28 EU member states are broadly ready to agree a new set of 2030 goals to follow on from 2020 energy and environment policy, although Europe's biggest power Germany says it will not agree a deal "at any price".
Poland has always been the most reluctant of EU member states to sign up for ambitious climate policy before the rest of the world.
It argues that EU emissions account for only a small part of the world's pollution, and that Poland needs help in moving away from its heavy dependency on coal, the most carbon-intensive of the fossil fuels.
The briefing document, drawn up by EU officials ahead of a summit of EU leaders on 23-24 October, says Poland is not convinced about the need for a deal now, but "is working in the spirit of not blocking an agreement".
Members of the current European Commission, meant to step down at the end of this month making way for a new set of officials, say the EU must decide now on its negotiating position ahead of U.N. talks on a global pact on tackling climate change to be hosted by Paris next year.
The executive EU Commission outlined in January its vision for 2030 goals, including a 40% cut in carbon emissions compared with 1990 levels, an improvement in energy efficiency to 30% versus business as usual and a target to get 27% of energy used from renewable sources. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47921
"Poland says it will need cash and help in curbing its emissions if it is to sign up for a new decade of EU green energy policy at talks this month, according to a document seen by Reuters.
The document shows the 28 EU member states are broadly ready to agree a new set of 2030 goals to follow on from 2020 energy and environment policy, although Europe's biggest power Germany says it will not agree a deal "at any price".
Poland has always been the most reluctant of EU member states to sign up for ambitious climate policy before the rest of the world.
It argues that EU emissions account for only a small part of the world's pollution, and that Poland needs help in moving away from its heavy dependency on coal, the most carbon-intensive of the fossil fuels.
The briefing document, drawn up by EU officials ahead of a summit of EU leaders on 23-24 October, says Poland is not convinced about the need for a deal now, but "is working in the spirit of not blocking an agreement".
Members of the current European Commission, meant to step down at the end of this month making way for a new set of officials, say the EU must decide now on its negotiating position ahead of U.N. talks on a global pact on tackling climate change to be hosted by Paris next year.
The executive EU Commission outlined in January its vision for 2030 goals, including a 40% cut in carbon emissions compared with 1990 levels, an improvement in energy efficiency to 30% versus business as usual and a target to get 27% of energy used from renewable sources. "
Fracking Footprint Seen, From Space - ENN/CGS/UoM/NASA/GRL, MICHIGAN - Oct 10, 2014
www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/data/125140-damaging-pollutio…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47922
"An unexpectedly high amount of the climate-changing gas methane, the main component of natural gas, is escaping from the Four Corners region in the US Southwest, according to a new study by the University of Michigan and NASA.
The researchers mapped satellite data to uncover the nation's largest methane signal seen from space. They measured levels of the gas emitted from all sources, and found more than half a teragram per year coming from the area where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet. That's about as much methane as the entire coal, oil, and gas industries of the United Kingdom give off each year.
Four Corners sits on North America's most productive coalbed methane basin. Coalbed methane is a variety of the gas that's stuck to the surface of coal. It is dangerous to miners (not to mention canaries), but in recent decades, it's been tapped as a resource.
"There's so much coalbed methane in the Four Corners area, it doesn't need to be that crazy of a leak rate to produce the emissions that we see. A lot of the infrastructure is likely contributing," said Eric Kort, assistant professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the U-M College of Engineering.
Kort, first author of a paper on the findings published in Geophysical Research Letters, says the controversial natural gas extraction technique of hydraulic fracturing is not the main culprit.
"We see this large signal and it's persistent since 2003," Kort said. "That's a pre- fracking timeframe in this region. While fracking has become a focal point in conversations about methane emissions, it certainly appears from this and other studies that in the U.S., fossil fuel extraction activities across the board likely emit higher than inventory estimates."
While the signal represents the highest concentration of methane seen from space, the researchers caution that Four Corners isn't necessarily the highest emitting region.
"One has to be somewhat careful in equating abundances with emissions," said study contributor Christian Frankenberg at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The Four Corners methane source is in a relatively isolated area with little other methane emissions, hence causing a well distinguishable hot-spot in methane abundances. Local or more diffuse emissions in other areas, such as the eastern U.S., may be convoluted with other nearby sources." "
www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/data/125140-damaging-pollutio…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47922
"An unexpectedly high amount of the climate-changing gas methane, the main component of natural gas, is escaping from the Four Corners region in the US Southwest, according to a new study by the University of Michigan and NASA.
The researchers mapped satellite data to uncover the nation's largest methane signal seen from space. They measured levels of the gas emitted from all sources, and found more than half a teragram per year coming from the area where Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah meet. That's about as much methane as the entire coal, oil, and gas industries of the United Kingdom give off each year.
Four Corners sits on North America's most productive coalbed methane basin. Coalbed methane is a variety of the gas that's stuck to the surface of coal. It is dangerous to miners (not to mention canaries), but in recent decades, it's been tapped as a resource.
"There's so much coalbed methane in the Four Corners area, it doesn't need to be that crazy of a leak rate to produce the emissions that we see. A lot of the infrastructure is likely contributing," said Eric Kort, assistant professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the U-M College of Engineering.
Kort, first author of a paper on the findings published in Geophysical Research Letters, says the controversial natural gas extraction technique of hydraulic fracturing is not the main culprit.
"We see this large signal and it's persistent since 2003," Kort said. "That's a pre- fracking timeframe in this region. While fracking has become a focal point in conversations about methane emissions, it certainly appears from this and other studies that in the U.S., fossil fuel extraction activities across the board likely emit higher than inventory estimates."
While the signal represents the highest concentration of methane seen from space, the researchers caution that Four Corners isn't necessarily the highest emitting region.
"One has to be somewhat careful in equating abundances with emissions," said study contributor Christian Frankenberg at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "The Four Corners methane source is in a relatively isolated area with little other methane emissions, hence causing a well distinguishable hot-spot in methane abundances. Local or more diffuse emissions in other areas, such as the eastern U.S., may be convoluted with other nearby sources." "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.945.569 von Popeye82 am 04.10.14 21:32:32
Foundations 'urged to use their financial muscle, to tackle global warming' - CG/EEF/D-IC/WGF/UN/GE/P-PCF/TMF - Sep 15, 2014
www.clickgreen.org.uk/opinion/opinion/125059-foundations-urg…
"More than 150 leading environmentalists from 44 countries today called on foundations and philanthropists to use endowments worth billions of dollars to turn the tide on global warming.
The group, all winners of major environmental awards, issued their call to action in an ‘Environmental Laureates’ Declaration on Climate Change’, a week before world leaders arrive in New York for a UN Climate Summit.
- Calls to use investment billions as leverage to help counter climate change -
“We, 160 winners of the world’s environmental prizes, call on foundations and philanthropists everywhere to deploy their endowments immediately in the effort to save civilization,” say the laureates. “The world’s philanthropic foundations, given the scale of their endowments, hold the power to trigger a survival reflex in society, so greatly helping those negotiating the climate treaty.”
They include figures with national and international reputations such as Aimée Christensen (USA), Paul Gilding (Australia), Prof Dr Ernst von Weizsäcker (Germany), Peggy Liu (China), Dr Harish Hande (India), Jeunesse Park (South Africa) and Dr Jeremy Leggett (UK).
The European Environment Foundation (EEF), which circulated the declaration to prize-winning environmentalists for signature, will now write to foundations individually asking them to use their financial power to create a tipping point in climate action:
* By investing directly in clean energy companies and low-carbon projects
* By withdrawing investments from fossil fuel companies or campaigning as shareholders for them not to develop new reserves
* By making grants to support clean energy start-ups and stimulate the development of low-carbon markets.
Foundations have already begun to take action on climate change through the Divest-Invest coalition. It launched in January 2014, announcing that 17 organizations with assets of nearly $2 billion had committed to pull their investments out of fossil fuels and back clean energy instead.
Dr Ellen Dorsey, Executive Director of the Wallace Global Fund and a leader of the coalition, welcomed the declaration. She said: “The escalating climate crisis threatens the programmes of every philanthropic organization.
“Growing numbers of foundations are shifting their money from fossil fuels to clean energy so their investments help solve this crisis instead of contributing to it. We hope that our stand will encourage others to take the urgent action we now need to prevent runaway global warming.”
In a full page newspaper ad, the environmental laureates warn that the world is “heading for 4C to 6C of global warming, given current policies on the burning of coal, oil and gas”, and say they are “terrified that we will lose our ability to feed ourselves, run out of potable water, increase the scope for war, and cause the very fabric of civilization to crash.”
Their comments are based on warnings from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In the declaration they argue that climate change on this scale will not only devalue or destroy all the good work done by the world’s foundations, it will also erode the worth of their huge endowments, leaving them with “stranded assets” in companies damaged by the consequences of global warming.
Dr Jeremy Leggett, the EEF Trustee who coordinated the declaration, said: “The world’s philanthropic foundations fund work which improves the lives of millions of people around the world, but if they want that work to last they can’t afford to ignore climate change. Investing in a clean energy future is the best way to safeguard their work and their finances.
“We hope this appeal will stimulate vital investment in a clean energy future, demonstrate support for an ambitious climate change treaty, and create space for a tipping point in climate action,” said Mr Leggett, who is a Hillary Laureate for Exceptional Leadership in Climate Change Solutions.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has invited world leaders from government, finance, business and civil society to the New York Climate Summit on 23rd September, 2014, and has challenged them to make bold commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build political momentum towards a global climate change treaty at the December 2015 Paris Climate Summit.
The environmental laureates warn that time to prevent damaging global warming is fast running out and “the Paris Climate Summit may be the last chance to agree a treaty capable of saving civilization”.
However, they say that foundations and philanthropists have the financial resources to respond on a scale that would materially increase negotiators’ chances of success in Paris.
Aimée Christensen (USA), Hillary Laureate, said: "The scientific imperative for climate action has never been stronger: we face grave risks from inaction, including risks to our investments, as captured by this year's Risky Business report.
"As governments work towards Paris to put in place policies to meet the climate challenge, we need foundation endowments to align their investments with their goals of doing good around the world, joining other leading investors and businesses to transform our economies to be more efficient, resilient, secure, and price stable - and to create high quality jobs and healthier communities."
Paul Gilding (Australia), winner of the Tomorrow Magazine Environmental Leadership Award, said: "Climate change has the capacity to overwhelm all efforts in other areas such as poverty and biodiversity. Anyone concerned about improving quality of life or protecting natural areas should know that unless they also act on climate, they are likely to waste their efforts. Here in Australia we already see dramatic climate change impacts and the process has just begun.
“The solutions, like renewable energy, are ready to fly and so Foundations have a great opportunity to accelerate the change.”
Prof Dr Ernst von Weizsäcker (Germany), winner of the German Environment Prize, said: "Acceleration of climate action by foundations at this crucial, make-or-break time would send a hugely useful signal to the world of investment."
Peggy Liu (China), Hillary Laureate and Time Magazine Hero of the Environment, said: “Accelerated funding by foundations could boost climate solutions that could work to address China's emissions at gigascale and gigapace.
“Endowment capital paired with Chinese resources could commercialize affordable sustainability solutions for the world, or help China build new cities with lighter environmental impact on the world's resources, or visualize an aspirational and sustainable China Dream lifestyle for the emerging 900 million city dwellers to lessen impact on consumption.”
Dr Harish Hande (India), winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, said: "In India, we see daily the power of sustainable energy to improve the quality of life of the poor while also reducing global warming. There is so much scope for an accelerated programme of investment and funding by foundations to move the dial further on these issues, leading by example.
“Together we could well trigger a tipping point in social-change for good, just in the nick of time!"
Jeunesse Park (South Africa), winner of the UNEP Sasakawa Prize, said: "Anthropogenic climate destabilization is hitting Africa right now, and the poorest suffer, despite Africa's vast resource wealth and ideal situation to innovate and implement renewable energy, eco-agriculture, more intelligent land use, and – instinctively - to lead a lower carbon path. The idea of a ‘big boost’ in investment and grant-making is not just timely but imperative."
Dr Jeremy Leggett (UK), Hillary Laureate, said: “Foundations responding to this appeal could help those of us in the green business world who are trying to divert 5% of corporate profits to the fight against global warming. They could insist that all for-profit beneficiaries of their investments and grants give 5% of their profits to climate action causes.
“This would create a significant and wholly new pool of capital-for-good in the world, given the scale of clean-energy revolution needed if we are to beat global warming.”
James Arbib, Founder and Trustee of the Tellus Mater Foundation, said: "We applaud this critical initiative. Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity and the window to address it pre-emptively is closing fast.
“Allocation of capital is a critical lever in pursuing a solution. We are actively looking at ways to invest our endowment to support a transition to a low-carbon energy system within a long-term and sustainable financial system.
"One of the key barriers we need to overcome is the lack of sophisticated products and the associated financial infrastructure to allow us to invest in this way. We are keen to work with other foundations and long-term investors, and the financial community to help develop this emerging market."
Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation Bevis Gillett, Vice Chair, cannot: “The significance of the environmental laureates’ declaration cannot be overstated. At the Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation we are quickly waking up to the need to align our mission, our investments, and our grants, so as to keep our environmental impact within 2C of global warming.
“As a foundation what other policy choices do we have? What choices do other foundations have, if we are to address the climate crisis before it is too late? Sympathetic foundations now need to take the message on board and act as exemplars for others to follow.”
In the UK, Good Energy founder and Chief Executive Juliet Davenport said: “The world’s charitable foundations hold the power to pull money out of oil and gas companies and invest in cleaner, greener energy.” "
Foundations 'urged to use their financial muscle, to tackle global warming' - CG/EEF/D-IC/WGF/UN/GE/P-PCF/TMF - Sep 15, 2014
www.clickgreen.org.uk/opinion/opinion/125059-foundations-urg…
"More than 150 leading environmentalists from 44 countries today called on foundations and philanthropists to use endowments worth billions of dollars to turn the tide on global warming.
The group, all winners of major environmental awards, issued their call to action in an ‘Environmental Laureates’ Declaration on Climate Change’, a week before world leaders arrive in New York for a UN Climate Summit.
- Calls to use investment billions as leverage to help counter climate change -
“We, 160 winners of the world’s environmental prizes, call on foundations and philanthropists everywhere to deploy their endowments immediately in the effort to save civilization,” say the laureates. “The world’s philanthropic foundations, given the scale of their endowments, hold the power to trigger a survival reflex in society, so greatly helping those negotiating the climate treaty.”
They include figures with national and international reputations such as Aimée Christensen (USA), Paul Gilding (Australia), Prof Dr Ernst von Weizsäcker (Germany), Peggy Liu (China), Dr Harish Hande (India), Jeunesse Park (South Africa) and Dr Jeremy Leggett (UK).
The European Environment Foundation (EEF), which circulated the declaration to prize-winning environmentalists for signature, will now write to foundations individually asking them to use their financial power to create a tipping point in climate action:
* By investing directly in clean energy companies and low-carbon projects
* By withdrawing investments from fossil fuel companies or campaigning as shareholders for them not to develop new reserves
* By making grants to support clean energy start-ups and stimulate the development of low-carbon markets.
Foundations have already begun to take action on climate change through the Divest-Invest coalition. It launched in January 2014, announcing that 17 organizations with assets of nearly $2 billion had committed to pull their investments out of fossil fuels and back clean energy instead.
Dr Ellen Dorsey, Executive Director of the Wallace Global Fund and a leader of the coalition, welcomed the declaration. She said: “The escalating climate crisis threatens the programmes of every philanthropic organization.
“Growing numbers of foundations are shifting their money from fossil fuels to clean energy so their investments help solve this crisis instead of contributing to it. We hope that our stand will encourage others to take the urgent action we now need to prevent runaway global warming.”
In a full page newspaper ad, the environmental laureates warn that the world is “heading for 4C to 6C of global warming, given current policies on the burning of coal, oil and gas”, and say they are “terrified that we will lose our ability to feed ourselves, run out of potable water, increase the scope for war, and cause the very fabric of civilization to crash.”
Their comments are based on warnings from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
In the declaration they argue that climate change on this scale will not only devalue or destroy all the good work done by the world’s foundations, it will also erode the worth of their huge endowments, leaving them with “stranded assets” in companies damaged by the consequences of global warming.
Dr Jeremy Leggett, the EEF Trustee who coordinated the declaration, said: “The world’s philanthropic foundations fund work which improves the lives of millions of people around the world, but if they want that work to last they can’t afford to ignore climate change. Investing in a clean energy future is the best way to safeguard their work and their finances.
“We hope this appeal will stimulate vital investment in a clean energy future, demonstrate support for an ambitious climate change treaty, and create space for a tipping point in climate action,” said Mr Leggett, who is a Hillary Laureate for Exceptional Leadership in Climate Change Solutions.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has invited world leaders from government, finance, business and civil society to the New York Climate Summit on 23rd September, 2014, and has challenged them to make bold commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build political momentum towards a global climate change treaty at the December 2015 Paris Climate Summit.
The environmental laureates warn that time to prevent damaging global warming is fast running out and “the Paris Climate Summit may be the last chance to agree a treaty capable of saving civilization”.
However, they say that foundations and philanthropists have the financial resources to respond on a scale that would materially increase negotiators’ chances of success in Paris.
Aimée Christensen (USA), Hillary Laureate, said: "The scientific imperative for climate action has never been stronger: we face grave risks from inaction, including risks to our investments, as captured by this year's Risky Business report.
"As governments work towards Paris to put in place policies to meet the climate challenge, we need foundation endowments to align their investments with their goals of doing good around the world, joining other leading investors and businesses to transform our economies to be more efficient, resilient, secure, and price stable - and to create high quality jobs and healthier communities."
Paul Gilding (Australia), winner of the Tomorrow Magazine Environmental Leadership Award, said: "Climate change has the capacity to overwhelm all efforts in other areas such as poverty and biodiversity. Anyone concerned about improving quality of life or protecting natural areas should know that unless they also act on climate, they are likely to waste their efforts. Here in Australia we already see dramatic climate change impacts and the process has just begun.
“The solutions, like renewable energy, are ready to fly and so Foundations have a great opportunity to accelerate the change.”
Prof Dr Ernst von Weizsäcker (Germany), winner of the German Environment Prize, said: "Acceleration of climate action by foundations at this crucial, make-or-break time would send a hugely useful signal to the world of investment."
Peggy Liu (China), Hillary Laureate and Time Magazine Hero of the Environment, said: “Accelerated funding by foundations could boost climate solutions that could work to address China's emissions at gigascale and gigapace.
“Endowment capital paired with Chinese resources could commercialize affordable sustainability solutions for the world, or help China build new cities with lighter environmental impact on the world's resources, or visualize an aspirational and sustainable China Dream lifestyle for the emerging 900 million city dwellers to lessen impact on consumption.”
Dr Harish Hande (India), winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award, said: "In India, we see daily the power of sustainable energy to improve the quality of life of the poor while also reducing global warming. There is so much scope for an accelerated programme of investment and funding by foundations to move the dial further on these issues, leading by example.
“Together we could well trigger a tipping point in social-change for good, just in the nick of time!"
Jeunesse Park (South Africa), winner of the UNEP Sasakawa Prize, said: "Anthropogenic climate destabilization is hitting Africa right now, and the poorest suffer, despite Africa's vast resource wealth and ideal situation to innovate and implement renewable energy, eco-agriculture, more intelligent land use, and – instinctively - to lead a lower carbon path. The idea of a ‘big boost’ in investment and grant-making is not just timely but imperative."
Dr Jeremy Leggett (UK), Hillary Laureate, said: “Foundations responding to this appeal could help those of us in the green business world who are trying to divert 5% of corporate profits to the fight against global warming. They could insist that all for-profit beneficiaries of their investments and grants give 5% of their profits to climate action causes.
“This would create a significant and wholly new pool of capital-for-good in the world, given the scale of clean-energy revolution needed if we are to beat global warming.”
James Arbib, Founder and Trustee of the Tellus Mater Foundation, said: "We applaud this critical initiative. Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity and the window to address it pre-emptively is closing fast.
“Allocation of capital is a critical lever in pursuing a solution. We are actively looking at ways to invest our endowment to support a transition to a low-carbon energy system within a long-term and sustainable financial system.
"One of the key barriers we need to overcome is the lack of sophisticated products and the associated financial infrastructure to allow us to invest in this way. We are keen to work with other foundations and long-term investors, and the financial community to help develop this emerging market."
Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation Bevis Gillett, Vice Chair, cannot: “The significance of the environmental laureates’ declaration cannot be overstated. At the Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation we are quickly waking up to the need to align our mission, our investments, and our grants, so as to keep our environmental impact within 2C of global warming.
“As a foundation what other policy choices do we have? What choices do other foundations have, if we are to address the climate crisis before it is too late? Sympathetic foundations now need to take the message on board and act as exemplars for others to follow.”
In the UK, Good Energy founder and Chief Executive Juliet Davenport said: “The world’s charitable foundations hold the power to pull money out of oil and gas companies and invest in cleaner, greener energy.” "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.005.377 von Popeye82 am 11.10.14 00:45:41
Fish Forced Poleward - ENN/UoBC/ICES, JoMS, BRITISH COLUMBIA - Oct 10, 2014
http://news.ubc.ca/2014/10/10/fish-moving-poleward-at-rate-o…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47923
"Large numbers of fish will disappear from the tropics by 2050, finds a new University of British Columbia study that examined the impact of climate change on fish stocks. The study identified ocean hotspots for local fish extinction but also found that changing temperatures will drive more fish into the Arctic and Antarctic waters.
Using the same climate change scenarios as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, researchers projected a large-scale shift of marine fish and invertebrates. In the worst-case scenario, where the Earth's oceans warm by three degrees Celsius by 2100, fish could move away from their current habitats at a rate of 26 kilometres per decade. Under the best-case scenario, where the Earth warms by one degree Celsius, fish would move 15 kilometres every decade. This is consistent with changes in the last few decades.
"The tropics will be the overall losers," says William Cheung, associate professor at the UBC Fisheries Centre and co-author of this study, published today in ICES Journal of Marine Science. "This area has a high dependence on fish for food, diet and nutrition. We'll see a loss of fish populations that are important to the fisheries and communities in these regions."
Cheung and his colleague used modeling to predict how 802 commercially important species of fish and invertebrates react to warming water temperatures, other changing ocean properties, and new habitats opening up at the poles.
"As fish move to cooler waters, this generates new opportunities for fisheries in the Arctic," says Miranda Jones, a UBC Nereus Fellow and lead author of this study. "On the other hand it means it could disrupt the species that live there now and increase competition for resources."
This study follows previous research that looked at change in fisheries catch in relation to ocean warming since 1970. "
Fish Forced Poleward - ENN/UoBC/ICES, JoMS, BRITISH COLUMBIA - Oct 10, 2014
http://news.ubc.ca/2014/10/10/fish-moving-poleward-at-rate-o…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47923
"Large numbers of fish will disappear from the tropics by 2050, finds a new University of British Columbia study that examined the impact of climate change on fish stocks. The study identified ocean hotspots for local fish extinction but also found that changing temperatures will drive more fish into the Arctic and Antarctic waters.
Using the same climate change scenarios as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, researchers projected a large-scale shift of marine fish and invertebrates. In the worst-case scenario, where the Earth's oceans warm by three degrees Celsius by 2100, fish could move away from their current habitats at a rate of 26 kilometres per decade. Under the best-case scenario, where the Earth warms by one degree Celsius, fish would move 15 kilometres every decade. This is consistent with changes in the last few decades.
"The tropics will be the overall losers," says William Cheung, associate professor at the UBC Fisheries Centre and co-author of this study, published today in ICES Journal of Marine Science. "This area has a high dependence on fish for food, diet and nutrition. We'll see a loss of fish populations that are important to the fisheries and communities in these regions."
Cheung and his colleague used modeling to predict how 802 commercially important species of fish and invertebrates react to warming water temperatures, other changing ocean properties, and new habitats opening up at the poles.
"As fish move to cooler waters, this generates new opportunities for fisheries in the Arctic," says Miranda Jones, a UBC Nereus Fellow and lead author of this study. "On the other hand it means it could disrupt the species that live there now and increase competition for resources."
This study follows previous research that looked at change in fisheries catch in relation to ocean warming since 1970. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.005.377 von Popeye82 am 11.10.14 00:45:41
Floods Will be Chronic Problem for East Coast Cities by 2030, Study Says - CT/YE360/UoCS - Oct 9, 2014
www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2014/10/encroachin…
www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2014/10/encroachin…
www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/impacts/effects-of-tidal-flood…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/09/floods-will-be-chronic-pr…
"
By 2030, residents of Washington, D.C., and Annapolis, Maryland, could be experiencing more than 150 tidal floods every year — up from an average of just 50 today — according to a recent study of sea level rise and coastal flood risk along the U.S. East Coast by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In another 15 years, that number could jump to 400 floods annually, the study says. A home purchased in some of the more flood-prone parts of those two cities could see daily flooding before a 30-year mortgage was paid off, according to the study. The increased frequency will be driven by sea level rise, researchers say, which exacerbates the effects of so-called “nuisance flooding” linked to tidal cycles, rainfall, and storm surges.
- Relatively few cities on the East and Gulf Coasts now face tidal flooding on a regular basis (left; circle size represents the number of flood events). But by 2045, sea level rise will bring more tidal floods to nearly every location. Many communities can expect a 10-fold increase in tidal flood frequency (right). (Image credit: Union of Concerned Scientists) -
Other cities on the Atlantic coast will also see increased flood frequency: Miami, Florida, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, can expect an average of 240 flood days per year, while Philadelphia and Baltimore could average as many as 180 tidal floods by 2045, according to the study.
Over the next 30 years, coastal communities in the Eastern U.S. can expect to see a roughly one-foot increase in sea level — a mid-range scenario, by most estimates — the report noted. "
Floods Will be Chronic Problem for East Coast Cities by 2030, Study Says - CT/YE360/UoCS - Oct 9, 2014
www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2014/10/encroachin…
www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2014/10/encroachin…
www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/impacts/effects-of-tidal-flood…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/09/floods-will-be-chronic-pr…
"
By 2030, residents of Washington, D.C., and Annapolis, Maryland, could be experiencing more than 150 tidal floods every year — up from an average of just 50 today — according to a recent study of sea level rise and coastal flood risk along the U.S. East Coast by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
In another 15 years, that number could jump to 400 floods annually, the study says. A home purchased in some of the more flood-prone parts of those two cities could see daily flooding before a 30-year mortgage was paid off, according to the study. The increased frequency will be driven by sea level rise, researchers say, which exacerbates the effects of so-called “nuisance flooding” linked to tidal cycles, rainfall, and storm surges.
- Relatively few cities on the East and Gulf Coasts now face tidal flooding on a regular basis (left; circle size represents the number of flood events). But by 2045, sea level rise will bring more tidal floods to nearly every location. Many communities can expect a 10-fold increase in tidal flood frequency (right). (Image credit: Union of Concerned Scientists) -
Other cities on the Atlantic coast will also see increased flood frequency: Miami, Florida, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, can expect an average of 240 flood days per year, while Philadelphia and Baltimore could average as many as 180 tidal floods by 2045, according to the study.
Over the next 30 years, coastal communities in the Eastern U.S. can expect to see a roughly one-foot increase in sea level — a mid-range scenario, by most estimates — the report noted. "
Four Companies 'Team Up for $8,000,000,000 Green Energy Project, in California' - CT/MIT/3BLM/SFI, CALIFORNIA - Oct 9, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/09/four-companies-team-up-fo…
"An increase in research investments and growth of markets has led to a significant rise in innovation in renewable energy technologies in recent years. Over the last decade, the number of patents issued for renewable energy has gone up sharply, according to a study by MIT and the Santa Fe Institute (SFI). The increase has been most dramatic in solar and wind energy technologies.
In line with the trends of a growing market opportunity and new technologies to support renewable energy, four energy companies have come together to work on an $8-billion plan to transmit electric power produced in Wyoming to Southern California through transmission lines. This will be done with the help of an innovative energy generation and storage system to be built in Utah.
The four companies that will submit a formal plan to the Southern California Public Power Authority, which is seeking proposals for renewable energy and energy storage projects, include Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy, Magnum Energy, Dresser-Rand Group Inc., and Duke-American Transmission.
Under the plan, Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy would build and operate a $4-billion wind farm in Wyoming. The wind farm will generate up to 2,100 MW of power, which would be largely dedicated to California’s Los Angeles basin. Additionally, Pathfinder, Magnum Energy and Dresser-Rand would also build a $1.5-billion compressed air storage system in Utah. This facility will have a capacity of 1,200 MW and would be filled with air during periods when demand for power is low.
Duke-American Transmission will build a $2.6-billion transmission line to connect the Utah storage facility with the Wyoming wind farm. From here, the electric power would be linked with an existing transmission line that would ship electricity from Utah to California. The companies said that some parts of the project were already on the drawing board, but creating an integrated package is new. According to the partners, the price of electricity that is produced from this project would be attractive to users because the wind turbines in this project are expected to be some of the most productive in the country.
Article by Vikas Vij of Justmeans, appearing courtesy 3BL Media. "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/09/four-companies-team-up-fo…
"An increase in research investments and growth of markets has led to a significant rise in innovation in renewable energy technologies in recent years. Over the last decade, the number of patents issued for renewable energy has gone up sharply, according to a study by MIT and the Santa Fe Institute (SFI). The increase has been most dramatic in solar and wind energy technologies.
In line with the trends of a growing market opportunity and new technologies to support renewable energy, four energy companies have come together to work on an $8-billion plan to transmit electric power produced in Wyoming to Southern California through transmission lines. This will be done with the help of an innovative energy generation and storage system to be built in Utah.
The four companies that will submit a formal plan to the Southern California Public Power Authority, which is seeking proposals for renewable energy and energy storage projects, include Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy, Magnum Energy, Dresser-Rand Group Inc., and Duke-American Transmission.
Under the plan, Pathfinder Renewable Wind Energy would build and operate a $4-billion wind farm in Wyoming. The wind farm will generate up to 2,100 MW of power, which would be largely dedicated to California’s Los Angeles basin. Additionally, Pathfinder, Magnum Energy and Dresser-Rand would also build a $1.5-billion compressed air storage system in Utah. This facility will have a capacity of 1,200 MW and would be filled with air during periods when demand for power is low.
Duke-American Transmission will build a $2.6-billion transmission line to connect the Utah storage facility with the Wyoming wind farm. From here, the electric power would be linked with an existing transmission line that would ship electricity from Utah to California. The companies said that some parts of the project were already on the drawing board, but creating an integrated package is new. According to the partners, the price of electricity that is produced from this project would be attractive to users because the wind turbines in this project are expected to be some of the most productive in the country.
Article by Vikas Vij of Justmeans, appearing courtesy 3BL Media. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.537.041 von JACKYONE am 16.08.14 22:31:23
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
In dem Artikel steht dass eine (holländische)Gruppe genauuu daaaaas vorhat -den Mars zu kolonialisieren.
Im Jahr 2022.
Das MIT aber quasi "technische Einwände" hat.
mir ging es bei der Ausgangsbemerkung auch nicht darum wann das, nun, sein wird, welcher Planet, wenn, in wieweit das technisch, schon, möglich wäre, oder nicht, und was dafür vielleicht noch erforderlich wäre.
Hier wird Deren Vorhaben -zumindest in deeer Form- als sehr unrealistisch bezeichnet -der CEO der Firma widerspricht dieser Darstellung-, darum geht es mir aber nicht.
Natürlich war die Bemerkung "leiiicht schnippisch", aber ich halte es letzten Endes schon für seeehr weahrscheinlich dass "wir", die Menschheit, über "kurz oder lang" andere Planet(en) besiedeln werden.
ich glaube dass unsere Phantasie teilweise zu arm für die Realität ist.
Wenn wir uns davor nicht selber auslöschen.
Was ich, zumindest, nicht als "reiiin theoretische Möglichkeit" sehe.
Der Artikel ist englisch, die Vorabbemerkung Deutsch, kannst also ruhig etwas dazu sagen.
Atlantic reporter Tim Fernholz writes that MIT researchers have analyzed Mars One’s plans for a colonization project on Mars, Expected Fatality Rate for That Mars Reality Show: 100 Percent - TA/MIT/IAC - Oct 9, 2014
http://qz.com/82959/convincing-500000-people-to-spend-the-re…
http://web.mit.edu/sydneydo/Public/Mars%20One%20Feasibility%…
www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/expected-fata…
www.spacex.com/falcon-heavy
"
Mars One, an organization based in the Netherlands, has been recruiting amateur astronauts to send on a one-way, televised trip to Mars, with the hopes of building a colony there. The organization says that the technology to do this exists, or will be ready by the time of its expected 2022 launch date.
Not so fast, says a group of strategic engineering graduate students at MIT. A simulation of the Mars One plan shared with the public at the recent International Astronautical Congress reveals the colonization project will likely end in disaster unless expensive changes are made.
More From Quartz
Mars One plans on sending crews of four every two years to the Red Planet, where they will live inside space capsules and inflatable habitats, wringing water from the Martian soil and growing much of their own food. The researchers took into account the various factors necessary for survival—maintaining a breathable atmosphere, avoiding starvation and dehydration, preventing fire and depressurization—to see what the colony would need.
It takes 68 days for the first crew member to die.*
That projected fatality is the result of suffocation, space-style: The researchers found that growing plants would increase the amount of oxygen in the air to the point where it would need to be vented outside of the habitat to avoid increasing the pressure within the life support unit.
But there isn’t technology yet to vent oxygen separately from nitrogen, and indiscriminate venting would quickly cause the colonists to run out of the nitrogen used to maintain pressure, creating a situation where there will not be enough air pressure for crew members to breathe, but enough oxygen in the habitat to create serious fire danger.
And did I mention that humidity in the capsule will hover around 100 percent, thanks to the agricultural efforts?
These failures sent the researchers back to the drawing board, considering options that would avoid this problem by bringing all of the food needed for the colonists or growing it in a completely separate habitat. Both of these options are more feasible, but require far larger shipments of supplies than Mars One’s organizers have planned.
Ironically, it’s more efficient to simply bring food to Mars than attempt to grow it, since the additional infrastructure for the plants will require far more replacement parts. Ultimately, supporting the first crew of four on Mars will require about 15 launches of a heavy rocket like SpaceX’s forthcoming Falcon Heavy, costing about $4.5 billion on their own.
Given that Mars One’s projected budget for the first crew—including launches, years of training, supplies, specially built spacecraft and habitats, ground control, communications technology, and a Martian rover—is $6 billion, they’d better start thinking up new fundraising tactics, or hope the costs of space access drop dramatically in the next eight years.
* Bas Lansdorp, CEO and co-founder of Mars One, disputes this analysis, writing to say that “lack of time for support from us combined with their limited experience results in incorrect conclusions.” Lansdorp believes that adapting medical oxygen concentrators will address atmosphere control issues and that the MIT researchers over-estimate the weight of their components, but was unable to share any other details about his Mars plan. "
Zitat von JACKYONE: Wer ernsthaft sowas meint :
ob die Marskolonialisierung letztlich alternativlos ist, was 'gut wäre'.
...
Hat m.M.n. eh ein Rad ab.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
In dem Artikel steht dass eine (holländische)Gruppe genauuu daaaaas vorhat -den Mars zu kolonialisieren.
Im Jahr 2022.
Das MIT aber quasi "technische Einwände" hat.
mir ging es bei der Ausgangsbemerkung auch nicht darum wann das, nun, sein wird, welcher Planet, wenn, in wieweit das technisch, schon, möglich wäre, oder nicht, und was dafür vielleicht noch erforderlich wäre.
Hier wird Deren Vorhaben -zumindest in deeer Form- als sehr unrealistisch bezeichnet -der CEO der Firma widerspricht dieser Darstellung-, darum geht es mir aber nicht.
Natürlich war die Bemerkung "leiiicht schnippisch", aber ich halte es letzten Endes schon für seeehr weahrscheinlich dass "wir", die Menschheit, über "kurz oder lang" andere Planet(en) besiedeln werden.
ich glaube dass unsere Phantasie teilweise zu arm für die Realität ist.
Wenn wir uns davor nicht selber auslöschen.
Was ich, zumindest, nicht als "reiiin theoretische Möglichkeit" sehe.
Der Artikel ist englisch, die Vorabbemerkung Deutsch, kannst also ruhig etwas dazu sagen.
Atlantic reporter Tim Fernholz writes that MIT researchers have analyzed Mars One’s plans for a colonization project on Mars, Expected Fatality Rate for That Mars Reality Show: 100 Percent - TA/MIT/IAC - Oct 9, 2014
http://qz.com/82959/convincing-500000-people-to-spend-the-re…
http://web.mit.edu/sydneydo/Public/Mars%20One%20Feasibility%…
www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/10/expected-fata…
www.spacex.com/falcon-heavy
"
Mars One, an organization based in the Netherlands, has been recruiting amateur astronauts to send on a one-way, televised trip to Mars, with the hopes of building a colony there. The organization says that the technology to do this exists, or will be ready by the time of its expected 2022 launch date.
Not so fast, says a group of strategic engineering graduate students at MIT. A simulation of the Mars One plan shared with the public at the recent International Astronautical Congress reveals the colonization project will likely end in disaster unless expensive changes are made.
More From Quartz
Mars One plans on sending crews of four every two years to the Red Planet, where they will live inside space capsules and inflatable habitats, wringing water from the Martian soil and growing much of their own food. The researchers took into account the various factors necessary for survival—maintaining a breathable atmosphere, avoiding starvation and dehydration, preventing fire and depressurization—to see what the colony would need.
It takes 68 days for the first crew member to die.*
That projected fatality is the result of suffocation, space-style: The researchers found that growing plants would increase the amount of oxygen in the air to the point where it would need to be vented outside of the habitat to avoid increasing the pressure within the life support unit.
But there isn’t technology yet to vent oxygen separately from nitrogen, and indiscriminate venting would quickly cause the colonists to run out of the nitrogen used to maintain pressure, creating a situation where there will not be enough air pressure for crew members to breathe, but enough oxygen in the habitat to create serious fire danger.
And did I mention that humidity in the capsule will hover around 100 percent, thanks to the agricultural efforts?
These failures sent the researchers back to the drawing board, considering options that would avoid this problem by bringing all of the food needed for the colonists or growing it in a completely separate habitat. Both of these options are more feasible, but require far larger shipments of supplies than Mars One’s organizers have planned.
Ironically, it’s more efficient to simply bring food to Mars than attempt to grow it, since the additional infrastructure for the plants will require far more replacement parts. Ultimately, supporting the first crew of four on Mars will require about 15 launches of a heavy rocket like SpaceX’s forthcoming Falcon Heavy, costing about $4.5 billion on their own.
Given that Mars One’s projected budget for the first crew—including launches, years of training, supplies, specially built spacecraft and habitats, ground control, communications technology, and a Martian rover—is $6 billion, they’d better start thinking up new fundraising tactics, or hope the costs of space access drop dramatically in the next eight years.
* Bas Lansdorp, CEO and co-founder of Mars One, disputes this analysis, writing to say that “lack of time for support from us combined with their limited experience results in incorrect conclusions.” Lansdorp believes that adapting medical oxygen concentrators will address atmosphere control issues and that the MIT researchers over-estimate the weight of their components, but was unable to share any other details about his Mars plan. "
Crude from oil sands not dirty: European Union, The EU new plan changes how refiners label the carbon intensity of their fuel
www.mining.com/crude-from-oil-sands-not-dirty-european-union…
"The European Union has changed its plans to label oil sands as “dirty” in a decision that would open market in the old continent to fuel generated in Canada.
The Fuel Quality Directive proposal, published by the European Commission on Tuesday, but disclosed in June, drops a mandatory requirement for oil sands oil to be labelled as unclean and highly polluting.
Refiners would now only required to report an average carbon rating of their stock of petrol, diesel, liquefied petroleum gas and compressed natural gas.
The move comes conveniently at a time when tensions between the EU and top oil supplier Russia are running high.
- Oil sands in Fort McMurray, Alberta. -
The new plan requires refiners to report an average emissions value of the feedstock used in the products they produce, dropping a requirement to single out oil sands content.
“It is no secret that our initial proposal could not go through due to resistance faced in some Member States,” EU climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard said in a statement.
Members to vote
The commission agreed in 2011 that oil sands fuel should receive a carbon rating a fifth higher than for standard oil, but some member states balked at the move.
The move to change how refiners label the carbon intensity of their fuel is expected to drawn sharp criticism from environmentalists and politicians. This despite the fact the new proposal retains a formula for calculating the carbon intensity of varied fuels types over their life-cycles.
“I strongly recommend Member States to adopt this proposal and keep the safeguards that will allow cleaner fuels to be used in transport across Europe,” Hedegaard said.
The plan must now be debated by member states, and a resolution could take less than two months. "
www.mining.com/crude-from-oil-sands-not-dirty-european-union…
"The European Union has changed its plans to label oil sands as “dirty” in a decision that would open market in the old continent to fuel generated in Canada.
The Fuel Quality Directive proposal, published by the European Commission on Tuesday, but disclosed in June, drops a mandatory requirement for oil sands oil to be labelled as unclean and highly polluting.
Refiners would now only required to report an average carbon rating of their stock of petrol, diesel, liquefied petroleum gas and compressed natural gas.
The move comes conveniently at a time when tensions between the EU and top oil supplier Russia are running high.
- Oil sands in Fort McMurray, Alberta. -
The new plan requires refiners to report an average emissions value of the feedstock used in the products they produce, dropping a requirement to single out oil sands content.
“It is no secret that our initial proposal could not go through due to resistance faced in some Member States,” EU climate action commissioner Connie Hedegaard said in a statement.
Members to vote
The commission agreed in 2011 that oil sands fuel should receive a carbon rating a fifth higher than for standard oil, but some member states balked at the move.
The move to change how refiners label the carbon intensity of their fuel is expected to drawn sharp criticism from environmentalists and politicians. This despite the fact the new proposal retains a formula for calculating the carbon intensity of varied fuels types over their life-cycles.
“I strongly recommend Member States to adopt this proposal and keep the safeguards that will allow cleaner fuels to be used in transport across Europe,” Hedegaard said.
The plan must now be debated by member states, and a resolution could take less than two months. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.005.377 von Popeye82 am 11.10.14 00:45:41
We can meet 2C climate target –&here's how, say energy experts, Sir Bob Watson +a team of climate experts lay out a step-by-step action plan on how to meet global warming limit, but say success depends on ‘immediate, urgent, action’
www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/10/we-can-meet-c2-c…
"
- Former UK government scientific adviser Sir Bob Watson says the steps needed to meet the C2 target, laid out in the report, are ‘hardly rocket science’. Photograph: Tony Buckingham/Rex Features -
Meeting a target of keeping global temperature from rising above 2C is still possible, according to 30 leading climate and energy experts.
The authors, who include former UK government scientific adviser Sir Bob Watson, conclude that staying under 2C needs “immediate, urgent action” at the highest levels of governments. The Tackling the Challenge of Climate Change report was presented at Ban Ki-moon’s UN climate summit in New York last month.
Watson rejects any suggestion that 2C is an inappropriate target saying it “plays into the hands of climate deniers” and would be a step backward from the urgent action that’s needed.
Waiting until 2025 or 2030 to bend the CO2 emissions curve will be too late to meet the 2C target. That would hit most of Africa, many small island states and the world’s poorest very hard.
The report is a “short, punchy document focused on near-term solutions,” said Watson while acknowledging there is little new in it. The steps outlined to achieve 2C are “hardly rocket science”.
These steps include increased energy efficiency in all sectors — building retrofits can achieve 70-90% reductions — and an effective price on carbon that reflects the enormous health and environmental costs of fossil fuels. Tackling air pollution is estimated to cost China 10% of its GDP. Retiring inefficient coal plants while only building new coal with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and massive increases in wind and solar PV are also crucial.
Governments need to follow countries like Germany and Denmark that have made climate a priority and are well along this path to creating low-carbon economies and benefiting from less pollution and creation of a new economic sector the report notes.
“We have the technology and know-how to solve this climate crisis,” said Marlene Moses, Ambassador of the Pacific Island nation of Nauru that commissioned the report.
“What is missing is the courage to make the change – and that has to come from world leaders,” said Moses, who is also the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis).
Nearly half of the world’s most powerful corporations are in the fossil fuel sector. They have extraordinary influence on government policies that Watson calls “a form of corruption” preventing the necessary action on climate. In countries like the US, Australia and Canada, industry leads and government follows he said.
Watson worries that time is rapidly running out but “people aren’t scared enough” to force governments to act. "
We can meet 2C climate target –&here's how, say energy experts, Sir Bob Watson +a team of climate experts lay out a step-by-step action plan on how to meet global warming limit, but say success depends on ‘immediate, urgent, action’
www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/10/we-can-meet-c2-c…
"
- Former UK government scientific adviser Sir Bob Watson says the steps needed to meet the C2 target, laid out in the report, are ‘hardly rocket science’. Photograph: Tony Buckingham/Rex Features -
Meeting a target of keeping global temperature from rising above 2C is still possible, according to 30 leading climate and energy experts.
The authors, who include former UK government scientific adviser Sir Bob Watson, conclude that staying under 2C needs “immediate, urgent action” at the highest levels of governments. The Tackling the Challenge of Climate Change report was presented at Ban Ki-moon’s UN climate summit in New York last month.
Watson rejects any suggestion that 2C is an inappropriate target saying it “plays into the hands of climate deniers” and would be a step backward from the urgent action that’s needed.
Waiting until 2025 or 2030 to bend the CO2 emissions curve will be too late to meet the 2C target. That would hit most of Africa, many small island states and the world’s poorest very hard.
The report is a “short, punchy document focused on near-term solutions,” said Watson while acknowledging there is little new in it. The steps outlined to achieve 2C are “hardly rocket science”.
These steps include increased energy efficiency in all sectors — building retrofits can achieve 70-90% reductions — and an effective price on carbon that reflects the enormous health and environmental costs of fossil fuels. Tackling air pollution is estimated to cost China 10% of its GDP. Retiring inefficient coal plants while only building new coal with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and massive increases in wind and solar PV are also crucial.
Governments need to follow countries like Germany and Denmark that have made climate a priority and are well along this path to creating low-carbon economies and benefiting from less pollution and creation of a new economic sector the report notes.
“We have the technology and know-how to solve this climate crisis,” said Marlene Moses, Ambassador of the Pacific Island nation of Nauru that commissioned the report.
“What is missing is the courage to make the change – and that has to come from world leaders,” said Moses, who is also the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis).
Nearly half of the world’s most powerful corporations are in the fossil fuel sector. They have extraordinary influence on government policies that Watson calls “a form of corruption” preventing the necessary action on climate. In countries like the US, Australia and Canada, industry leads and government follows he said.
Watson worries that time is rapidly running out but “people aren’t scared enough” to force governments to act. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.018.670 von Popeye82 am 13.10.14 12:42:21
Global CCS Institute addresses heads of world's leading steel companies, CEOs of many of the world's largest Steel companies including Arcelor Mittal, Nippon Steel, Posco, Tata Steel, Nucor, BlueScope Steel +Arrium were in the audience to hear the latest developments in CCS +the essential role CCS can play in enabling the cost-effective decarbonisation of global energy systems - GCCSI, MOSCOW - Oct 10 2014
www.globalccsinstitute.com/news/institute-updates/global-ccs…
"Global CCS Institute Addresses heads of the World’s Leading Steel Companies Moscow, 6th October 2014
The global steel industry peak membership organisation, the World Steel Association recently held it's 48th annual conference in Moscow. Sustainability was a major theme for the conference, with the release of the Association's 2014 Sustainability Indicators and a presentation by the Global CCS Institute's Andrew Purvis, General Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
- The Institute's General Manager, EMEA region, Andy Purvis addresses the World Steel Association in Moscow -
CEOs of many of the world’s largest Steel companies including Arcelor Mittal, Nippon Steel, Posco, Tata Steel, Nucor, BlueScope Steel and Arrium were in the audience to hear the latest developments in CCS and the essential role CCS can play in enabling the cost-effective decarbonisation of global energy systems. There are many opportunities for CCS technologies to reduce carbon emissions from steel making, including capture and sequestration of emissions directly from blast furnace gas and direct reduction processes. The World Steel Association CO2 Breakthrough Programme is helping to fast-track these technologies.
Andy went on to give an update on the latest news in the CCS industry - the launch of the Boundary Dam CCS facility in Canada, the world's first commercial CCS process at a coal-fired power station. This was followed by a summary of the challenges and opportunities faced by the CCS industry around three critical elements – Technology, Policy and Markets, and Public Acceptance, closing with a challenge to the industry to play a role in supporting the development and deployment of CCS technology in their industry.
At the same meeting the CEO of Emirates Steel, Mr Saeed Al Romaithi explained the background for the globally significant Mussafah CCS project in Abu Dhabi, a joint venture between Emirates Steel, Masdar and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
The Institute will continue to engage with and work with the Steel Industry through our close collaboration with the World Steel Association.
- Emirates Steel CEO Mr. Saeed Al Romaithi giving an update on the Abu Dhabi steel CCS project - "
Global CCS Institute addresses heads of world's leading steel companies, CEOs of many of the world's largest Steel companies including Arcelor Mittal, Nippon Steel, Posco, Tata Steel, Nucor, BlueScope Steel +Arrium were in the audience to hear the latest developments in CCS +the essential role CCS can play in enabling the cost-effective decarbonisation of global energy systems - GCCSI, MOSCOW - Oct 10 2014
www.globalccsinstitute.com/news/institute-updates/global-ccs…
"Global CCS Institute Addresses heads of the World’s Leading Steel Companies Moscow, 6th October 2014
The global steel industry peak membership organisation, the World Steel Association recently held it's 48th annual conference in Moscow. Sustainability was a major theme for the conference, with the release of the Association's 2014 Sustainability Indicators and a presentation by the Global CCS Institute's Andrew Purvis, General Manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
- The Institute's General Manager, EMEA region, Andy Purvis addresses the World Steel Association in Moscow -
CEOs of many of the world’s largest Steel companies including Arcelor Mittal, Nippon Steel, Posco, Tata Steel, Nucor, BlueScope Steel and Arrium were in the audience to hear the latest developments in CCS and the essential role CCS can play in enabling the cost-effective decarbonisation of global energy systems. There are many opportunities for CCS technologies to reduce carbon emissions from steel making, including capture and sequestration of emissions directly from blast furnace gas and direct reduction processes. The World Steel Association CO2 Breakthrough Programme is helping to fast-track these technologies.
Andy went on to give an update on the latest news in the CCS industry - the launch of the Boundary Dam CCS facility in Canada, the world's first commercial CCS process at a coal-fired power station. This was followed by a summary of the challenges and opportunities faced by the CCS industry around three critical elements – Technology, Policy and Markets, and Public Acceptance, closing with a challenge to the industry to play a role in supporting the development and deployment of CCS technology in their industry.
At the same meeting the CEO of Emirates Steel, Mr Saeed Al Romaithi explained the background for the globally significant Mussafah CCS project in Abu Dhabi, a joint venture between Emirates Steel, Masdar and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
The Institute will continue to engage with and work with the Steel Industry through our close collaboration with the World Steel Association.
- Emirates Steel CEO Mr. Saeed Al Romaithi giving an update on the Abu Dhabi steel CCS project - "
New bioplastic 'set to accelerate 3D printing market', One of the UK’s leading bioplastics developers, Biome Bioplastics, has launched a new material for the 3D printing industry. Made from plant starches, Biome3D is a biodegradable plastic that combines easy processing +a superior print finish, while offering much higher print speeds... - BioFPR/BB - Oct 2, 2014
www.biofpr.com/details/news/6803281/New_bioplastic_set_to_ac…
"One of the UK’s leading bioplastics developers, Biome Bioplastics, has launched a new material for the 3D printing industry. Made from plant starches, Biome3D is a biodegradable plastic that combines easy processing and a superior print finish, while offering much higher print speeds...
Developed in partnership with 3Dom Filaments, the new material was unveiled at the TCT Show 2014, the leading event dedicated to 3D printing, additive manufacturing and product development. Plant-based plastics are already a popular choice for 3D printing because they are much easier to work with during processing, and are food safe and odour free. They are a great example of how sustainable alternatives can gain market share based on their performance, rather than just their ‘green credentials’. However, oil-based printing filaments are still used because they have a higher softening point and make more flexible models that will bend before they break.
Biome3D combines the benefits of both plant and oil-based printing filaments and demonstrates that high performance plant-based plastics can be the ideal material for the 3D printing industry. Biome3D combines a superior finish and flexibility, with ease of processing and excellent printed detail. In addition, and perhaps most importantly for the industry, it runs at much higher print speeds, reducing overall job times.
“The future of bioplastics lies in demonstrating that plant-based materials can outperform their traditional, oil-based counterparts. Our new material for the 3D printing market exemplifies that philosophy. Biome3D combines the best processing qualities with the best product finish; it also happens to be made from natural, renewable resources,” explains Sally Morley, Sales Director at Biome Bioplastics.
Biome Bioplastics develops high performance, plant-based plastics for a wide range of applications, from catering to electronics. The company is committed to challenging the dominance of oil-based plastics and changing perceptions of the capabilities of biopolymers. Last year Biome Bioplastics launched the first compostable solution for single-serve coffee pods, one of the fastest growing segments of the food and drinks industry. The partnership with 3Dom Filaments represents their first move into the 3D printing industry.
3D printing has been heralded as an important step towards more sustainable manufacturing. Potential environmental benefits include reduced transport emissions from lighter materials that can be developed closer to point of purchase, more efficient use of raw materials, and reduced number of parts needed for assembly. 3D printing also gives the ability to produce products on demand and to customise and optimise parts to improve efficiency.
About Biome Bioplastics
Biome Bioplastics is one of the UK’s leading developers of intelligent, natural plastics. The company’s mission is to produce bioplastics that can challenge the dominance of oil-based polymers, and ultimately replace them completely. Biome Bioplastics develops high performance, plant-based plastics for a wide range of applications, from catering to electronics, changing perceptions of the capabilities of biopolymers.
For further information about Biome Bioplastics, please visit the website here "
www.biofpr.com/details/news/6803281/New_bioplastic_set_to_ac…
"One of the UK’s leading bioplastics developers, Biome Bioplastics, has launched a new material for the 3D printing industry. Made from plant starches, Biome3D is a biodegradable plastic that combines easy processing and a superior print finish, while offering much higher print speeds...
Developed in partnership with 3Dom Filaments, the new material was unveiled at the TCT Show 2014, the leading event dedicated to 3D printing, additive manufacturing and product development. Plant-based plastics are already a popular choice for 3D printing because they are much easier to work with during processing, and are food safe and odour free. They are a great example of how sustainable alternatives can gain market share based on their performance, rather than just their ‘green credentials’. However, oil-based printing filaments are still used because they have a higher softening point and make more flexible models that will bend before they break.
Biome3D combines the benefits of both plant and oil-based printing filaments and demonstrates that high performance plant-based plastics can be the ideal material for the 3D printing industry. Biome3D combines a superior finish and flexibility, with ease of processing and excellent printed detail. In addition, and perhaps most importantly for the industry, it runs at much higher print speeds, reducing overall job times.
“The future of bioplastics lies in demonstrating that plant-based materials can outperform their traditional, oil-based counterparts. Our new material for the 3D printing market exemplifies that philosophy. Biome3D combines the best processing qualities with the best product finish; it also happens to be made from natural, renewable resources,” explains Sally Morley, Sales Director at Biome Bioplastics.
Biome Bioplastics develops high performance, plant-based plastics for a wide range of applications, from catering to electronics. The company is committed to challenging the dominance of oil-based plastics and changing perceptions of the capabilities of biopolymers. Last year Biome Bioplastics launched the first compostable solution for single-serve coffee pods, one of the fastest growing segments of the food and drinks industry. The partnership with 3Dom Filaments represents their first move into the 3D printing industry.
3D printing has been heralded as an important step towards more sustainable manufacturing. Potential environmental benefits include reduced transport emissions from lighter materials that can be developed closer to point of purchase, more efficient use of raw materials, and reduced number of parts needed for assembly. 3D printing also gives the ability to produce products on demand and to customise and optimise parts to improve efficiency.
About Biome Bioplastics
Biome Bioplastics is one of the UK’s leading developers of intelligent, natural plastics. The company’s mission is to produce bioplastics that can challenge the dominance of oil-based polymers, and ultimately replace them completely. Biome Bioplastics develops high performance, plant-based plastics for a wide range of applications, from catering to electronics, changing perceptions of the capabilities of biopolymers.
For further information about Biome Bioplastics, please visit the website here "
'Could California Be Facing A Mega-Drought'? - ENN - Oct 15, 2014
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47937
"Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink
I moved to San Francisco six months ago and my umbrella hasn’t left its dusty sleeve yet. Scientists and politicians, everyone agrees: California is in deep trouble. As the state enters its fourth year of drought and the soil has never been drier. Some look at the sky with hope that El Niño will bring much needed rain. But most are starting to wonder if this is just the beginning. Are we entering a mega-drought that could last for more than a decade?
Agriculture, one of California’s strongest pillars, has taken the biggest hit: the drought will cost at least $2.2 billion in agricultural losses this year alone. Fields of dead almond trees and dried-out crops are a common sight in central California these days. Central Valley towns are also growing desperate. Many have been forced to install porta-potties in their backyards or even steal water from fire hydrants.
Despite the tremendous efforts for saving water, most Californians are still not aware of the magnitude of the problem.
Many believe that the drought can’t be that bad if water still comes out of everyone's tap, right?
California is borrowing most of this water, either from neighboring states or depleting ground water reservoirs. But experts say this will come back to haunt Californians.
Mark Cowin, director of the California Department of Water Resources, told the Los Angeles Times that our current ground water withdrawal levels are so dangerous that "We are essentially borrowing on tomorrow’s future. We’ll pay that price over time."
Global warming link?
A recent study headed by climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh of Stanford University linked the drought with human-made global warming and climate change. The paper concludes that "extreme atmospheric high pressure in this region--which is strongly linked to unusually low precipitation in California--is much more likely to occur today than prior to the emission of greenhouse gases that began during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s."
Diffenbaugh and his colleagues used computer simulations and statistical analysis to show that "a persistent region of high atmospheric pressure over the Pacific Ocean—one that diverted storms away from California—was much more likely to form in the presence of modern greenhouse gas concentrations."
But could this go on for decades?
Mega-droughts, which last decades, are what Cornell University scientist Toby Ault calls the "great white sharks of climate: powerful, dangerous and hard to detect before it’s too late," dubbing them "a threat to civilization.:
And he told USA Today that he’s "not optimistic" about the Southwestern U.S. avoiding a mega-drought.
"As we add greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -and we haven’t put the brakes on stopping this - we are weighting the dice for mega-drought conditions."
If does become a mega-drought, Ault warned it could be "even worse than anything experienced by any humans who have lived in that part of the world for the last few thousand years."
What can the state of California do to prepare?
Experts say that while water conservation is important, it won’t be enough. The state must also invest in new technologies like water desalinization plants."If California suffered something like a multi-decade drought, the best-case scenario would be some combination of conservation, technological improvements (such as desalinization plants), multi-state cooperation on the drought, economic-based water transfers from agriculture to urban areas and other things like that to get humans through the drought," said University of Arizona climate scientist Gregg Garfin. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47937
"Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink
I moved to San Francisco six months ago and my umbrella hasn’t left its dusty sleeve yet. Scientists and politicians, everyone agrees: California is in deep trouble. As the state enters its fourth year of drought and the soil has never been drier. Some look at the sky with hope that El Niño will bring much needed rain. But most are starting to wonder if this is just the beginning. Are we entering a mega-drought that could last for more than a decade?
Agriculture, one of California’s strongest pillars, has taken the biggest hit: the drought will cost at least $2.2 billion in agricultural losses this year alone. Fields of dead almond trees and dried-out crops are a common sight in central California these days. Central Valley towns are also growing desperate. Many have been forced to install porta-potties in their backyards or even steal water from fire hydrants.
Despite the tremendous efforts for saving water, most Californians are still not aware of the magnitude of the problem.
Many believe that the drought can’t be that bad if water still comes out of everyone's tap, right?
California is borrowing most of this water, either from neighboring states or depleting ground water reservoirs. But experts say this will come back to haunt Californians.
Mark Cowin, director of the California Department of Water Resources, told the Los Angeles Times that our current ground water withdrawal levels are so dangerous that "We are essentially borrowing on tomorrow’s future. We’ll pay that price over time."
Global warming link?
A recent study headed by climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh of Stanford University linked the drought with human-made global warming and climate change. The paper concludes that "extreme atmospheric high pressure in this region--which is strongly linked to unusually low precipitation in California--is much more likely to occur today than prior to the emission of greenhouse gases that began during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s."
Diffenbaugh and his colleagues used computer simulations and statistical analysis to show that "a persistent region of high atmospheric pressure over the Pacific Ocean—one that diverted storms away from California—was much more likely to form in the presence of modern greenhouse gas concentrations."
But could this go on for decades?
Mega-droughts, which last decades, are what Cornell University scientist Toby Ault calls the "great white sharks of climate: powerful, dangerous and hard to detect before it’s too late," dubbing them "a threat to civilization.:
And he told USA Today that he’s "not optimistic" about the Southwestern U.S. avoiding a mega-drought.
"As we add greenhouse gases into the atmosphere -and we haven’t put the brakes on stopping this - we are weighting the dice for mega-drought conditions."
If does become a mega-drought, Ault warned it could be "even worse than anything experienced by any humans who have lived in that part of the world for the last few thousand years."
What can the state of California do to prepare?
Experts say that while water conservation is important, it won’t be enough. The state must also invest in new technologies like water desalinization plants."If California suffered something like a multi-decade drought, the best-case scenario would be some combination of conservation, technological improvements (such as desalinization plants), multi-state cooperation on the drought, economic-based water transfers from agriculture to urban areas and other things like that to get humans through the drought," said University of Arizona climate scientist Gregg Garfin. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.891.315 von Popeye82 am 27.09.14 17:03:28
hat jetzt stattgefunden.
RFF Policy Leadership Forum: A Conversation with Gina McCarthy, Administrator, US Environmental Protection Agency, RFF President Phil Sharp +EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy discuss the economics of critical environmental issues facing the nation
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/A-Conversation-with-EPA-Administrat…
hat jetzt stattgefunden.
RFF Policy Leadership Forum: A Conversation with Gina McCarthy, Administrator, US Environmental Protection Agency, RFF President Phil Sharp +EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy discuss the economics of critical environmental issues facing the nation
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/A-Conversation-with-EPA-Administrat…
Space Weather +OUR weather - ENN/NC/BAS/FMI/UO, OTAGO - Oct 14, 2014
- R. Greenway -
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47931
"What is "space weather"? And how might it affect weather on Earth?
Researchers have discovered a formerly undetected impact of space weather on the polar atmosphere, which may explain some previously unexplained variations in winter weather patterns. Their results, published today (Tuesday 14 October), in the journal Nature Communications could have important implications for seasonal weather forecasting.
The international team from the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Otago University and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) studied data from three different satellites over an 11 year period. They found that energetic electrons (highly charged particles created by the sun) from the outer radiation belt hitting the Earth’s atmosphere cause ozone loss high above the Earth.
Vast quantities of energetic electrons are found in the Earth’s radiation belts, trapped there by the Earth’s magnetic field. During magnetic storms, which are driven by the solar wind, the electrons accelerate to high speeds and ”�rain’ into the atmosphere at the poles. The temporary, but frequent, ozone loss occurring as a result of these ”�rains’ may explain changes in wind patterns which affect regional winter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere by a maximum of plus or minus 5 degrees centigrade. The variation in temperature is only seen during winter because of the complex linkages from space through to the Earth’s surface.
Image of Earth from space via Shutterstock.
Read more at British Antarctic Survey. "
- R. Greenway -
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47931
"What is "space weather"? And how might it affect weather on Earth?
Researchers have discovered a formerly undetected impact of space weather on the polar atmosphere, which may explain some previously unexplained variations in winter weather patterns. Their results, published today (Tuesday 14 October), in the journal Nature Communications could have important implications for seasonal weather forecasting.
The international team from the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Otago University and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) studied data from three different satellites over an 11 year period. They found that energetic electrons (highly charged particles created by the sun) from the outer radiation belt hitting the Earth’s atmosphere cause ozone loss high above the Earth.
Vast quantities of energetic electrons are found in the Earth’s radiation belts, trapped there by the Earth’s magnetic field. During magnetic storms, which are driven by the solar wind, the electrons accelerate to high speeds and ”�rain’ into the atmosphere at the poles. The temporary, but frequent, ozone loss occurring as a result of these ”�rains’ may explain changes in wind patterns which affect regional winter temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere by a maximum of plus or minus 5 degrees centigrade. The variation in temperature is only seen during winter because of the complex linkages from space through to the Earth’s surface.
Image of Earth from space via Shutterstock.
Read more at British Antarctic Survey. "
Fly genome 'could help us improve our health, +environment' - ENN/BMC/CU/EA/GB, CORNELL - Oct 15, 2014
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47933
alanna.orpen@biomedcentral.com
44-020-319-22054
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-10/bc-fgc100814.php
http://genomebiology.com/2014/15/10/466
"The house fly might be a worldwide pest, but its genome will provide information that could improve our lives. From insights into pathogen immunity, to pest control and decomposing waste, the 691 Mb genome has been sequenced and analyzed by a global consortium of scientists, and is published in the open access journal Genome Biology.
The genome highlights detoxification and immune system genes that are unique to the insect, and could be subjects of further study to help humans deal with toxic and disease causing environments.
The house fly (Musca domestica) lives on human and animal waste. They are an important species for scientific study because of their roles as waste decomposers and as carriers of over 100 human diseases, including typhoid, tuberculosis and worms. Fly transmitted trachoma alone causes 6 million cases of childhood blindness each year.
Because the house fly is so intimately involved in human processes, the researchers say sequencing its genome will have implications for human health, identifying the genes that allow the flies to live in toxic environments.
The lead author of the paper Jeff Scott, Cornell University, says: "House flies are a fascinating insect for scientists in many areas, such as developmental biology, sex determination, immunity, toxicology and physiology. The completed genome will be a phenomenal tool for researchers in all of these fields and will facilitate rapid advancements".
The consortium of scientists sequenced the genomes of six female houseflies, creating a 691 Mb long sequence. They compared it to the 123 Mb Drosophila melanogaster genome, to give an indication of the genes that were unique to house fly, and could be candidates for further study.
The comparison showed that the fly had many more immune genes, and that these were of a higher diversity than in the Drosophila genome. Understanding how this fly is immune to the human diseases it carries could help scientists to create treatments or vaccines for these diseases.
The fly genome also contained unique detoxification genes, which produce proteins that help the fly break down waste. Information about these genes could help us to handle human waste and improve the environment. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47933
alanna.orpen@biomedcentral.com
44-020-319-22054
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-10/bc-fgc100814.php
http://genomebiology.com/2014/15/10/466
"The house fly might be a worldwide pest, but its genome will provide information that could improve our lives. From insights into pathogen immunity, to pest control and decomposing waste, the 691 Mb genome has been sequenced and analyzed by a global consortium of scientists, and is published in the open access journal Genome Biology.
The genome highlights detoxification and immune system genes that are unique to the insect, and could be subjects of further study to help humans deal with toxic and disease causing environments.
The house fly (Musca domestica) lives on human and animal waste. They are an important species for scientific study because of their roles as waste decomposers and as carriers of over 100 human diseases, including typhoid, tuberculosis and worms. Fly transmitted trachoma alone causes 6 million cases of childhood blindness each year.
Because the house fly is so intimately involved in human processes, the researchers say sequencing its genome will have implications for human health, identifying the genes that allow the flies to live in toxic environments.
The lead author of the paper Jeff Scott, Cornell University, says: "House flies are a fascinating insect for scientists in many areas, such as developmental biology, sex determination, immunity, toxicology and physiology. The completed genome will be a phenomenal tool for researchers in all of these fields and will facilitate rapid advancements".
The consortium of scientists sequenced the genomes of six female houseflies, creating a 691 Mb long sequence. They compared it to the 123 Mb Drosophila melanogaster genome, to give an indication of the genes that were unique to house fly, and could be candidates for further study.
The comparison showed that the fly had many more immune genes, and that these were of a higher diversity than in the Drosophila genome. Understanding how this fly is immune to the human diseases it carries could help scientists to create treatments or vaccines for these diseases.
The fly genome also contained unique detoxification genes, which produce proteins that help the fly break down waste. Information about these genes could help us to handle human waste and improve the environment. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.050.065 von Popeye82 am 15.10.14 23:17:12
Making Nature Useless? Global Resource Trends, Innovation, +Implications for Conservation, RFF will host a panel of experts to discuss the concept of saving nature by making it "useless" through the separation of conservation from consumption- +prosperity-based motivations. Panelists will also discuss evidence of reduced natural resource usage, +the innovations behind this trend - Nov 5, 2014
- Evidence abounds of humanity’s creative ability to produce more goods and services using fewer resources. In many cases, our use of natural resources is declining, particularly when measured in terms of GDP consumption per capita or per dollar. In fact, consumption of some natural resources (certain croplands, fuels, metals, and water) has plummeted, even as we produce more and more from these resources. The panel at this RFF First Wednesday Seminar will discuss this evidence and highlight the ingenuity enabling reduced natural resource use. Can we credibly envision a “peak environmental footprint?”
The answer has potentially profound implications for conservation. Conservation thinking currently stresses the interdependence of nature and consumption: save nature because we need it to produce growth, goods, and services. But what if, instead, the way to save nature is to make it useless? This is referred to as “decoupling” conservation from its consumption- and prosperity-based motivations. The panel will reflect on this change in perspective and its implications for conservation strategy. How much confidence should we have in the ability of innovation to make natural resources useless (in conventional consumption terms)? Even if decoupling is necessary and desirable, is it sufficient? Is there a role for governance, markets, and stronger relationships between the public and private sector? Panelists will also discuss the Breakthrough Institute’s Nature Unbound, a new report to be released November 5.
Moderator
- Jim Boyd, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for the Management of Ecological Wealth, Resources for the Future
Panelists
- Iddo Wernick, Research Associate, Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University
- Jesse Ausubel, Director, Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University; and University Fellow, Resources for the Future
- Linus Blomqvist, Director of Research, The Breakthrough Institute
- Ted Nordhaus, Chairman, The Breakthrough Institute ...-
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/Making-Nature-Useless-Global-Resour…
Making Nature Useless? Global Resource Trends, Innovation, +Implications for Conservation, RFF will host a panel of experts to discuss the concept of saving nature by making it "useless" through the separation of conservation from consumption- +prosperity-based motivations. Panelists will also discuss evidence of reduced natural resource usage, +the innovations behind this trend - Nov 5, 2014
- Evidence abounds of humanity’s creative ability to produce more goods and services using fewer resources. In many cases, our use of natural resources is declining, particularly when measured in terms of GDP consumption per capita or per dollar. In fact, consumption of some natural resources (certain croplands, fuels, metals, and water) has plummeted, even as we produce more and more from these resources. The panel at this RFF First Wednesday Seminar will discuss this evidence and highlight the ingenuity enabling reduced natural resource use. Can we credibly envision a “peak environmental footprint?”
The answer has potentially profound implications for conservation. Conservation thinking currently stresses the interdependence of nature and consumption: save nature because we need it to produce growth, goods, and services. But what if, instead, the way to save nature is to make it useless? This is referred to as “decoupling” conservation from its consumption- and prosperity-based motivations. The panel will reflect on this change in perspective and its implications for conservation strategy. How much confidence should we have in the ability of innovation to make natural resources useless (in conventional consumption terms)? Even if decoupling is necessary and desirable, is it sufficient? Is there a role for governance, markets, and stronger relationships between the public and private sector? Panelists will also discuss the Breakthrough Institute’s Nature Unbound, a new report to be released November 5.
Moderator
- Jim Boyd, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for the Management of Ecological Wealth, Resources for the Future
Panelists
- Iddo Wernick, Research Associate, Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University
- Jesse Ausubel, Director, Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University; and University Fellow, Resources for the Future
- Linus Blomqvist, Director of Research, The Breakthrough Institute
- Ted Nordhaus, Chairman, The Breakthrough Institute ...-
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/Making-Nature-Useless-Global-Resour…
"Renewables 2014: 'global status report' ", REN21’s Renewables Global Status Report provides a comprehensive +timely overview of renewable energy market, industry, investment, +policy developments worldwide. It enables policymakers, industry, investors, +civil society to make informed decisions. The report covers recent developments, current status, +key trends; by design, it does not provide analysis or forecast. The Renewables Global Status Report relies on up-to-date renewable energy data, provided by an international network of >500 contributors, researchers, +authors - D/REN21/ACORE/ARE/CREIA/CEC/EREF/GWEC/IGA/IHA/WBA/WWEA/ADB/EC/GBF/IEA/IRENA/UNDP/UNEP/UNIDO/WB/CURES/GFSE/GI/ICLEI/ISEP/JREF/WCRE/WRI/WWF/IIASA/ISES/SANEDI/TERI - Jun 3, 2014
http://decarboni.se/sites/default/files/publications/169363/…
http://decarboni.se/sites/default/files/publications/169363/…
letzte Beiden Links deutsche Zusammenfassungen.
2014 Global Hunger Index, 16 countries still ranked alarming or extremely alarming; Essay on hidden hunger - IFPRI - Oct 15, 2014
- Grebmer, Klaus, Saltzman, Amy, Birol, Ekin, Wiesmann, Doris, Prasai, Nilam, Yin, Sandra, Yohannes, Yisehac, Menon, Purnima, Thompson, Jennifer, Sonntag, Andrea -
- With one more year before the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the 2014 Global Hunger Index report offers a multifaceted overview of global hunger that brings new insights to the global debate on where to focus efforts in the fight against hunger and malnutrition.
The state of hunger in developing countries as a group has improved since 1990, falling by 39 percent, according to the 2014 GHI. Despite progress made, the level of hunger in the world is still “serious,” with 805 million people continuing to go hungry, according to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
The global average obscures dramatic differences across regions and countries. Regionally, the highest GHI scores—and therefore the highest hunger levels—are in Africa south of the Sahara and South Asia, which have also experienced the greatest absolute improvements since 2005. South Asia saw the steepest absolute decline in GHI scores since 1990. Progress in addressing child underweight was the main factor behind the improved GHI score for the region since 1990.
From the 1990 GHI to the 2014 GHI, 26 countries reduced their scores by 50 percent or more. In terms of absolute progress, comparing the 1990 GHI and the 2014 GHI, Angola, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chad, Ghana, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Thailand, and Vietnam saw the biggest improvements in scores.
Levels of hunger are “extremely alarming” or “alarming” in 16 countries, with Burundi and Eritrea both classified as “extremely alarming,” according to the 2014 GHI. Most of the countries with “alarming” GHI scores are in Africa south of the Sahara. Unlike many other countries south of the Sahara, where hunger has been decreasing, Swaziland is an exception. It suffered the biggest increase in a GHI score between the 1990 GHI and the 2014 GHI. Reliable data for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, however, are sorely lacking.
One form of hunger that is often ignored or overshadowed by hunger related to energy deficits is hidden hunger—also called micronutrient deficiency—which affects some 2 billion people around the world. This shortage in essential vitamins and minerals can have long-term, irreversible health effects as well as socioeconomic consequences that can erode a person’s well-being and development. By affecting people’s productivity, it can also take a toll on countries’ economies.
Hidden hunger can coexist with adequate or even excessive consumption of dietary energy from macronutrients, such as fats and carbohydrates, and therefore also with overweight /obesity in one person or community.
Poor diet, disease, impaired absorption, and increased micronutrient needs during certain life stages, such as pregnancy, lactation, and infancy, are among the causes of hidden hunger, which may “invisibly” affect the health and development of a population.
Possible solutions to hidden hunger include food-based approaches: dietary diversification, which might involve growing more diverse crops in a home garden; fortification of commercial foods; and biofortification, in which food crops are bred with increased micronutrient content. Food-based measures will require long-term, sustained, and coordinated efforts to make a lasting difference. In the short term, vitamin and mineral supplements can help vulnerable populations combat hidden hunger.
Along with these solutions that address the low content or density of vitamins and minerals in food, behavioral change communication is critical to educate people about health services, sanitation and hygiene, and caring practices, as well as the need for greater empowerment of women at all levels.
To eliminate hidden hunger, governments must demonstrate political commitment by making fighting it a priority. Governments and multilateral institutions need to invest in and develop human and financial resources, increase coordination, and ensure transparent monitoring and evaluation to build capacity on nutrition.
Governments must also create a regulatory environment that values good nutrition. This could involve creating incentives for private sector companies to develop more nutritious seeds or foods.
Transparent accountability systems are needed in order to ensure that investments contribute to public health, while standardized data collection on micronutrient deficiencies can build the evidence base on the efficacy and cost effectiveness of food-based solutions.
These and other recommendations set out in this report are some of the steps needed to eliminate hidden hunger. Ending hunger in all its forms is possible. It must now become a reality. ...-
www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ghi14.pdf
www.ifpri.org/publication/2014-global-hunger-index?utm_sourc…
www.ifpri.org/node/10313?utm_source=New+At+IFPRI&utm_campaig…
www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ghi14de.pdf
2014 Global Hunger Index, 16 countries still ranked alarming or extremely alarming; Essay on hidden hunger - IFPRI - Oct 15, 2014
- Grebmer, Klaus, Saltzman, Amy, Birol, Ekin, Wiesmann, Doris, Prasai, Nilam, Yin, Sandra, Yohannes, Yisehac, Menon, Purnima, Thompson, Jennifer, Sonntag, Andrea -
- With one more year before the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the 2014 Global Hunger Index report offers a multifaceted overview of global hunger that brings new insights to the global debate on where to focus efforts in the fight against hunger and malnutrition.
The state of hunger in developing countries as a group has improved since 1990, falling by 39 percent, according to the 2014 GHI. Despite progress made, the level of hunger in the world is still “serious,” with 805 million people continuing to go hungry, according to estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
The global average obscures dramatic differences across regions and countries. Regionally, the highest GHI scores—and therefore the highest hunger levels—are in Africa south of the Sahara and South Asia, which have also experienced the greatest absolute improvements since 2005. South Asia saw the steepest absolute decline in GHI scores since 1990. Progress in addressing child underweight was the main factor behind the improved GHI score for the region since 1990.
From the 1990 GHI to the 2014 GHI, 26 countries reduced their scores by 50 percent or more. In terms of absolute progress, comparing the 1990 GHI and the 2014 GHI, Angola, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Chad, Ghana, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Thailand, and Vietnam saw the biggest improvements in scores.
Levels of hunger are “extremely alarming” or “alarming” in 16 countries, with Burundi and Eritrea both classified as “extremely alarming,” according to the 2014 GHI. Most of the countries with “alarming” GHI scores are in Africa south of the Sahara. Unlike many other countries south of the Sahara, where hunger has been decreasing, Swaziland is an exception. It suffered the biggest increase in a GHI score between the 1990 GHI and the 2014 GHI. Reliable data for the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, however, are sorely lacking.
One form of hunger that is often ignored or overshadowed by hunger related to energy deficits is hidden hunger—also called micronutrient deficiency—which affects some 2 billion people around the world. This shortage in essential vitamins and minerals can have long-term, irreversible health effects as well as socioeconomic consequences that can erode a person’s well-being and development. By affecting people’s productivity, it can also take a toll on countries’ economies.
Hidden hunger can coexist with adequate or even excessive consumption of dietary energy from macronutrients, such as fats and carbohydrates, and therefore also with overweight /obesity in one person or community.
Poor diet, disease, impaired absorption, and increased micronutrient needs during certain life stages, such as pregnancy, lactation, and infancy, are among the causes of hidden hunger, which may “invisibly” affect the health and development of a population.
Possible solutions to hidden hunger include food-based approaches: dietary diversification, which might involve growing more diverse crops in a home garden; fortification of commercial foods; and biofortification, in which food crops are bred with increased micronutrient content. Food-based measures will require long-term, sustained, and coordinated efforts to make a lasting difference. In the short term, vitamin and mineral supplements can help vulnerable populations combat hidden hunger.
Along with these solutions that address the low content or density of vitamins and minerals in food, behavioral change communication is critical to educate people about health services, sanitation and hygiene, and caring practices, as well as the need for greater empowerment of women at all levels.
To eliminate hidden hunger, governments must demonstrate political commitment by making fighting it a priority. Governments and multilateral institutions need to invest in and develop human and financial resources, increase coordination, and ensure transparent monitoring and evaluation to build capacity on nutrition.
Governments must also create a regulatory environment that values good nutrition. This could involve creating incentives for private sector companies to develop more nutritious seeds or foods.
Transparent accountability systems are needed in order to ensure that investments contribute to public health, while standardized data collection on micronutrient deficiencies can build the evidence base on the efficacy and cost effectiveness of food-based solutions.
These and other recommendations set out in this report are some of the steps needed to eliminate hidden hunger. Ending hunger in all its forms is possible. It must now become a reality. ...-
www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ghi14.pdf
www.ifpri.org/publication/2014-global-hunger-index?utm_sourc…
www.ifpri.org/node/10313?utm_source=New+At+IFPRI&utm_campaig…
www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ghi14de.pdf
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.018.670 von Popeye82 am 13.10.14 12:42:21
U.S. Climate Envoy Says All Nations, Rich +Poor, Must Curb Emissions - CT/YU/YE360, YALE - Oct 16, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/16/u-s-climate-envoy-says-al…
"
The negotiating architecture that has governed the decades-long pursuit of an international climate agreement is outdated, said Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change at the State Department and the nation’s lead climate negotiator. In remarks delivered at Yale University’s Law School on Tuesday, Stern reiterated the U.S. position that all nations — both rich ones and developing ones — must be brought together under one agreement that includes pledges to cut emissions.
“This split between developed and developing countries in the climate convention is the singular fault line in these negotiations,” Stern said, “and has been from the beginning.” Under the recently expired Kyoto protocol, developing countries like China and India were exempted from committing to emissions cuts.
Climate talks are scheduled to resume in Lima, Peru later this year, with a goal of achieving a new and fully global treaty at a meeting in Paris in 2015. That pact, Stern argued, ought to require all nations to submit emissions reduction targets, tailored as needed to national interests and abilities. These should not be made legally binding, Stern said — a tack he described as “untenable” — but compliance could be ensured with clear rules for transparency, standardized metrics for accounting and reporting of emissions, and ideally, the passage of sound climate policies in each nation.
On the prospect for domestic climate legislation in the U.S., Stern suggested a tipping point was near: “I doubt, even year from now,” he said, “whether major political candidates will consider it viable to deny the existence of climate change.” "
U.S. Climate Envoy Says All Nations, Rich +Poor, Must Curb Emissions - CT/YU/YE360, YALE - Oct 16, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/16/u-s-climate-envoy-says-al…
"
The negotiating architecture that has governed the decades-long pursuit of an international climate agreement is outdated, said Todd Stern, the U.S. special envoy for climate change at the State Department and the nation’s lead climate negotiator. In remarks delivered at Yale University’s Law School on Tuesday, Stern reiterated the U.S. position that all nations — both rich ones and developing ones — must be brought together under one agreement that includes pledges to cut emissions.
“This split between developed and developing countries in the climate convention is the singular fault line in these negotiations,” Stern said, “and has been from the beginning.” Under the recently expired Kyoto protocol, developing countries like China and India were exempted from committing to emissions cuts.
Climate talks are scheduled to resume in Lima, Peru later this year, with a goal of achieving a new and fully global treaty at a meeting in Paris in 2015. That pact, Stern argued, ought to require all nations to submit emissions reduction targets, tailored as needed to national interests and abilities. These should not be made legally binding, Stern said — a tack he described as “untenable” — but compliance could be ensured with clear rules for transparency, standardized metrics for accounting and reporting of emissions, and ideally, the passage of sound climate policies in each nation.
On the prospect for domestic climate legislation in the U.S., Stern suggested a tipping point was near: “I doubt, even year from now,” he said, “whether major political candidates will consider it viable to deny the existence of climate change.” "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.071.863 von Popeye82 am 18.10.14 00:11:52
A 'global natural gas boom alone won't slow climate change', Comprehensive analysis shows that natural gas could displace both coal +low-emitting energy sources over the long term - PNNL/N.com/GTSP, MARYLAND - Oct 15, 2014
- Mary Beckmann -
www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=3166
www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13927…
"COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A new analysis of global energy use, economics and the climate shows that without new climate policies, expanding the current bounty of inexpensive natural gas alone would not slow the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions worldwide over the long term, according to a study appearing today in Nature Advanced Online Publication.
Because natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, many people hoped the recent natural gas boom could help slow climate change — and according to government analyses, natural gas did contribute partially to a decline in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions between 2007 and 2012. But, in the long run, according to this study, a global abundance of inexpensive natural gas would compete with all energy sources — not just higher-emitting coal, but also lower-emitting nuclear and renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar. Inexpensive natural gas would also accelerate economic growth and expand overall energy use.
"The effect is that abundant natural gas alone will do little to slow climate change," said lead author Haewon McJeon, an economist at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "Global deployment of advanced natural gas production technology could double or triple the global natural gas production by 2050, but greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow in the absence of climate policies that promote lower carbon energy sources."
Thinking Globally
Recent advances in gas production technology based on horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — also known as fracking — have led to bountiful, low-cost natural gas. Because gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, some researchers have linked the natural gas boom to recent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. But could these advanced technologies also have an impact on emissions beyond North America and decades into the future?
To find out, a group of scientists, engineers and policy experts, led by PNNL's Joint Global Change Research Institute, gathered at a workshop in Cambridge, Maryland, in April 2013 to consider the long-term impact of an expansion of the current natural gas boom on the rest of the world. The researchers, hailing from the U.S., Australia, Austria, Germany and Italy, went home and projected what the world would be like in 2050 with and without a global natural gas boom. The five teams used different computer models that had been independently developed.
Their computer models included not just energy use and production, but also the broader economy and the climate system. These "integrated assessment models" accounted for energy use, the economy, and climate and the way these different systems interact with one another. The groups each computed projections halfway into the century.
Five for Five
"We didn't really know how our first experiment would turn out, but we were surprised how little difference abundant gas made to total greenhouse gas emissions even though it was dramatically changing the global energy system," said James "Jae" Edmonds, PNNL's chief scientist at JGCRI. "When we saw all five modeling teams reporting little difference in climate change, we knew we were onto something."
The key, the researchers said, is that the five different models provide an integrated, comprehensive view of the economy and the Earth system. Swapping out coal for natural gas in a simple model would cut greenhouse gas emissions, a result many people expected to see. But incorporating the behavior of the entire economy and how people create and use energy from all sources affect emissions in several ways:
- Natural gas replacing coal would reduce carbon emissions. But due to its lower cost, natural gas would also replace some low-carbon energy, such as renewable or nuclear energy. Overall changes result in a smaller reduction than expected due to natural gas replacing these other, low-carbon sources. In a sense, natural gas would become a larger slice of the energy pie.
- Abundant, less expensive natural gas would lower energy prices across the board, leading people to use more energy overall. In addition, inexpensive energy stimulates the economy, which also increases overall energy use. Consequently, the entire energy pie gets bigger.
- The main component of natural gas, methane, is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. During production and distribution, some methane inevitably escapes into the atmosphere. The researchers considered both high and low estimates for this so-called fugitive methane. Even at the lower end, fugitive methane adds to climate change.
The combined effect of the three, the scientists found, is that the global energy system could experience unprecedented changes in the growth of natural gas production and significant changes to the types of energy used, but without much reduction to projected climate change if new mitigation policies are not put in place to support the deployment of renewable energy technologies.
"Abundant gas may have a lot of benefits — economic growth, local air pollution, energy security, and so on. There's been some hope that slowing climate change could also be one of its benefits, but that turns out not to be the case," said McJeon.
Scientists, engineers and economists from the following institutions contributed to the research: the JGCRI, a collaboration between PNNL and the University of Maryland, BAEconomics, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Centro Euromediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, and Resources for the Future.
PNNL researchers on this project were supported by the Global Technology Strategy Project, a public-private partnership.
Reference: Haewon McJeon, Jae Edmonds, Nico Bauer, Leon Clarke, Brian Fisher, Brian P. Flannery, Jérôme Hilaire, Volker Krey, Giacomo Marangoni, Raymond Mi, Keywan Riahi, Holger Rogner, Massimo Tavoni. Limited impact on decadal-scale climate change from increased use of natural gas, Nature October 15, 2014, DOI: 10.1038/nature13837.
Tags: Energy, Environment, Fundamental Science, Energy Efficiency, Emissions, Renewable Energy, Nuclear Power, Hydropower, Wind Power, Solar Power, Green Energy, Energy Production, Climate Science
Interdisciplinary teams at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory address many of America's most pressing issues in energy, the environment and national security through advances in basic and applied science. Founded in 1965, PNNL employs 4,300 staff and has an annual budget of about $950 million. It is managed by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. As the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information on PNNL, visit the PNNL News Center, or follow PNNL on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. "
A 'global natural gas boom alone won't slow climate change', Comprehensive analysis shows that natural gas could displace both coal +low-emitting energy sources over the long term - PNNL/N.com/GTSP, MARYLAND - Oct 15, 2014
- Mary Beckmann -
www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=3166
www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature13927…
"COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A new analysis of global energy use, economics and the climate shows that without new climate policies, expanding the current bounty of inexpensive natural gas alone would not slow the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions worldwide over the long term, according to a study appearing today in Nature Advanced Online Publication.
Because natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, many people hoped the recent natural gas boom could help slow climate change — and according to government analyses, natural gas did contribute partially to a decline in U.S. carbon dioxide emissions between 2007 and 2012. But, in the long run, according to this study, a global abundance of inexpensive natural gas would compete with all energy sources — not just higher-emitting coal, but also lower-emitting nuclear and renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar. Inexpensive natural gas would also accelerate economic growth and expand overall energy use.
"The effect is that abundant natural gas alone will do little to slow climate change," said lead author Haewon McJeon, an economist at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "Global deployment of advanced natural gas production technology could double or triple the global natural gas production by 2050, but greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow in the absence of climate policies that promote lower carbon energy sources."
Thinking Globally
Recent advances in gas production technology based on horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — also known as fracking — have led to bountiful, low-cost natural gas. Because gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, some researchers have linked the natural gas boom to recent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. But could these advanced technologies also have an impact on emissions beyond North America and decades into the future?
To find out, a group of scientists, engineers and policy experts, led by PNNL's Joint Global Change Research Institute, gathered at a workshop in Cambridge, Maryland, in April 2013 to consider the long-term impact of an expansion of the current natural gas boom on the rest of the world. The researchers, hailing from the U.S., Australia, Austria, Germany and Italy, went home and projected what the world would be like in 2050 with and without a global natural gas boom. The five teams used different computer models that had been independently developed.
Their computer models included not just energy use and production, but also the broader economy and the climate system. These "integrated assessment models" accounted for energy use, the economy, and climate and the way these different systems interact with one another. The groups each computed projections halfway into the century.
Five for Five
"We didn't really know how our first experiment would turn out, but we were surprised how little difference abundant gas made to total greenhouse gas emissions even though it was dramatically changing the global energy system," said James "Jae" Edmonds, PNNL's chief scientist at JGCRI. "When we saw all five modeling teams reporting little difference in climate change, we knew we were onto something."
The key, the researchers said, is that the five different models provide an integrated, comprehensive view of the economy and the Earth system. Swapping out coal for natural gas in a simple model would cut greenhouse gas emissions, a result many people expected to see. But incorporating the behavior of the entire economy and how people create and use energy from all sources affect emissions in several ways:
- Natural gas replacing coal would reduce carbon emissions. But due to its lower cost, natural gas would also replace some low-carbon energy, such as renewable or nuclear energy. Overall changes result in a smaller reduction than expected due to natural gas replacing these other, low-carbon sources. In a sense, natural gas would become a larger slice of the energy pie.
- Abundant, less expensive natural gas would lower energy prices across the board, leading people to use more energy overall. In addition, inexpensive energy stimulates the economy, which also increases overall energy use. Consequently, the entire energy pie gets bigger.
- The main component of natural gas, methane, is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. During production and distribution, some methane inevitably escapes into the atmosphere. The researchers considered both high and low estimates for this so-called fugitive methane. Even at the lower end, fugitive methane adds to climate change.
The combined effect of the three, the scientists found, is that the global energy system could experience unprecedented changes in the growth of natural gas production and significant changes to the types of energy used, but without much reduction to projected climate change if new mitigation policies are not put in place to support the deployment of renewable energy technologies.
"Abundant gas may have a lot of benefits — economic growth, local air pollution, energy security, and so on. There's been some hope that slowing climate change could also be one of its benefits, but that turns out not to be the case," said McJeon.
Scientists, engineers and economists from the following institutions contributed to the research: the JGCRI, a collaboration between PNNL and the University of Maryland, BAEconomics, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Centro Euromediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici, and Resources for the Future.
PNNL researchers on this project were supported by the Global Technology Strategy Project, a public-private partnership.
Reference: Haewon McJeon, Jae Edmonds, Nico Bauer, Leon Clarke, Brian Fisher, Brian P. Flannery, Jérôme Hilaire, Volker Krey, Giacomo Marangoni, Raymond Mi, Keywan Riahi, Holger Rogner, Massimo Tavoni. Limited impact on decadal-scale climate change from increased use of natural gas, Nature October 15, 2014, DOI: 10.1038/nature13837.
Tags: Energy, Environment, Fundamental Science, Energy Efficiency, Emissions, Renewable Energy, Nuclear Power, Hydropower, Wind Power, Solar Power, Green Energy, Energy Production, Climate Science
Interdisciplinary teams at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory address many of America's most pressing issues in energy, the environment and national security through advances in basic and applied science. Founded in 1965, PNNL employs 4,300 staff and has an annual budget of about $950 million. It is managed by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. As the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, the Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information on PNNL, visit the PNNL News Center, or follow PNNL on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. "
Sub-seabed CO2 leak experiment shows minimal environmental impact +rapid recovery, The world-1st experiment on a controlled sub-seabed CO2 leak showed minimal impact on wildlife limited to a small area - CCJ/NCC/PML - Oct 16, 2014
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3518
www.pml.ac.uk
www.sams.ac.uk/news-room/news-items/CCS-leaks-impact-small-r…
"An international team of scientists have published results of the first ever sub-sea carbon dioxide impact, detection and monitoring experiment relevant to Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) in sub-seabed storage reservoirs in Nature Climate Change.
The study was designed to understand how marine life on the seabed and in the water above might react to a real-life leakage, as well as determine methods for detection and monitoring of a small-scale carbon dioxide (CO2) leak event. The research found that, for a leak of this scale, the environmental damage was limited; restricted to a small area and with a quick recovery of both the chemistry and biology.
The Quantifying and Monitoring Potential Ecosystem Impacts of Geological Carbon Storage (QICS) project was led by Plymouth Marine Laboratory’s (PML) Jerry Blackford and funded by the Research Councils UK, the Natural Environment Research Council, the Scottish and Japanese Governments. A number of UK and Japanese institutes collaborated with the experimental controlled release of CO2 undertaken in Ardmucknish Bay, (near Oban) Scotland in 2012; the experiment was co-ordinated by the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS).
4.2 tonnes of CO2 (less than the annual CO2 emission of a gas-heated UK home*) was injected over 37 days from a land-based lab via a borehole drilled through rock to the release site, 350 meters from the shore and 11 meters below the seabed (see illustration below). Scientists initially monitored how the CO2 moved through the sediment and the 12 meters of water above. Over the following 12 months the impact on the chemistry and biology of the surrounding area was assessed using a combination of techniques, including chemical sensors, listening for bubbles and diver-mediated sampling.
A combination of chemical sensors and bubble acoustic techniques are shown to provide the optimal monitoring technology to detect leakage or give assurance of no leakage.
The impact of this simulated leak shows that the impact of escaped CO2 on a similar scale would be limited. CO2-induced chemical changes occurred towards the end of the CO2 release but impacts including changes to environmental chemistry returned to background levels within 17 days of turning off the CO2 release.
No biological effect was observed during the early stages of the release. At the end of the release period and early in the recovery period, there was a change in seabed-dwelling communities as well as the gene expression of microbes. These impacts were not catastrophic or long lasting and full recovery was seen in weeks.
Project leader Jerry Blackford, at PML, said: “These findings are contributing to the growing knowledge base necessary for optimal deployment of CCS as a climate change mitigation measure; in particular for the regulatory requirement for monitoring. The results show that small-scale leakage will not be catastrophic, although we do caution that impacts are likely to increase if a larger amount of CO2 is released. Water movement in the area is also important; impacts are estimated to be less and recovery quicker in environments with stronger water mixing so that the CO2 is dispersed more rapidly.
This study did not address the integrity of storage in reservoirs situated 1km or more below the sea floor, but addressed the “what if” scenario of leakage at the seabed. Leakage of CO2 from storage reservoirs is thought to be unlikely.
Recommendations for CCS operators developing risk strategies are:
- CCS site selection should be below dynamic bodies of water to promote dispersal of CO2 in the unlikely event of leakage.
- A comprehensive baseline study, encompassing sediment structure and content, sea water chemistry, biological community structure and ambient noise, is required to maximise monitoring efficiency.
- A combination of chemical pH and bubble-listening sensors will maximise early leakage detection or alternately provide assurance that leakage is not occurring. "
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3518
www.pml.ac.uk
www.sams.ac.uk/news-room/news-items/CCS-leaks-impact-small-r…
"An international team of scientists have published results of the first ever sub-sea carbon dioxide impact, detection and monitoring experiment relevant to Carbon dioxide Capture and Storage (CCS) in sub-seabed storage reservoirs in Nature Climate Change.
The study was designed to understand how marine life on the seabed and in the water above might react to a real-life leakage, as well as determine methods for detection and monitoring of a small-scale carbon dioxide (CO2) leak event. The research found that, for a leak of this scale, the environmental damage was limited; restricted to a small area and with a quick recovery of both the chemistry and biology.
The Quantifying and Monitoring Potential Ecosystem Impacts of Geological Carbon Storage (QICS) project was led by Plymouth Marine Laboratory’s (PML) Jerry Blackford and funded by the Research Councils UK, the Natural Environment Research Council, the Scottish and Japanese Governments. A number of UK and Japanese institutes collaborated with the experimental controlled release of CO2 undertaken in Ardmucknish Bay, (near Oban) Scotland in 2012; the experiment was co-ordinated by the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS).
4.2 tonnes of CO2 (less than the annual CO2 emission of a gas-heated UK home*) was injected over 37 days from a land-based lab via a borehole drilled through rock to the release site, 350 meters from the shore and 11 meters below the seabed (see illustration below). Scientists initially monitored how the CO2 moved through the sediment and the 12 meters of water above. Over the following 12 months the impact on the chemistry and biology of the surrounding area was assessed using a combination of techniques, including chemical sensors, listening for bubbles and diver-mediated sampling.
A combination of chemical sensors and bubble acoustic techniques are shown to provide the optimal monitoring technology to detect leakage or give assurance of no leakage.
The impact of this simulated leak shows that the impact of escaped CO2 on a similar scale would be limited. CO2-induced chemical changes occurred towards the end of the CO2 release but impacts including changes to environmental chemistry returned to background levels within 17 days of turning off the CO2 release.
No biological effect was observed during the early stages of the release. At the end of the release period and early in the recovery period, there was a change in seabed-dwelling communities as well as the gene expression of microbes. These impacts were not catastrophic or long lasting and full recovery was seen in weeks.
Project leader Jerry Blackford, at PML, said: “These findings are contributing to the growing knowledge base necessary for optimal deployment of CCS as a climate change mitigation measure; in particular for the regulatory requirement for monitoring. The results show that small-scale leakage will not be catastrophic, although we do caution that impacts are likely to increase if a larger amount of CO2 is released. Water movement in the area is also important; impacts are estimated to be less and recovery quicker in environments with stronger water mixing so that the CO2 is dispersed more rapidly.
This study did not address the integrity of storage in reservoirs situated 1km or more below the sea floor, but addressed the “what if” scenario of leakage at the seabed. Leakage of CO2 from storage reservoirs is thought to be unlikely.
Recommendations for CCS operators developing risk strategies are:
- CCS site selection should be below dynamic bodies of water to promote dispersal of CO2 in the unlikely event of leakage.
- A comprehensive baseline study, encompassing sediment structure and content, sea water chemistry, biological community structure and ambient noise, is required to maximise monitoring efficiency.
- A combination of chemical pH and bubble-listening sensors will maximise early leakage detection or alternately provide assurance that leakage is not occurring. "
EU pushes back deadlines 2 years in green energy funding scheme, European government officials have approved a proposal to delay deadlines for final investment decisions +the operational launch of Europe's 1st commercial-scale carbon capture +storage plant, +40 renewable energy projects - R/EC - Oct 15, 2014
- Michael Szabo -
www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/15/eu-renewables-ner-idUSL6N…
"European government officials have approved a proposal to delay deadlines for final investment decisions and the operational launch of Europe's first commercial-scale carbon capture and storage plant and 40 renewable energy projects.
The measure, proposed by the European Commission following pressure from seven EU member states including Britain, France and Germany, throws a lifeline to some projects struggling to comply with the EU's 2.1 billion euro ($2.7 billion) scheme to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The recipients under the first round of the NER300 programme had been due to make their final investment decisions by the end of 2014 and be operational by the end of 2016, but seven EU nations asked the Commission to delay all deadlines by two years.
Projects awarded funding in the second round announced in July now have until 2018 for final investment decisions and 2020 for activation.
The delays mean the viability of some of the first projects awarded cash will not be known for another two years, and those on the NER300's waiting list are now less likely to get funding.
British utility Drax was awarded 300 million euros in the programme's second round to help it develop technology to capture 1.8 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually from a coal-fired power plant in northern England and bury them in a depleted gas field in the North Sea.
Forty renewable energy projects across 20 EU countries were awarded grants worth around 1.8 billion euros.
Developers of several projects have since said they are unable to move forward for various reasons, offering to hand back the cash.
Funds for the NER300 were raised through the sale of 300 million carbon allowances under the EU's Emissions Trading System between 2011 and 2014, a reserve of permits set aside for new entrants in the bloc's carbon market.
(editing by Jane Baird) "
- Michael Szabo -
www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/15/eu-renewables-ner-idUSL6N…
"European government officials have approved a proposal to delay deadlines for final investment decisions and the operational launch of Europe's first commercial-scale carbon capture and storage plant and 40 renewable energy projects.
The measure, proposed by the European Commission following pressure from seven EU member states including Britain, France and Germany, throws a lifeline to some projects struggling to comply with the EU's 2.1 billion euro ($2.7 billion) scheme to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The recipients under the first round of the NER300 programme had been due to make their final investment decisions by the end of 2014 and be operational by the end of 2016, but seven EU nations asked the Commission to delay all deadlines by two years.
Projects awarded funding in the second round announced in July now have until 2018 for final investment decisions and 2020 for activation.
The delays mean the viability of some of the first projects awarded cash will not be known for another two years, and those on the NER300's waiting list are now less likely to get funding.
British utility Drax was awarded 300 million euros in the programme's second round to help it develop technology to capture 1.8 million tonnes of carbon emissions annually from a coal-fired power plant in northern England and bury them in a depleted gas field in the North Sea.
Forty renewable energy projects across 20 EU countries were awarded grants worth around 1.8 billion euros.
Developers of several projects have since said they are unable to move forward for various reasons, offering to hand back the cash.
Funds for the NER300 were raised through the sale of 300 million carbon allowances under the EU's Emissions Trading System between 2011 and 2014, a reserve of permits set aside for new entrants in the bloc's carbon market.
(editing by Jane Baird) "
Norsk Hydro clients want "green" aluminium -CEO - R, OSLO - Oct 15, 2014
* CEO says hydro power saves millions of tonnes of CO2
* Aluminium in cars, recycling to help climate goals
- Alister Doyle +Balazs Koranyi -
http://af.reuters.com/article/metalsNews/idAFL6N0SA3SV201410…
"Some major customers of Norwegian aluminium maker Norsk Hydro want it to certify metal made with clean hydro power to help a shift from high-polluting fossil fuels and combat climate change, chief executive Svein Richard Brandtzaeg said.
He also said the company, the world's number nine producer of primary aluminium in 2013, was investing in measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions because it expects governments to impose a global price on carbon pollution sometime in future.
Some customers wanted proof that aluminium is from a low-emissions source to help limit global warming, he said. That would echo other systems that certify that commodities such as timber, coffee or palm oil come from sustainable farms.
"We have customers now that would like us to give identification and also like to have a stamp - 'Hydro' - inside. The name itself reflects hydro power but they would like us to certificate the hydropower-based metal in Norway," he said.
He declined to name major business customers, nor say if Hydro might start stamping metal produced in Norway in future. A problem is how to certify a metal, a step likely to raise prices, when it trades on world markets.
"We believe that strict climate regulations are good for business and we are adapting to a future where there will be a global cost on carbon dioxide," Brandtzaeg told the Reuters Global Climate Change Summit.
Norsk Hydro, which produced about a million tonnes of primary aluminium in Norway out of a total of 1.9 million tonnes in 2013, said its use of clean hydro power in the Nordic nation was a big advantage over high-polluting coal-powered production.
"If what we produce in Norway was replaced by a million tonnes in China, then global emissions would rise by 13-14 million tonnes per year. That is quite a big chunk," he said.
That is bigger than the annual emissions of Luxembourg. Norsk Hydro also produces aluminium using fossil fuels, including in Qatar where it uses natural gas.
AUTOMOTIVE ALUMINIUM
Brandtzaeg also said Norsk Hydro's efforts to cut energy use, to replace steel in cars with lighter aluminium and to double its recycling of aluminium to 250,000 tonnes a year by 2020 from 2012 levels would all help to limit climate change.
He said that a push to invest 140 million euros ($177 million) to produce aluminium for cars in Germany would be aided by European Union plans to cut emissions for new cars. U.S. and other standards are also getting tougher.
"There will be a lot of investments in aluminium in automotive. The Audi A6 is almost totally aluminium," he said.
Hydro says its greenhouse gas emissions from its businesses, including electricity production, totalled 12.6 million tonnes in 2013, down from 13.6 million in 2012.
Norsk Hydro set a goal last year of becoming "carbon neutral" by 2020. It says it is about one million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year above the goal.
Carbon neutrality usually means having no net emissions to the atmosphere, for instance by planting forests - which soak up greenhouse gases as they grow - to offset greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.
Hydro's accounting, however, allows the company to say that lightweight aluminium in cars reduces its carbon emissions, relative to a baseline of emissions had the vehicles been made of heavier steel.
"When you replace steel, for each kilo of aluminium you use in cars you save 17 kilos of carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the car," Brandtzaeg said. Hydro declined to give all numbers and assumptions underlying its goal.
(For more from the Reuters Global Climate Change Summit click on ) (Reporting By Alister Doyle. Editing by Jane Merriman) "
* CEO says hydro power saves millions of tonnes of CO2
* Aluminium in cars, recycling to help climate goals
- Alister Doyle +Balazs Koranyi -
http://af.reuters.com/article/metalsNews/idAFL6N0SA3SV201410…
"Some major customers of Norwegian aluminium maker Norsk Hydro want it to certify metal made with clean hydro power to help a shift from high-polluting fossil fuels and combat climate change, chief executive Svein Richard Brandtzaeg said.
He also said the company, the world's number nine producer of primary aluminium in 2013, was investing in measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions because it expects governments to impose a global price on carbon pollution sometime in future.
Some customers wanted proof that aluminium is from a low-emissions source to help limit global warming, he said. That would echo other systems that certify that commodities such as timber, coffee or palm oil come from sustainable farms.
"We have customers now that would like us to give identification and also like to have a stamp - 'Hydro' - inside. The name itself reflects hydro power but they would like us to certificate the hydropower-based metal in Norway," he said.
He declined to name major business customers, nor say if Hydro might start stamping metal produced in Norway in future. A problem is how to certify a metal, a step likely to raise prices, when it trades on world markets.
"We believe that strict climate regulations are good for business and we are adapting to a future where there will be a global cost on carbon dioxide," Brandtzaeg told the Reuters Global Climate Change Summit.
Norsk Hydro, which produced about a million tonnes of primary aluminium in Norway out of a total of 1.9 million tonnes in 2013, said its use of clean hydro power in the Nordic nation was a big advantage over high-polluting coal-powered production.
"If what we produce in Norway was replaced by a million tonnes in China, then global emissions would rise by 13-14 million tonnes per year. That is quite a big chunk," he said.
That is bigger than the annual emissions of Luxembourg. Norsk Hydro also produces aluminium using fossil fuels, including in Qatar where it uses natural gas.
AUTOMOTIVE ALUMINIUM
Brandtzaeg also said Norsk Hydro's efforts to cut energy use, to replace steel in cars with lighter aluminium and to double its recycling of aluminium to 250,000 tonnes a year by 2020 from 2012 levels would all help to limit climate change.
He said that a push to invest 140 million euros ($177 million) to produce aluminium for cars in Germany would be aided by European Union plans to cut emissions for new cars. U.S. and other standards are also getting tougher.
"There will be a lot of investments in aluminium in automotive. The Audi A6 is almost totally aluminium," he said.
Hydro says its greenhouse gas emissions from its businesses, including electricity production, totalled 12.6 million tonnes in 2013, down from 13.6 million in 2012.
Norsk Hydro set a goal last year of becoming "carbon neutral" by 2020. It says it is about one million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year above the goal.
Carbon neutrality usually means having no net emissions to the atmosphere, for instance by planting forests - which soak up greenhouse gases as they grow - to offset greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels.
Hydro's accounting, however, allows the company to say that lightweight aluminium in cars reduces its carbon emissions, relative to a baseline of emissions had the vehicles been made of heavier steel.
"When you replace steel, for each kilo of aluminium you use in cars you save 17 kilos of carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the car," Brandtzaeg said. Hydro declined to give all numbers and assumptions underlying its goal.
(For more from the Reuters Global Climate Change Summit click on ) (Reporting By Alister Doyle. Editing by Jane Merriman) "
Indonesia cannot build power stations fast enough. +neither can most of its Asian neighbours
www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1027405-indonesias-choice-coal-vs-e…
"Indonesia cannot build power stations fast enough. And neither can most of its Asian neighbors. Rapid economic and population growth are driving equally rapid demands for electricity as the region builds out power grids to connect up millions of people to fuel prosperity.
Electricity generation is forecast to nearly triple in Southeast Asia between 2011 and 2035, the International Energy Agency says, with fossil fuels providing most of the energy.
With a population of 600 million, nearly twice that of the United States, and about 130 million people without electricity, Southeast Asia faces an immense challenge to meet that demand in a cost-efficient manner that doesn’t cause serious air and water pollution and drive up health costs.
For Indonesia, the Asia energy story is a blessing worth untold riches in terms of royalties, money it needs to develop its economy and provide jobs. The IEA says demand for coal in Southeast Asia will rise 4.8 percent per year, with Indonesia in the geographic sweet spot to be the region’s main supplier.
In the wider Asia-Pacific, demand for coal will increase by 52.8 percent from 2010 to 2035, according to the Asian Development Bank.
With about 30 billion metric tons of coal reserves, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Indonesia has decades’ worth of supply to fuel its economic expansion and that of its neighbors – provided it limits production growth.
“Coal is still going to be the most significant fuel in the energy mix for the foreseeable future,” said Sacha Winzenried, a senior adviser on mining for PwC, the global business services firm, referring to Indonesia. While Indonesia has large amounts of gas, it doesn’t have a national pipeline network, he said, and it will be hard for renewables, such as geothermal, to dramatically ramp up capacity fast enough because of high capital costs.
It is here that Indonesia faces its trickiest energy balancing act: how to ensure enough coal supplies to meet soaring domestic energy demands, while also meeting the growing needs of its neighbors and facilitating growth expectations of domestic coal producers.
Environmentalists and climate scientists also point to damage from coal mining and growing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that will undermine the drive to limit global warming. As a result of efforts to do so, major developing countries are under increasing pressure to limit emissions growth.
More coal mining will mean more deforestation, since most Indonesian coal extraction is done through open pit mining. This involves clearing forest or farmland, removing the top soil and then progressively digging out the coal seams, which can be a few metres to tens of metres from the surface. Once the coal is extracted, the top soil is backfilled into the hole and a new pit is dug.
Increased mining will also result in more water pollution and health risks for local communities, NGOs say. They point to myriad environmental and health problems caused by the industry to date because of poor oversight and corruption. Common examples of graft involve district chiefs offering mining permits in return for bribes and police and mining department officials ignoring threats and intimidation of villagers by mining firms seeking to acquire land.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
For Indonesia, though, there is little choice, the government says. In the world’s fourth most populous nation with 250 million people, 60 million of whom do not have access to electricity. The nation has 54.5 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity, about the same as neighboring Australia, a country with a tenth of Indonesia’s population.
Electricity demand growth in Indonesia is increasing 9.4 percent a year, according to state utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN). Abundant coal is the quickest way to connect millions of people to electricity and drive economic growth, the government says.
The central government is trying to address environmental issues, with mixed results. For now, its primary focus is energy security, particularly as production at its existing oil fields declines, leading to more oil and fuel imports.
It is also trying to clamp down on illegal mining and halt illegal exports estimated by the government at a minimum of 50 million to 60 million metric tons per year—an embarrassing loss that is costing hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.
The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources wants to cap coal production at around 450 million metric tons year, said Bambang Tjahjono, the director of coal business supervision at the ministry’s Directorate-General of Mineral and Coal.
Indonesia officially produced 421 million metric tons of coal last year, about 350 million of which was exported. Over the past decade, total output tripled, data from the ministry shows. That level of growth has to stop, said Tjahjono in an interview at his office in Jakarta.
“For Indonesia, we expect coal production, for the next five to 10 years, is still the same. We assume in 2015 we will have flat production, so zero growth. We plan to have 449 million tonnes for the next five years and the next 10 years,” he said.
“Coal utilization in Indonesia will increase. Maybe four percent [per year]. So the exports will be the same or decreasing, but the domestic consumption will increase. That’s the prediction,” he said. He added the ministry was working on a regulation that would enshrine the cap and he hoped it would be approved later this year.
Tjahjono said the cap would be enforced. The government already approves the annual production plans for all major coal miners in Indonesia and can cap or even trim these if the mines exceed approved production plans.
“Very clearly in the approval for the production plans for 2014, the government has been quite strict on maintaining a very minimal increase on 2013,” said Winzenried. “And in 2013, some large coal companies that had exceeded their targets, did get some reduction on the 2014 target.”
Winzenried said the current low global coal prices also discouraged allowing higher production, because coal royalties were based on total sales. “It’s no longer production at all costs,” he said.
Tjahjono expects production this year to be 407 million metric tons, in part because of low prices, but also because of new trade rules aimed at stopping illegal exports. Lower demand from China is also curbing some sales.
TEST OF RESOLVE
Already there are signs the global coal market is picking up and this will likely challenge the government’s resolve to cap production, given coal royalties are worth billions of dollars every year.
State utility PLN says Indonesia must ensure domestic coal supplies and also supports curbs on export growth. It forecasts Indonesia’s coal demand for power generation will grow from 73 million metric tons in 2014 to 151 million in 2022, as coal’s share in the total fuel mix rises from 53 percent to 66 percent. The IEA forecasts Indonesia’s electricity demand will triple between 2011 and 2035 and will need to add 100 GW.
The government has also recently changed its mining laws that require value-added processing to minerals before export. This will mean mining firms will have to build energy-hungry smelters, another source of coal demand.
Capping coal production will also upset coal miners, some of which have ambitious production and investment plans.
PT Adaro, one of Indonesia’s largest and most profitable coal mining corporations, expects to produce between 54 and 56 million metric tons this year, up from 52.3 million in 2013, and has a medium-term forecast of 80 million metric tons.
The company, in an investor presentation in September this year, said it saw immense opportunities in exporting to the rest of Southeast Asia. It expects coal consumption in the region to rise from 214 million metric tons in 2013 to 600 million in 2030. Nearly half that demand would come from Indonesia.
It also expected demand from China to wane, while Indian demand would grow over the coming decade. China is looking to impose a national cap on coal consumption and ban the import of low-quality coal under a draft pollution law released recently. On October 9, China announced it would impose tariffs on minerals, including coal, from Oct 15, though Indonesian coal is exempt because of a regional trade agreement.
“Coal demand in China might slow at some point in the next decade. However, that is the time when India’s energy requirements will peak, compensating any potential downfall,” the company says in the presentation.
Adaro expects that out of the expected total growth of 250 GW in new power generation capacity by 2030 in India, around 160 GW will come from coal. However, it is unclear how a decision late in September by India’s Supreme Court to cancel 214 coal permit allocations will affect power station investment plans. Rapid investment in solar could also weaken demand for coal in India.
Another Indonesian coal miner, PT Bukit Asam, is even more bullish. In a June 2014 conference presentation, it cited research by market analysts Wood Mackenzie, which forecast Indonesian coal production would reach one billion metric tons by 2035, with domestic coal consumption about 350 million. That level of production, though, would rapidly eat away at Indonesia’s coal reserves, currently estimated at about 3 percent of the world’s total.
For the moment, Indonesia’s largest overseas customers are India, China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, but demand from Southeast Asia is expected to pick up quickly.
Adaro and global miner BHP Billiton are investing in what could become one of Indonesia’s largest coal mines. The IndoMet mine complex on Borneo covers about 350,000 hectares across seven coal mining concessions in Central and East Kalimantan provinces. It is estimated to have 1.27 billion metric tons of coal resources, mainly coking coal used to make steel.
The environmental group Indonesian Forum for the Environment (or Walhi) says the mining would occur in a heavily forested area where smaller mining operations have already polluted local rivers.
They fear such a large mine could be the trigger for a $2.3 billion coal railway in the province, which in turn could prompt other mines to be developed. Coal produced in the north of Central Kalimantan is currently shipped hundreds of kilometers down-river by barge, a costly and time-consuming process.
Australian mining company Cokal, in a June announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange, said it had received in-principle approval from the ministry of forestry to proceed with its plan to develop part of its majority-owned Bumi Barito Mineral Coal Project covering nearly 15,000 hectares. The BBM project is next to one of IndoMet mine’s concessions. The company hopes to eventually produce six million metric tons of coking coal per year.
The central government and the Central Kalimantan authorities have accepted a Chinese-led consortium’s bid to build the 425-kilometre (266-mile) rail project, but have yet to grant final approval. The railway would start in the north of the province at Puruk Cahu on the Barito River.
“If you visit Central Kalimantan, you don’t see many forests in the southern, lowland areas,” said Walhi’s head of research, Pius Ginting, pointing to large-scale logging and deforestation for palm oil plantations.
“But this mine is in the northern part. The last areas of forest are there and the communities depend on the forest. We are really concerned about this. I think BHP is the biggest beneficiary, so if BHP goes there, the coal railway will go there. And this will facilitate all the other mining permit holders to open their areas,” he said in an interview.
Data from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources shows that as of last year, there were 543 coal mining permits of all types in Central Kalimantan covering 3 million hectares, or one-fifth of the province, underscoring the risk from coal mining expansion.
TIME TO GO GREEN
Indonesia does have energy alternatives, NGOs and green energy investors say. They want the government to focus more on renewables, such as wind, solar, geothermal and hydro, as a hedge against too much dependence on coal.
Greenpeace Indonesia has calculated that with regulatory support, renewable energy could comprise 50 percent of Indonesia’s energy mix by 2035. At present, hydro comprises 5 percent and geothermal 4 percent, according to PLN. Geothermal is forecast to rise to 11 percent of generation by 2022, PLN says, while hydro stays steady at 5 percent.
Indonesia boasts about 40 percent of the world’s geothermal resources, but high construction costs remain an obstacle. Solar and wind are looking increasingly attractive, particularly in remote areas, as costs fall.
Wind and solar investment remains tiny, but that is changing. Asia Green Capital Partners, a company developing renewable energy projects, is seeing positive signs of change from PLN. The government is working on a feed-in tariff for wind power projects and tendered 140 MW of solar power projects for remote islands, triggering a strong investor response.
“We believe in 2020 the potential would be 1 GW of wind energy for Indonesia, growing to 10 GW by 2060, which is due to growing grids and improvement in technology that allows us to build wind farms in lower wind speed areas,” said Asia Green Capital Partners’s project development director, Thijs Sablerolle, in Jakarta.
Singapore-based Asia Green Capital Partners has teamed up with the IFC, part of the World Bank, to develop a 62.5 megawatt wind farm in South Sulawesi. Other projects are in the pipeline.
At present, PLN uses costly diesel generators in many remote areas in Indonesia and is building small coal-fired power stations on some eastern islands. Solar could provide a cost-effective solution, Sablerolle said.
“Eastern Indonesia has up to 2,400 kilowatt/hours per square metre per year, which is very high,” he said, referring to solar energy that could be tapped. “It’s very hard to find something higher in the world.”
PLN, though, has yet to sign power-purchase agreements for solar projects. This cautious approach contrasts with the government’s fossil fuel subsidies that currently consume about one-fifth of its annual budget.
While renewables investment is set to grow in Indonesia, coal-fired generation will remain the main focus for the government. Greenpeace estimates there are 117 coal-fired power stations either planned or currently under construction.
FUELING CLIMATE CHANGE
Not all will get built, either for financial reasons or local protests. But based on projections by the government, IEA and ADB, rapid coal-fired power generation investment will cause a sharp jump in Indonesia’s and Southeast Asia’s carbon-dioxide emissions.
“The region’s energy-related CO2 emissions almost double, reaching 2.3 billion [metric tons] in 2035,” says the IEA in its Southeast Asia Energy Outlook 2013.
Of Indonesia’s 100 GW in new power generation capacity by 2035, half will be coal-fired, says the IEA.
According to the Global Carbon Atlas, Indonesia’s fossil fuel emissions from burning oil, gas and coal and cement production totalled 263 million [metric tons] in 2000, rising to 494 million in 2013. Over the same period, coal emissions rose from 42 million to 171 million metric tons.
The rise in emissions directly challenges the government’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas pollution by 26 percent below projected business-as-usual levels by 2020.
Add to this Indonesia’s increasing deforestation rate, according to recent studies, and annual forest fires. According to the government, about 75 percent of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation, forest fires and clearing and draining of carbon-rich peat swamps.
Given rising fossil fuel emissions, the government would need to dramatically rein in forest loss and curb forest fires if it is to achieve its 2020 climate goal.
Greenpeace says the government has to get its coal production policies right and that NGOs will be turning up the heat on the coal sector to curb production, with campaigns targeting financiers and buyers.
“The story of coal in Indonesia will be similar to the story [of] oil,” said Arif Fiyanto, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Indonesia. “In the past 10 years, Indonesia was a member of OPEC but now it is net importer of oil. Coal will be the same if there are no good policies on coal.”
For ordinary Indonesians, the growth of the coal sector means it is just one of a long line of resource industries that compete for land, placing ever greater demand on the nation’s dwindling forests and farms and customary lands as the population heads towards 300 million by 2035.
Mining concessions of all types already cover about 34 percent of the country. Coal mining concessions alone cover 21.25 million hectares, or about the size of the U.S. state of Kansas, according to government data.
If you include oil and gas, palm oil, timber and logging concessions, it is 68 percent of the country.
“Where do all the people live?” asked Hendrik Siregar of the Indonesian mining NGO Jaringan Advokasi Tambang, or JATAM. “If you overlay all the concessions, where do all the people live?”
This article was originally written and published by David Fogarty, a contributing writer for news.mongabay.com. For the original article and more information, please click HERE. "
www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1027405-indonesias-choice-coal-vs-e…
"Indonesia cannot build power stations fast enough. And neither can most of its Asian neighbors. Rapid economic and population growth are driving equally rapid demands for electricity as the region builds out power grids to connect up millions of people to fuel prosperity.
Electricity generation is forecast to nearly triple in Southeast Asia between 2011 and 2035, the International Energy Agency says, with fossil fuels providing most of the energy.
With a population of 600 million, nearly twice that of the United States, and about 130 million people without electricity, Southeast Asia faces an immense challenge to meet that demand in a cost-efficient manner that doesn’t cause serious air and water pollution and drive up health costs.
For Indonesia, the Asia energy story is a blessing worth untold riches in terms of royalties, money it needs to develop its economy and provide jobs. The IEA says demand for coal in Southeast Asia will rise 4.8 percent per year, with Indonesia in the geographic sweet spot to be the region’s main supplier.
In the wider Asia-Pacific, demand for coal will increase by 52.8 percent from 2010 to 2035, according to the Asian Development Bank.
With about 30 billion metric tons of coal reserves, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Indonesia has decades’ worth of supply to fuel its economic expansion and that of its neighbors – provided it limits production growth.
“Coal is still going to be the most significant fuel in the energy mix for the foreseeable future,” said Sacha Winzenried, a senior adviser on mining for PwC, the global business services firm, referring to Indonesia. While Indonesia has large amounts of gas, it doesn’t have a national pipeline network, he said, and it will be hard for renewables, such as geothermal, to dramatically ramp up capacity fast enough because of high capital costs.
It is here that Indonesia faces its trickiest energy balancing act: how to ensure enough coal supplies to meet soaring domestic energy demands, while also meeting the growing needs of its neighbors and facilitating growth expectations of domestic coal producers.
Environmentalists and climate scientists also point to damage from coal mining and growing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that will undermine the drive to limit global warming. As a result of efforts to do so, major developing countries are under increasing pressure to limit emissions growth.
More coal mining will mean more deforestation, since most Indonesian coal extraction is done through open pit mining. This involves clearing forest or farmland, removing the top soil and then progressively digging out the coal seams, which can be a few metres to tens of metres from the surface. Once the coal is extracted, the top soil is backfilled into the hole and a new pit is dug.
Increased mining will also result in more water pollution and health risks for local communities, NGOs say. They point to myriad environmental and health problems caused by the industry to date because of poor oversight and corruption. Common examples of graft involve district chiefs offering mining permits in return for bribes and police and mining department officials ignoring threats and intimidation of villagers by mining firms seeking to acquire land.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
For Indonesia, though, there is little choice, the government says. In the world’s fourth most populous nation with 250 million people, 60 million of whom do not have access to electricity. The nation has 54.5 gigawatts (GW) of installed capacity, about the same as neighboring Australia, a country with a tenth of Indonesia’s population.
Electricity demand growth in Indonesia is increasing 9.4 percent a year, according to state utility Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN). Abundant coal is the quickest way to connect millions of people to electricity and drive economic growth, the government says.
The central government is trying to address environmental issues, with mixed results. For now, its primary focus is energy security, particularly as production at its existing oil fields declines, leading to more oil and fuel imports.
It is also trying to clamp down on illegal mining and halt illegal exports estimated by the government at a minimum of 50 million to 60 million metric tons per year—an embarrassing loss that is costing hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties.
The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources wants to cap coal production at around 450 million metric tons year, said Bambang Tjahjono, the director of coal business supervision at the ministry’s Directorate-General of Mineral and Coal.
Indonesia officially produced 421 million metric tons of coal last year, about 350 million of which was exported. Over the past decade, total output tripled, data from the ministry shows. That level of growth has to stop, said Tjahjono in an interview at his office in Jakarta.
“For Indonesia, we expect coal production, for the next five to 10 years, is still the same. We assume in 2015 we will have flat production, so zero growth. We plan to have 449 million tonnes for the next five years and the next 10 years,” he said.
“Coal utilization in Indonesia will increase. Maybe four percent [per year]. So the exports will be the same or decreasing, but the domestic consumption will increase. That’s the prediction,” he said. He added the ministry was working on a regulation that would enshrine the cap and he hoped it would be approved later this year.
Tjahjono said the cap would be enforced. The government already approves the annual production plans for all major coal miners in Indonesia and can cap or even trim these if the mines exceed approved production plans.
“Very clearly in the approval for the production plans for 2014, the government has been quite strict on maintaining a very minimal increase on 2013,” said Winzenried. “And in 2013, some large coal companies that had exceeded their targets, did get some reduction on the 2014 target.”
Winzenried said the current low global coal prices also discouraged allowing higher production, because coal royalties were based on total sales. “It’s no longer production at all costs,” he said.
Tjahjono expects production this year to be 407 million metric tons, in part because of low prices, but also because of new trade rules aimed at stopping illegal exports. Lower demand from China is also curbing some sales.
TEST OF RESOLVE
Already there are signs the global coal market is picking up and this will likely challenge the government’s resolve to cap production, given coal royalties are worth billions of dollars every year.
State utility PLN says Indonesia must ensure domestic coal supplies and also supports curbs on export growth. It forecasts Indonesia’s coal demand for power generation will grow from 73 million metric tons in 2014 to 151 million in 2022, as coal’s share in the total fuel mix rises from 53 percent to 66 percent. The IEA forecasts Indonesia’s electricity demand will triple between 2011 and 2035 and will need to add 100 GW.
The government has also recently changed its mining laws that require value-added processing to minerals before export. This will mean mining firms will have to build energy-hungry smelters, another source of coal demand.
Capping coal production will also upset coal miners, some of which have ambitious production and investment plans.
PT Adaro, one of Indonesia’s largest and most profitable coal mining corporations, expects to produce between 54 and 56 million metric tons this year, up from 52.3 million in 2013, and has a medium-term forecast of 80 million metric tons.
The company, in an investor presentation in September this year, said it saw immense opportunities in exporting to the rest of Southeast Asia. It expects coal consumption in the region to rise from 214 million metric tons in 2013 to 600 million in 2030. Nearly half that demand would come from Indonesia.
It also expected demand from China to wane, while Indian demand would grow over the coming decade. China is looking to impose a national cap on coal consumption and ban the import of low-quality coal under a draft pollution law released recently. On October 9, China announced it would impose tariffs on minerals, including coal, from Oct 15, though Indonesian coal is exempt because of a regional trade agreement.
“Coal demand in China might slow at some point in the next decade. However, that is the time when India’s energy requirements will peak, compensating any potential downfall,” the company says in the presentation.
Adaro expects that out of the expected total growth of 250 GW in new power generation capacity by 2030 in India, around 160 GW will come from coal. However, it is unclear how a decision late in September by India’s Supreme Court to cancel 214 coal permit allocations will affect power station investment plans. Rapid investment in solar could also weaken demand for coal in India.
Another Indonesian coal miner, PT Bukit Asam, is even more bullish. In a June 2014 conference presentation, it cited research by market analysts Wood Mackenzie, which forecast Indonesian coal production would reach one billion metric tons by 2035, with domestic coal consumption about 350 million. That level of production, though, would rapidly eat away at Indonesia’s coal reserves, currently estimated at about 3 percent of the world’s total.
For the moment, Indonesia’s largest overseas customers are India, China, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, but demand from Southeast Asia is expected to pick up quickly.
Adaro and global miner BHP Billiton are investing in what could become one of Indonesia’s largest coal mines. The IndoMet mine complex on Borneo covers about 350,000 hectares across seven coal mining concessions in Central and East Kalimantan provinces. It is estimated to have 1.27 billion metric tons of coal resources, mainly coking coal used to make steel.
The environmental group Indonesian Forum for the Environment (or Walhi) says the mining would occur in a heavily forested area where smaller mining operations have already polluted local rivers.
They fear such a large mine could be the trigger for a $2.3 billion coal railway in the province, which in turn could prompt other mines to be developed. Coal produced in the north of Central Kalimantan is currently shipped hundreds of kilometers down-river by barge, a costly and time-consuming process.
Australian mining company Cokal, in a June announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange, said it had received in-principle approval from the ministry of forestry to proceed with its plan to develop part of its majority-owned Bumi Barito Mineral Coal Project covering nearly 15,000 hectares. The BBM project is next to one of IndoMet mine’s concessions. The company hopes to eventually produce six million metric tons of coking coal per year.
The central government and the Central Kalimantan authorities have accepted a Chinese-led consortium’s bid to build the 425-kilometre (266-mile) rail project, but have yet to grant final approval. The railway would start in the north of the province at Puruk Cahu on the Barito River.
“If you visit Central Kalimantan, you don’t see many forests in the southern, lowland areas,” said Walhi’s head of research, Pius Ginting, pointing to large-scale logging and deforestation for palm oil plantations.
“But this mine is in the northern part. The last areas of forest are there and the communities depend on the forest. We are really concerned about this. I think BHP is the biggest beneficiary, so if BHP goes there, the coal railway will go there. And this will facilitate all the other mining permit holders to open their areas,” he said in an interview.
Data from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources shows that as of last year, there were 543 coal mining permits of all types in Central Kalimantan covering 3 million hectares, or one-fifth of the province, underscoring the risk from coal mining expansion.
TIME TO GO GREEN
Indonesia does have energy alternatives, NGOs and green energy investors say. They want the government to focus more on renewables, such as wind, solar, geothermal and hydro, as a hedge against too much dependence on coal.
Greenpeace Indonesia has calculated that with regulatory support, renewable energy could comprise 50 percent of Indonesia’s energy mix by 2035. At present, hydro comprises 5 percent and geothermal 4 percent, according to PLN. Geothermal is forecast to rise to 11 percent of generation by 2022, PLN says, while hydro stays steady at 5 percent.
Indonesia boasts about 40 percent of the world’s geothermal resources, but high construction costs remain an obstacle. Solar and wind are looking increasingly attractive, particularly in remote areas, as costs fall.
Wind and solar investment remains tiny, but that is changing. Asia Green Capital Partners, a company developing renewable energy projects, is seeing positive signs of change from PLN. The government is working on a feed-in tariff for wind power projects and tendered 140 MW of solar power projects for remote islands, triggering a strong investor response.
“We believe in 2020 the potential would be 1 GW of wind energy for Indonesia, growing to 10 GW by 2060, which is due to growing grids and improvement in technology that allows us to build wind farms in lower wind speed areas,” said Asia Green Capital Partners’s project development director, Thijs Sablerolle, in Jakarta.
Singapore-based Asia Green Capital Partners has teamed up with the IFC, part of the World Bank, to develop a 62.5 megawatt wind farm in South Sulawesi. Other projects are in the pipeline.
At present, PLN uses costly diesel generators in many remote areas in Indonesia and is building small coal-fired power stations on some eastern islands. Solar could provide a cost-effective solution, Sablerolle said.
“Eastern Indonesia has up to 2,400 kilowatt/hours per square metre per year, which is very high,” he said, referring to solar energy that could be tapped. “It’s very hard to find something higher in the world.”
PLN, though, has yet to sign power-purchase agreements for solar projects. This cautious approach contrasts with the government’s fossil fuel subsidies that currently consume about one-fifth of its annual budget.
While renewables investment is set to grow in Indonesia, coal-fired generation will remain the main focus for the government. Greenpeace estimates there are 117 coal-fired power stations either planned or currently under construction.
FUELING CLIMATE CHANGE
Not all will get built, either for financial reasons or local protests. But based on projections by the government, IEA and ADB, rapid coal-fired power generation investment will cause a sharp jump in Indonesia’s and Southeast Asia’s carbon-dioxide emissions.
“The region’s energy-related CO2 emissions almost double, reaching 2.3 billion [metric tons] in 2035,” says the IEA in its Southeast Asia Energy Outlook 2013.
Of Indonesia’s 100 GW in new power generation capacity by 2035, half will be coal-fired, says the IEA.
According to the Global Carbon Atlas, Indonesia’s fossil fuel emissions from burning oil, gas and coal and cement production totalled 263 million [metric tons] in 2000, rising to 494 million in 2013. Over the same period, coal emissions rose from 42 million to 171 million metric tons.
The rise in emissions directly challenges the government’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas pollution by 26 percent below projected business-as-usual levels by 2020.
Add to this Indonesia’s increasing deforestation rate, according to recent studies, and annual forest fires. According to the government, about 75 percent of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation, forest fires and clearing and draining of carbon-rich peat swamps.
Given rising fossil fuel emissions, the government would need to dramatically rein in forest loss and curb forest fires if it is to achieve its 2020 climate goal.
Greenpeace says the government has to get its coal production policies right and that NGOs will be turning up the heat on the coal sector to curb production, with campaigns targeting financiers and buyers.
“The story of coal in Indonesia will be similar to the story [of] oil,” said Arif Fiyanto, climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Indonesia. “In the past 10 years, Indonesia was a member of OPEC but now it is net importer of oil. Coal will be the same if there are no good policies on coal.”
For ordinary Indonesians, the growth of the coal sector means it is just one of a long line of resource industries that compete for land, placing ever greater demand on the nation’s dwindling forests and farms and customary lands as the population heads towards 300 million by 2035.
Mining concessions of all types already cover about 34 percent of the country. Coal mining concessions alone cover 21.25 million hectares, or about the size of the U.S. state of Kansas, according to government data.
If you include oil and gas, palm oil, timber and logging concessions, it is 68 percent of the country.
“Where do all the people live?” asked Hendrik Siregar of the Indonesian mining NGO Jaringan Advokasi Tambang, or JATAM. “If you overlay all the concessions, where do all the people live?”
This article was originally written and published by David Fogarty, a contributing writer for news.mongabay.com. For the original article and more information, please click HERE. "
Global Boom in Natural Gas 'Unlikely to Help the Climate, Study Suggests' - CT/N/YE360 - Oct 20, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/20/global-boom-in-natural-ga…
"Increasing global supplies of unconventional natural gas will not help to reduce the overall upward trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions and the planetary warming that comes with it, according to a new study published in the journal Nature.
The findings further undercut the notion, long touted by proponents of natural gas, that the fuel — which emits less CO2 than coal when burned — represents an important “bridge” in the transition to low carbon energy resources.
The study, which synthesized models developed by numerous researchers working independently, suggested that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations over the next 35 years would remain virtually unchanged — and in some models, warming would be worsened — by increased natural gas production around the globe. This was in part attributed to the fact that the new gas supplies would provide a substitute not only for coal, but also for existing low-emissions technologies like nuclear power and renewables.
“Our results show that although market penetration of globally abundant gas may substantially change the future energy system,” the authors of the study noted, “it is not necessarily an effective substitute for climate change mitigation policy.” "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/20/global-boom-in-natural-ga…
"Increasing global supplies of unconventional natural gas will not help to reduce the overall upward trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions and the planetary warming that comes with it, according to a new study published in the journal Nature.
The findings further undercut the notion, long touted by proponents of natural gas, that the fuel — which emits less CO2 than coal when burned — represents an important “bridge” in the transition to low carbon energy resources.
The study, which synthesized models developed by numerous researchers working independently, suggested that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations over the next 35 years would remain virtually unchanged — and in some models, warming would be worsened — by increased natural gas production around the globe. This was in part attributed to the fact that the new gas supplies would provide a substitute not only for coal, but also for existing low-emissions technologies like nuclear power and renewables.
“Our results show that although market penetration of globally abundant gas may substantially change the future energy system,” the authors of the study noted, “it is not necessarily an effective substitute for climate change mitigation policy.” "
Pressing Matters: Inserting Indow Windows for Energy Efficiency - CT/DoE/PNNL, OREGON - Oct 20, 2014
www.pnnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/PN…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/20/pressing-matters-insertin…
"Indow Windows (Indow) is a Portland, Oregon, company that has developed energy efficient window inserts.
Indow owns at least one U.S. Patent and a pending patent application covering its storm window technology. U.S. Patent No. 8,272,178 (’178 Patent) is entitled “Press-fit storm window” and directed to a storm window assembly comprising a transparent panel and tubes or gaskets for insertion into a window frame.
The tube (102) has a hollow interior and a channel groove that connects it to the panel (130). The tube allows a pressure fit (350, 352, 354) into a window frame.
FIGS. 6(A)-6(C) show a molded tube corner piece which includes parallel plates (605, 615) with a gap (617). Notch (643) facilitates better coverage and flexibility while find (641) provides improved adhesion and insulation.
FIG. 5 shows the corner piece being inserted into a window frame.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2014/0174006 is a related application (continuation-in-part of a continuation-in-part) owned by Indow, which adds some new material to the original disclosure of the ’178 Patent.
According to the ’178 Patent, the invention is intended to supplement, rather than replace, existing windows:
The windows are not designed to replace existing windows, but rather to supplement them by creating a tight seal between the interior space or exterior space and the existing window.
The invention accomplishes this by creating outward pressure around the edge of the panel:
In one embodiment of the inventive press-fit storm window, a transparent panel of acrylic glass, such as PLEXIGLAS, glass, or other clear rigid material is held in place by the spring action created by a continuous (or partial, conceivably) round gasket (or other spring-like gasket), that creates outward pressure around the entire exterior edge of the clear panel (or the top, left, and right sides). The panel is held securely in place through a combination of this outward pressure and friction.
A press release emailed to me by the company notes that its compression tube requires no mounting hardware or track system. Significantly, the press release cites a U.S. Department of Energy study which found that installation of Indow Windows in a home in Seattle “led to a more than 20 percent reduction in heating, ventilating and air-conditioning use.”
The windows have gotten some recognition – according to the press release it has won a number of awards including the 2014 Top Product of the Year Award in the Environmental Leader Product & Project Awards. "
www.pnnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_reports/PN…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/20/pressing-matters-insertin…
"Indow Windows (Indow) is a Portland, Oregon, company that has developed energy efficient window inserts.
Indow owns at least one U.S. Patent and a pending patent application covering its storm window technology. U.S. Patent No. 8,272,178 (’178 Patent) is entitled “Press-fit storm window” and directed to a storm window assembly comprising a transparent panel and tubes or gaskets for insertion into a window frame.
The tube (102) has a hollow interior and a channel groove that connects it to the panel (130). The tube allows a pressure fit (350, 352, 354) into a window frame.
FIGS. 6(A)-6(C) show a molded tube corner piece which includes parallel plates (605, 615) with a gap (617). Notch (643) facilitates better coverage and flexibility while find (641) provides improved adhesion and insulation.
FIG. 5 shows the corner piece being inserted into a window frame.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2014/0174006 is a related application (continuation-in-part of a continuation-in-part) owned by Indow, which adds some new material to the original disclosure of the ’178 Patent.
According to the ’178 Patent, the invention is intended to supplement, rather than replace, existing windows:
The windows are not designed to replace existing windows, but rather to supplement them by creating a tight seal between the interior space or exterior space and the existing window.
The invention accomplishes this by creating outward pressure around the edge of the panel:
In one embodiment of the inventive press-fit storm window, a transparent panel of acrylic glass, such as PLEXIGLAS, glass, or other clear rigid material is held in place by the spring action created by a continuous (or partial, conceivably) round gasket (or other spring-like gasket), that creates outward pressure around the entire exterior edge of the clear panel (or the top, left, and right sides). The panel is held securely in place through a combination of this outward pressure and friction.
A press release emailed to me by the company notes that its compression tube requires no mounting hardware or track system. Significantly, the press release cites a U.S. Department of Energy study which found that installation of Indow Windows in a home in Seattle “led to a more than 20 percent reduction in heating, ventilating and air-conditioning use.”
The windows have gotten some recognition – according to the press release it has won a number of awards including the 2014 Top Product of the Year Award in the Environmental Leader Product & Project Awards. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.005.521 von Popeye82 am 11.10.14 02:50:30
keine AHnung, scheint mir schon "zeitlich sehr optimistisch", aber sie sehen das so
NASA: We will find alien life within 20 years, @NASA's Washington headquarters on Monday, a panel of space program scientists announced their estimation that humans will find extraterrestrial life within 20 years, going as far as to say that the estimate is a "conservative" one
keine AHnung, scheint mir schon "zeitlich sehr optimistisch", aber sie sehen das so
NASA: We will find alien life within 20 years, @NASA's Washington headquarters on Monday, a panel of space program scientists announced their estimation that humans will find extraterrestrial life within 20 years, going as far as to say that the estimate is a "conservative" one
per registrieren, ich bin es, istder komplett lesbar
New Report Shows Insurers Unprepared to Address Climate Risk: Insurer Climate Risk Disclosure Survey Report &Scorecard: 2014 Findings &Recommendations - Ceres - Oct 21, 2014
www.ceres.org/resources/reports/insurer-climate-risk-disclos…
"Amid growing evidence that climate change is having wide-ranging global impacts that will worsen in the years ahead, Insurer Climate Risk Disclosure Survey Report & Scorecard: 2014 Findings & Recommendations, ranks the nation's 330 largest insurance companies on what they are saying and doing to respond to escalating climate risks. The report found strong leadership among fewer than a dozen companies but generally poor responses among the vast majority.
This report summarizes responses from insurance companies to a survey on climatechange risks developed by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). In 2013, insurance regulators in California, Connecticut, Minnesota, NewYork and Washington required insurers writing in excess of $100 million in direct written premiums, and licensed to operate in any of the five states, to disclose their climate- related risks using this survey.
The aim of the survey, and Ceres’ analysis of the responses, is to provide regulators,insurers, investors and other stakeholders with substantive information about the risks insurers face from climate change and the steps insurers are taking—or are not taking— to respond to those risks. Because virtually every large insurer operates in at least one of the mandatory climate risk disclosure states, this analysis effectively opens a window into the entire industry. The report distills key findings and industry trends, and includes company specific scores based on disclosed actions taken to manage climate risks. It also offers recommendations for insurers and regulators to improve the insurance sectors’ overall management of climate change risks. ..."
New Report Shows Insurers Unprepared to Address Climate Risk: Insurer Climate Risk Disclosure Survey Report &Scorecard: 2014 Findings &Recommendations - Ceres - Oct 21, 2014
www.ceres.org/resources/reports/insurer-climate-risk-disclos…
"Amid growing evidence that climate change is having wide-ranging global impacts that will worsen in the years ahead, Insurer Climate Risk Disclosure Survey Report & Scorecard: 2014 Findings & Recommendations, ranks the nation's 330 largest insurance companies on what they are saying and doing to respond to escalating climate risks. The report found strong leadership among fewer than a dozen companies but generally poor responses among the vast majority.
This report summarizes responses from insurance companies to a survey on climatechange risks developed by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). In 2013, insurance regulators in California, Connecticut, Minnesota, NewYork and Washington required insurers writing in excess of $100 million in direct written premiums, and licensed to operate in any of the five states, to disclose their climate- related risks using this survey.
The aim of the survey, and Ceres’ analysis of the responses, is to provide regulators,insurers, investors and other stakeholders with substantive information about the risks insurers face from climate change and the steps insurers are taking—or are not taking— to respond to those risks. Because virtually every large insurer operates in at least one of the mandatory climate risk disclosure states, this analysis effectively opens a window into the entire industry. The report distills key findings and industry trends, and includes company specific scores based on disclosed actions taken to manage climate risks. It also offers recommendations for insurers and regulators to improve the insurance sectors’ overall management of climate change risks. ..."
Asia’s $20,000,000,000 Clean Energy Tycoon Considers Going Global - CT/3BLM - Oct 24, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/24/asias-20-billion-clean-en…
"The world’s largest private investor in clean energy, Zheng Jianming, who has amassed about $20 billion in Chinese solar manufacturing assets, is considering seeking U.S. investments to fund his expanding energy technology ambitions. Zheng is the chairman and founder of Asia Pacific Resources Development (APRD), which holds the world’s largest collection of solar-manufacturing businesses. During a recent meeting with potential investors at the Next Generation Solar PV Finance Conference in New York, he indicated that he may be ready to seek a public listing for APRD.
Hong Kong-based APRD is also investing in electric cars, geothermal systems, and even technologies that use seawater to store power. Zheng says that his aim is to supply clean energy for nearly every aspect of daily life – from the power source to air conditioning, lighting, and transport. His vision for APRD is not just limited to China, but aimed at going global. “If a city were to implement all of these technologies, it would basically be low-carbon,” he said in New York.
Zheng’s investor meeting in New York marks the first time that he has spoken publicly since he quietly began acquiring assets and stakes in Chinese solar companies in 2012. The 50-year old tycoon has consistently avoided public appearances and declined requests for interviews until he broke his silence in New York. He is the largest shareholder in Shunfeng Photovoltaic International Ltd., a panel maker and power-plant developer based in China and listed in Hong Kong.
Shunfeng has become the flagship company for his renewable-energy aspirations. Shunfeng has been on an acquisition spree, buying out large solar manufacturers that were strapped for cash. Zheng decided to invest into solar at a time when the industry was going through a slump due to a global glut of solar panels. One of his recent acquisitions, Suntech, which shipped about 800 MW of solar panels last year, is expected to triple the shipments this year to 2.4 gigawatts. Including other clean energy assets, Zheng expects to generate a total of 50 gigawatts of power.
Shunfeng has also made investments in energy-storage companies that are developing batteries for electric vehicles. It is financing Taiwan Carbon Nanotube Technology Corp., which employs nanotechnology in battery systems based on seawater, and Green Wheel Electric Vehicles, a Chinese supplier of electric cars and buses.Zheng said that his ventures have mirrored China’s development, and clean energy is what the country needs now.
Article by Vikas Vij of Justmeans, appearing courtesy 3BL Media. "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/24/asias-20-billion-clean-en…
"The world’s largest private investor in clean energy, Zheng Jianming, who has amassed about $20 billion in Chinese solar manufacturing assets, is considering seeking U.S. investments to fund his expanding energy technology ambitions. Zheng is the chairman and founder of Asia Pacific Resources Development (APRD), which holds the world’s largest collection of solar-manufacturing businesses. During a recent meeting with potential investors at the Next Generation Solar PV Finance Conference in New York, he indicated that he may be ready to seek a public listing for APRD.
Hong Kong-based APRD is also investing in electric cars, geothermal systems, and even technologies that use seawater to store power. Zheng says that his aim is to supply clean energy for nearly every aspect of daily life – from the power source to air conditioning, lighting, and transport. His vision for APRD is not just limited to China, but aimed at going global. “If a city were to implement all of these technologies, it would basically be low-carbon,” he said in New York.
Zheng’s investor meeting in New York marks the first time that he has spoken publicly since he quietly began acquiring assets and stakes in Chinese solar companies in 2012. The 50-year old tycoon has consistently avoided public appearances and declined requests for interviews until he broke his silence in New York. He is the largest shareholder in Shunfeng Photovoltaic International Ltd., a panel maker and power-plant developer based in China and listed in Hong Kong.
Shunfeng has become the flagship company for his renewable-energy aspirations. Shunfeng has been on an acquisition spree, buying out large solar manufacturers that were strapped for cash. Zheng decided to invest into solar at a time when the industry was going through a slump due to a global glut of solar panels. One of his recent acquisitions, Suntech, which shipped about 800 MW of solar panels last year, is expected to triple the shipments this year to 2.4 gigawatts. Including other clean energy assets, Zheng expects to generate a total of 50 gigawatts of power.
Shunfeng has also made investments in energy-storage companies that are developing batteries for electric vehicles. It is financing Taiwan Carbon Nanotube Technology Corp., which employs nanotechnology in battery systems based on seawater, and Green Wheel Electric Vehicles, a Chinese supplier of electric cars and buses.Zheng said that his ventures have mirrored China’s development, and clean energy is what the country needs now.
Article by Vikas Vij of Justmeans, appearing courtesy 3BL Media. "
EU Leaders Agree on 40 Percent Emissions Reduction, by 2030 - CT/EC - Oct 24, 2014
- Edouard Stenger -
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/24/eu-leaders-agree-on-40-pe…
"Last night, the European Council met with all the heads of State and country leaders. The topic was climate and energy and the goal was to enable the European Union – over half a billion people accounting for as 23 percent of global GDP and 11 percent of global emissions – to reach as ambitious a goal as possible for 2030.
These negotiations took place ahead of the future UNFCCC talks that will take place in December 2015 in Paris.
The outcome could have been better but could have been worse as leaders agreed to a minimum level of 40 percent of emissions reductions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. However, the energy efficiency and renewables targets were watered down, from 30 percent which were asked by the European Commission to 27 percent.
This is a major disappointment as some nations like Germany or Denmark have much more higher national targets for overall emissions reductions and that many other countries are investing – or have been investing – heavily in renewables. Those who read my articles will remember my recent posts on Portugal, Spain or Ireland to name but a few.
But on the other side of the fence of climate change mitigation, we have Poland, which continues to be heavily reliant on coal. The leaders of this great country seem hell-bent on keeping their coal industry, oblivious to the fact that their country could halve coal consumption by 2030 as I reported in an article.
The second reason for disappointment – some business leaders had called for more ambitious goals. Indeed, European Industry could benefit from more renewables and energy efficiency as it could lower their energy bills, and thus increase their competitivity. Additionally, many companies are manufacturing and selling these solutions, and thus are depending on larger, tougher goals.
Last but not least, these watered down objectives are being set while the EU continues to purchase from Russia over half a billion euros of oil and natural gas each day. The amounts total over 200 billion euros ( $277 billion ) a year as I noted on my blog earlier this year. Given how efficiency and renewables could lower these bills, one is truly wondering why our leaders kept such targets… Even more, when one know that 30 percent emissions reductions could be reached as early as 2030.
Time will tell if the European Union will once again lead the fight against climate change. "
- Edouard Stenger -
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/24/eu-leaders-agree-on-40-pe…
"Last night, the European Council met with all the heads of State and country leaders. The topic was climate and energy and the goal was to enable the European Union – over half a billion people accounting for as 23 percent of global GDP and 11 percent of global emissions – to reach as ambitious a goal as possible for 2030.
These negotiations took place ahead of the future UNFCCC talks that will take place in December 2015 in Paris.
The outcome could have been better but could have been worse as leaders agreed to a minimum level of 40 percent of emissions reductions by 2030 compared to 1990 levels. However, the energy efficiency and renewables targets were watered down, from 30 percent which were asked by the European Commission to 27 percent.
This is a major disappointment as some nations like Germany or Denmark have much more higher national targets for overall emissions reductions and that many other countries are investing – or have been investing – heavily in renewables. Those who read my articles will remember my recent posts on Portugal, Spain or Ireland to name but a few.
But on the other side of the fence of climate change mitigation, we have Poland, which continues to be heavily reliant on coal. The leaders of this great country seem hell-bent on keeping their coal industry, oblivious to the fact that their country could halve coal consumption by 2030 as I reported in an article.
The second reason for disappointment – some business leaders had called for more ambitious goals. Indeed, European Industry could benefit from more renewables and energy efficiency as it could lower their energy bills, and thus increase their competitivity. Additionally, many companies are manufacturing and selling these solutions, and thus are depending on larger, tougher goals.
Last but not least, these watered down objectives are being set while the EU continues to purchase from Russia over half a billion euros of oil and natural gas each day. The amounts total over 200 billion euros ( $277 billion ) a year as I noted on my blog earlier this year. Given how efficiency and renewables could lower these bills, one is truly wondering why our leaders kept such targets… Even more, when one know that 30 percent emissions reductions could be reached as early as 2030.
Time will tell if the European Union will once again lead the fight against climate change. "
ExxonMobil 'joins the Pyromaniax', Petroleum giant signs 2-year research project with Iowa State to explore fast pyrolysis as a biofuel technology? What exactly is going on in the fast pyro reaction - can deep insight lead to biocrude instead of biooil? Can biooil be more stabilized? The Digest looks behind the news - BD - Oct 22, 2014
- J. Lane -
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/10/21/exxonmobil-joins-t…
"One science project that never got done in primeval times was setting up a time-lapse camera somewhere in Texas around 60 million years ago, and accumulating a photographic record of where exactly petroleum actually came from.
Even at a rate of one exposure a year, the resulting film would run for nearly five years, and would be about as interesting as watching paint dry (sort of in reverse, since it’s better described as watching paint form). But it would have solved the mystery.
To make matters worse, we have no dinosaur-in-the-street interview to provide on-the-spot answers:
DINO: There, over there, I saw it!
REPORTER: What did you see?
DINO: Those leaves and muck over there…they’re changing! They’re becoming hydrocarbons! Run for your lives!
So, we’re left to guess, and the general consensus is that the hydrocarbon soup — the stuff we are we are so busy finding, drilling, tracking and pumping — came out of a gigantic collection of muck, fiber and leaves which has gone through an achingly slow pyrolysis.
Back to Pyrolysis Academy
Now, pyrolysis isn’t so hard to understand at a high level. That grade school experiment where you burn sugar and make a lava-like brown flow that rises and bubbles briefly as a liquid stew, then suddenly solidifies into a bunch or desiccated black carbon. That’s pyrolysis — though a highly oxygenated, uncontrolled version of it.
Pyrolysis means simply heating biomass — but not so hot that it begins to combust — and the fast pyrolysis reaction that was discovered around 1980 is thought by many to be the world’s best hope for discovering a machine that can turn biomass into oil so quickly that it becomes an economically viable way of making an oil that is workable in all the ways that petroleum is.
So far, it’s more about vision than reality. There have been a number of fast pyrolysis reactors built — and they really do transform biomass, in a matter of seconds, into a fraction of burnable gas, a fraction of biooil, and a fraction of black residue known as biochar. But then, we try to work with the resulting bio-oil, and its a mess compared to petroleum.
And here’s the problem with bio-oil, vs petroleum. And you wouldn’t think that it’s a problem until you have to do with it.
The lazy kid and the hyperactive one
You see, petroleum is like the laziest kid in the neighborhood. You have to prod it and poke it to get it to do anything for you. So, over the years, we have developed these huge refineries that throw temperature and pressure and catalysts at petroleum, to transform it into the array of fuels, chemicals and materials that we know today.
By contrast, bio-oil is like the hyperactive kid in the neighborhood with ADHD that you want to make sure is taking his Ritalin.
It reacts in a volatile way even when you don’t want it to, and changes from one stew of molecules into another. It has always been viewed typically as a very uncontrollable reaction, a non-selective process that gives you this soup of molecules and doesn’t behave like petroleum.
Enter ExxonMobil
But hang on, help may be on the way. ExxonMobil and Iowa State University just announced a collaboration on pyrolysis. But not a simple process development from what we know today. Rather, a deep investigation into pyro — what is actually going on inside the reactor, and what can be done for stabilization of the bio-oil that is so tantalizingly close to petroleum, but lacks that inert nature that leaves us in control of its transformation.
The Digest spoke this week with Iowa State’s Dr. Robert “The Godfatha of Pyrolysis” Brown, who is one of the two principal investigators at Iowa State for the ExxonMobil collaboration.
“Big Oil has a bad rap on renewables,” Brown sighed. “Some companies have backed out of some commitments, and many of them have had no special interest in the cellulosic fermentation space. But most of the people I have talked with like the promise of biofuels and are genuinely interested in them.”
“We had a first conversation a few years back when they came to visit about pyrolysis. That was it, and I didn’t hear from them again, until about a year ago, when they came back again, interested specifically in pyrolysis, and the conversations led in part to the collaboration you’ve heard about.
“There are two theories going around about what is happening in the reactor. One, that pyrolysis is taking solids and transforming them into other molecules that we condense and capture as liquids, as they are thermally ejected out of the system.
If true, that leaves us with a problem with lignin, which in the fast pyrolysis reaction becomes pyrolytic lignin, which is a kind name for it, because what you get is a sort of goo that comes out of the reactor and there’s nothing economic that really anyone has come up with for it.”
“If fast pyrolysis is based on thermal ejection than it is spitting out goo and that’s about all you are ever going to have,” Brown said.
“But there’s another theory, and that is that pyrolysis is breaking the solids down into small enough pieces that the vapor pressure begins to play a role, and it is an evaporative process. In that theory, what you are seeing in the reactor is that valuable monomers are being formed, but then are rapidly recombining into polymers. And what we see in pyrolytic lignin is the result of recombination.”
“So that what you have is a primary reaction with solid biomass, and then a set of secondary reactions that cause the recombination.”
“That’s interesting, because if we can keep them from recombining, if we can begin to control and quench those secondary reactions, then we can deploymerize cellulose thermally. It could be a mix of the two but I suspect it is preponderantly evaporative.
“One vision is that you can take the three plant polymers – cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin – and make stable intermediates, such as monosaccharides. If we can heat it fast enough and get it out of the reactor before it burns, we can ultimately get these molecules into the BTX or fuel range with an upgrade. But to do so, we have to go beyond the chemistry and look simultaneously at the physical phenomena. That’s part of what the ExxonMobil project is all about.”
“We also need to understand what is catalyzing the secondary reactions. For example, one of the things we have to do is understand what’s causing bad things in the reaction, such as alkali and alkaline metals.”
Combining and recombining
If you’ve used gladwrap recently, you might wonder what it is made of: that’s polyethylene, and we spend quite a bit of industrial resources on distilling off fraction of petroleum known as naphtha, transforming that into ethylene — which is known as a monomer — and then transforming that into a polymer, and that’s polyethylene. People spend their whole lives improving that process.
The thing is, you can throw just about anything you like at ethylene, and it won’t polymerize. Think arguing with a state trooper over a speeding ticket when he’s having a bad day and behind quota. People make good money, and deserve it, for designing catalysts that cause ethylene to polymerize.
By contrast, what may be going on in pyrolysis is that it may be repolymerizing — spontaneously. But, like the unruly teen it is, never in the way you want, or the time you want. A pyrolytic bio-oil is oil’s Rebel Without a Cause.
Looking at commercial companies in the field
“KiOR or Cool Planet?” Brown sighed. “They might come up with unique names for the process because of commercial considerations, but it is pyrolysis ultimately.”
With catalytic pyrolysis, Brown was skeptical that the answer was a magic catalyst. “The problem is that they get all this coke on the catalyst, from the high reactivity and because there is not enough hydrogen. But another problem goes back to the way that petroleum refining works.”
“With petroleum, you fraction through distillation, and you have a specific catalyst for every fraction. So they pull out the fractions and separate them from each other.”
I asked Brown about Cool Planet, which hasn’t gone into a fantastic amount of detail about its pyrolysis, but one of the fundamental approaches that founder Mike Cheiky spoke about was fractionating the streams as they came out of the reactor, and pulling off materials along the line.
“He may have had an insight into petroleum refining, and it would be a very interesting insight. it could be that his process is based on some analogy with petroleum.”
So, how much time for the ExxonMobil-Iowa State project?
It’s a two-year program, with two aspects. One, fundamentally understanding what its happening – is it thermal ejection or evaporative -is there something beyond pyrolytic lignin? Two, stabilization, can we do something that makes a stable bio-oil vs the corrosive active liquid we have today?
The Bottom Line
If pyrolysis is a time machine, right now it can take you all the way back to around 60,000,000 BC — but can only bring you forward to around 1850, when it was felt there was real potential in what was known then as “rock oil”, but no one had actually figured out how to extract stable products from it.
That’s where we are with fast pyrolysis today. When it’s stable – oh, the interest you’ll see. "
- J. Lane -
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/10/21/exxonmobil-joins-t…
"One science project that never got done in primeval times was setting up a time-lapse camera somewhere in Texas around 60 million years ago, and accumulating a photographic record of where exactly petroleum actually came from.
Even at a rate of one exposure a year, the resulting film would run for nearly five years, and would be about as interesting as watching paint dry (sort of in reverse, since it’s better described as watching paint form). But it would have solved the mystery.
To make matters worse, we have no dinosaur-in-the-street interview to provide on-the-spot answers:
DINO: There, over there, I saw it!
REPORTER: What did you see?
DINO: Those leaves and muck over there…they’re changing! They’re becoming hydrocarbons! Run for your lives!
So, we’re left to guess, and the general consensus is that the hydrocarbon soup — the stuff we are we are so busy finding, drilling, tracking and pumping — came out of a gigantic collection of muck, fiber and leaves which has gone through an achingly slow pyrolysis.
Back to Pyrolysis Academy
Now, pyrolysis isn’t so hard to understand at a high level. That grade school experiment where you burn sugar and make a lava-like brown flow that rises and bubbles briefly as a liquid stew, then suddenly solidifies into a bunch or desiccated black carbon. That’s pyrolysis — though a highly oxygenated, uncontrolled version of it.
Pyrolysis means simply heating biomass — but not so hot that it begins to combust — and the fast pyrolysis reaction that was discovered around 1980 is thought by many to be the world’s best hope for discovering a machine that can turn biomass into oil so quickly that it becomes an economically viable way of making an oil that is workable in all the ways that petroleum is.
So far, it’s more about vision than reality. There have been a number of fast pyrolysis reactors built — and they really do transform biomass, in a matter of seconds, into a fraction of burnable gas, a fraction of biooil, and a fraction of black residue known as biochar. But then, we try to work with the resulting bio-oil, and its a mess compared to petroleum.
And here’s the problem with bio-oil, vs petroleum. And you wouldn’t think that it’s a problem until you have to do with it.
The lazy kid and the hyperactive one
You see, petroleum is like the laziest kid in the neighborhood. You have to prod it and poke it to get it to do anything for you. So, over the years, we have developed these huge refineries that throw temperature and pressure and catalysts at petroleum, to transform it into the array of fuels, chemicals and materials that we know today.
By contrast, bio-oil is like the hyperactive kid in the neighborhood with ADHD that you want to make sure is taking his Ritalin.
It reacts in a volatile way even when you don’t want it to, and changes from one stew of molecules into another. It has always been viewed typically as a very uncontrollable reaction, a non-selective process that gives you this soup of molecules and doesn’t behave like petroleum.
Enter ExxonMobil
But hang on, help may be on the way. ExxonMobil and Iowa State University just announced a collaboration on pyrolysis. But not a simple process development from what we know today. Rather, a deep investigation into pyro — what is actually going on inside the reactor, and what can be done for stabilization of the bio-oil that is so tantalizingly close to petroleum, but lacks that inert nature that leaves us in control of its transformation.
The Digest spoke this week with Iowa State’s Dr. Robert “The Godfatha of Pyrolysis” Brown, who is one of the two principal investigators at Iowa State for the ExxonMobil collaboration.
“Big Oil has a bad rap on renewables,” Brown sighed. “Some companies have backed out of some commitments, and many of them have had no special interest in the cellulosic fermentation space. But most of the people I have talked with like the promise of biofuels and are genuinely interested in them.”
“We had a first conversation a few years back when they came to visit about pyrolysis. That was it, and I didn’t hear from them again, until about a year ago, when they came back again, interested specifically in pyrolysis, and the conversations led in part to the collaboration you’ve heard about.
“There are two theories going around about what is happening in the reactor. One, that pyrolysis is taking solids and transforming them into other molecules that we condense and capture as liquids, as they are thermally ejected out of the system.
If true, that leaves us with a problem with lignin, which in the fast pyrolysis reaction becomes pyrolytic lignin, which is a kind name for it, because what you get is a sort of goo that comes out of the reactor and there’s nothing economic that really anyone has come up with for it.”
“If fast pyrolysis is based on thermal ejection than it is spitting out goo and that’s about all you are ever going to have,” Brown said.
“But there’s another theory, and that is that pyrolysis is breaking the solids down into small enough pieces that the vapor pressure begins to play a role, and it is an evaporative process. In that theory, what you are seeing in the reactor is that valuable monomers are being formed, but then are rapidly recombining into polymers. And what we see in pyrolytic lignin is the result of recombination.”
“So that what you have is a primary reaction with solid biomass, and then a set of secondary reactions that cause the recombination.”
“That’s interesting, because if we can keep them from recombining, if we can begin to control and quench those secondary reactions, then we can deploymerize cellulose thermally. It could be a mix of the two but I suspect it is preponderantly evaporative.
“One vision is that you can take the three plant polymers – cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin – and make stable intermediates, such as monosaccharides. If we can heat it fast enough and get it out of the reactor before it burns, we can ultimately get these molecules into the BTX or fuel range with an upgrade. But to do so, we have to go beyond the chemistry and look simultaneously at the physical phenomena. That’s part of what the ExxonMobil project is all about.”
“We also need to understand what is catalyzing the secondary reactions. For example, one of the things we have to do is understand what’s causing bad things in the reaction, such as alkali and alkaline metals.”
Combining and recombining
If you’ve used gladwrap recently, you might wonder what it is made of: that’s polyethylene, and we spend quite a bit of industrial resources on distilling off fraction of petroleum known as naphtha, transforming that into ethylene — which is known as a monomer — and then transforming that into a polymer, and that’s polyethylene. People spend their whole lives improving that process.
The thing is, you can throw just about anything you like at ethylene, and it won’t polymerize. Think arguing with a state trooper over a speeding ticket when he’s having a bad day and behind quota. People make good money, and deserve it, for designing catalysts that cause ethylene to polymerize.
By contrast, what may be going on in pyrolysis is that it may be repolymerizing — spontaneously. But, like the unruly teen it is, never in the way you want, or the time you want. A pyrolytic bio-oil is oil’s Rebel Without a Cause.
Looking at commercial companies in the field
“KiOR or Cool Planet?” Brown sighed. “They might come up with unique names for the process because of commercial considerations, but it is pyrolysis ultimately.”
With catalytic pyrolysis, Brown was skeptical that the answer was a magic catalyst. “The problem is that they get all this coke on the catalyst, from the high reactivity and because there is not enough hydrogen. But another problem goes back to the way that petroleum refining works.”
“With petroleum, you fraction through distillation, and you have a specific catalyst for every fraction. So they pull out the fractions and separate them from each other.”
I asked Brown about Cool Planet, which hasn’t gone into a fantastic amount of detail about its pyrolysis, but one of the fundamental approaches that founder Mike Cheiky spoke about was fractionating the streams as they came out of the reactor, and pulling off materials along the line.
“He may have had an insight into petroleum refining, and it would be a very interesting insight. it could be that his process is based on some analogy with petroleum.”
So, how much time for the ExxonMobil-Iowa State project?
It’s a two-year program, with two aspects. One, fundamentally understanding what its happening – is it thermal ejection or evaporative -is there something beyond pyrolytic lignin? Two, stabilization, can we do something that makes a stable bio-oil vs the corrosive active liquid we have today?
The Bottom Line
If pyrolysis is a time machine, right now it can take you all the way back to around 60,000,000 BC — but can only bring you forward to around 1850, when it was felt there was real potential in what was known then as “rock oil”, but no one had actually figured out how to extract stable products from it.
That’s where we are with fast pyrolysis today. When it’s stable – oh, the interest you’ll see. "
Abengoa opens 'world's largest cellulosic biorefinery', as US Energy Secretary Moniz says "Let's get going!" on advanced biofuels. "Welcome to the future of biotechnology +the biofuel industry," says Abengoa - BD - Oct 19, 2014
- J. Lane -
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/10/19/abengoa-opens-worl…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/10/19/highway-51-revisit…
"
“Welcome to the future of biotechnology and the biofuel industry.”
In Kansas, Abengoa Bioenergy officially opened the world’s largest cellulosic biorefinery in Hugoton on Friday, surrounded by dignitaries such as US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, Kansas senior Senator Pat Roberts, former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson among many others.
The second generation cellulosic ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kansas, located about 90 miles southwest of Dodge City finished construction in mid-August and began producing cellulosic ethanol at the end of September with the capacity to produce up to 25 million gallons per year.
The capacity
The refinery’s nameplate capacity makes it, for the time being, the world’s largest cellulosic biofuels facility, topping the 21 million gallon capacity of the GranBio facility in Alagoas, Brasil. The plant is expected to hold the “world’s largest” title until the DuPont first commercial plant opens in Nevada, Iowa early in the new year.
The plant utilizes corn stover residues that do not compete with food or feed grain. The state-of-the-art facility also features an electricity cogeneration component allowing it to operate as a self-sufficient renewable energy producer. By utilizing residual biomass solids from the ethanol conversion process, the plant generates 21 megawatts (MW) of electricity – enough to power itself and provide 4-5 megawatts of renewable power to the local Stevens County community.
- US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz -
US Energy Secretary Moniz makes first major address, on renewable fuels
US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz utilized the occasion to make his first keynote address on bioenergy. “The oil & gas revolution, part of the US “all of the above” energy strategy, is already showing the importance of advanced energy technology and is having a major spillover effect with 700,000 new manufacturing jobs created as a result of new technologies unlocking low-cost natural gas.
But we are still importing 7.5 million barrels of oil per day. And we have three strategies to reduce that: efficient vehicles, electrification, and alternative fuels.
“It is critical that the Department of Energy play a role in new technology from development to initial deployment, and this Abengoa biorefinery is a prime example of the public-private partnerships that are realizing results.”
- Kansas Governor Sam Brownback -
Kansas Governor Sam Brownback
Kansas Governor Sam Brownback hailed “a rural renaissance” and said his goal was to establish Kansas as “the Renewable State,” noting the impact that bioenergy and wind energy were having in expanding the Kansas economy.
Brownback, whose father was a first-gen ethanol investor, noted that “it has been a dream for 30 years that we would be able to develop new markets by converting cellulose residues and waste into agricultural products. Cellulosic was always an aspiration that has become a reality.
Reflecting back on the long journey to cellulosic fuels, Brownback said that “new technologies are always tough, the barriers to entry are high and the competition is tough.”
- US Senator Pat Roberts -
Kansas Senator Pat Roberts
“Kansas was the first state to introduce hydraulic fracking,” said US Senator Pat Roberts. “Kansas is used to setting that standard, and we are so happy to be part of setting a new standard again.
“I take pride in having worked to support the 2005 and 2007 energy policy acts that helped create the incentives and structure for this technology.
“I see my friend Ken Salazar, who was a colleague of mine in the Senate before serving as Interior Secretary. There used to be a lot of Salazar-Roberts and Roberts-Salazar legislation, and I sure hope we get back to those days.”
- Abengoa CEO Manuel Sánchez Ortega -
Abengoa CEO Manuel Sánchez Ortega
“The Hugoton plant opening is the result of 10 years of technical development, roughly 40,000 hours of pilot and demonstration plant operation, and the support of the DOE,” said Manuel Sánchez Ortega, CEO of Abengoa.
“This is a proud and pivotal moment for Abengoa and for the larger advanced bioenergy industry – and further demonstrates our longstanding commitment to providing sustainable energy alternatives in the United States. This would have been simply impossible without the establishment of the Renewable Fuel Standard.
Referring to the partnership with the DOE, Sánchez Ortega said that the DOE supplied something even more important than financial support, “you gave us your support and your confidence. Together we never accepted the impossible even when it was impossible. Here is your plant.”
Sánchez Ortega called for strengthening the US commitment to the Renewable Fuel Standard to ensure that “this is not the last facility of this size and type built in the United States. Where was no path for us to invest $500 million, filled with risk, without that framework that the RFS provides.” Abengoa received a $132.4 million loan guarantee and a $97 million grant through the Department of Energy to support construction of the Hugoton facility.
Turning to the local leaders and growers in the audience of more than 200 who gathered for the grand opening, Sánchez Ortega said that “Hugoton is right here, in our hearts, and will always be so as we take this technology forward. Thank you, Hugoton.”
- Plant manger Danny Alison -
Plant manager Danny Allison
Plant manager Danny Allison added, “Seven years ago, all we could ofer was a promise to succeed.
“The community was sometimes skeptical, but always warm, always encouraging, always supportive even when we had 1,000 workers here in this small town during the construction phase.
- Abengoa Bioenergy CEO Javier Garoz -
Abengoa Bioenergy CEO Javier Garoz
Abengoa Bioenergy CEO Javier Garoz said that “key to the future are multiple chemicals and bioproducts. This is the year that cellulosic has proven to be viable.
Welcome to the future of biotechnology and the biofuel industry.”
Abengoa by the numbers
At full capacity, the Hugoton facility will process 1,000 tons per day of biomass, most of which is harvested within a 50-mile radius each year – providing $17 million per year of extra income for local farmers whose agricultural waste would otherwise have little or no value. Of that biomass, more than 80 percent is expected to consist of irrigated corn stover, with the remainder comprised of wheat straw, milo stubble and switchgrass.
- Abengoa Bioenergy EVP Chris Standless was master of ceremonies for the opening day. -
On-site cogeneration will produce 21 MW of electricity per year – enough to power the plant and sell some back to the local Stevens County community.
The construction phase provided an average of 300 full time jobs. The plant itself will provide 76 full-time jobs, with an annual payroll in excess of $5 million.
Abengoa is the largest ethanol producer in Europe, and one of the largest in the U.S. The company also runs ethanol operations from sugar cane in Brazil, and has 867 million gallons of installed production capacity annually distributed among 15 plants in five countries. 405 million gallons of this capacity is located within the U.S.
Next steps
Abengoa plans to offer licenses and contracts to interested parties covering every aspect of this new industry – from process design, to engineering, procurement and construction, supply of exclusive enzymes, as well as operations and marketing of the completed products from the facility.
In addition to the plant’s crucial role in proving the commercial viability of cellulosic ethanol, its success provides a platform for the company’s future development of other bioproducts that reduce petroleum use, such as bioplastics, biochemicals and drop-in jet fuel.
- The Abengoa biorefinery -
Legacy of Innovation
With a biofuels presence on three continents, Abengoa notes that it is”is an international biotechnology company – one of the largest ethanol producers in the United States and Brazil, and the largest producer in Europe with a total of 867 million gallons of annual installed production capacity distributed among 15 commercial-scale plants in five countries.”
Reaction from industry
BIO President & CEO Jim Greenwood stated, “The advanced biofuel industry is starting up first-of-a-kind cellulosic biofuel plants, creating new jobs and proving the cost competitiveness of innovative new technology. The new cellulosic biorefinery opened by Abengoa Bioenergy today is the realization of nearly a decade of research and development and billions of dollars in investment and is the second commercial scale cellulosic biofuel plant in as many months. We congratulate Abengoa and its employees on this achievement.
“The Renewable Fuel Standard has been the driving force in encouraging innovative companies like Abengoa to invest this time and money to commercialize cellulosic biofuels. New advanced biofuel technologies are vital to the nation’s energy security. The United States must stay the course with the RFS, keeping this policy strong and operating consistently and predictably.”
Advanced Ethanol Council executive director Brooke Coleman said, “creating new markets for local agricultural products that will bring new opportunities for America’s farmers. Secretary Moniz is right when he says that these projects tie back to the Renewable Fuel Standard.
“The RFS is a game-changer when it comes to the global race to commercialize cellulosic biofuels. It is extremely important that the Obama Administration, which is proposing controversial changes to the RFS, continue to stand behind the original policy. If that happens, the vision articulated by Secretary Moniz will come to fruition.”
More photos of the biorefinery
Our tour of the complete biorefinery, in pictures, is here. "
- J. Lane -
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/10/19/abengoa-opens-worl…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/10/19/highway-51-revisit…
"
“Welcome to the future of biotechnology and the biofuel industry.”
In Kansas, Abengoa Bioenergy officially opened the world’s largest cellulosic biorefinery in Hugoton on Friday, surrounded by dignitaries such as US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, Kansas senior Senator Pat Roberts, former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson among many others.
The second generation cellulosic ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kansas, located about 90 miles southwest of Dodge City finished construction in mid-August and began producing cellulosic ethanol at the end of September with the capacity to produce up to 25 million gallons per year.
The capacity
The refinery’s nameplate capacity makes it, for the time being, the world’s largest cellulosic biofuels facility, topping the 21 million gallon capacity of the GranBio facility in Alagoas, Brasil. The plant is expected to hold the “world’s largest” title until the DuPont first commercial plant opens in Nevada, Iowa early in the new year.
The plant utilizes corn stover residues that do not compete with food or feed grain. The state-of-the-art facility also features an electricity cogeneration component allowing it to operate as a self-sufficient renewable energy producer. By utilizing residual biomass solids from the ethanol conversion process, the plant generates 21 megawatts (MW) of electricity – enough to power itself and provide 4-5 megawatts of renewable power to the local Stevens County community.
- US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz -
US Energy Secretary Moniz makes first major address, on renewable fuels
US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz utilized the occasion to make his first keynote address on bioenergy. “The oil & gas revolution, part of the US “all of the above” energy strategy, is already showing the importance of advanced energy technology and is having a major spillover effect with 700,000 new manufacturing jobs created as a result of new technologies unlocking low-cost natural gas.
But we are still importing 7.5 million barrels of oil per day. And we have three strategies to reduce that: efficient vehicles, electrification, and alternative fuels.
“It is critical that the Department of Energy play a role in new technology from development to initial deployment, and this Abengoa biorefinery is a prime example of the public-private partnerships that are realizing results.”
- Kansas Governor Sam Brownback -
Kansas Governor Sam Brownback
Kansas Governor Sam Brownback hailed “a rural renaissance” and said his goal was to establish Kansas as “the Renewable State,” noting the impact that bioenergy and wind energy were having in expanding the Kansas economy.
Brownback, whose father was a first-gen ethanol investor, noted that “it has been a dream for 30 years that we would be able to develop new markets by converting cellulose residues and waste into agricultural products. Cellulosic was always an aspiration that has become a reality.
Reflecting back on the long journey to cellulosic fuels, Brownback said that “new technologies are always tough, the barriers to entry are high and the competition is tough.”
- US Senator Pat Roberts -
Kansas Senator Pat Roberts
“Kansas was the first state to introduce hydraulic fracking,” said US Senator Pat Roberts. “Kansas is used to setting that standard, and we are so happy to be part of setting a new standard again.
“I take pride in having worked to support the 2005 and 2007 energy policy acts that helped create the incentives and structure for this technology.
“I see my friend Ken Salazar, who was a colleague of mine in the Senate before serving as Interior Secretary. There used to be a lot of Salazar-Roberts and Roberts-Salazar legislation, and I sure hope we get back to those days.”
- Abengoa CEO Manuel Sánchez Ortega -
Abengoa CEO Manuel Sánchez Ortega
“The Hugoton plant opening is the result of 10 years of technical development, roughly 40,000 hours of pilot and demonstration plant operation, and the support of the DOE,” said Manuel Sánchez Ortega, CEO of Abengoa.
“This is a proud and pivotal moment for Abengoa and for the larger advanced bioenergy industry – and further demonstrates our longstanding commitment to providing sustainable energy alternatives in the United States. This would have been simply impossible without the establishment of the Renewable Fuel Standard.
Referring to the partnership with the DOE, Sánchez Ortega said that the DOE supplied something even more important than financial support, “you gave us your support and your confidence. Together we never accepted the impossible even when it was impossible. Here is your plant.”
Sánchez Ortega called for strengthening the US commitment to the Renewable Fuel Standard to ensure that “this is not the last facility of this size and type built in the United States. Where was no path for us to invest $500 million, filled with risk, without that framework that the RFS provides.” Abengoa received a $132.4 million loan guarantee and a $97 million grant through the Department of Energy to support construction of the Hugoton facility.
Turning to the local leaders and growers in the audience of more than 200 who gathered for the grand opening, Sánchez Ortega said that “Hugoton is right here, in our hearts, and will always be so as we take this technology forward. Thank you, Hugoton.”
- Plant manger Danny Alison -
Plant manager Danny Allison
Plant manager Danny Allison added, “Seven years ago, all we could ofer was a promise to succeed.
“The community was sometimes skeptical, but always warm, always encouraging, always supportive even when we had 1,000 workers here in this small town during the construction phase.
- Abengoa Bioenergy CEO Javier Garoz -
Abengoa Bioenergy CEO Javier Garoz
Abengoa Bioenergy CEO Javier Garoz said that “key to the future are multiple chemicals and bioproducts. This is the year that cellulosic has proven to be viable.
Welcome to the future of biotechnology and the biofuel industry.”
Abengoa by the numbers
At full capacity, the Hugoton facility will process 1,000 tons per day of biomass, most of which is harvested within a 50-mile radius each year – providing $17 million per year of extra income for local farmers whose agricultural waste would otherwise have little or no value. Of that biomass, more than 80 percent is expected to consist of irrigated corn stover, with the remainder comprised of wheat straw, milo stubble and switchgrass.
- Abengoa Bioenergy EVP Chris Standless was master of ceremonies for the opening day. -
On-site cogeneration will produce 21 MW of electricity per year – enough to power the plant and sell some back to the local Stevens County community.
The construction phase provided an average of 300 full time jobs. The plant itself will provide 76 full-time jobs, with an annual payroll in excess of $5 million.
Abengoa is the largest ethanol producer in Europe, and one of the largest in the U.S. The company also runs ethanol operations from sugar cane in Brazil, and has 867 million gallons of installed production capacity annually distributed among 15 plants in five countries. 405 million gallons of this capacity is located within the U.S.
Next steps
Abengoa plans to offer licenses and contracts to interested parties covering every aspect of this new industry – from process design, to engineering, procurement and construction, supply of exclusive enzymes, as well as operations and marketing of the completed products from the facility.
In addition to the plant’s crucial role in proving the commercial viability of cellulosic ethanol, its success provides a platform for the company’s future development of other bioproducts that reduce petroleum use, such as bioplastics, biochemicals and drop-in jet fuel.
- The Abengoa biorefinery -
Legacy of Innovation
With a biofuels presence on three continents, Abengoa notes that it is”is an international biotechnology company – one of the largest ethanol producers in the United States and Brazil, and the largest producer in Europe with a total of 867 million gallons of annual installed production capacity distributed among 15 commercial-scale plants in five countries.”
Reaction from industry
BIO President & CEO Jim Greenwood stated, “The advanced biofuel industry is starting up first-of-a-kind cellulosic biofuel plants, creating new jobs and proving the cost competitiveness of innovative new technology. The new cellulosic biorefinery opened by Abengoa Bioenergy today is the realization of nearly a decade of research and development and billions of dollars in investment and is the second commercial scale cellulosic biofuel plant in as many months. We congratulate Abengoa and its employees on this achievement.
“The Renewable Fuel Standard has been the driving force in encouraging innovative companies like Abengoa to invest this time and money to commercialize cellulosic biofuels. New advanced biofuel technologies are vital to the nation’s energy security. The United States must stay the course with the RFS, keeping this policy strong and operating consistently and predictably.”
Advanced Ethanol Council executive director Brooke Coleman said, “creating new markets for local agricultural products that will bring new opportunities for America’s farmers. Secretary Moniz is right when he says that these projects tie back to the Renewable Fuel Standard.
“The RFS is a game-changer when it comes to the global race to commercialize cellulosic biofuels. It is extremely important that the Obama Administration, which is proposing controversial changes to the RFS, continue to stand behind the original policy. If that happens, the vision articulated by Secretary Moniz will come to fruition.”
More photos of the biorefinery
Our tour of the complete biorefinery, in pictures, is here. "
He du Seemann mit den Spinat Muskeln, du bist einfach nur ätzend. Kopierst hier die englischen Artikel rein, welche die wenigsten verstehen. Lebst du eigentlich in USA, GB oder D oder wo?
Dass du es mit der deutschen Sprache nicht so hast wurde ja schon festgestellt.
Willst du dich hier als NERD aufführen??
Dass du es mit der deutschen Sprache nicht so hast wurde ja schon festgestellt.
Willst du dich hier als NERD aufführen??
Germany’s Energiewende 'Proves Electricity can be Clean +Reliable' - CT/EDF, EEB - Oct 23, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/21/germanys-energiewende-pro…
"Since 2004, the year of the first major revision of Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG), the country has added at least 35 gigawatts (GW) of solar and 35 GW of wind to its electric grid – enough to offset upwards of 35 coal plants. What’s more impressive is during the first half of 2014, close to 29 percent of Germany’s electricity came from renewable sources. For perspective, America’s renewables percentage, at about 14 percent, was half of Germany’s during this timeframe.
Meanwhile, the country has improved its status as a grid reliability leader, causing the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Energy Transition blog to conclude, “Clearly, installing the equivalent of 100 percent of peak demand as wind and solar capacity does not bring down the grid.” Renewables International further asserts, “Renewables have not yet reached a penetration level that has detrimentally impacted grid reliability.”
This success runs contrary to the predictions of Energiewende’s critics, who have sounded the alarms about investing in “too much” renewable energy. Some of these concerns are more valid than others, but the truth is, most of these claims are blown out of proportion, fixable with solutions that are not overly complex, and/or based on no empirical data.
How did Germany do it?
The System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) measures the average interruption time per electricity customer, and it is the foremost metric used internationally for assessing electric grid reliability. This past August, Germany’s Network Agency announced that the country’s SAIDI value dropped from 15.91 minutes in 2012 to 15.32 minutes in 2013.
This improvement is especially impressive considering Germany’s 2012 SAIDI score was the third best in Europe and less than a tenth of the value of 244, the most recent statistic from the United States (see graphics below).
The indicator that most strongly correlates with grid reliability, and could explain why Germany outperforms the United States, is the level of undergrounding of low-voltage (LV) and medium-voltage (MV) cables. As the name suggests, underground electricity wires are buried and sheltered from inclement weather and thus more reliable than aboveground electricity transmission. Over 70 percent of both LV and MV cables are underground in Germany (see figure below).
By contrast, 2012 survey results from the Edison Electric Institute indicate that underground cables only serve about 39 percent of homes in the United States (see below).
Critics are not always right
Despite this success, the Institute for Energy Research asserted just last month that “the outcome [of the Energiewende]for Germans will be a higher potential for blackouts” due to an increased number of grid intervention events. From 2010 to 2012, grid intervention events increased fourfold in Germany. Similarly, Nature Publishing Group claims,
“The rapid rise in wind and solar power has created a nightmare scenario for grid operators, who face surges when the wind blows and the sun shines, and shortages when they don’t. In 2011, more than 200,000 blackouts exceeding three minutes were reported – and experts warn of a growing risk of major power failures.”
But this criticism is shortsighted. SAIDI specifically measures blackouts exceeding three minutes, and since 2006 Germany’s solar and wind capacity have increased by 70 GW while its SAIDI has improved from 21.53 to 15.32. Furthermore, as argued by Craig Morris for the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Energy Transition blog, all ‘grid intervention’ events mean is that “instead of merely sitting there looking at screens, the engineers now have to press buttons”; as a result, there is a “slightly” higher likelihood of human error.
The most valid concern
Of all the criticisms against Energiewende’s reliability success, the issue of cost is the most valid. As it turns out, upgrading the electric grid to a state-of-the-art, 21st century machine is pretty expensive, and that cost is mostly borne by utilities.
Too rapid an increase in generation from renewables is financially weakening German utilities, which make only a fraction of the revenue dispatching renewable power as from conventional sources. The value of Europe’s top 20 utilities has fallen from €1 trillion (USD $1.3 trillion) in 2008 to €500 billion (USD $630 billion) in 2013. According to The Economist, European grid upgrades by 2020 are expected to cost up to €1 trillion, and “companies worth €500 billion cannot finance anything like that amount… In their current state, utilities cannot finance Europe’s hoped-for clean energy system.”
Thus, crippling these utilities is potentially problematic for reliability because it lowers the potential for investment in the modernized grid. This concern, however, has yet to erode Germany’s electric grid reliability in practice.
Solutions exist
According to the Heinrich Böll Foundation, “even the strongest proponents of Energiewende agree that Germany needs to reform its energy system to accommodate the next influx of renewable energies.”
However, solutions exist to this problem that are not revolutionary. For example, a shift away from the “energy-only” market, in which utilities are only paid to produce and deliver energy, to one that is more profitable for utilities as renewables take over the generation mix. Potential structures include “capacity” and “capabilities” markets.
In a capacity market, utilities are not compensated for the energy they produce, but instead for what they have on reserve for immediate use when faced with reliability challenges. But this model does not give preference to any particular energy source. A capabilities market, however, attempts to prioritize power generation that guarantees low CO2 emissions. Natural gas-fired plants, energy storage, demand response, and renewable energy resources are just a few examples of the reliability measures that might be prioritized over a coal-fired “peaker” plant when trying to meet the demands of a strained electric grid.
The highest quality data supports the conclusion Germany’s grid reliability during Energiewende has been an unequivocal success so far. Opponents levy negative commentaries on this subject, and there is certainly still room for improvement regarding energy markets, but there is no doubt the German experience, as an international model, proves a clean grid can also be a reliable one.
Article by Peter Sopher, Clean Energy Policy Analyst, appearing courtesy Environmental Defense Fund Energy Exchange Blog. "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/21/germanys-energiewende-pro…
"Since 2004, the year of the first major revision of Germany’s Renewable Energy Act (EEG), the country has added at least 35 gigawatts (GW) of solar and 35 GW of wind to its electric grid – enough to offset upwards of 35 coal plants. What’s more impressive is during the first half of 2014, close to 29 percent of Germany’s electricity came from renewable sources. For perspective, America’s renewables percentage, at about 14 percent, was half of Germany’s during this timeframe.
Meanwhile, the country has improved its status as a grid reliability leader, causing the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Energy Transition blog to conclude, “Clearly, installing the equivalent of 100 percent of peak demand as wind and solar capacity does not bring down the grid.” Renewables International further asserts, “Renewables have not yet reached a penetration level that has detrimentally impacted grid reliability.”
This success runs contrary to the predictions of Energiewende’s critics, who have sounded the alarms about investing in “too much” renewable energy. Some of these concerns are more valid than others, but the truth is, most of these claims are blown out of proportion, fixable with solutions that are not overly complex, and/or based on no empirical data.
How did Germany do it?
The System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) measures the average interruption time per electricity customer, and it is the foremost metric used internationally for assessing electric grid reliability. This past August, Germany’s Network Agency announced that the country’s SAIDI value dropped from 15.91 minutes in 2012 to 15.32 minutes in 2013.
This improvement is especially impressive considering Germany’s 2012 SAIDI score was the third best in Europe and less than a tenth of the value of 244, the most recent statistic from the United States (see graphics below).
The indicator that most strongly correlates with grid reliability, and could explain why Germany outperforms the United States, is the level of undergrounding of low-voltage (LV) and medium-voltage (MV) cables. As the name suggests, underground electricity wires are buried and sheltered from inclement weather and thus more reliable than aboveground electricity transmission. Over 70 percent of both LV and MV cables are underground in Germany (see figure below).
By contrast, 2012 survey results from the Edison Electric Institute indicate that underground cables only serve about 39 percent of homes in the United States (see below).
Critics are not always right
Despite this success, the Institute for Energy Research asserted just last month that “the outcome [of the Energiewende]for Germans will be a higher potential for blackouts” due to an increased number of grid intervention events. From 2010 to 2012, grid intervention events increased fourfold in Germany. Similarly, Nature Publishing Group claims,
“The rapid rise in wind and solar power has created a nightmare scenario for grid operators, who face surges when the wind blows and the sun shines, and shortages when they don’t. In 2011, more than 200,000 blackouts exceeding three minutes were reported – and experts warn of a growing risk of major power failures.”
But this criticism is shortsighted. SAIDI specifically measures blackouts exceeding three minutes, and since 2006 Germany’s solar and wind capacity have increased by 70 GW while its SAIDI has improved from 21.53 to 15.32. Furthermore, as argued by Craig Morris for the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s Energy Transition blog, all ‘grid intervention’ events mean is that “instead of merely sitting there looking at screens, the engineers now have to press buttons”; as a result, there is a “slightly” higher likelihood of human error.
The most valid concern
Of all the criticisms against Energiewende’s reliability success, the issue of cost is the most valid. As it turns out, upgrading the electric grid to a state-of-the-art, 21st century machine is pretty expensive, and that cost is mostly borne by utilities.
Too rapid an increase in generation from renewables is financially weakening German utilities, which make only a fraction of the revenue dispatching renewable power as from conventional sources. The value of Europe’s top 20 utilities has fallen from €1 trillion (USD $1.3 trillion) in 2008 to €500 billion (USD $630 billion) in 2013. According to The Economist, European grid upgrades by 2020 are expected to cost up to €1 trillion, and “companies worth €500 billion cannot finance anything like that amount… In their current state, utilities cannot finance Europe’s hoped-for clean energy system.”
Thus, crippling these utilities is potentially problematic for reliability because it lowers the potential for investment in the modernized grid. This concern, however, has yet to erode Germany’s electric grid reliability in practice.
Solutions exist
According to the Heinrich Böll Foundation, “even the strongest proponents of Energiewende agree that Germany needs to reform its energy system to accommodate the next influx of renewable energies.”
However, solutions exist to this problem that are not revolutionary. For example, a shift away from the “energy-only” market, in which utilities are only paid to produce and deliver energy, to one that is more profitable for utilities as renewables take over the generation mix. Potential structures include “capacity” and “capabilities” markets.
In a capacity market, utilities are not compensated for the energy they produce, but instead for what they have on reserve for immediate use when faced with reliability challenges. But this model does not give preference to any particular energy source. A capabilities market, however, attempts to prioritize power generation that guarantees low CO2 emissions. Natural gas-fired plants, energy storage, demand response, and renewable energy resources are just a few examples of the reliability measures that might be prioritized over a coal-fired “peaker” plant when trying to meet the demands of a strained electric grid.
The highest quality data supports the conclusion Germany’s grid reliability during Energiewende has been an unequivocal success so far. Opponents levy negative commentaries on this subject, and there is certainly still room for improvement regarding energy markets, but there is no doubt the German experience, as an international model, proves a clean grid can also be a reliable one.
Article by Peter Sopher, Clean Energy Policy Analyst, appearing courtesy Environmental Defense Fund Energy Exchange Blog. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.132.887 von egbertklon am 26.10.14 01:17:39
Lern Englisch.
Und da bin ich jetzt, noch, bewuuusst netter als Du.
Lern Englisch.
Und da bin ich jetzt, noch, bewuuusst netter als Du.
Erster Link ist das Papier
Climate Change: A 'Military Imperative' - CT/3BLM, PENTAGON - Oct 21, 2014
www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/CCARprint.pdf
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/21/climate-change-a-military…
"For many years, the Pentagon has issued reports about climate change, highlighting the future possible threats our nation may face from increased temperatures, extreme weather, drought, flooding, and rising sea levels. This week marked a notable change in the Pentagon’s approach—instead of addressing climate change as a distant danger, the Pentagon issued a report that clearly recognizes it as present-day threat to national and global security, requiring immediate and drastic action.
Previously, the military has focused the bulk of its climate action efforts on preparing military installations for climate change. Military bases have suffered their share of climate disaster, such as the repeated flooding of military installation in Virginia caused by rising sea levels, and the organization has responded accordingly to protect its facilities and infrastructure.
But the Defense Department is now broadening the scope of its climate efforts. In this week’s report, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel stated:
Among the future trends that will impact our national security is climate change. Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict. They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe. In our defense strategy, we refer to climate change as a “threat multiplier” because it has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we are dealing with today – from infectious disease to terrorism. We are already beginning to see some of these impacts.
As climate events cause more frequent and intense global humanitarian crises, the Defense Department expects increased demand for its assistance and humanitarian relief. The military is now actively scenario planning, preparing for situations ranging from rescuing climate refugees from ravaged areas to providing clean drinking water to parched populations to remediating environmental destruction from devastating climate events.
“The loss of glaciers will strain water supplies in several areas of our hemisphere,” said Hagel on Monday at a meeting of defense ministers in Peru. “Destruction and devastation from hurricanes can sow the seeds for instability. Droughts and crop failures can leave millions of people without any lifeline, and trigger waves of mass migration.”
The US military is particularly concerned about how drought and food shortages will affect high risk areas, namely the Middle East and Africa. Military experts have even made a connection between the increased level of desperation caused by lack of access to food and clean water and the rise of extremist groups like ISIS, which are now taking control of precious (and scarce) water resources to further enhance their tyrannical power.
Beyond preparing for the inevitable increase in national security threats caused by climate related events, the Pentagon plans to play a principal role in helping the United Nations develop and implement a global response plan. The Defense Department expects to be part of the vanguard at the United Nations meetings in Peru in December, taking a lead in the ratification of a global climate action treaty.
Interestingly, the Pentagon’s climate efforts are being championed by Hagel himself, who has a sordid past when it comes to climate action. As a Republican Senator from Nebraska, Nagel blocked the US from participating in the Kyoto Protocol. Hagel’s shift apparently stems from his direct experience in dealing with a bevy of climate-caused natural disasters, his open acknowledgement of increased international risks caused by our changing climate, and his newfound understanding that switching to a clean, low-carbon economy will actually have financial and environmental benefits.
Fortunately, Hagel’s—and the Pentagon’s—proactive involvement in scenario planning is elevating the discussion of climate action above political debate and into reality.
Article by Sara Gutterman of Green Builder Media, appearing courtesy 3BL Media. "
Climate Change: A 'Military Imperative' - CT/3BLM, PENTAGON - Oct 21, 2014
www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/CCARprint.pdf
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/21/climate-change-a-military…
"For many years, the Pentagon has issued reports about climate change, highlighting the future possible threats our nation may face from increased temperatures, extreme weather, drought, flooding, and rising sea levels. This week marked a notable change in the Pentagon’s approach—instead of addressing climate change as a distant danger, the Pentagon issued a report that clearly recognizes it as present-day threat to national and global security, requiring immediate and drastic action.
Previously, the military has focused the bulk of its climate action efforts on preparing military installations for climate change. Military bases have suffered their share of climate disaster, such as the repeated flooding of military installation in Virginia caused by rising sea levels, and the organization has responded accordingly to protect its facilities and infrastructure.
But the Defense Department is now broadening the scope of its climate efforts. In this week’s report, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel stated:
Among the future trends that will impact our national security is climate change. Rising global temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, climbing sea levels, and more extreme weather events will intensify the challenges of global instability, hunger, poverty, and conflict. They will likely lead to food and water shortages, pandemic disease, disputes over refugees and resources, and destruction by natural disasters in regions across the globe. In our defense strategy, we refer to climate change as a “threat multiplier” because it has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we are dealing with today – from infectious disease to terrorism. We are already beginning to see some of these impacts.
As climate events cause more frequent and intense global humanitarian crises, the Defense Department expects increased demand for its assistance and humanitarian relief. The military is now actively scenario planning, preparing for situations ranging from rescuing climate refugees from ravaged areas to providing clean drinking water to parched populations to remediating environmental destruction from devastating climate events.
“The loss of glaciers will strain water supplies in several areas of our hemisphere,” said Hagel on Monday at a meeting of defense ministers in Peru. “Destruction and devastation from hurricanes can sow the seeds for instability. Droughts and crop failures can leave millions of people without any lifeline, and trigger waves of mass migration.”
The US military is particularly concerned about how drought and food shortages will affect high risk areas, namely the Middle East and Africa. Military experts have even made a connection between the increased level of desperation caused by lack of access to food and clean water and the rise of extremist groups like ISIS, which are now taking control of precious (and scarce) water resources to further enhance their tyrannical power.
Beyond preparing for the inevitable increase in national security threats caused by climate related events, the Pentagon plans to play a principal role in helping the United Nations develop and implement a global response plan. The Defense Department expects to be part of the vanguard at the United Nations meetings in Peru in December, taking a lead in the ratification of a global climate action treaty.
Interestingly, the Pentagon’s climate efforts are being championed by Hagel himself, who has a sordid past when it comes to climate action. As a Republican Senator from Nebraska, Nagel blocked the US from participating in the Kyoto Protocol. Hagel’s shift apparently stems from his direct experience in dealing with a bevy of climate-caused natural disasters, his open acknowledgement of increased international risks caused by our changing climate, and his newfound understanding that switching to a clean, low-carbon economy will actually have financial and environmental benefits.
Fortunately, Hagel’s—and the Pentagon’s—proactive involvement in scenario planning is elevating the discussion of climate action above political debate and into reality.
Article by Sara Gutterman of Green Builder Media, appearing courtesy 3BL Media. "
'Global boom in hydropower 'expected' this decade', An 'unprecedented boom in hydropower dam construction is underway, primarily in developing countries +emerging economies'. While this is 'expected' to double the global electricity production from hydropower, it 'could' reduce the number of our last remaining large free-flowing rivers, by about 20%, +pose a serious threat to freshwater biodiversity - IT/UoC/UoT, COPENHAGEN/TÜBINGEN/BERLIN - Oct 25, 2014
elisabethw@snm.ku.dk
+45 21179140
christiane.zarfl@uni-tuebingen.de
+49 17661881256
http://news.ku.dk/all_news/2014/10/global-boom-in-hydropower…
http://sustainability.ku.dk/iarucongress2014/
www.innovationtoronto.com/2014/10/global-boom-in-hydropower-…
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00027-014-0377-0
"
- Global spatial distribution of future hydropower dams, either under construction (blue dots; 17%) or planned (red dots; 83%).
Credit: Aquatic Sciences (DOI: 10.1007/s00027-014-0377-0). -
An unprecedented boom in hydropower dam construction is underway, primarily in developing countries and emerging economies.
While this is expected to double the global electricity production from hydropower, it could reduce the number of our last remaining large free-flowing rivers by about 20 percent and pose a serious threat to freshwater biodiversity. A new database has been developed to support decision making on sustainable modes of electricity production. It is presented today at the international congress Global Challenges: Achieving Sustainability hosted by the University of Copenhagen.
The intensified demand for electricity from renewable sources has kick-started the hydropower development into a new era: Following a period of a flattening trend, an unprecedented number of dams for electricity production is currently under construction or planned worldwide. However, the boom occurs primarily in developing countries and emerging economies in South America, Southeast Asia and Africa, that also hold some of the world’s most important sites for freshwater biodiversity.
“Hydropower is an integrated part of transitioning to renewable energy and currently the largest contributor of renewable electricity. However, it is vital that hydropower dams do not create a new problem for the biodiversity in the world’s freshwater systems, due to fragmentation and the expected changes in the flow and sediment regime. That is why we have compiled available data on future expected hydropower dams – to form a key foundation for evaluating where and how to build the dams and how to operate them sustainably”, says Prof. Dr. Christiane Zarfl (now Universität Tübingen) who, together with her colleagues, performed the study at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) in Berlin. She is presenting the database today at the congress Global Challenges: Achieving Sustainability.
Hydropower 'may double in electricity capacity'
Renewables account for 20 percent of the global electricity production today, with hydropower contributing 80 percent of the total share. An expected 3700 major dams may more than double the total electricity capacity of hydropower to 1,700 GW within the next two decades. ..."
elisabethw@snm.ku.dk
+45 21179140
christiane.zarfl@uni-tuebingen.de
+49 17661881256
http://news.ku.dk/all_news/2014/10/global-boom-in-hydropower…
http://sustainability.ku.dk/iarucongress2014/
www.innovationtoronto.com/2014/10/global-boom-in-hydropower-…
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00027-014-0377-0
"
- Global spatial distribution of future hydropower dams, either under construction (blue dots; 17%) or planned (red dots; 83%).
Credit: Aquatic Sciences (DOI: 10.1007/s00027-014-0377-0). -
An unprecedented boom in hydropower dam construction is underway, primarily in developing countries and emerging economies.
While this is expected to double the global electricity production from hydropower, it could reduce the number of our last remaining large free-flowing rivers by about 20 percent and pose a serious threat to freshwater biodiversity. A new database has been developed to support decision making on sustainable modes of electricity production. It is presented today at the international congress Global Challenges: Achieving Sustainability hosted by the University of Copenhagen.
The intensified demand for electricity from renewable sources has kick-started the hydropower development into a new era: Following a period of a flattening trend, an unprecedented number of dams for electricity production is currently under construction or planned worldwide. However, the boom occurs primarily in developing countries and emerging economies in South America, Southeast Asia and Africa, that also hold some of the world’s most important sites for freshwater biodiversity.
“Hydropower is an integrated part of transitioning to renewable energy and currently the largest contributor of renewable electricity. However, it is vital that hydropower dams do not create a new problem for the biodiversity in the world’s freshwater systems, due to fragmentation and the expected changes in the flow and sediment regime. That is why we have compiled available data on future expected hydropower dams – to form a key foundation for evaluating where and how to build the dams and how to operate them sustainably”, says Prof. Dr. Christiane Zarfl (now Universität Tübingen) who, together with her colleagues, performed the study at the Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) in Berlin. She is presenting the database today at the congress Global Challenges: Achieving Sustainability.
Hydropower 'may double in electricity capacity'
Renewables account for 20 percent of the global electricity production today, with hydropower contributing 80 percent of the total share. An expected 3700 major dams may more than double the total electricity capacity of hydropower to 1,700 GW within the next two decades. ..."
Microbes from melting permafrost speed up climate change, Microbes released from melting permafrost may be one of the most significant factors in accelerating climate change - SH/UPI, TUCSON - Oct 26, 2014
- Thor Benson -
www.upi.com/Science_News/2014/10/26/Microbes-released-from-m…
"Microbes released from melting permafrost may be one of the most significant factors in accelerating climate change.
A newly discovered microbe appears to be releasing massive amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as permafrost succumbs to rising global temperatures.
- Permafrost in the high arctic. (CC/Wikimedia/Brocken Inaglory) -
Scientists from the United States, Australia and Sweden discovered the microbe in the permafrost soils of northern Sweden early this year. The microbe, currently named Methanoflorens stordalenmirensis, had not been previously identified, and scientists discovered it releases huge amount of methane from melting permafrost.
Methane only makes up about nine percent of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but it can hold up to 21 times more heat in its molecules than carbon dioxide can.
"If you think of the African savanna as an analogy, you could say that both lions and elephants produce carbon dioxide, but they eat different things," said senior author Scott Saleska, an associate professor in the UA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and director of the UA's new Ecosystem Genomics Institute. "In Methanoflorens, we discovered the microbial equivalent of an elephant, an organism that plays an enormously important role in what happens to the whole ecosystem."
The scientists say having a better understanding of how much greenhouse gas comes from these kinds of microbes will help with climate change predictions and modeling. "
- Thor Benson -
www.upi.com/Science_News/2014/10/26/Microbes-released-from-m…
"Microbes released from melting permafrost may be one of the most significant factors in accelerating climate change.
A newly discovered microbe appears to be releasing massive amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as permafrost succumbs to rising global temperatures.
- Permafrost in the high arctic. (CC/Wikimedia/Brocken Inaglory) -
Scientists from the United States, Australia and Sweden discovered the microbe in the permafrost soils of northern Sweden early this year. The microbe, currently named Methanoflorens stordalenmirensis, had not been previously identified, and scientists discovered it releases huge amount of methane from melting permafrost.
Methane only makes up about nine percent of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but it can hold up to 21 times more heat in its molecules than carbon dioxide can.
"If you think of the African savanna as an analogy, you could say that both lions and elephants produce carbon dioxide, but they eat different things," said senior author Scott Saleska, an associate professor in the UA's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and director of the UA's new Ecosystem Genomics Institute. "In Methanoflorens, we discovered the microbial equivalent of an elephant, an organism that plays an enormously important role in what happens to the whole ecosystem."
The scientists say having a better understanding of how much greenhouse gas comes from these kinds of microbes will help with climate change predictions and modeling. "
US Navy, DOE, USDA award $210,000,000, for 3 commercial biorefineries for 100,000,000 gallons of 'military-spec fuels'; In Washington, the US Department of the Navy +Department of Energy will award $210,000,000 to Emerald Biofuels, Fulcrum Biofuels +Red Rock Bio towards the construction of biorefineries that produce 'cost-competitive, drop-in military biofuels'. The awards are made under the 'Defense Production Act', that dates back to the Truman Administration -&'aims' to solve 'chicken-&-egg problems', in commercializing new technologies of 'vital interest, for national security'. Under the awards, which require 'significant cost-share, from the private sector', the companies will build biorefineries to produce military spec fuel that is 'expected' to cost the US military, on average, $3.50/gallon -or cost competitive with petroleum-based fuels. The biorefineries, once complete, will have a combined capacity for producing 100,000,000 gallons of 'military-spec jet fuel +marine diesel'; US Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus: “You 'only have to read the headlines', to understand how energy can be used as a weapon. Today, oil is the 'ultimate global commodity', +when 'something happens anywhere', energy traders out a security premium on the price, +the DOD has had billion of dollars in expense from its budget, that had to be redirected to fuels. We’re in a maritime century. 90 percent of all trade goes over the ocean, 95 percent of data goes under the ocean. The navy +marines provide the ability keep sea lanes open, to deter conflict without escalating tension, to give the President options. +power +energy is 'critical to global growth' +the ability of the navy +marine corps to do that”; US Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Poneman: “The "national that leads the clean energy economy will lead the global economy of the future". Winning the race to 'cost-competitive drop-in biofuels' is a 'huge win for our country, +for the future'. That’s why today is 'such a great day for me', It is 'an opportunity to take stock, where we have come, where this will take us'. +to renew our commitment to the people, to our men +women in uniform, on [changing our energy mix]”; US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack: “The bioeconomy 'take everything we grow +we raise, +turn it into something more valuable'. In addition to creating 'economic opportunity', we can make sure our energy supplies come from a 'wider +more diverse mix', from an “all of the above” energy strategy. We know that the biofuel industry is now cleaning the air, +creating 'more diversified fuels', +giving the Navy 'a reason to feel a safer, about its energy supply'. But also let us remember that Rural America has 15 percent of our population, +as high as 40 percent of our military. These jobs are likely to be created in small towns. How important it is to give something back to our men +women in unifor, that we are creating a new fuel source, +job creating source in the very area that supplies so much of our military. It 'makes our country better, +stronger' ” - BD/N/DoE/USDA, WASHINGTON - Sep 19, 2014
- J. Lane -
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/09/19/breaking-news-us-n…
- J. Lane -
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/09/19/breaking-news-us-n…
“A New National Prize: Making Clean Energy the Next Oil Sands - PM - Sep/Oct14
http://policymagazine.ca/pdf/9/PolicyMagazineSeptember-Octob…
http://policymagazine.ca/pdf/9/PolicyMagazineSeptember-Octob…
World losing 2,000 hectares of farm soil daily, to salt damage
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47965
http://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/world-losing-2000-he…
"Salt-spoiled soils worldwide: 20% of all irrigated lands — an area equal to size of France; Extensive costs include $27 billion+ in lost crop value / year. UNU study identifies ways to reverse damage, says every hectare needed to feed world’s fast-growing population.
Every day for more than 20 years, an average of 2,000 hectares of irrigated land in arid and semi-arid areas across 75 countries have been degraded by salt, according to a new study — Economics of Salt-induced Land Degradation and Restoration — published today by the UNU Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).
Currently an area the size of France is affected — about 62 million hectares (20 percent) of the world’s irrigated lands, up from 45 million hectares in the early 1990s.
Salt-induced land degradation occurs in arid and semi-arid regions where rainfall is too low to maintain regular percolation of rainwater through the soil and where irrigation is practiced without a natural or artificial drainage system.
Irrigation practices without drainage management trigger the accumulation of salts in the root zone, affecting several soil properties and reducing productivity.
“To feed the world’s anticipated nine billion people by 2050, and with little new productive land available, it’s a case of all lands needed on deck,” says principal author Manzoor Qadir, Assistant Director of the Water and Human Development programme at UNU-INWEH. ”We can’t afford not to restore the productivity of salt-affected lands.”
Zafar Adeel, Director of UNU-INWEH, notes that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization projects a need to produce 70 percent more food by 2050, including a 50 percent rise in annual cereal production to about 3 billion tonnes.
“Each week the world loses an area larger than Manhattan to salt degradation. A large portion of the affected areas in developing countries have seen investments made in irrigation and drainage but the infrastructure is not properly maintained or managed. Efforts to restore those lands to full productivity are essential as world population and food needs grow, especially in the developing world.”
Well known salt-degraded land areas include:
• Aral Sea Basin, Central Asia
• Indo-Gangetic Basin, India
• Indus Basin, Pakistan
• Yellow River Basin, China
• Euphrates Basin, Syria and Iraq
• Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, and
• San Joaquin Valley, United States
The paper, authored by eight experts based in Canada, Jordan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and published in the UN Sustainable Development journal Natural Resources Forum, details crop productivity losses at farm, regional, and global scales, the cost of doing nothing, and the net economic benefit of preventing and/or reversing land degradation. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47965
http://unu.edu/media-relations/releases/world-losing-2000-he…
"Salt-spoiled soils worldwide: 20% of all irrigated lands — an area equal to size of France; Extensive costs include $27 billion+ in lost crop value / year. UNU study identifies ways to reverse damage, says every hectare needed to feed world’s fast-growing population.
Every day for more than 20 years, an average of 2,000 hectares of irrigated land in arid and semi-arid areas across 75 countries have been degraded by salt, according to a new study — Economics of Salt-induced Land Degradation and Restoration — published today by the UNU Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH).
Currently an area the size of France is affected — about 62 million hectares (20 percent) of the world’s irrigated lands, up from 45 million hectares in the early 1990s.
Salt-induced land degradation occurs in arid and semi-arid regions where rainfall is too low to maintain regular percolation of rainwater through the soil and where irrigation is practiced without a natural or artificial drainage system.
Irrigation practices without drainage management trigger the accumulation of salts in the root zone, affecting several soil properties and reducing productivity.
“To feed the world’s anticipated nine billion people by 2050, and with little new productive land available, it’s a case of all lands needed on deck,” says principal author Manzoor Qadir, Assistant Director of the Water and Human Development programme at UNU-INWEH. ”We can’t afford not to restore the productivity of salt-affected lands.”
Zafar Adeel, Director of UNU-INWEH, notes that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization projects a need to produce 70 percent more food by 2050, including a 50 percent rise in annual cereal production to about 3 billion tonnes.
“Each week the world loses an area larger than Manhattan to salt degradation. A large portion of the affected areas in developing countries have seen investments made in irrigation and drainage but the infrastructure is not properly maintained or managed. Efforts to restore those lands to full productivity are essential as world population and food needs grow, especially in the developing world.”
Well known salt-degraded land areas include:
• Aral Sea Basin, Central Asia
• Indo-Gangetic Basin, India
• Indus Basin, Pakistan
• Yellow River Basin, China
• Euphrates Basin, Syria and Iraq
• Murray-Darling Basin, Australia, and
• San Joaquin Valley, United States
The paper, authored by eight experts based in Canada, Jordan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and published in the UN Sustainable Development journal Natural Resources Forum, details crop productivity losses at farm, regional, and global scales, the cost of doing nothing, and the net economic benefit of preventing and/or reversing land degradation. "
MIT finds switching to higher octane fuel would reduce carbon emissions - ENN/ES&T/MIT, MASSUCHSETTS - Oct 28, 2014
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/premium-gas-could-save-fuel-m…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47966
"If the majority of light-duty vehicles in the United States ran on higher-octane gasoline, the automotive industry as a whole would reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 35 million tons per year, saving up to $6 billion in fuel costs, according to a new analysis by MIT researchers.
In a study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, the team considered a scenario in which fuel is manufactured under a redefined octane rating — the measure of a gasoline’s ability to resist engine knocking during combustion.
Currently in the United States, a car’s octane rating is based on the antiknock index (AKI) — a specification for fuel composition that is determined by a standard research octane number (RON) and a motor octane number (MON). The resulting octane ratings for today’s car engines typically range from 87 (regular fuel) to 93 (premium, or high-octane, fuel) — numbers that are commonly displayed at the pump. The higher the octane rating, the more resistant the fuel is to knocking.
However, the MIT researchers deemed AKI — and more specifically, MON — to be an outdated measure of engine performance, originally designed to apply to older, carbureted engines rather than modern, fuel-injected engines. To bring the octane rating system up to date, the team considered doing away with MON, and basing engine performance solely on RON.
The revised octane rating system would boost the fuel grade of regular gasoline to 93, and premium to 98. The researchers reasoned that the higher fuel grades, while still appropriate for use in today’s engines, could also give oil refiners the opportunity to produce higher-octane fuel, which in turn could spur manufacturers to design vehicles to run on higher-octane — an innovation that could lead to more efficient vehicles. "
http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/premium-gas-could-save-fuel-m…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47966
"If the majority of light-duty vehicles in the United States ran on higher-octane gasoline, the automotive industry as a whole would reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 35 million tons per year, saving up to $6 billion in fuel costs, according to a new analysis by MIT researchers.
In a study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, the team considered a scenario in which fuel is manufactured under a redefined octane rating — the measure of a gasoline’s ability to resist engine knocking during combustion.
Currently in the United States, a car’s octane rating is based on the antiknock index (AKI) — a specification for fuel composition that is determined by a standard research octane number (RON) and a motor octane number (MON). The resulting octane ratings for today’s car engines typically range from 87 (regular fuel) to 93 (premium, or high-octane, fuel) — numbers that are commonly displayed at the pump. The higher the octane rating, the more resistant the fuel is to knocking.
However, the MIT researchers deemed AKI — and more specifically, MON — to be an outdated measure of engine performance, originally designed to apply to older, carbureted engines rather than modern, fuel-injected engines. To bring the octane rating system up to date, the team considered doing away with MON, and basing engine performance solely on RON.
The revised octane rating system would boost the fuel grade of regular gasoline to 93, and premium to 98. The researchers reasoned that the higher fuel grades, while still appropriate for use in today’s engines, could also give oil refiners the opportunity to produce higher-octane fuel, which in turn could spur manufacturers to design vehicles to run on higher-octane — an innovation that could lead to more efficient vehicles. "
Ocean Plays Important Role, in Past Climate Change
kbranson@ucm.rutgers.edu
848-932-0580
cell 908-797-2590
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47960
http://news.rutgers.edu/news/past-climate-change-was-caused-…
"Most of the concerns about climate change have focused on the amount of greenhouse gases that have been released into the atmosphere.
But in a new study published in Science, a group of Rutgers researchers have found that circulation of the ocean plays an equally important role in regulating the earth’s climate.
In their study, the researchers say the major cooling of Earth and continental ice build-up in the Northern Hemisphere 2.7 million years ago coincided with a shift in the circulation of the ocean – which pulls in heat and carbon dioxide in the Atlantic and moves them through the deep ocean from north to south until it’s released in the Pacific.
The ocean conveyor system, Rutgers scientists believe, changed at the same time as a major expansion in the volume of the glaciers in the northern hemisphere as well as a substantial fall in sea levels. It was the Antarctic ice, they argue, that cut off heat exchange at the ocean's surface and forced it into deep water. They believe this caused global climate change at that time, not carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“We argue that it was the establishment of the modern deep ocean circulation – the ocean conveyor – about 2.7 million years ago, and not a major change in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere that triggered an expansion of the ice sheets in the northern hemisphere,” says Stella Woodard, lead author and a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. Their findings, based on ocean sediment core samples between 2.5 million to 3.3 million years old, provide scientists with a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of climate change today.
The study shows that changes in heat distribution between the ocean basins is important for understanding future climate change. However, scientists can’t predict precisely what effect the carbon dioxide currently being pulled into the ocean from the atmosphere will have on climate. Still, they argue that since more carbon dioxide has been released in the past 200 years than any recent period in geological history, interactions between carbon dioxide, temperature changes and precipitation, and ocean circulation will result in profound changes.
Scientists believe that the different pattern of deep ocean circulation was responsible for the elevated temperatures 3 million years ago when the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was arguably what it is now and the temperature was 4 degree Fahrenheit higher. They say the formation of the ocean conveyor cooled the earth and created the climate we live in now. "
kbranson@ucm.rutgers.edu
848-932-0580
cell 908-797-2590
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47960
http://news.rutgers.edu/news/past-climate-change-was-caused-…
"Most of the concerns about climate change have focused on the amount of greenhouse gases that have been released into the atmosphere.
But in a new study published in Science, a group of Rutgers researchers have found that circulation of the ocean plays an equally important role in regulating the earth’s climate.
In their study, the researchers say the major cooling of Earth and continental ice build-up in the Northern Hemisphere 2.7 million years ago coincided with a shift in the circulation of the ocean – which pulls in heat and carbon dioxide in the Atlantic and moves them through the deep ocean from north to south until it’s released in the Pacific.
The ocean conveyor system, Rutgers scientists believe, changed at the same time as a major expansion in the volume of the glaciers in the northern hemisphere as well as a substantial fall in sea levels. It was the Antarctic ice, they argue, that cut off heat exchange at the ocean's surface and forced it into deep water. They believe this caused global climate change at that time, not carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
“We argue that it was the establishment of the modern deep ocean circulation – the ocean conveyor – about 2.7 million years ago, and not a major change in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere that triggered an expansion of the ice sheets in the northern hemisphere,” says Stella Woodard, lead author and a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences. Their findings, based on ocean sediment core samples between 2.5 million to 3.3 million years old, provide scientists with a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of climate change today.
The study shows that changes in heat distribution between the ocean basins is important for understanding future climate change. However, scientists can’t predict precisely what effect the carbon dioxide currently being pulled into the ocean from the atmosphere will have on climate. Still, they argue that since more carbon dioxide has been released in the past 200 years than any recent period in geological history, interactions between carbon dioxide, temperature changes and precipitation, and ocean circulation will result in profound changes.
Scientists believe that the different pattern of deep ocean circulation was responsible for the elevated temperatures 3 million years ago when the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was arguably what it is now and the temperature was 4 degree Fahrenheit higher. They say the formation of the ocean conveyor cooled the earth and created the climate we live in now. "
Using Microscopic Bugs, to Save the Bees
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47964
http://news.byu.edu/archive14-oct-bees.aspx
"For decades, honeybees have been battling a deadly disease that kills off their babies (larvae) and leads to hive collapse. It’s called American Foulbrood and its effects are so devastating and infectious, it often requires infected hives to be burned to the ground.
Treating Foulbrood is complicated because the disease can evolve to resist antibiotics and other chemical treatments. Losing entire hives not only disrupts the honey industry, but reduces the number of bees for pollinating plants.
Now an undergraduate student at BYU, funded by ORCA grants, has produced a natural way to eliminate the scourge, and it’s working: Using tiny killer bugs known as phages to protect baby bees from infection.
“Phages are the most abundant life form on the planet and each phage has a unique bacteria that it will attack,” said Sandra Burnett, BYU professor of microbiology and molecular biology. “This makes phage an ideal treatment for bacterial disease because it can target specific bacteria while leaving all other cells alone.”
Although phages are plentiful in nature, finding the perfect phage for the job takes a lot of hunting. That’s where student Bryan Merrill comes in.
Merrill has been researching ways to treat American Foulbrood since joining a “Phage Hunters” class his freshman year at BYU. Merrill loved the class, which introduced him to the process of phage identification, and so he approached Burnett with hopes of researching treatment for the disease under her tutelage.
“This bacteria has been a problem in honeybees for a long time,” Merrill said. “It infects the larva when they’re teeny tiny. Even a few spores will infect and they’ll start eating the larva from the inside out. It doesn’t hurt the adult bees, but all of the sudden the bees can’t replenish the population and the hive just collapses.”
When hives are infected, beekeepers generally treat their hives with antibiotics. However, this is usually only a temporary solution. If the bacteria returns, it will most likely develop to be resistant to the antibiotics. From there, bee owners have the option to burn the hive or try phage treatment. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47964
http://news.byu.edu/archive14-oct-bees.aspx
"For decades, honeybees have been battling a deadly disease that kills off their babies (larvae) and leads to hive collapse. It’s called American Foulbrood and its effects are so devastating and infectious, it often requires infected hives to be burned to the ground.
Treating Foulbrood is complicated because the disease can evolve to resist antibiotics and other chemical treatments. Losing entire hives not only disrupts the honey industry, but reduces the number of bees for pollinating plants.
Now an undergraduate student at BYU, funded by ORCA grants, has produced a natural way to eliminate the scourge, and it’s working: Using tiny killer bugs known as phages to protect baby bees from infection.
“Phages are the most abundant life form on the planet and each phage has a unique bacteria that it will attack,” said Sandra Burnett, BYU professor of microbiology and molecular biology. “This makes phage an ideal treatment for bacterial disease because it can target specific bacteria while leaving all other cells alone.”
Although phages are plentiful in nature, finding the perfect phage for the job takes a lot of hunting. That’s where student Bryan Merrill comes in.
Merrill has been researching ways to treat American Foulbrood since joining a “Phage Hunters” class his freshman year at BYU. Merrill loved the class, which introduced him to the process of phage identification, and so he approached Burnett with hopes of researching treatment for the disease under her tutelage.
“This bacteria has been a problem in honeybees for a long time,” Merrill said. “It infects the larva when they’re teeny tiny. Even a few spores will infect and they’ll start eating the larva from the inside out. It doesn’t hurt the adult bees, but all of the sudden the bees can’t replenish the population and the hive just collapses.”
When hives are infected, beekeepers generally treat their hives with antibiotics. However, this is usually only a temporary solution. If the bacteria returns, it will most likely develop to be resistant to the antibiotics. From there, bee owners have the option to burn the hive or try phage treatment. "
Adélie penguin chick weights correlated to temperatures
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47967
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141027144628.htm
"Oceanographers have reported a connection between local weather conditions and the weight of Adélie penguin chicks. Adélie penguins are an indigenous species of the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), one of the most rapidly warming areas on Earth. Since 1950, the average annual temperature in the Antarctic Peninsula has increased 2 degrees Celsius on average, and 6 degrees Celsius during winter.
Adélie penguins are an indigenous species of the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), one of the most rapidly warming areas on Earth. Since 1950, the average annual temperature in the Antarctic Peninsula has increased 2 degrees Celsius on average, and 6 degrees Celsius during winter.
As the WAP climate warms, it is changing from a dry, polar system to a warmer, sub-polar system with more rain.
University of Delaware oceanographers recently reported a connection between local weather conditions and the weight of Adélie penguin chicks in an article in Marine Ecology Progress Series, a top marine ecology journal.
Penguin chick weight at the time of fledgling, when they leave the nest, is considered an important indicator of food availability, parental care and environmental conditions at a penguin colony. A higher chick mass provides the chick a better likelihood of surviving and propagating future generations.
In the study, Megan Cimino, a UD doctoral student in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and the paper's lead author, compared data from 1987 to 2011 related to the penguin's diet, the weather and the large-scale climate indices to see if they could correlate year-to-year penguin chick weight with a particular factor. She also evaluated samples from the penguin's diet to determine what they were eating.
"The ability of a penguin species to progress is dependent on the adults' investment in their chicks," said Matthew Oliver, an associate professor of marine science and policy and principal investigator on the project. "Penguins do a remarkable job of finding food for their chicks in the ocean's dynamic environment, so we thought that the type and size distribution of food sources would impact chick weight." "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47967
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141027144628.htm
"Oceanographers have reported a connection between local weather conditions and the weight of Adélie penguin chicks. Adélie penguins are an indigenous species of the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), one of the most rapidly warming areas on Earth. Since 1950, the average annual temperature in the Antarctic Peninsula has increased 2 degrees Celsius on average, and 6 degrees Celsius during winter.
Adélie penguins are an indigenous species of the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), one of the most rapidly warming areas on Earth. Since 1950, the average annual temperature in the Antarctic Peninsula has increased 2 degrees Celsius on average, and 6 degrees Celsius during winter.
As the WAP climate warms, it is changing from a dry, polar system to a warmer, sub-polar system with more rain.
University of Delaware oceanographers recently reported a connection between local weather conditions and the weight of Adélie penguin chicks in an article in Marine Ecology Progress Series, a top marine ecology journal.
Penguin chick weight at the time of fledgling, when they leave the nest, is considered an important indicator of food availability, parental care and environmental conditions at a penguin colony. A higher chick mass provides the chick a better likelihood of surviving and propagating future generations.
In the study, Megan Cimino, a UD doctoral student in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and the paper's lead author, compared data from 1987 to 2011 related to the penguin's diet, the weather and the large-scale climate indices to see if they could correlate year-to-year penguin chick weight with a particular factor. She also evaluated samples from the penguin's diet to determine what they were eating.
"The ability of a penguin species to progress is dependent on the adults' investment in their chicks," said Matthew Oliver, an associate professor of marine science and policy and principal investigator on the project. "Penguins do a remarkable job of finding food for their chicks in the ocean's dynamic environment, so we thought that the type and size distribution of food sources would impact chick weight." "
"Shrinking goats" another indicator, that climate change affects animal size
www.dur.ac.uk/biosciences/about/news/?itemno=22559
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47968
"Alpine goats appear to be shrinking in size as they react to changes in climate, according to new research from Durham University.
The researchers studied the impacts of changes in temperature on the body size of Alpine Chamois, a species of mountain goat, over the past 30 years.
To their surprise, they discovered that young Chamois now weigh about 25 per cent less than animals of the same age in the 1980s.
In recent years, decreases in body size have been identified in a variety of animal species, and have frequently been linked to the changing climate.
However, the researchers say the decline in size of Chamois observed in this study is striking in its speed and magnitude.
The research, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council is published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology.
Lead author Dr Tom Mason, in the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, at Durham University, said: “Body size declines attributed to climate change are widespread in the animal kingdom, with many fish, bird and mammal species getting smaller.
“However the decreases we observe here are astonishing. The impacts on Chamois weight could pose real problems for the survival of these populations.”
The team delved into long-term records of Chamois body weights provided by hunters in the Italian Alps. They discovered that the declines were strongly linked to the warming climate in the study region, which became 3-4oC warmer during the 30 years of the study.
To date, most studies have found that animals are getting smaller because the changing climate is reducing the availability or nutritional content of their food.
However, this study found no evidence that the productivity of Alpine meadows grazed by Chamois had been affected by the warming climate. Instead, the team believes that higher temperatures are affecting how chamois behave.
Co-author Dr Stephen Willis, in the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, at Durham University, said: “We know that Chamois cope with hot periods by resting more and spending less time searching for food, and this may be restricting their size more than the quality of the vegetation they eat.
“If climate change results in similar behavioural and body mass changes in domestic livestock, this could have impacts on agricultural productivity in coming decades.” "
www.dur.ac.uk/biosciences/about/news/?itemno=22559
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47968
"Alpine goats appear to be shrinking in size as they react to changes in climate, according to new research from Durham University.
The researchers studied the impacts of changes in temperature on the body size of Alpine Chamois, a species of mountain goat, over the past 30 years.
To their surprise, they discovered that young Chamois now weigh about 25 per cent less than animals of the same age in the 1980s.
In recent years, decreases in body size have been identified in a variety of animal species, and have frequently been linked to the changing climate.
However, the researchers say the decline in size of Chamois observed in this study is striking in its speed and magnitude.
The research, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council is published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology.
Lead author Dr Tom Mason, in the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, at Durham University, said: “Body size declines attributed to climate change are widespread in the animal kingdom, with many fish, bird and mammal species getting smaller.
“However the decreases we observe here are astonishing. The impacts on Chamois weight could pose real problems for the survival of these populations.”
The team delved into long-term records of Chamois body weights provided by hunters in the Italian Alps. They discovered that the declines were strongly linked to the warming climate in the study region, which became 3-4oC warmer during the 30 years of the study.
To date, most studies have found that animals are getting smaller because the changing climate is reducing the availability or nutritional content of their food.
However, this study found no evidence that the productivity of Alpine meadows grazed by Chamois had been affected by the warming climate. Instead, the team believes that higher temperatures are affecting how chamois behave.
Co-author Dr Stephen Willis, in the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, at Durham University, said: “We know that Chamois cope with hot periods by resting more and spending less time searching for food, and this may be restricting their size more than the quality of the vegetation they eat.
“If climate change results in similar behavioural and body mass changes in domestic livestock, this could have impacts on agricultural productivity in coming decades.” "
CO2 pulses +the last Ice Age
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47972
"A new study shows that the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide that contributed to the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago did not occur gradually, but was characterized by three “pulses” in which C02 rose abruptly.
Scientists are not sure what caused these abrupt increases, during which C02 levels rose about 10-15 parts per million – or about 5 percent per episode – over a period of 1-2 centuries. It likely was a combination of factors, they say, including ocean circulation, changing wind patterns, and terrestrial processes.
The finding is important, however, because it casts new light on the mechanisms that take the Earth in and out of ice age regimes. Results of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, appear this week in the journal Nature.
“We used to think that naturally occurring changes in carbon dioxide took place relatively slowly over the 10,000 years it took to move out of the last ice age,” said Shaun Marcott, lead author on the article who conducted his study as a post-doctoral researcher at Oregon State University. “This abrupt, centennial-scale variability of CO2 appears to be a fundamental part of the global carbon cycle.”
Some previous research has hinted at the possibility that spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide may have accelerated the last deglaciation, but that hypothesis had not been resolved, the researchers say. The key to the new finding is the analysis of an ice core from the West Antarctic that provided the scientists with an unprecedented glimpse into the past.
Scientists studying past climate have been hampered by the limitations of previous ice cores. Cores from Greenland, for example, provide unique records of rapid climate events going back 120,000 years – but high concentrations of impurities don’t allow researchers to accurately determine atmospheric carbon dioxide records. Antarctic ice cores have fewer impurities, but generally have had lower “temporal resolution,” providing less detailed information about atmospheric CO2.
OSU scientists have examined air bubbles trapped in a new ice core that are providing them with some of the clearest indications of atmospheric conditions during the last ice age. Image credit Oregon State University. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/47972
"A new study shows that the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide that contributed to the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago did not occur gradually, but was characterized by three “pulses” in which C02 rose abruptly.
Scientists are not sure what caused these abrupt increases, during which C02 levels rose about 10-15 parts per million – or about 5 percent per episode – over a period of 1-2 centuries. It likely was a combination of factors, they say, including ocean circulation, changing wind patterns, and terrestrial processes.
The finding is important, however, because it casts new light on the mechanisms that take the Earth in and out of ice age regimes. Results of the study, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, appear this week in the journal Nature.
“We used to think that naturally occurring changes in carbon dioxide took place relatively slowly over the 10,000 years it took to move out of the last ice age,” said Shaun Marcott, lead author on the article who conducted his study as a post-doctoral researcher at Oregon State University. “This abrupt, centennial-scale variability of CO2 appears to be a fundamental part of the global carbon cycle.”
Some previous research has hinted at the possibility that spikes in atmospheric carbon dioxide may have accelerated the last deglaciation, but that hypothesis had not been resolved, the researchers say. The key to the new finding is the analysis of an ice core from the West Antarctic that provided the scientists with an unprecedented glimpse into the past.
Scientists studying past climate have been hampered by the limitations of previous ice cores. Cores from Greenland, for example, provide unique records of rapid climate events going back 120,000 years – but high concentrations of impurities don’t allow researchers to accurately determine atmospheric carbon dioxide records. Antarctic ice cores have fewer impurities, but generally have had lower “temporal resolution,” providing less detailed information about atmospheric CO2.
OSU scientists have examined air bubbles trapped in a new ice core that are providing them with some of the clearest indications of atmospheric conditions during the last ice age. Image credit Oregon State University. "
das Papier, Link 1
China is 'Top Developing Nation for Clean Energy Investment, Analysis Finds' - CT/CP/YE360 - Oct 31, 2014
http://global-climatescope.org/en/download/reports/climatesc…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/31/china-is-top-developing-n…
"China is the most attractive among developing nations for low-carbon investment and deployment, according to an analysis by the Climatescope project, a partnership among various international development agencies and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. China received top marks because it is the largest manufacturer of wind and solar equipment in the world, has the largest demand market for wind and solar energy, and has taken major strides to improve its domestic policy framework score, the analysis said.
Brazil ranked second, largely due to the country’s aggressive approach to clean energy development and the availability of low-cost capital through its national bank, the report said. South Africa ranked third, and the analysis noted the nation had attracted $10 billion in clean energy investments in 2012 through 2013. The project ranked 55 developing countries on their past, present, and future ability to attract investment for clean energy companies and projects. "
China is 'Top Developing Nation for Clean Energy Investment, Analysis Finds' - CT/CP/YE360 - Oct 31, 2014
http://global-climatescope.org/en/download/reports/climatesc…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/31/china-is-top-developing-n…
"China is the most attractive among developing nations for low-carbon investment and deployment, according to an analysis by the Climatescope project, a partnership among various international development agencies and Bloomberg New Energy Finance. China received top marks because it is the largest manufacturer of wind and solar equipment in the world, has the largest demand market for wind and solar energy, and has taken major strides to improve its domestic policy framework score, the analysis said.
Brazil ranked second, largely due to the country’s aggressive approach to clean energy development and the availability of low-cost capital through its national bank, the report said. South Africa ranked third, and the analysis noted the nation had attracted $10 billion in clean energy investments in 2012 through 2013. The project ranked 55 developing countries on their past, present, and future ability to attract investment for clean energy companies and projects. "
Norway Best Prepared Nation for Climate Change, Global Index Shows - CT/YE360/UoND, NOTRE DAME - Nov 6, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/06/norway-best-prepared-nati…
"Norway is the best prepared country for climate change, and has been so for almost 20 years, according to rankings compiled by the University of Notre Dame. New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark rounded out the top five, while Chad, Burundi, Eritrea, Central African Republic, and Congo make up the bottom of the Global Adaptation Index.
The rankings highlight the disparities between the world’s relatively wealthy, developed nations and its developing economies when it comes to dealing with climate change. Many of the highest ranking countries do face moderate exposure to climate change, the researchers said, but access to amenities such as electricity, sanitation, clean drinking water, and functional governance have left them better prepared.
The economies of many developing countries, however, depend on natural resources, which makes their political and economic stability more susceptible to climate change. The index ranked 178 countries on their vulnerability and readiness to adapt to droughts, extreme weather, and other natural disasters associated with global warming. "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/06/norway-best-prepared-nati…
"Norway is the best prepared country for climate change, and has been so for almost 20 years, according to rankings compiled by the University of Notre Dame. New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark rounded out the top five, while Chad, Burundi, Eritrea, Central African Republic, and Congo make up the bottom of the Global Adaptation Index.
The rankings highlight the disparities between the world’s relatively wealthy, developed nations and its developing economies when it comes to dealing with climate change. Many of the highest ranking countries do face moderate exposure to climate change, the researchers said, but access to amenities such as electricity, sanitation, clean drinking water, and functional governance have left them better prepared.
The economies of many developing countries, however, depend on natural resources, which makes their political and economic stability more susceptible to climate change. The index ranked 178 countries on their vulnerability and readiness to adapt to droughts, extreme weather, and other natural disasters associated with global warming. "
FTC Warns 15 Businesses that their Biodegradable Claims May be Deceptive - CT/FTC - Nov 5, 2014
- Stuart Kaplow -
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/05/ftc-warns-15-businesses-t…
"The Federal Trade Commission made public that its staff sent letters to 15 businesses last month warning that their biodegradable claims related to “oxodegradable” plastic waste bags may be deceptive.
Oxodegradable plastic is supposedly made with an additive intended to cause it to degrade in the presence of oxygen. Most waste bags are intended to be deposited in landfills, however, where not enough oxygen likely exists for oxodegradable bags to completely degrade in the time consumers expect. Contrary to the marketing, these bags may be no more biodegradable than ordinary plastic waste bags when used as intended.
“If marketers don’t have reliable scientific evidence for their claims, they shouldn’t make them,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Claims that products are environmentally friendly influence buyers, so it’s important they be accurate.”
The FTC staff notified 15 marketers that they may be deceiving consumers based on the agency’s 2012 revisions to its Guides For the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims (the Green Guides). Based on studies about how consumers understand biodegradable claims, the Green Guides advise that unqualified “degradable” or “biodegradable” claims for items that are customarily disposed in landfills, incinerators, and recycling facilities are deceptive because these locations do not present conditions in which complete decomposition will occur within one year.
The FTC says it advised the businesses that buyers understand the terms “oxodegradable” or “oxo biodegradable” claims to mean the same thing as “biodegradable.” Staff identified the 15 businesses as part of its ongoing review of green claims in the marketplace.
The businesses are requested to respond to the warning letters and tell the staff if they will remove their oxodegradable claims from their marketing or if they have competent and reliable scientific evidence proving that their bags will biodegrade as advertised.
Despite that the information in this blog post was provided by the FTC, the staff is not disclosing the recipients of the letters.
The FTC expressly noted when providing this information that businesses who did not receive a letter should not assume that their claims are fine. The FTC has since the 2012 release of the updated Green Guides stepped up enforcement of environment claims from the use of renewable energy to VOCs in coatings, and more. "
- Stuart Kaplow -
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/05/ftc-warns-15-businesses-t…
"The Federal Trade Commission made public that its staff sent letters to 15 businesses last month warning that their biodegradable claims related to “oxodegradable” plastic waste bags may be deceptive.
Oxodegradable plastic is supposedly made with an additive intended to cause it to degrade in the presence of oxygen. Most waste bags are intended to be deposited in landfills, however, where not enough oxygen likely exists for oxodegradable bags to completely degrade in the time consumers expect. Contrary to the marketing, these bags may be no more biodegradable than ordinary plastic waste bags when used as intended.
“If marketers don’t have reliable scientific evidence for their claims, they shouldn’t make them,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Claims that products are environmentally friendly influence buyers, so it’s important they be accurate.”
The FTC staff notified 15 marketers that they may be deceiving consumers based on the agency’s 2012 revisions to its Guides For the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims (the Green Guides). Based on studies about how consumers understand biodegradable claims, the Green Guides advise that unqualified “degradable” or “biodegradable” claims for items that are customarily disposed in landfills, incinerators, and recycling facilities are deceptive because these locations do not present conditions in which complete decomposition will occur within one year.
The FTC says it advised the businesses that buyers understand the terms “oxodegradable” or “oxo biodegradable” claims to mean the same thing as “biodegradable.” Staff identified the 15 businesses as part of its ongoing review of green claims in the marketplace.
The businesses are requested to respond to the warning letters and tell the staff if they will remove their oxodegradable claims from their marketing or if they have competent and reliable scientific evidence proving that their bags will biodegrade as advertised.
Despite that the information in this blog post was provided by the FTC, the staff is not disclosing the recipients of the letters.
The FTC expressly noted when providing this information that businesses who did not receive a letter should not assume that their claims are fine. The FTC has since the 2012 release of the updated Green Guides stepped up enforcement of environment claims from the use of renewable energy to VOCs in coatings, and more. "
bisschen optimistisch
5 Energy Trends 'that will Change the Balance of Power' - CT/EDF, EEB - Nov 5, 2014
www.edf.org/blog/2014/04/18/depth-look-future-american-energ…
http://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2014/10/27/disruptive-is…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/05/5-energy-trends-that-will…
"We no longer fret over taxes on tea, but there’s another American Revolution forming in our great nation today. Like the colonist uprising 241 years ago, it’s fueled by a need to stand up against an outdated system that threatens our way of life.
It’s a battle over the future of American energy and our antiquated electric grid. And it centers around the way consumers, utilities, and investors interact with this vast network of powerlines, substations, and plants.
As Cheryl Roberto, who leads Environmental Defense Fund’s Clean Energy program, notes, “The U.S. is poised to spend around $2 trillion over the next two decades replacing our outdated electric infrastructure.”
That’s a lot of coin and a tremendous opportunity.
We’ve detected five emerging trends that may forever change how we produce and consume electricity. It will be an American approach to energy that wastes less, pollutes less, and, as Cheryl likes to say, “puts customers in the driver’s seat.”
It’s made by, and for, you and me.
Trend #1: Utilities think quality, not quantity
Power companies, like people, respond to incentives. The current regulatory framework in the United States incentivizes utilities to invest more in power stations and infrastructure than in building value for consumers and the environment.
If they are to survive the Revolution, utilities need to re-think the model, and the regulatory framework needs to change to support utility investments in renewable energy and energy savings. It sounds daunting, but it’s already happening in New York State.
Trend #2: Clean energy finance takes hold
While rooftop solar panels are becoming more common, securing financing for these and other energy investments and retrofits can be tough. Clean energy is more than a way for homes and businesses to lower bills and protect the environment; these upgrades also represent a serious investment opportunity.
Today, states are beginning to connect investors with programs such as on-bill repayment for large and small residential projects. Commercial properties are getting in on energy efficiency, too, thanks to the Investor Confidence Project which brings standardization and quantifiable metrics to energy efficiency projects in the commercial building sector.
The result: lower operating costs, higher market value, and a significantly lower carbon footprint.
Trend #3: Everyone gets a stake in the grid
Going back to incentives, energy-savings programs like demand response help consumers adjust their power consumption during peak times by offering a financial reward for doing so. By empowering consumers (forgive the pun) we can use resources far more effectively and efficiently.
Distributed energy is a related concept, calling on smaller-scale clean energy resources such as energy efficiency, energy storage, and local, on-site generation to complement traditional sources. California is at the forefront in this area.
Trend #4: Vastly improved batteries open new doors
Rapid advancements in battery technology are making batteries a surprisingly disruptive – for the better – force in the modern American Revolution. EDF’s Midwest Clean Energy Director Dick Munson reports that improved batteries could put renewable energy sources in the lead.
“When the wind stops blowing or the sun goes behind a cloud, batteries are able to provide back-up power until those resources are back online,” he writes.
Until recently, battery cost was prohibitive, with systems costing as much as $1,500 per kilowatt hour. Today the average is between $500 and $700, and dropping. Bonus: Someone has to build these batteries, and that means jobs. Just ask North Carolina and Illinois.
Trend #5: Coming: Federal policies to support it all
All of these trends are independently worthwhile, but the Clean Power Plan may be the glue that binds them all together. In addition to putting the first-ever limits on power plant emissions, the plan offers states impressive freedom to choose how to meet their emissions goals, and the trends above will play out as states exercise that freedom.
Freedom is the hallmark of any true American Revolution, after all. As is our quest for a stronger, better, and more innovative nation.
To take a page from the classic 1980s cartoon He-Man: Americans can be masters of our energy universe. We…have…the power!
Article by Dan Upham, Editor, Environmental Defense Fund Energy Exchange Blog. "
5 Energy Trends 'that will Change the Balance of Power' - CT/EDF, EEB - Nov 5, 2014
www.edf.org/blog/2014/04/18/depth-look-future-american-energ…
http://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2014/10/27/disruptive-is…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/05/5-energy-trends-that-will…
"We no longer fret over taxes on tea, but there’s another American Revolution forming in our great nation today. Like the colonist uprising 241 years ago, it’s fueled by a need to stand up against an outdated system that threatens our way of life.
It’s a battle over the future of American energy and our antiquated electric grid. And it centers around the way consumers, utilities, and investors interact with this vast network of powerlines, substations, and plants.
As Cheryl Roberto, who leads Environmental Defense Fund’s Clean Energy program, notes, “The U.S. is poised to spend around $2 trillion over the next two decades replacing our outdated electric infrastructure.”
That’s a lot of coin and a tremendous opportunity.
We’ve detected five emerging trends that may forever change how we produce and consume electricity. It will be an American approach to energy that wastes less, pollutes less, and, as Cheryl likes to say, “puts customers in the driver’s seat.”
It’s made by, and for, you and me.
Trend #1: Utilities think quality, not quantity
Power companies, like people, respond to incentives. The current regulatory framework in the United States incentivizes utilities to invest more in power stations and infrastructure than in building value for consumers and the environment.
If they are to survive the Revolution, utilities need to re-think the model, and the regulatory framework needs to change to support utility investments in renewable energy and energy savings. It sounds daunting, but it’s already happening in New York State.
Trend #2: Clean energy finance takes hold
While rooftop solar panels are becoming more common, securing financing for these and other energy investments and retrofits can be tough. Clean energy is more than a way for homes and businesses to lower bills and protect the environment; these upgrades also represent a serious investment opportunity.
Today, states are beginning to connect investors with programs such as on-bill repayment for large and small residential projects. Commercial properties are getting in on energy efficiency, too, thanks to the Investor Confidence Project which brings standardization and quantifiable metrics to energy efficiency projects in the commercial building sector.
The result: lower operating costs, higher market value, and a significantly lower carbon footprint.
Trend #3: Everyone gets a stake in the grid
Going back to incentives, energy-savings programs like demand response help consumers adjust their power consumption during peak times by offering a financial reward for doing so. By empowering consumers (forgive the pun) we can use resources far more effectively and efficiently.
Distributed energy is a related concept, calling on smaller-scale clean energy resources such as energy efficiency, energy storage, and local, on-site generation to complement traditional sources. California is at the forefront in this area.
Trend #4: Vastly improved batteries open new doors
Rapid advancements in battery technology are making batteries a surprisingly disruptive – for the better – force in the modern American Revolution. EDF’s Midwest Clean Energy Director Dick Munson reports that improved batteries could put renewable energy sources in the lead.
“When the wind stops blowing or the sun goes behind a cloud, batteries are able to provide back-up power until those resources are back online,” he writes.
Until recently, battery cost was prohibitive, with systems costing as much as $1,500 per kilowatt hour. Today the average is between $500 and $700, and dropping. Bonus: Someone has to build these batteries, and that means jobs. Just ask North Carolina and Illinois.
Trend #5: Coming: Federal policies to support it all
All of these trends are independently worthwhile, but the Clean Power Plan may be the glue that binds them all together. In addition to putting the first-ever limits on power plant emissions, the plan offers states impressive freedom to choose how to meet their emissions goals, and the trends above will play out as states exercise that freedom.
Freedom is the hallmark of any true American Revolution, after all. As is our quest for a stronger, better, and more innovative nation.
To take a page from the classic 1980s cartoon He-Man: Americans can be masters of our energy universe. We…have…the power!
Article by Dan Upham, Editor, Environmental Defense Fund Energy Exchange Blog. "
New Mechanism Behind Arctic Warming Revealed - CT/ENN/NAoS, P/DoE/BNL, BERKELEY - Nov 7, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/07/new-mechanism-behind-arct…
"We all know that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming, but new research identifies a new mechanism that could turn out to be a major contributor to melting sea ice, specifically in the Arctic region.
Scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have studied a long-wavelength region of the electromagnetic spectrum called far infrared. Far infrared is a region in the infrared spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. While it is invisible to our eyes, it accounts for about half the energy emitted by the Earth’s surface.
Despite its importance in the planet’s energy budget, it’s difficult to measure a surface’s effectiveness in emitting far-infrared energy. In addition, its influence on the planet’s climate is not well represented in climate models.
Current models assume that all surfaces are 100 percent efficient in emitting far-infrared energy. However, scientists found that open oceans are much less efficient than sea ice when it comes to emitting in the far-infrared region of the spectrum. This means that the Arctic Ocean traps much of the energy in far-infrared radiation, a previously unknown phenomenon that is likely contributing to the warming of the polar climate.
“Far-infrared surface emissivity is an unexplored topic, but it deserves more attention. Our research found that non-frozen surfaces are poor emitters compared to frozen surfaces. And this discrepancy has a much bigger impact on the polar climate than today’s models indicate,” says Daniel Feldman, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division and lead author of the paper.
Simulations conducted by the researchers revealed that far-infrared surface emissions have the biggest impact on the climates of arid high-latitude and high-altitude regions.
In the Arctic, the simulations found that open oceans hold more far-infrared energy than sea ice, resulting in warmer oceans, melting sea ice, and a 2-degree Celsius increase in the polar climate after only a 25-year run.
This could help explain why polar warming is most pronounced during the three-month winter when there is no sun.
“The Earth continues to emit energy in the far infrared during the polar winter,” Feldman says. “And because ocean surfaces trap this energy, the system is warmer throughout the year as opposed to only when the sun is out.”
Their research appeared this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/07/new-mechanism-behind-arct…
"We all know that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming, but new research identifies a new mechanism that could turn out to be a major contributor to melting sea ice, specifically in the Arctic region.
Scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have studied a long-wavelength region of the electromagnetic spectrum called far infrared. Far infrared is a region in the infrared spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. While it is invisible to our eyes, it accounts for about half the energy emitted by the Earth’s surface.
Despite its importance in the planet’s energy budget, it’s difficult to measure a surface’s effectiveness in emitting far-infrared energy. In addition, its influence on the planet’s climate is not well represented in climate models.
Current models assume that all surfaces are 100 percent efficient in emitting far-infrared energy. However, scientists found that open oceans are much less efficient than sea ice when it comes to emitting in the far-infrared region of the spectrum. This means that the Arctic Ocean traps much of the energy in far-infrared radiation, a previously unknown phenomenon that is likely contributing to the warming of the polar climate.
“Far-infrared surface emissivity is an unexplored topic, but it deserves more attention. Our research found that non-frozen surfaces are poor emitters compared to frozen surfaces. And this discrepancy has a much bigger impact on the polar climate than today’s models indicate,” says Daniel Feldman, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division and lead author of the paper.
Simulations conducted by the researchers revealed that far-infrared surface emissions have the biggest impact on the climates of arid high-latitude and high-altitude regions.
In the Arctic, the simulations found that open oceans hold more far-infrared energy than sea ice, resulting in warmer oceans, melting sea ice, and a 2-degree Celsius increase in the polar climate after only a 25-year run.
This could help explain why polar warming is most pronounced during the three-month winter when there is no sun.
“The Earth continues to emit energy in the far infrared during the polar winter,” Feldman says. “And because ocean surfaces trap this energy, the system is warmer throughout the year as opposed to only when the sun is out.”
Their research appeared this week in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "
'Wind of Change': European grid 'prepares for massive integration of renewables', Today, the city of Rome welcomed an important new initiative for the large-scale integration of grids +of renewables sources into Europe's energy mix, with nearly 40 leading organisations from research, industry, utilities, transmission systems operators announcing their united goal to find the BEST PATHS to deliver affordable, reliable power in Europe from coast to coast - NW/Y, ROME - Oct 30, 2014
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=37918.php?utm_source=fee…
"Today, the ancient city of Rome welcomed an important new initiative for the large-scale integration of grids and of renewables sources into Europe’s energy mix, with nearly 40 leading organisations from research, industry, utilities, transmission systems operators announcing their united goal to find the BEST PATHS to deliver affordable, reliable power in Europe from “coast to coast”.
An ambitious research project which will be funded by the European Commission, BEST PATHS, will focus on the development of high-capacity transmission networks needed to meet Europe’s long-term energy goals and incorporation of renewable energy sources.
The project unites expert partners around five large-scale demonstration areas focused on ensuring increased network capacity and system flexibility – incorporating innovative transmission systems and industrial solutions to link offshore wind farms and improve the interconnections of the entire power grid.
Project coordinator, Mr. Vicente González López of Red Eléctrica de España (REE) addressed the opening of a new challenge for the European power industry: “It goes beyond the intrinsic complexity of the individual developments proposed, since the project is going to require an effort of coordination to jointly analyse the results of each individual demonstrations and evaluate their combined impact in the European power system of the future.”
Describing the actors working to deliver this ambitious project, Mr. González López said: “Thirty-nine key players have joined together to deliver a substantial change to the power grid’s capacity and flexibility. They represent the entire chain of innovation in Europe, from universities and research centres generating new knowledge, the power industry developing new products, Transmission Systems Operators and utilities, specifying their needs of new industrial solutions to allow the grid to better serve society.”
Bridging the gap from often remote renewable electricity production to high-load consumption centres, BEST PATHS will focus on developing inter-operable multi-terminal High Voltage Direct Current grids; innovative upgrading and repowering existing AC corridors; and superconducting high power links.
The experimental results of BEST PATHS will be integrated into European impact analyses to show the scalability of the solutions and will be made available as soon as 2018 to benefit replication across the pan-European transmission network and electricity market.
Source: Youris "
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=37918.php?utm_source=fee…
"Today, the ancient city of Rome welcomed an important new initiative for the large-scale integration of grids and of renewables sources into Europe’s energy mix, with nearly 40 leading organisations from research, industry, utilities, transmission systems operators announcing their united goal to find the BEST PATHS to deliver affordable, reliable power in Europe from “coast to coast”.
An ambitious research project which will be funded by the European Commission, BEST PATHS, will focus on the development of high-capacity transmission networks needed to meet Europe’s long-term energy goals and incorporation of renewable energy sources.
The project unites expert partners around five large-scale demonstration areas focused on ensuring increased network capacity and system flexibility – incorporating innovative transmission systems and industrial solutions to link offshore wind farms and improve the interconnections of the entire power grid.
Project coordinator, Mr. Vicente González López of Red Eléctrica de España (REE) addressed the opening of a new challenge for the European power industry: “It goes beyond the intrinsic complexity of the individual developments proposed, since the project is going to require an effort of coordination to jointly analyse the results of each individual demonstrations and evaluate their combined impact in the European power system of the future.”
Describing the actors working to deliver this ambitious project, Mr. González López said: “Thirty-nine key players have joined together to deliver a substantial change to the power grid’s capacity and flexibility. They represent the entire chain of innovation in Europe, from universities and research centres generating new knowledge, the power industry developing new products, Transmission Systems Operators and utilities, specifying their needs of new industrial solutions to allow the grid to better serve society.”
Bridging the gap from often remote renewable electricity production to high-load consumption centres, BEST PATHS will focus on developing inter-operable multi-terminal High Voltage Direct Current grids; innovative upgrading and repowering existing AC corridors; and superconducting high power links.
The experimental results of BEST PATHS will be integrated into European impact analyses to show the scalability of the solutions and will be made available as soon as 2018 to benefit replication across the pan-European transmission network and electricity market.
Source: Youris "
Climate change could cause expansion of ocean dead zones - UPI/SH/SERC/GCB, WASHINGTON - Nov 11, 2014
www.stockhouse.com/news/press-releases/2014/11/11/climate-ch…
"Dead zones in the world's oceans are expected to warm and expand by the end of the century due to climate change, says a new study.
The dead zones, areas of water that are oxygen depleted and unable to sustain aquatic life, are going to grow. The study, published by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center on Nov. 10 in Global Change Biology, said 94 percent of the ocean's dead zones will see a jump of two degrees Celsius.
"Over 40 percent of the world's population lives in coastal areas," said Keryn B. Gedan, a researcher at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. "We depend on these resources. No one wants to see a fish kill or harmful algal bloom at their local beach."
One other cause besides climate change that could be causing this is runoff into the bodies of water.
Major areas of water affected by this include the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, the Black and Baltic seas as well as the Gulf of Mexico.
The warm waters of dead zones can eventually lead to the death of the fish, crab, oyster and shrimp in the area. Aside from damaging the ecosystem, the dead zones put a dent in the economies of areas that rely on fishing such as Maryland's crab market and the Gulf's shrimp production.
Gedan told the Washington Post that cleanup efforts like the one in Chesapeake Bay may stave off the effects of dead zones and mitigate the impact of climate change and pollution. "
www.stockhouse.com/news/press-releases/2014/11/11/climate-ch…
"Dead zones in the world's oceans are expected to warm and expand by the end of the century due to climate change, says a new study.
The dead zones, areas of water that are oxygen depleted and unable to sustain aquatic life, are going to grow. The study, published by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center on Nov. 10 in Global Change Biology, said 94 percent of the ocean's dead zones will see a jump of two degrees Celsius.
"Over 40 percent of the world's population lives in coastal areas," said Keryn B. Gedan, a researcher at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. "We depend on these resources. No one wants to see a fish kill or harmful algal bloom at their local beach."
One other cause besides climate change that could be causing this is runoff into the bodies of water.
Major areas of water affected by this include the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, the Black and Baltic seas as well as the Gulf of Mexico.
The warm waters of dead zones can eventually lead to the death of the fish, crab, oyster and shrimp in the area. Aside from damaging the ecosystem, the dead zones put a dent in the economies of areas that rely on fishing such as Maryland's crab market and the Gulf's shrimp production.
Gedan told the Washington Post that cleanup efforts like the one in Chesapeake Bay may stave off the effects of dead zones and mitigate the impact of climate change and pollution. "
"5) Oil, divestment, and solar news - John D. Rockefeller built his fortune on oil. Now his heirs are divesting a $860 million endowment from fossil fuels, as reported by the New York Times. Also while oil prices have been dominating the news, a new Deutsche Bank report concludes solar will be as cheap or cheaper than average electricity-bill prices for consumers in 47 US states by 2016. Solar has already reached grid parity in 10 states that are responsible for 90 percent of U.S. solar electricity production. In those states alone, installed capacity growth will increase as much as sixfold over the next three to four years, Deutsche Bank analyst Vishal Shah wrote in the Oct. 26 report. ...
www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-29/while-you-were-getting-wor…
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/29/us-solar-iea-electr… "
- Source: Deutsche Bank, EIA. Graph shows LCOE minus average electricity price -
www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-29/while-you-were-getting-wor…
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/29/us-solar-iea-electr… "
- Source: Deutsche Bank, EIA. Graph shows LCOE minus average electricity price -
Public Views of Climate Science Hinge on Solutions, New Study Finds
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/11/public-views-of-climate-s…
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503&h…
"People often evaluate scientific evidence not on the basis of its perceived merits, but on whether they agree with the policy implications of the research, according to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Using issues like climate change and air pollution as test cases, Duke University researchers sought to determine if what they call a “solution aversion” bias could be detected among self-identified Republican or Democratic survey participants.
In one example, participants were provided a scientific assertion that global average temperatures could rise as much as 3.2 degrees by the end of the century, after which they were presented with potential policy solutions. If that solution involved government regulation or increased taxes, just 22 percent of Republican participants expressed confidence in the initial scientific finding. But if the solution emphasized using market forces to curb temperatures, the percentage of Republicans accepting the initial temperature predictions rose to 55 percent. Self-identified Democrats displayed no difference in the same experiment, but liberal biases were clearly elicited on other issues, including crime and gun control, the researchers found.
The study complements previous analyses from Yale University and elsewhere, which suggest that education in the sciences is a poor predictor for global warming beliefs, and that rejection or acceptance of the problem is a product of much complicated sociological and psychological factors. "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/11/public-views-of-climate-s…
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1871503&h…
"People often evaluate scientific evidence not on the basis of its perceived merits, but on whether they agree with the policy implications of the research, according to a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Using issues like climate change and air pollution as test cases, Duke University researchers sought to determine if what they call a “solution aversion” bias could be detected among self-identified Republican or Democratic survey participants.
In one example, participants were provided a scientific assertion that global average temperatures could rise as much as 3.2 degrees by the end of the century, after which they were presented with potential policy solutions. If that solution involved government regulation or increased taxes, just 22 percent of Republican participants expressed confidence in the initial scientific finding. But if the solution emphasized using market forces to curb temperatures, the percentage of Republicans accepting the initial temperature predictions rose to 55 percent. Self-identified Democrats displayed no difference in the same experiment, but liberal biases were clearly elicited on other issues, including crime and gun control, the researchers found.
The study complements previous analyses from Yale University and elsewhere, which suggest that education in the sciences is a poor predictor for global warming beliefs, and that rejection or acceptance of the problem is a product of much complicated sociological and psychological factors. "
Groundwater affected by Climate Change
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48004
"Global warming stops at nothing – not even the groundwater, as a new study by researchers from ETH Zurich and KIT reveals: the groundwater’s temperature profiles echo those of the atmosphere, albeit damped and delayed.
For their study, the researchers were able to fall back on uninterrupted long-term temperature measurements of groundwater flows around the cities of Cologne and Karlsruhe, where the operators of the local waterworks have been measuring the temperature of the groundwater, which is largely uninfluenced by humans, for forty years. This is unique and a rare commodity for the researchers. “For us, the data was a godsend,” stresses Peter Bayer, a senior assistant at ETH Zurich’s Geological Institute. Even with some intensive research, they would not have been able to find a comparable series of measurements. Evidently, it is less interesting or too costly for waterworks to measure groundwater temperatures systematically for a lengthy period of time. “Or the data isn’t digitalised and only archived on paper,” suspects the hydrogeologist.
Damped image of atmospheric warming
Based on the readings, the researchers were able to demonstrate that the groundwater is not just warming up; the warming stages observed in the atmosphere are also echoed. “Global warming is reflected directly in the groundwater, albeit damped and with a certain time lag,” says Bayer, summarising the main results that the project has yielded. The researchers published their study in the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.
The data also reveals that the groundwater close to the surface down to a depth of around sixty metres has warmed up statistically significantly in the course of global warming over the last forty years. This water heating follows the warming pattern of the local and regional climate, which in turn mirrors that of global warming.
The groundwater reveals how the atmosphere has made several temperature leaps at irregular intervals. These “regime shifts” can also be observed in the global climate, as the researchers write in their study. Bayer was surprised at how quickly the groundwater responded to climate change.
Heat exchange with the subsoil
The earth’s atmosphere has warmed up by an average of 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade in the last fifty years. And this warming doesn’t stop at the subsoil, either, as other climate scientists have demonstrated in the last two decades with drillings all over the world.
Continue reading at ETH Zurich. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48004
"Global warming stops at nothing – not even the groundwater, as a new study by researchers from ETH Zurich and KIT reveals: the groundwater’s temperature profiles echo those of the atmosphere, albeit damped and delayed.
For their study, the researchers were able to fall back on uninterrupted long-term temperature measurements of groundwater flows around the cities of Cologne and Karlsruhe, where the operators of the local waterworks have been measuring the temperature of the groundwater, which is largely uninfluenced by humans, for forty years. This is unique and a rare commodity for the researchers. “For us, the data was a godsend,” stresses Peter Bayer, a senior assistant at ETH Zurich’s Geological Institute. Even with some intensive research, they would not have been able to find a comparable series of measurements. Evidently, it is less interesting or too costly for waterworks to measure groundwater temperatures systematically for a lengthy period of time. “Or the data isn’t digitalised and only archived on paper,” suspects the hydrogeologist.
Damped image of atmospheric warming
Based on the readings, the researchers were able to demonstrate that the groundwater is not just warming up; the warming stages observed in the atmosphere are also echoed. “Global warming is reflected directly in the groundwater, albeit damped and with a certain time lag,” says Bayer, summarising the main results that the project has yielded. The researchers published their study in the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.
The data also reveals that the groundwater close to the surface down to a depth of around sixty metres has warmed up statistically significantly in the course of global warming over the last forty years. This water heating follows the warming pattern of the local and regional climate, which in turn mirrors that of global warming.
The groundwater reveals how the atmosphere has made several temperature leaps at irregular intervals. These “regime shifts” can also be observed in the global climate, as the researchers write in their study. Bayer was surprised at how quickly the groundwater responded to climate change.
Heat exchange with the subsoil
The earth’s atmosphere has warmed up by an average of 0.13 degrees Celsius per decade in the last fifty years. And this warming doesn’t stop at the subsoil, either, as other climate scientists have demonstrated in the last two decades with drillings all over the world.
Continue reading at ETH Zurich. "
Fukushima Radioactivity Detected Off West Coast
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48001
"Monitoring efforts along the Pacific Coast of the U.S. and Canada have detected the presence of small amounts of radioactivity from the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident 100 miles (150 km) due west of Eureka, California. Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) found the trace amounts of telltale radioactive compounds as part of their ongoing monitoring of natural and human sources of radioactivity in the ocean.
In the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami off Japan, the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant released cesium-134 and other radioactive elements into the ocean at unprecedented levels. Since then, the radioactive plume has traveled west across the Pacific, propelled largely by ocean currents and being diluted along the way. At their highest near the damaged nuclear power plant in 2011, radioactivity levels peaked at more than 10 million times the levels recently detected near North America.
"We detected cesium-134, a contaminant from Fukushima, off the northern California coast. The levels are only detectable by sophisticated equipment able to discern minute quantities of radioactivity," said Ken Buesseler, a WHOI marine chemist, who is leading the monitoring effort. "Most people don't realize that there was already cesium in Pacific waters prior to Fukushima, but only the cesium-137 isotope. Cesium-137 undergoes radioactive decay with a 30-year half-life and was introduced to the environment during atmospheric weapons testing in the 1950s and '60s. Along with cesium-137, we detected cesium-134 – which also does not occur naturally in the environment and has a half-life of just two years. Therefore the only source of this cesium-134 in the Pacific today is from Fukushima."
The amount of cesium-134 reported in these new offshore data is less than 2 Becquerels per cubic meter (the number of decay events per second per 260 gallons of water). This Fukushima-derived cesium is far below where one might expect any measurable risk to human health or marine life, according to international health agencies. And it is more than 1000 times lower than acceptable limits in drinking water set by US EPA.
Continue reading at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48001
"Monitoring efforts along the Pacific Coast of the U.S. and Canada have detected the presence of small amounts of radioactivity from the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident 100 miles (150 km) due west of Eureka, California. Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) found the trace amounts of telltale radioactive compounds as part of their ongoing monitoring of natural and human sources of radioactivity in the ocean.
In the aftermath of the 2011 tsunami off Japan, the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant released cesium-134 and other radioactive elements into the ocean at unprecedented levels. Since then, the radioactive plume has traveled west across the Pacific, propelled largely by ocean currents and being diluted along the way. At their highest near the damaged nuclear power plant in 2011, radioactivity levels peaked at more than 10 million times the levels recently detected near North America.
"We detected cesium-134, a contaminant from Fukushima, off the northern California coast. The levels are only detectable by sophisticated equipment able to discern minute quantities of radioactivity," said Ken Buesseler, a WHOI marine chemist, who is leading the monitoring effort. "Most people don't realize that there was already cesium in Pacific waters prior to Fukushima, but only the cesium-137 isotope. Cesium-137 undergoes radioactive decay with a 30-year half-life and was introduced to the environment during atmospheric weapons testing in the 1950s and '60s. Along with cesium-137, we detected cesium-134 – which also does not occur naturally in the environment and has a half-life of just two years. Therefore the only source of this cesium-134 in the Pacific today is from Fukushima."
The amount of cesium-134 reported in these new offshore data is less than 2 Becquerels per cubic meter (the number of decay events per second per 260 gallons of water). This Fukushima-derived cesium is far below where one might expect any measurable risk to human health or marine life, according to international health agencies. And it is more than 1000 times lower than acceptable limits in drinking water set by US EPA.
Continue reading at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.312.979 von Popeye82 am 13.11.14 18:08:24
Study examines the role of the deep ocean, in carbon dioxide storage
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48000
"The Southern Ocean plays an important role in the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the ocean. One aspect of this is the growth of phytoplankton, which acts as a natural sponge for carbon dioxide, drawing the troublesome greenhouse gas from the atmosphere into the sea. When these plankton die they can sink to the bottom of the ocean and store some of the carbon dioxide they have absorbed, a process scientists call the "biological carbon pump."
”�Although many areas of the Southern Ocean are rich in nutrients, they often lack iron, which limits phytoplankton growth. An important idea in oceanography is that adding iron to the Southern Ocean could stimulate phytoplankton growth and the biological carbon pump. Some scientists believe that this process can partly explain cycles in atmospheric carbon dioxide over Earth's recent history and it has also been widely debated as a mitigation strategy for climate change.
In two previous studies carried out in the last five years it has been shown that iron fertilization of the Southern Ocean can export carbon dioxide to the deep-sea. "However, to understand the net storage of carbon dioxide in the ocean interior, sinking phytoplankton are only one part of the story," explains Dr. Ian Salter from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. "These phytoplankton can be a food source for certain types of planktonic grazers, foraminifer and pteropods, that make shells from calcium carbonate -- a process which produces carbon dioxide."
The biogeochemist, and an international team of collaborators, were the first to quantify production and sinking of these calcium carbonate shells resulting from a phytoplankton bloom in the Southern Ocean, close to the Crozet Islands, with surprising results. Natural fertilization, caused by iron leached from the basaltic islands, increased the production and sinking of these calcium carbonate shells to a greater extent than sinking phytoplankton. This has important implications for the deep-sea storage of the carbon dioxide resulting from these blooms.
Image of deep sea floor via Shutterstock. "
Study examines the role of the deep ocean, in carbon dioxide storage
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48000
"The Southern Ocean plays an important role in the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and the ocean. One aspect of this is the growth of phytoplankton, which acts as a natural sponge for carbon dioxide, drawing the troublesome greenhouse gas from the atmosphere into the sea. When these plankton die they can sink to the bottom of the ocean and store some of the carbon dioxide they have absorbed, a process scientists call the "biological carbon pump."
”�Although many areas of the Southern Ocean are rich in nutrients, they often lack iron, which limits phytoplankton growth. An important idea in oceanography is that adding iron to the Southern Ocean could stimulate phytoplankton growth and the biological carbon pump. Some scientists believe that this process can partly explain cycles in atmospheric carbon dioxide over Earth's recent history and it has also been widely debated as a mitigation strategy for climate change.
In two previous studies carried out in the last five years it has been shown that iron fertilization of the Southern Ocean can export carbon dioxide to the deep-sea. "However, to understand the net storage of carbon dioxide in the ocean interior, sinking phytoplankton are only one part of the story," explains Dr. Ian Salter from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. "These phytoplankton can be a food source for certain types of planktonic grazers, foraminifer and pteropods, that make shells from calcium carbonate -- a process which produces carbon dioxide."
The biogeochemist, and an international team of collaborators, were the first to quantify production and sinking of these calcium carbonate shells resulting from a phytoplankton bloom in the Southern Ocean, close to the Crozet Islands, with surprising results. Natural fertilization, caused by iron leached from the basaltic islands, increased the production and sinking of these calcium carbonate shells to a greater extent than sinking phytoplankton. This has important implications for the deep-sea storage of the carbon dioxide resulting from these blooms.
Image of deep sea floor via Shutterstock. "
WHO promotes ethanol for cooking, to reduce indoor air pollution - BD/WHO, GENEVA - Nov 12, 2014
- Meghan Sapp -
www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/indoor-air-pollut…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/11/13/who-promotes-ethan…
"In Switzerland, World Health Organization recommendations released on Thursday highlight the dangers of burning fuels like unprocessed coal and kerosene in the home, and set targets for reducing emissions of health-damaging pollutants from domestic cookstoves, space heaters and fuel-based lamps.
The new “WHO guidelines for indoor air quality: household fuel combustion” stress the need to improve access to cleaner home energy sources such as liquefied petroleum gas, biogas, natural gas and ethanol, or electricity, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. "
- Meghan Sapp -
www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/indoor-air-pollut…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/11/13/who-promotes-ethan…
"In Switzerland, World Health Organization recommendations released on Thursday highlight the dangers of burning fuels like unprocessed coal and kerosene in the home, and set targets for reducing emissions of health-damaging pollutants from domestic cookstoves, space heaters and fuel-based lamps.
The new “WHO guidelines for indoor air quality: household fuel combustion” stress the need to improve access to cleaner home energy sources such as liquefied petroleum gas, biogas, natural gas and ethanol, or electricity, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. "
Canada's SCISAT Satellite Makes Important Discovery, for Understanding the Evolution of the Ozone Layer - MW/CSA, LONGUEUIL - Nov 6, 2014
www.marketwired.com/press-release/canadas-scisat-satellite-m…
"LONGUEUIL, QUEBEC--(Marketwired - Nov. 6, 2014) - Thanks to Canada's SCISAT, an international team of scientists has discovered a recent and unexpected increase in stratospheric hydrogen chloride (HCl) in the Northern Hemisphere.
Information from SCISAT along with other satellite data and ground-based measurements showed the scientific team that the increase in stratospheric HCl is due to a slowdown in the atmospheric circulation of the Northern Hemisphere. This discovery could impact how scientists will analyze the evolution of the stratospheric ozone layer going forward.
Since 1989, the implementation of the UN's Montreal Protocol has led to a reduction in chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) around the globe. These CFCs are responsible for the depletion of the ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet radiation. CFCs break-up in the stratosphere and release chlorine atoms that then form HCl. Under certain conditions, HCl can be transformed into other chlorine-containing molecules that destroy ozone.
Quick Facts
- SCISAT, a Canadian-led mission managed by the Canadian Space Agency, launched in 2003, with the objective of measuring the amount of ozone and related molecules in the Earth's atmosphere.
- The satellite's measurements also contribute to improving our understanding of atmospheric chemistry which affects air quality over Canada, including the Arctic.
- This space data is useful for validating Canada's Air Quality Health Index and UV Index.
- SCISAT has become internationally known as the satellite that provides measurements of over 40 atmospheric constituents. ABB Inc. developed the ACE-FTS instrument while Bristol Aerospace Ltd. (now Magellan Aerospace Corporation) built the satellite bus. SED Systems is responsible for the satellite operations. Professor Peter Bernath of the University of Waterloo is the Principal Investigator for the mission. Dr. Kaley A. Walker of the University of Toronto is the Co-Investigator.
Quotes
"The SCISAT data was essential in identifying the altitudes at which this change was taking place. Without reliable HCl measurements in the lower stratosphere provided by the Canadian instrument, we could not have reached this conclusion. No other single instrument has provided such a wide range of data products for such a long time"
Peter Bernath, University of Waterloo chemist and Principal Investigator of the ACE-FTS instrument.
"Originally, the instrument was designed to study ozone and molecules involved in ozone production and destruction. Now, we've developed further data products that have allowed us to contribute in so many other areas"
Kaley A. Walker, chemical physicist at the University of Toronto
"The instrument turned out to be an enormous commercial success for us, as well as a scientific success for Canadian researchers. We really hit a home run with it. The $20M Canada invested in the instrument materialized into more than $100M in sales. It's quite remarkable - the whole team deserves credit for its success."
Marc-Andre Soucy, Director for the Remote Sensing Industry at ABB Inc.
Associated Links
The Canadian Space Agency's webpage on SCISAT and the ACE-FTS instrument
Nature article
Twitter: @csa_asc
Follow us on Social Media!
Contact Information
Canadian Space Agency
Media Relations Office
450-926-4370
media@asc-csa.gc.ca
www.asc-csa.gc.ca "
www.marketwired.com/press-release/canadas-scisat-satellite-m…
"LONGUEUIL, QUEBEC--(Marketwired - Nov. 6, 2014) - Thanks to Canada's SCISAT, an international team of scientists has discovered a recent and unexpected increase in stratospheric hydrogen chloride (HCl) in the Northern Hemisphere.
Information from SCISAT along with other satellite data and ground-based measurements showed the scientific team that the increase in stratospheric HCl is due to a slowdown in the atmospheric circulation of the Northern Hemisphere. This discovery could impact how scientists will analyze the evolution of the stratospheric ozone layer going forward.
Since 1989, the implementation of the UN's Montreal Protocol has led to a reduction in chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) around the globe. These CFCs are responsible for the depletion of the ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet radiation. CFCs break-up in the stratosphere and release chlorine atoms that then form HCl. Under certain conditions, HCl can be transformed into other chlorine-containing molecules that destroy ozone.
Quick Facts
- SCISAT, a Canadian-led mission managed by the Canadian Space Agency, launched in 2003, with the objective of measuring the amount of ozone and related molecules in the Earth's atmosphere.
- The satellite's measurements also contribute to improving our understanding of atmospheric chemistry which affects air quality over Canada, including the Arctic.
- This space data is useful for validating Canada's Air Quality Health Index and UV Index.
- SCISAT has become internationally known as the satellite that provides measurements of over 40 atmospheric constituents. ABB Inc. developed the ACE-FTS instrument while Bristol Aerospace Ltd. (now Magellan Aerospace Corporation) built the satellite bus. SED Systems is responsible for the satellite operations. Professor Peter Bernath of the University of Waterloo is the Principal Investigator for the mission. Dr. Kaley A. Walker of the University of Toronto is the Co-Investigator.
Quotes
"The SCISAT data was essential in identifying the altitudes at which this change was taking place. Without reliable HCl measurements in the lower stratosphere provided by the Canadian instrument, we could not have reached this conclusion. No other single instrument has provided such a wide range of data products for such a long time"
Peter Bernath, University of Waterloo chemist and Principal Investigator of the ACE-FTS instrument.
"Originally, the instrument was designed to study ozone and molecules involved in ozone production and destruction. Now, we've developed further data products that have allowed us to contribute in so many other areas"
Kaley A. Walker, chemical physicist at the University of Toronto
"The instrument turned out to be an enormous commercial success for us, as well as a scientific success for Canadian researchers. We really hit a home run with it. The $20M Canada invested in the instrument materialized into more than $100M in sales. It's quite remarkable - the whole team deserves credit for its success."
Marc-Andre Soucy, Director for the Remote Sensing Industry at ABB Inc.
Associated Links
The Canadian Space Agency's webpage on SCISAT and the ACE-FTS instrument
Nature article
Twitter: @csa_asc
Follow us on Social Media!
Contact Information
Canadian Space Agency
Media Relations Office
450-926-4370
media@asc-csa.gc.ca
www.asc-csa.gc.ca "
"commentary on the US-China Agreement on Climate
The landmark U.S.-China climate change agreement announced this week is a game changer for our energy future. It is resounding recognition of the need to wind down fossil fuel use. What had been a physical necessity but a political taboo is now being acknowledged by the two countries with the largest CO2 emissions.
Other countries have been waiting on the sidelines for the United States and China to act on climate change. So President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost renewable energy adoption by 2025 and 2030 respectively—just 10 and 15 years away—sends a promising signal to the world community on the path to the Paris climate summit at the end of next year.
The new goals would keep the United States on the trajectory to achieve deep economy-wide carbon emission reductions on the order of 80 percent by 2050, according to the White House. China, meanwhile, has targeted total energy consumption coming from zero-emission sources to around 20 percent by 2030. Both actions will happen well within the lifetimes of many people today.
These targets represent a significant shift in political momentum and suggest that moving out of fossil fuels finally may have won mainstream acceptance.
Of course, it will take substantial investment for nations to transform their economies, and those costs are only likely to increase the longer nations delay action. Consequently, it’s in the self-interest of every nation to act now to shift toward low-carbon economies.
Our analysis shows that countries are unequally exposed in terms of the scale and impact of reforms required to thrive in a low-carbon future. The longer countries wait, the more likely their carbon-intensive assets will lose value. This inaction may lead to a loss of competitiveness and potentially higher credit default risk. We are working with the U.N. Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and leading finance institutions to develop tools for the finance industry to better measure these economic risks when evaluating sovereign bonds.
To succeed in a carbon-constrained world, government leaders at all levels need better tools to make economically effective long-term decisions on everything from infrastructure to energy to buildings. Consequently, we have worked with state leaders in the U.S. to enhance traditional net present value (NPV) tools to recognize the economic and resource contexts in which the investments will operate. Such assessments provide more realistic estimates of the future costs and benefits associated with particular investments and show that in many cases, the low-carbon options are already the economically superior choice today.
Indeed, the U.S.-China agreement announced Wednesday suggests we need an entirely new way to determine the value of fossil fuels and assets that could become stranded because of their over-dependence on those fuels.
The details of how U.S. and China will achieve their ambitious goals remain to be seen, and the agreement may prove to be largely symbolic. But symbols can be powerful, and we believe the agreement portends a brighter outlook for action on climate change in 2015.
Sincerely,
Mathis Wackernagel,
President and Co-Founder,
Global Footprint Network "
The landmark U.S.-China climate change agreement announced this week is a game changer for our energy future. It is resounding recognition of the need to wind down fossil fuel use. What had been a physical necessity but a political taboo is now being acknowledged by the two countries with the largest CO2 emissions.
Other countries have been waiting on the sidelines for the United States and China to act on climate change. So President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost renewable energy adoption by 2025 and 2030 respectively—just 10 and 15 years away—sends a promising signal to the world community on the path to the Paris climate summit at the end of next year.
The new goals would keep the United States on the trajectory to achieve deep economy-wide carbon emission reductions on the order of 80 percent by 2050, according to the White House. China, meanwhile, has targeted total energy consumption coming from zero-emission sources to around 20 percent by 2030. Both actions will happen well within the lifetimes of many people today.
These targets represent a significant shift in political momentum and suggest that moving out of fossil fuels finally may have won mainstream acceptance.
Of course, it will take substantial investment for nations to transform their economies, and those costs are only likely to increase the longer nations delay action. Consequently, it’s in the self-interest of every nation to act now to shift toward low-carbon economies.
Our analysis shows that countries are unequally exposed in terms of the scale and impact of reforms required to thrive in a low-carbon future. The longer countries wait, the more likely their carbon-intensive assets will lose value. This inaction may lead to a loss of competitiveness and potentially higher credit default risk. We are working with the U.N. Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and leading finance institutions to develop tools for the finance industry to better measure these economic risks when evaluating sovereign bonds.
To succeed in a carbon-constrained world, government leaders at all levels need better tools to make economically effective long-term decisions on everything from infrastructure to energy to buildings. Consequently, we have worked with state leaders in the U.S. to enhance traditional net present value (NPV) tools to recognize the economic and resource contexts in which the investments will operate. Such assessments provide more realistic estimates of the future costs and benefits associated with particular investments and show that in many cases, the low-carbon options are already the economically superior choice today.
Indeed, the U.S.-China agreement announced Wednesday suggests we need an entirely new way to determine the value of fossil fuels and assets that could become stranded because of their over-dependence on those fuels.
The details of how U.S. and China will achieve their ambitious goals remain to be seen, and the agreement may prove to be largely symbolic. But symbols can be powerful, and we believe the agreement portends a brighter outlook for action on climate change in 2015.
Sincerely,
Mathis Wackernagel,
President and Co-Founder,
Global Footprint Network "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.327.406 von Popeye82 am 15.11.14 04:43:26
European Union to Overachieve its 2020 Climate Goals - CT/EU/EEA - Nov 14, 2014
- Edouard Stenger -
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-1202_en.htm
www.eea.europa.eu/media/newsreleases/policies-put-the-eu-on
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/14/european-union-to-overach…
"Good news everyone: the European Union has already almost achieved its climate and energy goals for 2020 according to the latest data from the European Environmental Agency. The European Commission official statement reports that “ The decrease in emissions of 1.8% in 2013 compared to 2012 implies that total EU emissions are around 19% below 1990 “.
But there is more good news as the EEA states that: ” With 14 % of final energy consumption generated by renewable sources in 2012, the EU is also ahead of the planned trajectory to hit 20 % renewable energy by 2020[/b]. Likewise, the EU’s energy consumption is also falling faster than would be necessary to meet the 2020 energy efficiency target.”
Euractiv notes that this fall in emissions in the European Union is not exactly taking place in all countries as German emissions rose by 1.2% as more fossil fuel was used for heating and Denmark also emitted 3.1% more greenhouse gases year-on-year, as a fall in imports from the Nordic power market drove it to use more coal.
These two countries are however working hard at their respective energy transition from fossil fuels. Germany is a global leader in this industry and it’s not rare for Denmark to have 100 % of its electricity coming from wind power during the nights.
But such facts aren’t news as I reported a year ago that the European Union was already nearing its 2020 objectives as greenhouse gases emissions fell one percent between 2011 and 2012. If emissions were to keep falling 1.4 percent per year ( which is the average of the emissions cuts for the past two years), emissions would be cut by over ten percent.
I have made previously my case for 30 percent emissions cuts by 2020 and halving EU emissions by 2030. This would be very profitable, would create thousands of jobs and cut our dependance from Russian gas. "
European Union to Overachieve its 2020 Climate Goals - CT/EU/EEA - Nov 14, 2014
- Edouard Stenger -
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-1202_en.htm
www.eea.europa.eu/media/newsreleases/policies-put-the-eu-on
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/14/european-union-to-overach…
"Good news everyone: the European Union has already almost achieved its climate and energy goals for 2020 according to the latest data from the European Environmental Agency. The European Commission official statement reports that “ The decrease in emissions of 1.8% in 2013 compared to 2012 implies that total EU emissions are around 19% below 1990 “.
But there is more good news as the EEA states that: ” With 14 % of final energy consumption generated by renewable sources in 2012, the EU is also ahead of the planned trajectory to hit 20 % renewable energy by 2020[/b]. Likewise, the EU’s energy consumption is also falling faster than would be necessary to meet the 2020 energy efficiency target.”
Euractiv notes that this fall in emissions in the European Union is not exactly taking place in all countries as German emissions rose by 1.2% as more fossil fuel was used for heating and Denmark also emitted 3.1% more greenhouse gases year-on-year, as a fall in imports from the Nordic power market drove it to use more coal.
These two countries are however working hard at their respective energy transition from fossil fuels. Germany is a global leader in this industry and it’s not rare for Denmark to have 100 %
of its electricity coming from wind power during the nights.But such facts aren’t news as I reported a year ago that the European Union was already nearing its 2020 objectives as greenhouse gases emissions fell one percent between 2011 and 2012. If emissions were to keep falling 1.4 percent per year ( which is the average of the emissions cuts for the past two years), emissions would be cut by over ten percent.
I have made previously my case for 30 percent emissions cuts by 2020 and halving EU emissions by 2030. This would be very profitable, would create thousands of jobs and cut our dependance from Russian gas. "
Opportunities in eco-innovation, UNEP has released the publication 'The Business Case for Eco-Innovation' which demonstrates how eco-innovation can enable a company to carve out commercially viable opportunities, providing examples of companies that have integrated eco-innovation @the core of their business strategy. The findings demonstrate that business benefits resulted from innovation, including: increased market access, value creation +increased operational resilience - GGK/UNEP/EC - Nov14
- Tanja Bisgaard, Katie Tuck, Liazzat Rabbiosi, Elisa Tonda, Joni Pegram, Madhuvantthe, Ulla Norup Panild -
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
- Tanja Bisgaard, Katie Tuck, Liazzat Rabbiosi, Elisa Tonda, Joni Pegram, Madhuvantthe, Ulla Norup Panild -
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.331.753 von Popeye82 am 16.11.14 04:49:34
'Transitioning towards green growth in Africa', The African Development Bank has released a green growth strategy for Africa for 2013 to 2022 titled 'Transitioning towards Green Growth: A Framework for the African Development Bank'. The strategy seeks to promote high quality growth in Africa +focuses on the overarching objectives of inclusive growth, +the transition to green growth. It promotes five priority pillars which are intended to frame the Bank's country +regional integration strategies: improved infrastructure, governance, private sector development, skills +technology, +regional integration - GGN/ADB - Nov14
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
'Transitioning towards green growth in Africa', The African Development Bank has released a green growth strategy for Africa for 2013 to 2022 titled 'Transitioning towards Green Growth: A Framework for the African Development Bank'. The strategy seeks to promote high quality growth in Africa +focuses on the overarching objectives of inclusive growth, +the transition to green growth. It promotes five priority pillars which are intended to frame the Bank's country +regional integration strategies: improved infrastructure, governance, private sector development, skills +technology, +regional integration - GGN/ADB - Nov14
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
'Pairing finance +sustainable development', UNEP's Inquiry into the Design of a Sustainable Financial System has released a new paper 'Aligning the financial system with sustainable development: Insights from practice'. The paper describes what the Inquiry has found to date in their ground-level engagement in diverse country contexts from Bangladesh to Brazil, China, South Africa, the US +Europe, as well as setting out initial scenarios work framing the Inquiry's analysis of what it takes to create a sustainable financial system - GGN/UNEP - Oct14
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
'Understanding green industrial policy', The German Development Institute(DIE) has released the discussion paper 'Green industrial policy: managing transformation under uncertainty'. The paper presents the rationale of green industrial policy, +discusses how it differs from conventional industrial policy, why it is faced with significantly bigger challenges, +how these can be met. Read more about this report on the GGKP Insights blog - GGK/GIE, BONN - Oct14
- Wilfried Lütkenhorst, Tilman Altenburg, Anna Pegels, Georgeta Vidican -
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
- Wilfried Lütkenhorst, Tilman Altenburg, Anna Pegels, Georgeta Vidican -
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.332.845 von Popeye82 am 16.11.14 12:40:40
'Measuring agriculture +green growth', The OECD has released the report 'Green Growth Indicators for Agriculture: A Preliminary Assessment'. This report is a 1st step towards developing a framework to monitor progress on green growth in the agricultural sector in OECD countries. The goal is to identify relevant, succinct +measurable statistics to implement the OECD Green Growth Strategy Measurement Framework which provides a common basis for further developing green growth indicators in the agricultural sector in OECD countries - GGK/OECD - Nov14
www.oecd-ilibrary.org/agriculture-and-food/green-growth-indi…
'Measuring agriculture +green growth', The OECD has released the report 'Green Growth Indicators for Agriculture: A Preliminary Assessment'. This report is a 1st step towards developing a framework to monitor progress on green growth in the agricultural sector in OECD countries. The goal is to identify relevant, succinct +measurable statistics to implement the OECD Green Growth Strategy Measurement Framework which provides a common basis for further developing green growth indicators in the agricultural sector in OECD countries - GGK/OECD - Nov14
www.oecd-ilibrary.org/agriculture-and-food/green-growth-indi…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.333.085 von Popeye82 am 16.11.14 13:34:04
'Greening human development', Beijing Normal University has released the 'Human Green Development Report 2014' as part of the Current Chinese Economic Report Series. The report includes a survey assessing the performance of the United Nations +its member states in key areas, laying down a roadmap for sustainable development in the future. The report showcases a large array of data, including Human Green Development Index indicators for >120 nation - GGK/S/BNU, BEIJING - Nov14
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/resource/human-green-developmen…
'Greening human development', Beijing Normal University has released the 'Human Green Development Report 2014' as part of the Current Chinese Economic Report Series. The report includes a survey assessing the performance of the United Nations +its member states in key areas, laying down a roadmap for sustainable development in the future. The report showcases a large array of data, including Human Green Development Index indicators for >120 nation - GGK/S/BNU, BEIJING - Nov14
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/resource/human-green-developmen…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.333.127 von Popeye82 am 16.11.14 13:50:19
'Perception vs reality -Measuring national performance in the green economy', Dual Citizen has released 'The Global Green Economy Index, Measuring National Performance in the Green Economy(GGEI), 4th Edition'. The GGEI provides a ranking of how 60 countries +70 cities perform in the global green economy +how expert practitioners perceive this performance. The GGEI performance index uses quantitative +qualitative indicators, to measure how well each country performs on four key dimensions: leadership & climate change, efficiency sectors, markets & investment +environment & natural capital - GGK/DC - Oct14
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
'Perception vs reality -Measuring national performance in the green economy', Dual Citizen has released 'The Global Green Economy Index, Measuring National Performance in the Green Economy(GGEI), 4th Edition'. The GGEI provides a ranking of how 60 countries +70 cities perform in the global green economy +how expert practitioners perceive this performance. The GGEI performance index uses quantitative +qualitative indicators, to measure how well each country performs on four key dimensions: leadership & climate change, efficiency sectors, markets & investment +environment & natural capital - GGK/DC - Oct14
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/sites/default/files/downloads/r…
EU moves closer to enabling national bans on GM crops - SM/EFSA, BRUSSELS - Nov 12, 2014
- Tania Rabesandratana -
http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2014/11/e-u-moves-clo…
"
- Frédérique Ries, the European Parliament's lead negotiator on the GM cultivation proposal, casts her vote. -
Members of the European Parliament agreed yesterday on draft rules allowing individual governments to refuse growing genetically modified (GM) crops on their territory, even if the products have been authorized on the European level. The plan could help reconcile anti- and pro-GM countries, unlock stalled approval processes, and lead to more GM crops in European fields—although many countries are likely to take the opportunity to restrict them.
Although the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has sanctioned several GM crops, many European consumers spurn these foods, and some national governments have tried outlawing them. In the past decade, disagreement among states has crippled regulatory decisions, and some countries have seen their bans challenged in court by seed producers.
To avoid such impasses in the future, the plan gives more power to national governments—at the expense of pan-European market congruence. "In exchange for forgoing a common European rule, we give more flexibility to member states to be more in tune with their public opinion, and this is no small feat," said Frédérique Ries, the Parliament's lead negotiator on this matter, in a statement after the vote.
GM opponents have praised the Parliament's latest version of the bill, approved here yesterday by the committee in charge of environmental, public health, and food safety (ENVI) issues, for going further than the text agreed to by member states in June. The bill as it stands "would give European countries a legally solid right to ban GM cultivation in their territory, making it difficult for the biotech industry to challenge such bans in court,” said Marco Contiero, agriculture policy director at Greenpeace EU here in Brussels, in a statement after the vote.
But the plan has dismayed biotech companies, which say the proposal “sets a negative precedent” for other science-based industries. “We are now moving from a system that lacks proper enforcement to a system that is designed not to work,” says Beat Späth, director for agricultural biotechnology at the industry association EuropaBio here, in a statement sent to ScienceInsider by e-mail today.
Many scientists have echoed industry's concerns. On 30 October, 21 plant scientists issued an open letter to " decision makers in Europe," complaining that politics has stalled plant science and calling for the "prompt authorization" of GM plant varieties that EFSA has deemed safe.
"We make a science-based risk assessment [of a product], and if it's safe we use it and if it's unsafe, we don't," says Stefan Jansson, a professor of plant cell and molecular biology at Umeå University’s Plant Science Centre in Sweden, who was one of the signatories to the letter. "If we start to say there could be other grounds [for banning a product], we undermine the scientific basis of the whole system."
In crucial amendments, parliamentarians proposed letting member states ban a given crop for a broader range of reasons, including environmental grounds, without putting in question EFSA's science-based risk assessment. "It's not about [member states] proving EFSA wrong" with fresh scientific evidence, Contiero says, but about letting governments, as risk managers, restrict the use of given crops, for example to avoid the development of pesticide-resistant weeds, or interbreeding between GM and conventional or wild plants.
In other significant changes, the ENVI committee scrapped the member states' proposal to involve seed companies directly in the banning process—an idea that had outraged environmental groups—and suggested letting member states ban groups of crops at once, instead of one by one. The Parliament's text also requires member states to take "appropriate measures to avoid the unintended presence of GMOs in other products on their territory and in border areas of neighbouring Member States," for example by creating buffer zones between GM and non-GM fields.
The Parliament, the European Commission, and the Council of Ministers have now entered negotiations to settle on a joint version of the text, which they aim to agree on before the end of the year. "
- Tania Rabesandratana -
http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2014/11/e-u-moves-clo…
"
- Frédérique Ries, the European Parliament's lead negotiator on the GM cultivation proposal, casts her vote. -
Members of the European Parliament agreed yesterday on draft rules allowing individual governments to refuse growing genetically modified (GM) crops on their territory, even if the products have been authorized on the European level. The plan could help reconcile anti- and pro-GM countries, unlock stalled approval processes, and lead to more GM crops in European fields—although many countries are likely to take the opportunity to restrict them.
Although the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has sanctioned several GM crops, many European consumers spurn these foods, and some national governments have tried outlawing them. In the past decade, disagreement among states has crippled regulatory decisions, and some countries have seen their bans challenged in court by seed producers.
To avoid such impasses in the future, the plan gives more power to national governments—at the expense of pan-European market congruence. "In exchange for forgoing a common European rule, we give more flexibility to member states to be more in tune with their public opinion, and this is no small feat," said Frédérique Ries, the Parliament's lead negotiator on this matter, in a statement after the vote.
GM opponents have praised the Parliament's latest version of the bill, approved here yesterday by the committee in charge of environmental, public health, and food safety (ENVI) issues, for going further than the text agreed to by member states in June. The bill as it stands "would give European countries a legally solid right to ban GM cultivation in their territory, making it difficult for the biotech industry to challenge such bans in court,” said Marco Contiero, agriculture policy director at Greenpeace EU here in Brussels, in a statement after the vote.
But the plan has dismayed biotech companies, which say the proposal “sets a negative precedent” for other science-based industries. “We are now moving from a system that lacks proper enforcement to a system that is designed not to work,” says Beat Späth, director for agricultural biotechnology at the industry association EuropaBio here, in a statement sent to ScienceInsider by e-mail today.
Many scientists have echoed industry's concerns. On 30 October, 21 plant scientists issued an open letter to " decision makers in Europe," complaining that politics has stalled plant science and calling for the "prompt authorization" of GM plant varieties that EFSA has deemed safe.
"We make a science-based risk assessment [of a product], and if it's safe we use it and if it's unsafe, we don't," says Stefan Jansson, a professor of plant cell and molecular biology at Umeå University’s Plant Science Centre in Sweden, who was one of the signatories to the letter. "If we start to say there could be other grounds [for banning a product], we undermine the scientific basis of the whole system."
In crucial amendments, parliamentarians proposed letting member states ban a given crop for a broader range of reasons, including environmental grounds, without putting in question EFSA's science-based risk assessment. "It's not about [member states] proving EFSA wrong" with fresh scientific evidence, Contiero says, but about letting governments, as risk managers, restrict the use of given crops, for example to avoid the development of pesticide-resistant weeds, or interbreeding between GM and conventional or wild plants.
In other significant changes, the ENVI committee scrapped the member states' proposal to involve seed companies directly in the banning process—an idea that had outraged environmental groups—and suggested letting member states ban groups of crops at once, instead of one by one. The Parliament's text also requires member states to take "appropriate measures to avoid the unintended presence of GMOs in other products on their territory and in border areas of neighbouring Member States," for example by creating buffer zones between GM and non-GM fields.
The Parliament, the European Commission, and the Council of Ministers have now entered negotiations to settle on a joint version of the text, which they aim to agree on before the end of the year. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.335.023 von Popeye82 am 16.11.14 20:27:53
Bio-based industries consortium(BIC) welcomes new members, BIC's General Assembly has approved 25 new members, further reinforcing the pan-European pool of expertise from industries, research organisations, banks, +other stakeholders committed to deploying the bioeconomy in Europe through the BBI - BIC - Nov 5, 2014
http://biconsortium.eu/?q=news/bic-welcomes-25-new-members
"On 29 October 2014, BIC’s General Assembly has approved 25 new members, further reinforcing the pan-European pool of expertise from industries, research organisations, banks, and other stakeholders committed to deploying the bioeconomy in Europe through the BBI.
New (Full) industrial members (7)
Alkol Biotech (SME, Spain)
BioVale (SME Cluster, UK)
BuggyPower (SME, Portugual)
CBB Capbiotek (SME Cluster, France)
DuPont (Large company, USA/Belgium)
mi-plast (SME, Croatia)
Monoghan Mushrooms Group (Large Company, Ireland)
New Associate members (18)
AFBI – Agri-Food & Biosciences Institute (RTO, UK)
Atlanpole (Public institution, France)
Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark (University, Denmark)
CEPF – Confederation of European Forest Owners (European Association, Belgium)
Chalmers University of Technology (University, Sweden)
CIRAD – Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (RTO, France)
CNRS – National Centre for Scientific Research (RTO, France)
DWI Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials (University, Germany)
Institute of Technology FCBA (RTO, France)
Laborelec (RTO, Belgium)
Northern Research Institute Narvik (RTO, Norway)
Rabobank (Cooperative Bank, Netherlands)
Starch Europe (European Industry Association, Belgium)
TCBB – Technology Center for Biorefining & Bioenergy (Association/Tech Platform, Ireland)
Terra Humana Clean Technology Development, Engineering and Manufacturing (RTO/Tech Platform, Hungary)
Thünen Institute (RTO, Germany)
UPV-EHU – Universidad del País Vasco (University, Spain)
Universidad de Cadiz (University, Spain)
BIC is now counting more than 200 members with interest and/or expertise in bio-based, and is still growing. If you are also interested in realising the bio-based industries vision, join us! "
Bio-based industries consortium(BIC) welcomes new members, BIC's General Assembly has approved 25 new members, further reinforcing the pan-European pool of expertise from industries, research organisations, banks, +other stakeholders committed to deploying the bioeconomy in Europe through the BBI - BIC - Nov 5, 2014
http://biconsortium.eu/?q=news/bic-welcomes-25-new-members
"On 29 October 2014, BIC’s General Assembly has approved 25 new members, further reinforcing the pan-European pool of expertise from industries, research organisations, banks, and other stakeholders committed to deploying the bioeconomy in Europe through the BBI.
New (Full) industrial members (7)
Alkol Biotech (SME, Spain)
BioVale (SME Cluster, UK)
BuggyPower (SME, Portugual)
CBB Capbiotek (SME Cluster, France)
DuPont (Large company, USA/Belgium)
mi-plast (SME, Croatia)
Monoghan Mushrooms Group (Large Company, Ireland)
New Associate members (18)
AFBI – Agri-Food & Biosciences Institute (RTO, UK)
Atlanpole (Public institution, France)
Center for Biosustainability, Technical University of Denmark (University, Denmark)
CEPF – Confederation of European Forest Owners (European Association, Belgium)
Chalmers University of Technology (University, Sweden)
CIRAD – Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (RTO, France)
CNRS – National Centre for Scientific Research (RTO, France)
DWI Leibniz Institute for Interactive Materials (University, Germany)
Institute of Technology FCBA (RTO, France)
Laborelec (RTO, Belgium)
Northern Research Institute Narvik (RTO, Norway)
Rabobank (Cooperative Bank, Netherlands)
Starch Europe (European Industry Association, Belgium)
TCBB – Technology Center for Biorefining & Bioenergy (Association/Tech Platform, Ireland)
Terra Humana Clean Technology Development, Engineering and Manufacturing (RTO/Tech Platform, Hungary)
Thünen Institute (RTO, Germany)
UPV-EHU – Universidad del País Vasco (University, Spain)
Universidad de Cadiz (University, Spain)
BIC is now counting more than 200 members with interest and/or expertise in bio-based, and is still growing. If you are also interested in realising the bio-based industries vision, join us! "
Obama Announces $3,000,000,000 Pledge, to U.N. Climate Fund
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48017
"Right on the heels of his historic climate agreement with China, President Barack Obama announced a pledge of $3 billion to the United Nations’ thus far underfunded Green Climate Fund. The fund was formally established in 2010 at the U.N. Climate Change conference in Cancun. The purpose of the fund was to redistribute resources between the developed world and the developing world in order to assist developing countries in their effort to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
It’s clear that the president is doubling down on climate change, which shouldn’t be a surprise, since he has repeatedly highlighted his intention in his second term to take action by any means available. Recently, that has meant primarily by executive order, which, given the upcoming Republican control of Congress, will likely remain the only available avenue left to act on this crucial issue.
Republicans are already squawking. Intrepid denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) called it “part of a climate-change agenda that’s siphoned precious taxpayer dollars away from the real problems facing the American people.” Unsurprisingly, Inhofe, who despite his willful ignorance on the subject chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, has vowed to fight the measure.
Some are already spinning the agreement the president made with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying that while we have committed to doubling our rate of reduction the Chinese don’t have to do anything until 2030. While that makes for a very catchy sound bite, it is highly misleading. The Chinese have committed to add no additional fossil fuels after 2030. If you bother to think about it, that means transforming an economy that is still growing at 7 percent, is heavily powered by fossil fuels (as ours was) and is adding one new coal plant a week, to one that will presumably keep growing — but will do so entirely powered by clean energy, bringing millions out of poverty. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48017
"Right on the heels of his historic climate agreement with China, President Barack Obama announced a pledge of $3 billion to the United Nations’ thus far underfunded Green Climate Fund. The fund was formally established in 2010 at the U.N. Climate Change conference in Cancun. The purpose of the fund was to redistribute resources between the developed world and the developing world in order to assist developing countries in their effort to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
It’s clear that the president is doubling down on climate change, which shouldn’t be a surprise, since he has repeatedly highlighted his intention in his second term to take action by any means available. Recently, that has meant primarily by executive order, which, given the upcoming Republican control of Congress, will likely remain the only available avenue left to act on this crucial issue.
Republicans are already squawking. Intrepid denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) called it “part of a climate-change agenda that’s siphoned precious taxpayer dollars away from the real problems facing the American people.” Unsurprisingly, Inhofe, who despite his willful ignorance on the subject chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, has vowed to fight the measure.
Some are already spinning the agreement the president made with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying that while we have committed to doubling our rate of reduction the Chinese don’t have to do anything until 2030. While that makes for a very catchy sound bite, it is highly misleading. The Chinese have committed to add no additional fossil fuels after 2030. If you bother to think about it, that means transforming an economy that is still growing at 7 percent, is heavily powered by fossil fuels (as ours was) and is adding one new coal plant a week, to one that will presumably keep growing — but will do so entirely powered by clean energy, bringing millions out of poverty. "
Obama Announces $3,000,000,000 Pledge, to U.N. Climate Fund
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48017
"Right on the heels of his historic climate agreement with China, President Barack Obama announced a pledge of $3 billion to the United Nations’ thus far underfunded Green Climate Fund. The fund was formally established in 2010 at the U.N. Climate Change conference in Cancun. The purpose of the fund was to redistribute resources between the developed world and the developing world in order to assist developing countries in their effort to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
It’s clear that the president is doubling down on climate change, which shouldn’t be a surprise, since he has repeatedly highlighted his intention in his second term to take action by any means available. Recently, that has meant primarily by executive order, which, given the upcoming Republican control of Congress, will likely remain the only available avenue left to act on this crucial issue.
Republicans are already squawking. Intrepid denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) called it “part of a climate-change agenda that’s siphoned precious taxpayer dollars away from the real problems facing the American people.” Unsurprisingly, Inhofe, who despite his willful ignorance on the subject chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, has vowed to fight the measure.
Some are already spinning the agreement the president made with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying that while we have committed to doubling our rate of reduction the Chinese don’t have to do anything until 2030. While that makes for a very catchy sound bite, it is highly misleading. The Chinese have committed to add no additional fossil fuels after 2030. If you bother to think about it, that means transforming an economy that is still growing at 7 percent, is heavily powered by fossil fuels (as ours was) and is adding one new coal plant a week, to one that will presumably keep growing — but will do so entirely powered by clean energy, bringing millions out of poverty. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48017
"Right on the heels of his historic climate agreement with China, President Barack Obama announced a pledge of $3 billion to the United Nations’ thus far underfunded Green Climate Fund. The fund was formally established in 2010 at the U.N. Climate Change conference in Cancun. The purpose of the fund was to redistribute resources between the developed world and the developing world in order to assist developing countries in their effort to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
It’s clear that the president is doubling down on climate change, which shouldn’t be a surprise, since he has repeatedly highlighted his intention in his second term to take action by any means available. Recently, that has meant primarily by executive order, which, given the upcoming Republican control of Congress, will likely remain the only available avenue left to act on this crucial issue.
Republicans are already squawking. Intrepid denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) called it “part of a climate-change agenda that’s siphoned precious taxpayer dollars away from the real problems facing the American people.” Unsurprisingly, Inhofe, who despite his willful ignorance on the subject chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, has vowed to fight the measure.
Some are already spinning the agreement the president made with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying that while we have committed to doubling our rate of reduction the Chinese don’t have to do anything until 2030. While that makes for a very catchy sound bite, it is highly misleading. The Chinese have committed to add no additional fossil fuels after 2030. If you bother to think about it, that means transforming an economy that is still growing at 7 percent, is heavily powered by fossil fuels (as ours was) and is adding one new coal plant a week, to one that will presumably keep growing — but will do so entirely powered by clean energy, bringing millions out of poverty. "
New Material Can Trap Powerful Greenhouse Gases Efficiently, Chemists Say - CT/YE360/NC - Nov 17, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/17/new-material-can-trap-pow…
www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141013/ncomms6131/full/ncomms6131…
"Scientists from the U.S. and Taiwan have developed a new type of lightweight, self-assembling molecule that can capture large amounts of potent greenhouse gases, according to a report in Nature Communications.
The molecules create a lightweight structure with many microscopic pores that can absorb gases such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Those long-lived compounds, once widely used as refrigerants, were phased out because they damage the ozone layer, but they are still used in various industrial processes.
The newly developed material is rich in the element fluorine, which helps it bind CFCs and various other hydro- and fluorocarbon gases very efficiently — to the tune of 75 percent by weight, the chemists say. Although they are less prevalent, the greenhouse effect of those gases can be hundreds- or thousands-fold more powerful than carbon dioxide, the researchers note.
Heavier, metal-based materials with similar capabilities have been developed in previous studies, but these were sensitive to water and difficult to process and recycle. "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/17/new-material-can-trap-pow…
www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/141013/ncomms6131/full/ncomms6131…
"Scientists from the U.S. and Taiwan have developed a new type of lightweight, self-assembling molecule that can capture large amounts of potent greenhouse gases, according to a report in Nature Communications.
The molecules create a lightweight structure with many microscopic pores that can absorb gases such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Those long-lived compounds, once widely used as refrigerants, were phased out because they damage the ozone layer, but they are still used in various industrial processes.
The newly developed material is rich in the element fluorine, which helps it bind CFCs and various other hydro- and fluorocarbon gases very efficiently — to the tune of 75 percent by weight, the chemists say. Although they are less prevalent, the greenhouse effect of those gases can be hundreds- or thousands-fold more powerful than carbon dioxide, the researchers note.
Heavier, metal-based materials with similar capabilities have been developed in previous studies, but these were sensitive to water and difficult to process and recycle. "
310 species added to IUCN Red List
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/1117-hance-iucn-update-310.htm…
"
- Overfishing has pushed the Pacific bluefin tuna from Least Concern to Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Photo by: © Monterey Bay Aquarium - Randy Wilder. -
Today, 22,413 species are threatened with extinction, according to the most recent update of the IUCN Red List. This is a rise of 310 species from the last update in the summer. The update includes the Pacific bluefin tuna (moved from Least Concern to Vulnerable), the Chinese pufferfish (newly listed as Critically Endangered), and Chapman's pygmy chameleon (also newly listed as Critically Endangered).
"Each update of the IUCN Red List makes us realize that our planet is constantly losing its incredible diversity of life, largely due to our destructive actions to satisfy our growing appetite for resources," IUCN Director General Julia Marton-Lefèvre said. "But we have scientific evidence that protected areas can play a central role in reversing this trend. Experts warn that threatened species poorly represented in protected areas are declining twice as fast as those which are well represented. Our responsibility is to increase the number of protected areas and ensure that they are effectively managed so that they can contribute to saving our planet’s biodiversity."
Chapman's pygmy chameleon (Rhampholeon chapmanorum), native to Mozambique, hasn't been seen since 1998, just six years after it was described. If not extinct, it is found in a single degraded forest. Meanwhile, the Chinese pufferfish's (Takifugu chinensis) population has dropped by 99.99 percent in just 40 years due to overexploitation for sashimi in Japan. The Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) is also threatened by overfishing for sushi and sashimi in Asia. Its population has dropped 19 to 33 percent in the last 22 years.
"The growing food market is putting unsustainable pressure on these and other species," said Jane Smart, Global Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Group. "We urgently need to impose strict limits on harvesting and take appropriate measures to protect habitats."
In all, the IUCN Red List has assessed 76,199 species. However, this is a drop in the bucket compared to how many species have been described on planet Earth: almost two million. Moreover, many family groups are better represented than others. For example, the IUCN Red List has evaluated all of the world's birds and mammals, but only seven percent of the world's flowering plants, 0.5 percent of the world's insects, and 0.003 percent of the world's mushrooms—meaning just one mushroom out of over 30,000 described species. "
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/1117-hance-iucn-update-310.htm…
"
- Overfishing has pushed the Pacific bluefin tuna from Least Concern to Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Photo by: © Monterey Bay Aquarium - Randy Wilder. -
Today, 22,413 species are threatened with extinction, according to the most recent update of the IUCN Red List. This is a rise of 310 species from the last update in the summer. The update includes the Pacific bluefin tuna (moved from Least Concern to Vulnerable), the Chinese pufferfish (newly listed as Critically Endangered), and Chapman's pygmy chameleon (also newly listed as Critically Endangered).
"Each update of the IUCN Red List makes us realize that our planet is constantly losing its incredible diversity of life, largely due to our destructive actions to satisfy our growing appetite for resources," IUCN Director General Julia Marton-Lefèvre said. "But we have scientific evidence that protected areas can play a central role in reversing this trend. Experts warn that threatened species poorly represented in protected areas are declining twice as fast as those which are well represented. Our responsibility is to increase the number of protected areas and ensure that they are effectively managed so that they can contribute to saving our planet’s biodiversity."
Chapman's pygmy chameleon (Rhampholeon chapmanorum), native to Mozambique, hasn't been seen since 1998, just six years after it was described. If not extinct, it is found in a single degraded forest. Meanwhile, the Chinese pufferfish's (Takifugu chinensis) population has dropped by 99.99 percent in just 40 years due to overexploitation for sashimi in Japan. The Pacific bluefin tuna (Thunnus orientalis) is also threatened by overfishing for sushi and sashimi in Asia. Its population has dropped 19 to 33 percent in the last 22 years.
"The growing food market is putting unsustainable pressure on these and other species," said Jane Smart, Global Director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Group. "We urgently need to impose strict limits on harvesting and take appropriate measures to protect habitats."
In all, the IUCN Red List has assessed 76,199 species. However, this is a drop in the bucket compared to how many species have been described on planet Earth: almost two million. Moreover, many family groups are better represented than others. For example, the IUCN Red List has evaluated all of the world's birds and mammals, but only seven percent of the world's flowering plants, 0.5 percent of the world's insects, and 0.003 percent of the world's mushrooms—meaning just one mushroom out of over 30,000 described species. "
Denmark Announces 100% Renewable Goal
www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/science/earth/denmark-aims-for-10…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/18/denmark-announces-100-ren…
"Denmark has just one-upped its status as the most cutting edge sustainable country in the world. They have committed to a goal of 100% renewable energy by the year 2050. That goal is not just limited to electric generation as other countries have done. They are including transportation as well. Nooooo burning of fossil fuels by 2050.
If that seems like an unrealistically lofty goal, keep in mind that these are the Danes we are talking about, who already get over 40% of their electricity from over 5,000 wind turbines, with every intention of making that 50% by 2020. Fossil fuel consumption is expected to fall by 20% over that same period.
While wind has carried most of the weight going forward, the latest initiative is more comprehensive. For starters, energy efficiency will play a major role. An intermediate target is looking for a 7% overall decrease in consumption from 2010 levels by 2020. Energy companies will be given specific targets.
Industrial heating and cooling is also a major part of the plan. Biomass will be substituted for coal on a large scale, for both heating and electricity. Subsidies will be provided for geothermal energy.
Also included are subsidies for energy efficient production processes, combined heat and power (CHP) applications, biogas, and smart grid. You could say the Danes are leaving no stone unturned in their search for a totally clean energy future.
What makes Denmark so successful while so many other nations are falling short?
According to Kurt Kornbluth, director of the Program for International Energy Technologies at the University of California, Davis, the first thing is that the government and the people are in accord. The government is willing to enact policies directed towards this shared goal, including a carbon tax, and feed-in tariffs, which the people were willing to accommodate. It also helps that as Rasmus Helveg Petersen, Minister for Climate, Energy and Building, has said, Denmark has been focusing on energy in a concerted manner ever since the oil crisis of 1973.
The second thing the Danes did was to establish wind cooperatives which funneled profits from excess power generation back to individuals and communities. BY 2001, the cooperative had over 100,000 members and owned a total of 86% of the nation’s wind power. That’s buy-in with a capital “B”.”When they see those turbines spinning,” said Kornbluth, they don’t say, that’s ugly, they say, that’s income.”
The third and final factor was a little bit of geopolitical luck. Denmark is positioned between Norway, home of abundant hydropower, and Sweden, which has lots of nuclear. The two form a gigantic grid that can readily provide backup when Denmark needs it. They can often be counted on to purchase excess wind power from Denmark when it is available as well.
Despite all of this good news, the Danes are facing some new challenges as they push into these unprecedented levels of renewable generation. As they are beginning to find out, each electrical grid has a level of renewables that they can economically support before they become saturated. That’s because the “baseline” power plants, that run on gas, coal, or nuclear are no longer economical if they are only used once in a while, when the wind has stopped or the sun has set. That’s because they can’t compete the rest of the time, with energy sources that are essentially free.
It’s not that this can’t be done. It’s just that the system hasn’t been designed for it. Real-time pricing and energy storage, an option that California is aggressively pursuing, and smart grids are some tools that can be applied. In the meantime, some utilities are being subsidized to operate plants at a loss, which is not sustainable.
“We are really worried about this situation,” Anders Stouge, the deputy director general of the Danish Energy Association, said. “If we don’t do something, we will in the future face higher and higher risks of blackouts.”
All of this is before Denmark has really started to ramp up on electric vehicles. That could put considerable further strain on the electric. But it could also be a blessing in disguise. Tens of thousands of electric cars could serve as a massive electric storage reservoir at times when most of those vehicles are parked, like at night. This is a synergistic relationship that the architects of tomorrow’s smart grid are counting on. "
www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/science/earth/denmark-aims-for-10…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/18/denmark-announces-100-ren…
"Denmark has just one-upped its status as the most cutting edge sustainable country in the world. They have committed to a goal of 100% renewable energy by the year 2050. That goal is not just limited to electric generation as other countries have done. They are including transportation as well. Nooooo burning of fossil fuels by 2050.
If that seems like an unrealistically lofty goal, keep in mind that these are the Danes we are talking about, who already get over 40% of their electricity from over 5,000 wind turbines, with every intention of making that 50% by 2020. Fossil fuel consumption is expected to fall by 20% over that same period.
While wind has carried most of the weight going forward, the latest initiative is more comprehensive. For starters, energy efficiency will play a major role. An intermediate target is looking for a 7% overall decrease in consumption from 2010 levels by 2020. Energy companies will be given specific targets.
Industrial heating and cooling is also a major part of the plan. Biomass will be substituted for coal on a large scale, for both heating and electricity. Subsidies will be provided for geothermal energy.
Also included are subsidies for energy efficient production processes, combined heat and power (CHP) applications, biogas, and smart grid. You could say the Danes are leaving no stone unturned in their search for a totally clean energy future.
What makes Denmark so successful while so many other nations are falling short?
According to Kurt Kornbluth, director of the Program for International Energy Technologies at the University of California, Davis, the first thing is that the government and the people are in accord. The government is willing to enact policies directed towards this shared goal, including a carbon tax, and feed-in tariffs, which the people were willing to accommodate. It also helps that as Rasmus Helveg Petersen, Minister for Climate, Energy and Building, has said, Denmark has been focusing on energy in a concerted manner ever since the oil crisis of 1973.
The second thing the Danes did was to establish wind cooperatives which funneled profits from excess power generation back to individuals and communities. BY 2001, the cooperative had over 100,000 members and owned a total of 86% of the nation’s wind power. That’s buy-in with a capital “B”.”When they see those turbines spinning,” said Kornbluth, they don’t say, that’s ugly, they say, that’s income.”
The third and final factor was a little bit of geopolitical luck. Denmark is positioned between Norway, home of abundant hydropower, and Sweden, which has lots of nuclear. The two form a gigantic grid that can readily provide backup when Denmark needs it. They can often be counted on to purchase excess wind power from Denmark when it is available as well.
Despite all of this good news, the Danes are facing some new challenges as they push into these unprecedented levels of renewable generation. As they are beginning to find out, each electrical grid has a level of renewables that they can economically support before they become saturated. That’s because the “baseline” power plants, that run on gas, coal, or nuclear are no longer economical if they are only used once in a while, when the wind has stopped or the sun has set. That’s because they can’t compete the rest of the time, with energy sources that are essentially free.
It’s not that this can’t be done. It’s just that the system hasn’t been designed for it. Real-time pricing and energy storage, an option that California is aggressively pursuing, and smart grids are some tools that can be applied. In the meantime, some utilities are being subsidized to operate plants at a loss, which is not sustainable.
“We are really worried about this situation,” Anders Stouge, the deputy director general of the Danish Energy Association, said. “If we don’t do something, we will in the future face higher and higher risks of blackouts.”
All of this is before Denmark has really started to ramp up on electric vehicles. That could put considerable further strain on the electric. But it could also be a blessing in disguise. Tens of thousands of electric cars could serve as a massive electric storage reservoir at times when most of those vehicles are parked, like at night. This is a synergistic relationship that the architects of tomorrow’s smart grid are counting on. "
Building 'Competitive Green Industries': the Climate +Clean Technology Opportunity for Developing Countries - WB/UKAID/KTF/InfoDev - Sep14
www.infodev.org/infodev-files/green-industries.pdf
www.infodev.org/infodev-files/green-industries.pdf
Children's rights +child labor in hazardous jobs around the world
cdenly@support.ucla.edu
310-825-6738
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/a-global-report-card-are-c…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48025
"Nearly half of the countries that ratified the U.N. agreement still allow children to work in jobs that endanger their health and safety.
Twenty-five years ago this month, the countries that compose the United Nations reached a landmark agreement that laid the foundation for much-needed strengthening of children’s rights and protections in nearly every country around the world.
Today, the Convention on the Rights of the Child remains the only formal global effort to improve children’s rights and the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. Only three U.N. member nations have not ratified the treaty: Somalia, South Sudan and the United States.
“The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a promise from our global community to all children,” said Dr. Jody Heymann, founding director of the World Policy Analysis Center and dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “Everyone deserves to know whether their country is fulfilling that promise and how it compares to other countries facing similar opportunities and constraints.”
To mark the 25th anniversary of the CRC on November 20, the center assessed 190 U.N. countries’ progress toward fulfilling the CRC’s commitment to children in critical areas such as the right to education, protection from child labor and child marriage, and discrimination of children with disabilities.
How are the world’s children faring?
- Child labor: Some 168 million children around the world are still engaged in some form of child labor. While 74 percent of the countries that ratified the CRC no longer allow children to engage in hazardous work, once legal exceptions are taken into account, nearly half of CRC countries still allow children to work in jobs that endanger their health and safety, including mining and factory work. ...
Young miner image via Shutterstock.
Read more at UCLA Newsroom "
- Map detailing how long children in each nation are protected from hazardous work when exceptions to minimum-age protections are considered. -
cdenly@support.ucla.edu
310-825-6738
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/a-global-report-card-are-c…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48025
"Nearly half of the countries that ratified the U.N. agreement still allow children to work in jobs that endanger their health and safety.
Twenty-five years ago this month, the countries that compose the United Nations reached a landmark agreement that laid the foundation for much-needed strengthening of children’s rights and protections in nearly every country around the world.
Today, the Convention on the Rights of the Child remains the only formal global effort to improve children’s rights and the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history. Only three U.N. member nations have not ratified the treaty: Somalia, South Sudan and the United States.
“The Convention on the Rights of the Child is a promise from our global community to all children,” said Dr. Jody Heymann, founding director of the World Policy Analysis Center and dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. “Everyone deserves to know whether their country is fulfilling that promise and how it compares to other countries facing similar opportunities and constraints.”
To mark the 25th anniversary of the CRC on November 20, the center assessed 190 U.N. countries’ progress toward fulfilling the CRC’s commitment to children in critical areas such as the right to education, protection from child labor and child marriage, and discrimination of children with disabilities.
How are the world’s children faring?
- Child labor: Some 168 million children around the world are still engaged in some form of child labor. While 74 percent of the countries that ratified the CRC no longer allow children to engage in hazardous work, once legal exceptions are taken into account, nearly half of CRC countries still allow children to work in jobs that endanger their health and safety, including mining and factory work. ...
Young miner image via Shutterstock.
Read more at UCLA Newsroom "
- Map detailing how long children in each nation are protected from hazardous work when exceptions to minimum-age protections are considered. -
UK unveils first waste-fueled bus
www.clickgreen.org.uk/news/national-news/125247-next-stop-fo…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48026
"The UK's first ever bus powered on human and food waste has taken to the road today which engineers believe could provide a sustainable way of fuelling public transport - cutting emissions in polluted towns and cities.
The 40-seater Bio-Bus, which runs on gas generated through the treatment of sewage and food waste that's unfit for human consumption, helps to improve urban air quality as it produces fewer emissions than traditional diesel engines.
Running on waste products that are both renewable and sustainable, the bus can travel up to 300km on a full tank of gas generated at Bristol sewage treatment works – a plant run by GENeco, a subsidiary of Wessex Water.
This week GENeco became the first company in the UK to start injecting gas generated from food waste and sewage into the national gas grid network and at the same time installed a gas refuelling plant for the bus.
GENeco general manager Mohammed Saddiq said: “Through treating sewage and food thats unfit for human consumption we're able to produce enough biomethane to provide a significant supply of gas to the national gas network that's capable of powering almost 8,500 homes as well as fuelling the Bio-Bus.
“Gas powered vehicles have an important role to play in improving air quality in UK cities, but the Bio-Bus goes further than that and is actually powered by people living in the local area, including quite possibly those on the bus itself.
“Using biomethane in this way not only provides a sustainable fuel, but also reduces our reliance on traditional fossil fuels.”
The Bio-Bus can travel up to 300km on a full tank of gas, which takes the annual waste of around five people to produce.
Using the annual waste generated from one bus load of passengers, would provide enough power for it to travel a return journey from Lands End to John O’Groats.
The first passengers to get on board the Bio-Bus today were visitors to the UK who were commuting from Bristol Airport to the historic city of Bath.
Bath Bus Company, which is operating the service, said the bus was greener for the environment and added that it was extremely pleased to be using the Bio-Bus for its rapidly growing A4 service from Bath to Bristol Airport via South Bristol. "
www.clickgreen.org.uk/news/national-news/125247-next-stop-fo…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48026
"The UK's first ever bus powered on human and food waste has taken to the road today which engineers believe could provide a sustainable way of fuelling public transport - cutting emissions in polluted towns and cities.
The 40-seater Bio-Bus, which runs on gas generated through the treatment of sewage and food waste that's unfit for human consumption, helps to improve urban air quality as it produces fewer emissions than traditional diesel engines.
Running on waste products that are both renewable and sustainable, the bus can travel up to 300km on a full tank of gas generated at Bristol sewage treatment works – a plant run by GENeco, a subsidiary of Wessex Water.
This week GENeco became the first company in the UK to start injecting gas generated from food waste and sewage into the national gas grid network and at the same time installed a gas refuelling plant for the bus.
GENeco general manager Mohammed Saddiq said: “Through treating sewage and food thats unfit for human consumption we're able to produce enough biomethane to provide a significant supply of gas to the national gas network that's capable of powering almost 8,500 homes as well as fuelling the Bio-Bus.
“Gas powered vehicles have an important role to play in improving air quality in UK cities, but the Bio-Bus goes further than that and is actually powered by people living in the local area, including quite possibly those on the bus itself.
“Using biomethane in this way not only provides a sustainable fuel, but also reduces our reliance on traditional fossil fuels.”
The Bio-Bus can travel up to 300km on a full tank of gas, which takes the annual waste of around five people to produce.
Using the annual waste generated from one bus load of passengers, would provide enough power for it to travel a return journey from Lands End to John O’Groats.
The first passengers to get on board the Bio-Bus today were visitors to the UK who were commuting from Bristol Airport to the historic city of Bath.
Bath Bus Company, which is operating the service, said the bus was greener for the environment and added that it was extremely pleased to be using the Bio-Bus for its rapidly growing A4 service from Bath to Bristol Airport via South Bristol. "
Coal Rush in India Could Tip Balance on Climate Change - NYT, DHANBAD - Nov 17, 2014
- GARDINER HARRIS -
www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/world/coal-rush-in-india-could-ti…
"
- A mine in Jharkhand State. India’s coal rush could push the world past the brink of irreversible climate change, scientists say. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times -
Decades of strip mining have left this town in the heart of India’s coal fields a fiery moonscape, with mountains of black slag, sulfurous air and sickened residents.
But rather than reclaim these hills or rethink their exploitation, the government is digging deeper in a coal rush that could push the world into irreversible climate change and make India’s cities, already among the world’s most polluted, even more unlivable, scientists say.
“If India goes deeper and deeper into coal, we’re all doomed,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one of the world’s top climate scientists. “And no place will suffer more than India.”
India’s coal mining plans may represent the biggest obstacle to a global climate pact to be negotiated at a conference in Paris next year. While the United States and China announced a landmark agreement that includes new targets for carbon emissions, and Europe has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent, India, the world’s third-largest emitter, has shown no appetite for such a pledge.
“India’s development imperatives cannot be sacrificed at the altar of potential climate changes many years in the future,” India’s power minister, Piyush Goyal, said at a recent conference in New Delhi in response to a question. “The West will have to recognize we have the needs of the poor.”
Mr. Goyal has promised to double India’s use of domestic coal from 565 million tons last year to more than a billion tons by 2019, and he is trying to sell coal-mining licenses as swiftly as possible after years of delay. The government has signaled that it may denationalize commercial coal mining to accelerate extraction.
“India is the biggest challenge in global climate negotiations, not China,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also vowed to build a vast array of solar power stations, and projects are already springing up in India’s sun-scorched west.
Continue reading the main story
But India’s coal rush could push the world past the brink of irreversible climate change, with India among the worst affected, scientists say.
Indian cities are already the world’s most polluted, with Delhi’s air almost three times more toxic than Beijing’s by one crucial measure. An estimated 37 million Indians could be displaced by rising seas by 2050, far more than in any other country. India’s megacities are among the world’s hottest, with springtime temperatures in Delhi reaching 120 degrees. Traffic, which will only increase with new mining activity, is already the world’s most deadly. And half of Indians are farmers who rely on water from melting Himalayan glaciers and an increasingly fitful monsoons.
India’s coal is mostly of poor quality with a high ash content that makes it roughly twice as polluting as coal from the West. And while China gets 90 percent of its coal from underground mines, 90 percent of India’s coal is from strip mines, which are far more environmentally costly. In a country three times more densely populated than China, India’s mines and power plants directly affect millions of residents. Mercury poisoning has cursed generations of villagers in places like Bagesati, in Uttar Pradesh, with contorted bodies, decaying teeth and mental disorders.
The city of Dhanbad resembles a postapocalyptic movie set, with villages surrounded by barren slag heaps half-obscured by acrid smoke spewing from a century-old fire slowly burning through buried coal seams. Mining and fire cause subsidence that swallows homes, with inhabitants’ bodies sometimes never found.
Suffering widespread respiratory and skin disorders, residents accuse the government of allowing fires to burn and allowing pollution to poison them as a way of pushing people off land needed for India’s coal rush.
“The government wants more coal, but they are throwing their own people away to get it,” said Ashok Agarwal of the Save Jharia Coal Field Committee, a citizens’ group.
T. K. Lahiry, chairman of Bharat Coking Coal, a government-owned company that controls much of the Jharia region, denied neglecting fires and pollution but readily agreed that tens of thousands of residents must be displaced for India to realize its coal needs. Evictions are done too slowly, he said.
- Hauling coal by bicycle in Jharkhand in eastern India. The country plans to double its use of domestic coal by 2019 as part of efforts to reduce poverty. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times -
“We need to shift these people to corporate villages far from the coal fields,” Mr. Lahiry said during an interview in his large office.
With land scarce, Bharat Coking is digging deeper at mines it already controls. On a tour of one huge strip mine, officials said they had recently purchased two mammoth Russian mining shovels to more than triple annual production to 10 million tons. The shovels are clawing coal from a 420-foot-deep pit, with huge trucks piling slag in flat-topped mountains. The deeper the mine goes, the more polluting the coal produced.
India has the world’s fifth-largest reserves of coal but little domestic oil or natural gas production. The country went on a coal-fired power plant building spree over the last five years, increasing capacity by 73 percent. But coal mining grew just 6 percent, leading to expensive coal imports, idle plants and widespread blackouts. Nearly 300 million Indians do not have access to electricity, and millions more get it only sporadically.
“India is going to use coal because that’s what it has,” said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director of the Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment, a prominent environmental group. “Its strategy is ‘all of the above,’ just like in the U.S.”
Each Indian consumes on average 7 percent of the energy used by an American, and Indian officials dismiss critics from wealthy countries.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘pontificate’ when talking about these people, but it would be reasonable to expect more fairness in the discussion and a recognition of India’s need to reach the development of the West,” Mr. Goyal said with a tight smile.
One reason for the widespread domestic support for India’s coal rush is the lack of awareness of just how bad the air has already become, scientists say. Smog levels that would lead to highway shutdowns and near-panic in Beijing go largely unnoticed in Delhi. Pediatric respiratory clinics are overrun, but parents largely shrug when asked about the cause of their children’s suffering. Face masks and air purifiers, ubiquitous among China’s elite, are rare here. And there are signs Indian air is rapidly worsening.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
“People need to wake up to just how awful the air already is,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading intergovernmental organization for the assessment of climate change.
India’s great hope to save both itself and the world from possible environmental dystopia can be found in the scrub grass outside the village of Neemuch, in India’s western state of Madhya Pradesh. Welspun Energy has constructed what for the moment is Asia’s largest solar plant, a $148 million silent farm of photovoltaic panels on 800 acres of barren soil.
Welspun harvests some of the most focused solar radiation in the world. Dust is so intense that workers must wash each panel every two weeks.
Under Mr. Modi, India is expected to soon underwrite a vast solar building program, and Welspun alone has plans to produce within two years more than 10 times the renewable energy it gets from its facility in Neemuch.
The benefits of solar and the environmental costs of coal are so profound that India has no other choice but to rely more on renewables, said Dr. Pachauri.
“India cannot go down China’s pathway, because the consequences for the public welfare are too horrendous,” he said.
______________________________________________
Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on November 18, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Coal Rush in India Could Tip Balance on Climate Change. Order Reprints "
- GARDINER HARRIS -
www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/world/coal-rush-in-india-could-ti…
"
- A mine in Jharkhand State. India’s coal rush could push the world past the brink of irreversible climate change, scientists say. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times -
Decades of strip mining have left this town in the heart of India’s coal fields a fiery moonscape, with mountains of black slag, sulfurous air and sickened residents.
But rather than reclaim these hills or rethink their exploitation, the government is digging deeper in a coal rush that could push the world into irreversible climate change and make India’s cities, already among the world’s most polluted, even more unlivable, scientists say.
“If India goes deeper and deeper into coal, we’re all doomed,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one of the world’s top climate scientists. “And no place will suffer more than India.”
India’s coal mining plans may represent the biggest obstacle to a global climate pact to be negotiated at a conference in Paris next year. While the United States and China announced a landmark agreement that includes new targets for carbon emissions, and Europe has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent, India, the world’s third-largest emitter, has shown no appetite for such a pledge.
“India’s development imperatives cannot be sacrificed at the altar of potential climate changes many years in the future,” India’s power minister, Piyush Goyal, said at a recent conference in New Delhi in response to a question. “The West will have to recognize we have the needs of the poor.”
Mr. Goyal has promised to double India’s use of domestic coal from 565 million tons last year to more than a billion tons by 2019, and he is trying to sell coal-mining licenses as swiftly as possible after years of delay. The government has signaled that it may denationalize commercial coal mining to accelerate extraction.
“India is the biggest challenge in global climate negotiations, not China,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also vowed to build a vast array of solar power stations, and projects are already springing up in India’s sun-scorched west.
Continue reading the main story
But India’s coal rush could push the world past the brink of irreversible climate change, with India among the worst affected, scientists say.
Indian cities are already the world’s most polluted, with Delhi’s air almost three times more toxic than Beijing’s by one crucial measure. An estimated 37 million Indians could be displaced by rising seas by 2050, far more than in any other country. India’s megacities are among the world’s hottest, with springtime temperatures in Delhi reaching 120 degrees. Traffic, which will only increase with new mining activity, is already the world’s most deadly. And half of Indians are farmers who rely on water from melting Himalayan glaciers and an increasingly fitful monsoons.
India’s coal is mostly of poor quality with a high ash content that makes it roughly twice as polluting as coal from the West. And while China gets 90 percent of its coal from underground mines, 90 percent of India’s coal is from strip mines, which are far more environmentally costly. In a country three times more densely populated than China, India’s mines and power plants directly affect millions of residents. Mercury poisoning has cursed generations of villagers in places like Bagesati, in Uttar Pradesh, with contorted bodies, decaying teeth and mental disorders.
The city of Dhanbad resembles a postapocalyptic movie set, with villages surrounded by barren slag heaps half-obscured by acrid smoke spewing from a century-old fire slowly burning through buried coal seams. Mining and fire cause subsidence that swallows homes, with inhabitants’ bodies sometimes never found.
Suffering widespread respiratory and skin disorders, residents accuse the government of allowing fires to burn and allowing pollution to poison them as a way of pushing people off land needed for India’s coal rush.
“The government wants more coal, but they are throwing their own people away to get it,” said Ashok Agarwal of the Save Jharia Coal Field Committee, a citizens’ group.
T. K. Lahiry, chairman of Bharat Coking Coal, a government-owned company that controls much of the Jharia region, denied neglecting fires and pollution but readily agreed that tens of thousands of residents must be displaced for India to realize its coal needs. Evictions are done too slowly, he said.
- Hauling coal by bicycle in Jharkhand in eastern India. The country plans to double its use of domestic coal by 2019 as part of efforts to reduce poverty. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times -
“We need to shift these people to corporate villages far from the coal fields,” Mr. Lahiry said during an interview in his large office.
With land scarce, Bharat Coking is digging deeper at mines it already controls. On a tour of one huge strip mine, officials said they had recently purchased two mammoth Russian mining shovels to more than triple annual production to 10 million tons. The shovels are clawing coal from a 420-foot-deep pit, with huge trucks piling slag in flat-topped mountains. The deeper the mine goes, the more polluting the coal produced.
India has the world’s fifth-largest reserves of coal but little domestic oil or natural gas production. The country went on a coal-fired power plant building spree over the last five years, increasing capacity by 73 percent. But coal mining grew just 6 percent, leading to expensive coal imports, idle plants and widespread blackouts. Nearly 300 million Indians do not have access to electricity, and millions more get it only sporadically.
“India is going to use coal because that’s what it has,” said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director of the Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment, a prominent environmental group. “Its strategy is ‘all of the above,’ just like in the U.S.”
Each Indian consumes on average 7 percent of the energy used by an American, and Indian officials dismiss critics from wealthy countries.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘pontificate’ when talking about these people, but it would be reasonable to expect more fairness in the discussion and a recognition of India’s need to reach the development of the West,” Mr. Goyal said with a tight smile.
One reason for the widespread domestic support for India’s coal rush is the lack of awareness of just how bad the air has already become, scientists say. Smog levels that would lead to highway shutdowns and near-panic in Beijing go largely unnoticed in Delhi. Pediatric respiratory clinics are overrun, but parents largely shrug when asked about the cause of their children’s suffering. Face masks and air purifiers, ubiquitous among China’s elite, are rare here. And there are signs Indian air is rapidly worsening.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
“People need to wake up to just how awful the air already is,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading intergovernmental organization for the assessment of climate change.
India’s great hope to save both itself and the world from possible environmental dystopia can be found in the scrub grass outside the village of Neemuch, in India’s western state of Madhya Pradesh. Welspun Energy has constructed what for the moment is Asia’s largest solar plant, a $148 million silent farm of photovoltaic panels on 800 acres of barren soil.
Welspun harvests some of the most focused solar radiation in the world. Dust is so intense that workers must wash each panel every two weeks.
Under Mr. Modi, India is expected to soon underwrite a vast solar building program, and Welspun alone has plans to produce within two years more than 10 times the renewable energy it gets from its facility in Neemuch.
The benefits of solar and the environmental costs of coal are so profound that India has no other choice but to rely more on renewables, said Dr. Pachauri.
“India cannot go down China’s pathway, because the consequences for the public welfare are too horrendous,” he said.
______________________________________________
Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on November 18, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Coal Rush in India Could Tip Balance on Climate Change. Order Reprints "
Coal Rush in India Could Tip Balance on Climate Change - NYT, DHANBAD - Nov 17, 2014
- GARDINER HARRIS -
www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/world/coal-rush-in-india-could-ti…
"
- A mine in Jharkhand State. India’s coal rush could push the world past the brink of irreversible climate change, scientists say. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times -
Decades of strip mining have left this town in the heart of India’s coal fields a fiery moonscape, with mountains of black slag, sulfurous air and sickened residents.
But rather than reclaim these hills or rethink their exploitation, the government is digging deeper in a coal rush that could push the world into irreversible climate change and make India’s cities, already among the world’s most polluted, even more unlivable, scientists say.
“If India goes deeper and deeper into coal, we’re all doomed,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one of the world’s top climate scientists. “And no place will suffer more than India.”
India’s coal mining plans may represent the biggest obstacle to a global climate pact to be negotiated at a conference in Paris next year. While the United States and China announced a landmark agreement that includes new targets for carbon emissions, and Europe has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent, India, the world’s third-largest emitter, has shown no appetite for such a pledge.
“India’s development imperatives cannot be sacrificed at the altar of potential climate changes many years in the future,” India’s power minister, Piyush Goyal, said at a recent conference in New Delhi in response to a question. “The West will have to recognize we have the needs of the poor.”
Mr. Goyal has promised to double India’s use of domestic coal from 565 million tons last year to more than a billion tons by 2019, and he is trying to sell coal-mining licenses as swiftly as possible after years of delay. The government has signaled that it may denationalize commercial coal mining to accelerate extraction.
“India is the biggest challenge in global climate negotiations, not China,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also vowed to build a vast array of solar power stations, and projects are already springing up in India’s sun-scorched west.
Continue reading the main story
But India’s coal rush could push the world past the brink of irreversible climate change, with India among the worst affected, scientists say.
Indian cities are already the world’s most polluted, with Delhi’s air almost three times more toxic than Beijing’s by one crucial measure. An estimated 37 million Indians could be displaced by rising seas by 2050, far more than in any other country. India’s megacities are among the world’s hottest, with springtime temperatures in Delhi reaching 120 degrees. Traffic, which will only increase with new mining activity, is already the world’s most deadly. And half of Indians are farmers who rely on water from melting Himalayan glaciers and an increasingly fitful monsoons.
India’s coal is mostly of poor quality with a high ash content that makes it roughly twice as polluting as coal from the West. And while China gets 90 percent of its coal from underground mines, 90 percent of India’s coal is from strip mines, which are far more environmentally costly. In a country three times more densely populated than China, India’s mines and power plants directly affect millions of residents. Mercury poisoning has cursed generations of villagers in places like Bagesati, in Uttar Pradesh, with contorted bodies, decaying teeth and mental disorders.
The city of Dhanbad resembles a postapocalyptic movie set, with villages surrounded by barren slag heaps half-obscured by acrid smoke spewing from a century-old fire slowly burning through buried coal seams. Mining and fire cause subsidence that swallows homes, with inhabitants’ bodies sometimes never found.
Suffering widespread respiratory and skin disorders, residents accuse the government of allowing fires to burn and allowing pollution to poison them as a way of pushing people off land needed for India’s coal rush.
“The government wants more coal, but they are throwing their own people away to get it,” said Ashok Agarwal of the Save Jharia Coal Field Committee, a citizens’ group.
T. K. Lahiry, chairman of Bharat Coking Coal, a government-owned company that controls much of the Jharia region, denied neglecting fires and pollution but readily agreed that tens of thousands of residents must be displaced for India to realize its coal needs. Evictions are done too slowly, he said.
- Hauling coal by bicycle in Jharkhand in eastern India. The country plans to double its use of domestic coal by 2019 as part of efforts to reduce poverty. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times -
“We need to shift these people to corporate villages far from the coal fields,” Mr. Lahiry said during an interview in his large office.
With land scarce, Bharat Coking is digging deeper at mines it already controls. On a tour of one huge strip mine, officials said they had recently purchased two mammoth Russian mining shovels to more than triple annual production to 10 million tons. The shovels are clawing coal from a 420-foot-deep pit, with huge trucks piling slag in flat-topped mountains. The deeper the mine goes, the more polluting the coal produced.
India has the world’s fifth-largest reserves of coal but little domestic oil or natural gas production. The country went on a coal-fired power plant building spree over the last five years, increasing capacity by 73 percent. But coal mining grew just 6 percent, leading to expensive coal imports, idle plants and widespread blackouts. Nearly 300 million Indians do not have access to electricity, and millions more get it only sporadically.
“India is going to use coal because that’s what it has,” said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director of the Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment, a prominent environmental group. “Its strategy is ‘all of the above,’ just like in the U.S.”
Each Indian consumes on average 7 percent of the energy used by an American, and Indian officials dismiss critics from wealthy countries.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘pontificate’ when talking about these people, but it would be reasonable to expect more fairness in the discussion and a recognition of India’s need to reach the development of the West,” Mr. Goyal said with a tight smile.
One reason for the widespread domestic support for India’s coal rush is the lack of awareness of just how bad the air has already become, scientists say. Smog levels that would lead to highway shutdowns and near-panic in Beijing go largely unnoticed in Delhi. Pediatric respiratory clinics are overrun, but parents largely shrug when asked about the cause of their children’s suffering. Face masks and air purifiers, ubiquitous among China’s elite, are rare here. And there are signs Indian air is rapidly worsening.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
“People need to wake up to just how awful the air already is,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading intergovernmental organization for the assessment of climate change.
India’s great hope to save both itself and the world from possible environmental dystopia can be found in the scrub grass outside the village of Neemuch, in India’s western state of Madhya Pradesh. Welspun Energy has constructed what for the moment is Asia’s largest solar plant, a $148 million silent farm of photovoltaic panels on 800 acres of barren soil.
Welspun harvests some of the most focused solar radiation in the world. Dust is so intense that workers must wash each panel every two weeks.
Under Mr. Modi, India is expected to soon underwrite a vast solar building program, and Welspun alone has plans to produce within two years more than 10 times the renewable energy it gets from its facility in Neemuch.
The benefits of solar and the environmental costs of coal are so profound that India has no other choice but to rely more on renewables, said Dr. Pachauri.
“India cannot go down China’s pathway, because the consequences for the public welfare are too horrendous,” he said.
______________________________________________
Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on November 18, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Coal Rush in India Could Tip Balance on Climate Change. Order Reprints "
- GARDINER HARRIS -
www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/world/coal-rush-in-india-could-ti…
"
- A mine in Jharkhand State. India’s coal rush could push the world past the brink of irreversible climate change, scientists say. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times -
Decades of strip mining have left this town in the heart of India’s coal fields a fiery moonscape, with mountains of black slag, sulfurous air and sickened residents.
But rather than reclaim these hills or rethink their exploitation, the government is digging deeper in a coal rush that could push the world into irreversible climate change and make India’s cities, already among the world’s most polluted, even more unlivable, scientists say.
“If India goes deeper and deeper into coal, we’re all doomed,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, director of the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one of the world’s top climate scientists. “And no place will suffer more than India.”
India’s coal mining plans may represent the biggest obstacle to a global climate pact to be negotiated at a conference in Paris next year. While the United States and China announced a landmark agreement that includes new targets for carbon emissions, and Europe has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent, India, the world’s third-largest emitter, has shown no appetite for such a pledge.
“India’s development imperatives cannot be sacrificed at the altar of potential climate changes many years in the future,” India’s power minister, Piyush Goyal, said at a recent conference in New Delhi in response to a question. “The West will have to recognize we have the needs of the poor.”
Mr. Goyal has promised to double India’s use of domestic coal from 565 million tons last year to more than a billion tons by 2019, and he is trying to sell coal-mining licenses as swiftly as possible after years of delay. The government has signaled that it may denationalize commercial coal mining to accelerate extraction.
“India is the biggest challenge in global climate negotiations, not China,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also vowed to build a vast array of solar power stations, and projects are already springing up in India’s sun-scorched west.
Continue reading the main story
But India’s coal rush could push the world past the brink of irreversible climate change, with India among the worst affected, scientists say.
Indian cities are already the world’s most polluted, with Delhi’s air almost three times more toxic than Beijing’s by one crucial measure. An estimated 37 million Indians could be displaced by rising seas by 2050, far more than in any other country. India’s megacities are among the world’s hottest, with springtime temperatures in Delhi reaching 120 degrees. Traffic, which will only increase with new mining activity, is already the world’s most deadly. And half of Indians are farmers who rely on water from melting Himalayan glaciers and an increasingly fitful monsoons.
India’s coal is mostly of poor quality with a high ash content that makes it roughly twice as polluting as coal from the West. And while China gets 90 percent of its coal from underground mines, 90 percent of India’s coal is from strip mines, which are far more environmentally costly. In a country three times more densely populated than China, India’s mines and power plants directly affect millions of residents. Mercury poisoning has cursed generations of villagers in places like Bagesati, in Uttar Pradesh, with contorted bodies, decaying teeth and mental disorders.
The city of Dhanbad resembles a postapocalyptic movie set, with villages surrounded by barren slag heaps half-obscured by acrid smoke spewing from a century-old fire slowly burning through buried coal seams. Mining and fire cause subsidence that swallows homes, with inhabitants’ bodies sometimes never found.
Suffering widespread respiratory and skin disorders, residents accuse the government of allowing fires to burn and allowing pollution to poison them as a way of pushing people off land needed for India’s coal rush.
“The government wants more coal, but they are throwing their own people away to get it,” said Ashok Agarwal of the Save Jharia Coal Field Committee, a citizens’ group.
T. K. Lahiry, chairman of Bharat Coking Coal, a government-owned company that controls much of the Jharia region, denied neglecting fires and pollution but readily agreed that tens of thousands of residents must be displaced for India to realize its coal needs. Evictions are done too slowly, he said.
- Hauling coal by bicycle in Jharkhand in eastern India. The country plans to double its use of domestic coal by 2019 as part of efforts to reduce poverty. Credit Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times -
“We need to shift these people to corporate villages far from the coal fields,” Mr. Lahiry said during an interview in his large office.
With land scarce, Bharat Coking is digging deeper at mines it already controls. On a tour of one huge strip mine, officials said they had recently purchased two mammoth Russian mining shovels to more than triple annual production to 10 million tons. The shovels are clawing coal from a 420-foot-deep pit, with huge trucks piling slag in flat-topped mountains. The deeper the mine goes, the more polluting the coal produced.
India has the world’s fifth-largest reserves of coal but little domestic oil or natural gas production. The country went on a coal-fired power plant building spree over the last five years, increasing capacity by 73 percent. But coal mining grew just 6 percent, leading to expensive coal imports, idle plants and widespread blackouts. Nearly 300 million Indians do not have access to electricity, and millions more get it only sporadically.
“India is going to use coal because that’s what it has,” said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director of the Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment, a prominent environmental group. “Its strategy is ‘all of the above,’ just like in the U.S.”
Each Indian consumes on average 7 percent of the energy used by an American, and Indian officials dismiss critics from wealthy countries.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘pontificate’ when talking about these people, but it would be reasonable to expect more fairness in the discussion and a recognition of India’s need to reach the development of the West,” Mr. Goyal said with a tight smile.
One reason for the widespread domestic support for India’s coal rush is the lack of awareness of just how bad the air has already become, scientists say. Smog levels that would lead to highway shutdowns and near-panic in Beijing go largely unnoticed in Delhi. Pediatric respiratory clinics are overrun, but parents largely shrug when asked about the cause of their children’s suffering. Face masks and air purifiers, ubiquitous among China’s elite, are rare here. And there are signs Indian air is rapidly worsening.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
“People need to wake up to just how awful the air already is,” said Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading intergovernmental organization for the assessment of climate change.
India’s great hope to save both itself and the world from possible environmental dystopia can be found in the scrub grass outside the village of Neemuch, in India’s western state of Madhya Pradesh. Welspun Energy has constructed what for the moment is Asia’s largest solar plant, a $148 million silent farm of photovoltaic panels on 800 acres of barren soil.
Welspun harvests some of the most focused solar radiation in the world. Dust is so intense that workers must wash each panel every two weeks.
Under Mr. Modi, India is expected to soon underwrite a vast solar building program, and Welspun alone has plans to produce within two years more than 10 times the renewable energy it gets from its facility in Neemuch.
The benefits of solar and the environmental costs of coal are so profound that India has no other choice but to rely more on renewables, said Dr. Pachauri.
“India cannot go down China’s pathway, because the consequences for the public welfare are too horrendous,” he said.
______________________________________________
Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on November 18, 2014, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Coal Rush in India Could Tip Balance on Climate Change. Order Reprints "
Global Status of CCS: 2014, The Global CCS Institute's annual Global Status of CCS: 2014 report finds that CCS is now on the cusp of widespread deployment - CCJ/CCSI - Nov 5, 2014
http://decarboni.se/sites/default/files/publications/180928/…
http://decarboni.se/sites/default/files/publications/180923/…
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3524
"The report found that there are now 22 projects in construction or operation worldwide, a 50% increase since 2011. The report details progress on CCS over the past year, providing a raft of recommendations for decision makers.
Brad Page, CEO of the Global CCS Institute, said: “CCS in the power sector is now a reality with the world’s first large-scale CCS project operating at Boundary Dam, Canada. With eight major CCS projects anticipated to go live in a range of industries worldwide by 2016, this low-carbon technology is reaching the critical mass necessary for widespread deployment.”
The report found the industry is poised to move through its most active construction period to date, extending across a diverse range of sectors such as iron and steel, natural gas and power. The report details nine CCS projects under construction with investments totalling billions of dollars. Eight of these are expected to become operational by 2016.
“These diverse and large-scale projects demonstrate that CCS is active, operational and viable. An important point is that the projects currently under construction are the result of visionary policy decisions made around five years ago.
“We simply can’t have an effective response to tackling climate change without CCS. Decisions and actions are required now to lay policy, legal and infrastructure foundations for wide-scale deployment post 2020,” said Mr Page.
Mr Page called for “a year of action” on policy and deployment for CCS, saying, “Now is the time for decision makers to take stock of what has been achieved and build on these solid foundations so that CCS can make major contributions to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”
The report found there are 14 CCS projects in advanced planning stage, including nine in the power sector, expected to be in a position to make a final investment decision in 2015. Calling for financial and policy support structures to transition this portfolio of planned projects to actual projects by 2020, Mr Page warned that CCS technology would not become widespread without policy parity with other clean technologies.
By 2016, CCS will be in operation in high carbon-emitting sectors such as chemicals and iron and steel. The world’s first commercial-scale chemical and bio-CCS plant at the Illinois Industrial CCS Project in the United States (US) plans to be operational in 2015. The Abu Dhabi CCS Project in the UAE, planned for operation in 2016, is the world’s first large-scale project in the iron and steel sector.
“We need to be clear that CCS is the only technology that can achieve large reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industries such as iron and steel, chemicals and cement which together emit 20% of the world’s CO2. In fact, it is just as important to use CCS on industrial processes as in the electricity sector, which is currently the world’s largest CO2 emitter, accounting for up to 40% of emissions,” concluded Mr Page.
Key findings
- The world’s first large-scale CCS project in the power sector went live at Boundary Dam in Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada on October 2, 2014.
- The Abu Dhabi CCS Project in the UAE (expected to come on in line in 2016) will be the world’s first large-scale CCS project in the iron and steel sector.
- There are 22 large-scale CCS projects in operation or construction around the world, with the capacity to capture up to 40 million tonnes of CO2 per annum, equivalent to taking 8 million cars off the road.
- The next two large-scale CCS projects in the power sector are planned to come online in the US: Southern Company’s Kemper County Energy Facility in Mississippi (2016), and the Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project in Texas (2016).
- CCS projects in the UK are progressing with both the Peterhead CCS Project and the White Rose CCS Project receiving funding to begin advanced engineering studies, while its policy makers are developing mechanisms to support CCS in the power and industrial sectors.
- There are another 14 large-scale CCS projects in advanced planning stages, including 9 in the power sector, many of which are anticipated to take a final investment decision during the next year.
- The US, Canada and China lead the world in the development and deployment of CCS projects. These countries are not only major sources of CO2, but also have a vast potential to store CO2.
- The data revealed two areas requiring more attention from policy makers: the lack of CCS projects in non-OECD economies (outside of China) and the lack of progress in CCS technology development in high carbon-intensive industries such as iron and steel and cement.
Luke Warren, Chief Executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, commented, “We welcome the findings of today’s report in demonstrating just how much progress has been made on CCS. The findings will help towards building much needed confidence amongst Governments, the general public and critically, the financial investment community. The message is clear – CCS is here and ready for deployment”.
"The report comes at a time when CCS has garnered widespread acknowledgement for its crucial role in delivering a long-term, fiscally responsible way of reducing emissions."
"Earlier this week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its ‘Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report’ in which CCS was identified as the essential low-carbon technology needed to help cost-effectively decarbonise the global power sector. The report found that without CCS the total cost of limiting CO2 emissions could increase by 138%."
"The news builds upon the release of the EU 2030 climate and energy framework earlier this month, where inclusion of CCS in the final Council Conclusions– alongside renewables and energy efficiency – signalled its increasing prominence in delivering a secure future energy mix for Europe."
“The GCCSI report is firm confirmation that others around the world are forging ahead with CCS. Now is the time for UK policy makers to reflect on what has been achieved to date and build upon this solid foundation. Decisions taken now will determine whether the UK is able to benefit from this technology or whether we close the door on CCS as an option."
"The UK Government must maintain momentum in delivering the CCS Commercialisation Programme and ensure that a second phase of CCS projects are developed in parallel with the current competition projects. What is now urgently needed is a steady roll-out of UK projects to ensure that CCS becomes cost-competitive with other low-carbon technologies in the 2020s. The UK is world-leading in developing an enduring policy framework to support CCS alongside renewable and nuclear under the Electricity Market Reform programme but it is vital that the policy delivers real projects as soon as possible”. "
http://decarboni.se/sites/default/files/publications/180928/…
http://decarboni.se/sites/default/files/publications/180923/…
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3524
"The report found that there are now 22 projects in construction or operation worldwide, a 50% increase since 2011. The report details progress on CCS over the past year, providing a raft of recommendations for decision makers.
Brad Page, CEO of the Global CCS Institute, said: “CCS in the power sector is now a reality with the world’s first large-scale CCS project operating at Boundary Dam, Canada. With eight major CCS projects anticipated to go live in a range of industries worldwide by 2016, this low-carbon technology is reaching the critical mass necessary for widespread deployment.”
The report found the industry is poised to move through its most active construction period to date, extending across a diverse range of sectors such as iron and steel, natural gas and power. The report details nine CCS projects under construction with investments totalling billions of dollars. Eight of these are expected to become operational by 2016.
“These diverse and large-scale projects demonstrate that CCS is active, operational and viable. An important point is that the projects currently under construction are the result of visionary policy decisions made around five years ago.
“We simply can’t have an effective response to tackling climate change without CCS. Decisions and actions are required now to lay policy, legal and infrastructure foundations for wide-scale deployment post 2020,” said Mr Page.
Mr Page called for “a year of action” on policy and deployment for CCS, saying, “Now is the time for decision makers to take stock of what has been achieved and build on these solid foundations so that CCS can make major contributions to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.”
The report found there are 14 CCS projects in advanced planning stage, including nine in the power sector, expected to be in a position to make a final investment decision in 2015. Calling for financial and policy support structures to transition this portfolio of planned projects to actual projects by 2020, Mr Page warned that CCS technology would not become widespread without policy parity with other clean technologies.
By 2016, CCS will be in operation in high carbon-emitting sectors such as chemicals and iron and steel. The world’s first commercial-scale chemical and bio-CCS plant at the Illinois Industrial CCS Project in the United States (US) plans to be operational in 2015. The Abu Dhabi CCS Project in the UAE, planned for operation in 2016, is the world’s first large-scale project in the iron and steel sector.
“We need to be clear that CCS is the only technology that can achieve large reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industries such as iron and steel, chemicals and cement which together emit 20% of the world’s CO2. In fact, it is just as important to use CCS on industrial processes as in the electricity sector, which is currently the world’s largest CO2 emitter, accounting for up to 40% of emissions,” concluded Mr Page.
Key findings
- The world’s first large-scale CCS project in the power sector went live at Boundary Dam in Estevan, Saskatchewan, Canada on October 2, 2014.
- The Abu Dhabi CCS Project in the UAE (expected to come on in line in 2016) will be the world’s first large-scale CCS project in the iron and steel sector.
- There are 22 large-scale CCS projects in operation or construction around the world, with the capacity to capture up to 40 million tonnes of CO2 per annum, equivalent to taking 8 million cars off the road.
- The next two large-scale CCS projects in the power sector are planned to come online in the US: Southern Company’s Kemper County Energy Facility in Mississippi (2016), and the Petra Nova Carbon Capture Project in Texas (2016).
- CCS projects in the UK are progressing with both the Peterhead CCS Project and the White Rose CCS Project receiving funding to begin advanced engineering studies, while its policy makers are developing mechanisms to support CCS in the power and industrial sectors.
- There are another 14 large-scale CCS projects in advanced planning stages, including 9 in the power sector, many of which are anticipated to take a final investment decision during the next year.
- The US, Canada and China lead the world in the development and deployment of CCS projects. These countries are not only major sources of CO2, but also have a vast potential to store CO2.
- The data revealed two areas requiring more attention from policy makers: the lack of CCS projects in non-OECD economies (outside of China) and the lack of progress in CCS technology development in high carbon-intensive industries such as iron and steel and cement.
Luke Warren, Chief Executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, commented, “We welcome the findings of today’s report in demonstrating just how much progress has been made on CCS. The findings will help towards building much needed confidence amongst Governments, the general public and critically, the financial investment community. The message is clear – CCS is here and ready for deployment”.
"The report comes at a time when CCS has garnered widespread acknowledgement for its crucial role in delivering a long-term, fiscally responsible way of reducing emissions."
"Earlier this week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its ‘Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report’ in which CCS was identified as the essential low-carbon technology needed to help cost-effectively decarbonise the global power sector. The report found that without CCS the total cost of limiting CO2 emissions could increase by 138%."
"The news builds upon the release of the EU 2030 climate and energy framework earlier this month, where inclusion of CCS in the final Council Conclusions– alongside renewables and energy efficiency – signalled its increasing prominence in delivering a secure future energy mix for Europe."
“The GCCSI report is firm confirmation that others around the world are forging ahead with CCS. Now is the time for UK policy makers to reflect on what has been achieved to date and build upon this solid foundation. Decisions taken now will determine whether the UK is able to benefit from this technology or whether we close the door on CCS as an option."
"The UK Government must maintain momentum in delivering the CCS Commercialisation Programme and ensure that a second phase of CCS projects are developed in parallel with the current competition projects. What is now urgently needed is a steady roll-out of UK projects to ensure that CCS becomes cost-competitive with other low-carbon technologies in the 2020s. The UK is world-leading in developing an enduring policy framework to support CCS alongside renewable and nuclear under the Electricity Market Reform programme but it is vital that the policy delivers real projects as soon as possible”. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.379.982 von Popeye82 am 21.11.14 13:28:48
Bellona report: Investments in CO2 storage must begin before 2020, Bellona Europa has launched a new report examining the development of the CO2 storage industry - CCJ/BE, BRUSSELS - Nov 19, 2014
http://bellona.org/assets/sites/6/Scaling-the-CO2-storage-in…
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3525
" The report, titled ‘Scaling the CO2 storage industry: A study and a tool’ outlines how, when and where European CO2 storage must take place toward 2050. This is done through the use of a model which can consider different scenarios, looking for instance at the effect on CCS and CO2 storage in a case very high renewable deployment, and thereby find both the bottlenecks and the most feasible options for a CO2 storage industry in Europe.
The report was presented by Frederic Hauge during the ZEP General Assembly hosted in the European Parliament.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a critical technology in reducing CO2 emissions from energy and industry. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the cost of the necessary emissions reductions would more than double without CCS. A failure to deploy CCS would thus be a failure to avoid a warming world.
The availability of CO2 storage is the linchpin of CCS deployment. A lack of storage capacity could render CO2 capture futile, and in the worst case could discourage investments in CCS projects. A CO2 storage industry that can match the scale of the oil and gas sector will therefore be necessary to enable the necessary scale of CCS deployment.
The report takes a look at the practicalities of developing CO2 storage in Europe and answers three key questions:
- What is the rate at which CO2 storage needs to be developed for CCS to be deployed and climate goals met?
- Is the nascent CO2 storage industry capable of scaling up quickly?
- What are the requirements of a CO2 storage industry?
Bellona has built a simple yet robust model to answer these questions and give insight into the broad lines of the future scale of CO2 storage activities. It examines storage scenarios for onshore and offshore storage in saline aquifers, depleted oil and gas fields, and for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The model uses storage data and the anticipated CO2captured each year to measure the necessary CO2 storage capacity to be deployed throughout Europe. It does so “just in time” and for “just enough” CO2 storage to meet set targets.
The study finds that annual investments in the range of €500 million need to begin by 2020, and increase rapidly into the 2020s, if we are to deliver the storage capacity required by the CCS projects operating in the 2030s and beyond (see figure). The first large scale investments in commercial storage should take place in 2019. This finding shows that what some consider early deployment is in fact timely deployment if we are to reach EU Energy Roadmap 2050 goals. There is therefore a clear and urgent need to have a functioning investment environment for both CCS and CO2 storage operators starting within the next five years. A robust policy framework must therefore be assured as soon as possible.
The study also finds that the scale of the CO2 storage industry will be large. Both in terms of material and human resources, storage operations will be on par with the current oil and gas industry. This could lead to a ‘competition’ for resources between ‘carbon emitters’ and ‘carbon sequesters’, which may delay growth of the storage industry. But it also affords Europe an opportunity to develop a huge new industrial sector that tackles climate change and provides thousands of jobs.
Regarding requirements of a storage industry, injectivity – the rate at which a well can inject CO2 into a suitable storage site – is found to be as critical as storage capacity. Lower injectivity could result in a doubling of the cost and scale of CO2 storage deployment. The role injection capacity plays in realising CCS is often underestimated. More effort is therefore needed to quantify the injectivity of prospective CO2 storage sites.
The importance of injectivity is made even clearer by the finding that most storage will likely take place offshore. This reflects political and planning constraints that exist in Europe, but also the potential: Europe is fortunate in having a huge offshore CO2 storage resource. Costs are generally higher offshore than onshore as greater demands are placed on characterisation and drilling. As reduced injectivity increases the required injection wells, an offshore scenario will have an even greater effect on CO2 storage cost. Appropriate funding mechanisms for full-scale CCS as well as concrete investments in storage site development must therefore be a matter of policy priority. "
Bellona report: Investments in CO2 storage must begin before 2020, Bellona Europa has launched a new report examining the development of the CO2 storage industry - CCJ/BE, BRUSSELS - Nov 19, 2014
http://bellona.org/assets/sites/6/Scaling-the-CO2-storage-in…
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3525
" The report, titled ‘Scaling the CO2 storage industry: A study and a tool’ outlines how, when and where European CO2 storage must take place toward 2050. This is done through the use of a model which can consider different scenarios, looking for instance at the effect on CCS and CO2 storage in a case very high renewable deployment, and thereby find both the bottlenecks and the most feasible options for a CO2 storage industry in Europe.
The report was presented by Frederic Hauge during the ZEP General Assembly hosted in the European Parliament.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a critical technology in reducing CO2 emissions from energy and industry. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the cost of the necessary emissions reductions would more than double without CCS. A failure to deploy CCS would thus be a failure to avoid a warming world.
The availability of CO2 storage is the linchpin of CCS deployment. A lack of storage capacity could render CO2 capture futile, and in the worst case could discourage investments in CCS projects. A CO2 storage industry that can match the scale of the oil and gas sector will therefore be necessary to enable the necessary scale of CCS deployment.
The report takes a look at the practicalities of developing CO2 storage in Europe and answers three key questions:
- What is the rate at which CO2 storage needs to be developed for CCS to be deployed and climate goals met?
- Is the nascent CO2 storage industry capable of scaling up quickly?
- What are the requirements of a CO2 storage industry?
Bellona has built a simple yet robust model to answer these questions and give insight into the broad lines of the future scale of CO2 storage activities. It examines storage scenarios for onshore and offshore storage in saline aquifers, depleted oil and gas fields, and for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The model uses storage data and the anticipated CO2captured each year to measure the necessary CO2 storage capacity to be deployed throughout Europe. It does so “just in time” and for “just enough” CO2 storage to meet set targets.
The study finds that annual investments in the range of €500 million need to begin by 2020, and increase rapidly into the 2020s, if we are to deliver the storage capacity required by the CCS projects operating in the 2030s and beyond (see figure). The first large scale investments in commercial storage should take place in 2019. This finding shows that what some consider early deployment is in fact timely deployment if we are to reach EU Energy Roadmap 2050 goals. There is therefore a clear and urgent need to have a functioning investment environment for both CCS and CO2 storage operators starting within the next five years. A robust policy framework must therefore be assured as soon as possible.
The study also finds that the scale of the CO2 storage industry will be large. Both in terms of material and human resources, storage operations will be on par with the current oil and gas industry. This could lead to a ‘competition’ for resources between ‘carbon emitters’ and ‘carbon sequesters’, which may delay growth of the storage industry. But it also affords Europe an opportunity to develop a huge new industrial sector that tackles climate change and provides thousands of jobs.
Regarding requirements of a storage industry, injectivity – the rate at which a well can inject CO2 into a suitable storage site – is found to be as critical as storage capacity. Lower injectivity could result in a doubling of the cost and scale of CO2 storage deployment. The role injection capacity plays in realising CCS is often underestimated. More effort is therefore needed to quantify the injectivity of prospective CO2 storage sites.
The importance of injectivity is made even clearer by the finding that most storage will likely take place offshore. This reflects political and planning constraints that exist in Europe, but also the potential: Europe is fortunate in having a huge offshore CO2 storage resource. Costs are generally higher offshore than onshore as greater demands are placed on characterisation and drilling. As reduced injectivity increases the required injection wells, an offshore scenario will have an even greater effect on CO2 storage cost. Appropriate funding mechanisms for full-scale CCS as well as concrete investments in storage site development must therefore be a matter of policy priority. "
EPA abandons RFS rulemaking for 2014 - BD/EPA, WASHINGTON - Nov 21, 2014
- J. Lane -
www.epa.gov/otaq/fuels/renewablefuels/documents/fr-notice-20…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/11/21/epa-abandons-rfs-r…
"In Washington, the U.S. EPA announced it is delaying finalization of the long-awaited 2014 Renewable Fuel Standard Renewable Volume Obligations until 2015.
The proposed 2014 rule ran into a steamroller of opposition from renewable fuel groups, who said the proposed rule substantially cutting biofuels targets “pulled the rug” from underneath billions of dollars investment made in reliance upon targets.
The EPA Statement
The Agency said:
“Today EPA is announcing that it will not be finalizing 2014 applicable percentage standards under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program before the end of 2014. In light of this delay in issuing the 2014 RFS standards, the compliance demonstration deadline for the 2013 RFS standards will take place in 2015.
“EPA will be making modifications to the EPA- Moderated Transaction System (EMTS) to ensure that Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) generated in 2012 are valid for demonstrating compliance with the 2013 applicable standards.”
The Agency adds:
“On November 29, 2013, EPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking to establish the 2014 RFS standards. The proposal has generated significant comment and controversy, particularly about how volumes should be set in light of lower gasoline consumption than had been forecast at the time that the Energy Independence and Security Act was enacted, and whether and on what basis the statutory volumes should be waived. Most notably, commenters expressed concerns regarding the proposal’s ability to ensure continued progress towards achieving the volumes of renewable fuel targeted by the statute.
“EPA has been evaluating these issues in light of the purposes of the statute and the Administration’s commitment to the goals of the statute to increase the use of renewable fuels, particularly cellulosic biofuels, which will reduce the greenhouse gases emitted from the consumption of transportation fuels and diversify the nation’s fuel supply.
“Finalization of the 2014 standards rule has been significantly delayed. Due to this delay, and given ongoing consideration of the issues presented by the commenters, EPA is not in a position to finalize the 2014 RFS standards rule before the end of the year. Accordingly, we intend to take action on the 2014 standards rule in 2015 prior to or in conjunction with action on the 2015 standards rule.
The complete EPA announce is here.
Industry reaction
BIO President & CEO Jim Greenwood
“We appreciate that EPA will not be finalizing a proposed 2014 RFS rule containing a flawed methodology for setting the renewable fuel volumes. We will continue to work with the agency to get this successful program back on track as soon as possible.
“The RFS supports companies that invest in, build and start up new advanced and cellulosic biorefineries here in the United States. It’s clear that the advanced biofuel industry has made rapid strides to increase production capacity to meet the annual volume requirements. Unfortunately, the delay in this year’s rule already has chilled investment and financing of future projects, even as first-of-a-kind cellulosic biofuel plants are right now starting up operations. The industry needs a final rule that is legally appropriate and continues to support our efforts.”
Michael McAdams, ABFA President, Advanced Biofuels Association
“Today, EPA hit the big reset button. Given the fact that we are already at the end of 2014, we appreciate EPA’s recognition that the real importance is to set the program on a clear glide path for 2015 and 2016. The numbers do matter, and utilizing the actual production will be a positive step from what was a proposed. We appreciate how EPA recognized that cutting requirements for advanced biofuels would be a mistake. This emerging industry deserves better considering it has already demonstrated the capacity to generate 3.2 billion gallons of advanced biofuel annually. But, at least EPA’s decision leaves the glass more than half full and allow us to get back on track next year.
“We are hopeful that this resets the bar to allow EPA to release 2015 numbers as quickly as possible and give certainty to the program. It has been the uncertainty that has created issues for the advanced and cellulosic sectors to move forward.
“Congress intended the RFS to improve America’s energy security by fostering development of the next generation of cleaner, more sustainable biofuels. Considering EPA is nearly a year late, which has left the air of uncertainty around the program, perhaps it is time for lawmakers to take a fresh look at whether the program is meeting expectations and following Congress’s desired goal of creating an advanced and cellulosic industry.”
National Biodiesel Board Vice President of Federal Affairs Anne Steckel
“This Administration says over and over that it supports biodiesel, yet its actions with these repeated delays are undermining the industry. Biodiesel producers have laid off workers and idled production. Some have shut down altogether. We know that fuels policy is complex, but there is absolutely no reason that the biodiesel volume hasn’t been announced. We are urging the Administration to finalize a 2014 rule as quickly as possible that puts this industry back on track for growth and puts our country back on track for ending our dangerous dependence on oil. We also urge them to move quickly on 2015 so that we don’t repeat this flawed process again next year.”
Advanced Ethanol Council Executive Director Brooke Coleman
“Pulling back on the 2014 RFS rule is the right thing to do at this stage in the game when it comes to preserving the integrity of the program. While the cellulosic biofuel industry will not get the policy certainty it needs from this decision, it does suggest that the Administration is listening when it comes to our concerns about giving oil companies too much power to avoid its obligations under the RFS going forward. This battle was never about the 2014 volumes for the oil industry, and we appreciate the Administration’s willingness to pivot in the right direction this late in the game. The key now for advanced biofuel investment is to move quickly to fix what needs to be fixed administratively so we can reestablish the RFS as the global gold standard for advanced biofuel policy.”
Bob Dinneen, president and CEO, Renewable Fuels Association
“Deciding not to decide is not a decision. Unfortunately, the announcement today perpetuates the uncertainty that has plagued the continued evolution of biofuels production and marketing for a year. Nevertheless, the Administration has taken a major step by walking away from a proposed rule that was wrong on the law, wrong on the market impacts, wrong for innovation, and wrong for consumers.
“Moreover, it is clear that one of the reasons we find ourselves in this position is that the oil industry has steadfastly refused to make the investments in infrastructure or allow their marketers to offer higher ethanol blends like E85 or E15. In the absence of their dogged efforts to undermine the RFS, this would be far simpler for EPA.
“The monopoly-protecting talking points of the oil industry notwithstanding, the RFS has been enormously successful. It has compelled competition in motor fuel markets, lowered consumer gasoline costs, and reduced the carbon footprint of transportation fuels. We look forward to working with the Administration to assure this critically important program is implemented consistent with congressional intent, to the benefit of consumers and with the goal of advancing the evolution of biofuels production and marketing.
“Refiners will continue to resist the competition from biofuels. The RFS must be allowed to be the market forcing mechanism it was designed to be. In the end, the verdict on today’s announcement can only be made after a decision on a path forward for biofuels is identified.
Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis CEO
“The EPA made the appropriate decision today to not finalize the 2014 RVO numbers. We commend them for listening to all stakeholders. Today’s announcement is a clear acknowledgement that the EPA’s proposed rule was flawed from the beginning. There was no way the methodology in the proposed rule would ever work, as it went against the very purpose and policy goals of the RFS. The EPA wisely decided not to finalize the rule so they could fix the flawed methodology. Their initial proposal over a year ago was unacceptable and simply acquiesced to the demands of Big Oil and their refusal to blend more renewable fuels into the marketplace.
“The decision to withdraw the rule is a win for the renewable fuels industry. While a further delay is unwelcome news, at the end of the day, the most important aspect is that the EPA gets the final rule right. The EPA must implement the RFS as it was originally envisioned and supported by a bipartisan majority in Congress. This policy was established to help improve our environment, create jobs that cannot be outsourced and reduce our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil, all while providing consumers with a choice and savings at the pump by increasing market access to cleaner burning renewable fuels.
“Growth Energy stands ready to work with the administration to ensure that America stays on a path to energy security and innovation by ending the decades old, shortsighted practice of ‘putting our eggs in one basket’ by relying only on foreign oil and fossil fuels. I encourage the EPA to act swiftly to produce a final rule that ensures the methodology allows our industry to move forward and invest in additional production of biofuels, which will help grow an American industry that creates jobs, reduces our dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels, reduces carbon pollution and creates new economic opportunities all over the country.”
Reaction from outside the industry
American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers President Charles T. Drevna
“The Obama Administration’s decision to further delay issuing the 2014 Renewable Volume Obligations (RVO) is a gross dereliction of responsibility that leaves fuel refiners and the biofuels industry alike to navigate a course of ambiguity. Today’s announcement indicates that the Administration plans to continuously mismanage this program in a manner that equates to playing Russian roulette with the nation’s fuel supply at the American consumer’s ultimate expense. The Administration’s inaction demonstrates once again that the non-functioning Renewable Fuel Standard program is irreparably broken. AFPM calls upon Congress to expeditiously resume work on repealing or significantly reforming the RFS. In the meantime, AFPM will seek legal intervention.
“For three years in a row, the Administration has thumbed its nose at Congress and ignored a crystal clear statutory deadline to issue RVOs by November 30 of the preceding year. For this reason, AFPM today filed a notice of intent to sue EPA over its failure to issue the 2014 RFS regulations, which has languished at the White House Office of Management and Budget since August 22, 2014.”
Environmental Working Group policy analyst Mike Lavender
“Today’s announcement is further evidence that Congress must reform our badly broken food-to-fuel policies. By failing to reduce the amount of corn ethanol blended into gasoline, the Obama administration today missed an opportunity to immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If we hope to reverse climate change, we need greenhouse gas reductions now, not in 2025, and reducing the amount of corn ethanol in gasoline is among the most effective tools at the administration’s disposal. We urge the administration to quickly finalize a RVO that paves the way for truly “green” biofuels.”
Friends of the Earth Climate and energy campaigner Lukas Ross
“Today’s announcement confirms that the Renewable Fuel Standard system is in absolute chaos. Frankly, this announcement has biofuel watchers stumped. No one is sure how the standard will be administered now or what the implications will be for the industry. Final volume levels or no, the simple fact is that the statute requires too much climate-busting corn ethanol. Today’s announcement shows that Congress handed the EPA an unworkable policy. Now it’s time for Congress to step in and fix the corn ethanol problem they created.” "
- J. Lane -
www.epa.gov/otaq/fuels/renewablefuels/documents/fr-notice-20…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/11/21/epa-abandons-rfs-r…
"In Washington, the U.S. EPA announced it is delaying finalization of the long-awaited 2014 Renewable Fuel Standard Renewable Volume Obligations until 2015.
The proposed 2014 rule ran into a steamroller of opposition from renewable fuel groups, who said the proposed rule substantially cutting biofuels targets “pulled the rug” from underneath billions of dollars investment made in reliance upon targets.
The EPA Statement
The Agency said:
“Today EPA is announcing that it will not be finalizing 2014 applicable percentage standards under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program before the end of 2014. In light of this delay in issuing the 2014 RFS standards, the compliance demonstration deadline for the 2013 RFS standards will take place in 2015.
“EPA will be making modifications to the EPA- Moderated Transaction System (EMTS) to ensure that Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) generated in 2012 are valid for demonstrating compliance with the 2013 applicable standards.”
The Agency adds:
“On November 29, 2013, EPA published a notice of proposed rulemaking to establish the 2014 RFS standards. The proposal has generated significant comment and controversy, particularly about how volumes should be set in light of lower gasoline consumption than had been forecast at the time that the Energy Independence and Security Act was enacted, and whether and on what basis the statutory volumes should be waived. Most notably, commenters expressed concerns regarding the proposal’s ability to ensure continued progress towards achieving the volumes of renewable fuel targeted by the statute.
“EPA has been evaluating these issues in light of the purposes of the statute and the Administration’s commitment to the goals of the statute to increase the use of renewable fuels, particularly cellulosic biofuels, which will reduce the greenhouse gases emitted from the consumption of transportation fuels and diversify the nation’s fuel supply.
“Finalization of the 2014 standards rule has been significantly delayed. Due to this delay, and given ongoing consideration of the issues presented by the commenters, EPA is not in a position to finalize the 2014 RFS standards rule before the end of the year. Accordingly, we intend to take action on the 2014 standards rule in 2015 prior to or in conjunction with action on the 2015 standards rule.
The complete EPA announce is here.
Industry reaction
BIO President & CEO Jim Greenwood
“We appreciate that EPA will not be finalizing a proposed 2014 RFS rule containing a flawed methodology for setting the renewable fuel volumes. We will continue to work with the agency to get this successful program back on track as soon as possible.
“The RFS supports companies that invest in, build and start up new advanced and cellulosic biorefineries here in the United States. It’s clear that the advanced biofuel industry has made rapid strides to increase production capacity to meet the annual volume requirements. Unfortunately, the delay in this year’s rule already has chilled investment and financing of future projects, even as first-of-a-kind cellulosic biofuel plants are right now starting up operations. The industry needs a final rule that is legally appropriate and continues to support our efforts.”
Michael McAdams, ABFA President, Advanced Biofuels Association
“Today, EPA hit the big reset button. Given the fact that we are already at the end of 2014, we appreciate EPA’s recognition that the real importance is to set the program on a clear glide path for 2015 and 2016. The numbers do matter, and utilizing the actual production will be a positive step from what was a proposed. We appreciate how EPA recognized that cutting requirements for advanced biofuels would be a mistake. This emerging industry deserves better considering it has already demonstrated the capacity to generate 3.2 billion gallons of advanced biofuel annually. But, at least EPA’s decision leaves the glass more than half full and allow us to get back on track next year.
“We are hopeful that this resets the bar to allow EPA to release 2015 numbers as quickly as possible and give certainty to the program. It has been the uncertainty that has created issues for the advanced and cellulosic sectors to move forward.
“Congress intended the RFS to improve America’s energy security by fostering development of the next generation of cleaner, more sustainable biofuels. Considering EPA is nearly a year late, which has left the air of uncertainty around the program, perhaps it is time for lawmakers to take a fresh look at whether the program is meeting expectations and following Congress’s desired goal of creating an advanced and cellulosic industry.”
National Biodiesel Board Vice President of Federal Affairs Anne Steckel
“This Administration says over and over that it supports biodiesel, yet its actions with these repeated delays are undermining the industry. Biodiesel producers have laid off workers and idled production. Some have shut down altogether. We know that fuels policy is complex, but there is absolutely no reason that the biodiesel volume hasn’t been announced. We are urging the Administration to finalize a 2014 rule as quickly as possible that puts this industry back on track for growth and puts our country back on track for ending our dangerous dependence on oil. We also urge them to move quickly on 2015 so that we don’t repeat this flawed process again next year.”
Advanced Ethanol Council Executive Director Brooke Coleman
“Pulling back on the 2014 RFS rule is the right thing to do at this stage in the game when it comes to preserving the integrity of the program. While the cellulosic biofuel industry will not get the policy certainty it needs from this decision, it does suggest that the Administration is listening when it comes to our concerns about giving oil companies too much power to avoid its obligations under the RFS going forward. This battle was never about the 2014 volumes for the oil industry, and we appreciate the Administration’s willingness to pivot in the right direction this late in the game. The key now for advanced biofuel investment is to move quickly to fix what needs to be fixed administratively so we can reestablish the RFS as the global gold standard for advanced biofuel policy.”
Bob Dinneen, president and CEO, Renewable Fuels Association
“Deciding not to decide is not a decision. Unfortunately, the announcement today perpetuates the uncertainty that has plagued the continued evolution of biofuels production and marketing for a year. Nevertheless, the Administration has taken a major step by walking away from a proposed rule that was wrong on the law, wrong on the market impacts, wrong for innovation, and wrong for consumers.
“Moreover, it is clear that one of the reasons we find ourselves in this position is that the oil industry has steadfastly refused to make the investments in infrastructure or allow their marketers to offer higher ethanol blends like E85 or E15. In the absence of their dogged efforts to undermine the RFS, this would be far simpler for EPA.
“The monopoly-protecting talking points of the oil industry notwithstanding, the RFS has been enormously successful. It has compelled competition in motor fuel markets, lowered consumer gasoline costs, and reduced the carbon footprint of transportation fuels. We look forward to working with the Administration to assure this critically important program is implemented consistent with congressional intent, to the benefit of consumers and with the goal of advancing the evolution of biofuels production and marketing.
“Refiners will continue to resist the competition from biofuels. The RFS must be allowed to be the market forcing mechanism it was designed to be. In the end, the verdict on today’s announcement can only be made after a decision on a path forward for biofuels is identified.
Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis CEO
“The EPA made the appropriate decision today to not finalize the 2014 RVO numbers. We commend them for listening to all stakeholders. Today’s announcement is a clear acknowledgement that the EPA’s proposed rule was flawed from the beginning. There was no way the methodology in the proposed rule would ever work, as it went against the very purpose and policy goals of the RFS. The EPA wisely decided not to finalize the rule so they could fix the flawed methodology. Their initial proposal over a year ago was unacceptable and simply acquiesced to the demands of Big Oil and their refusal to blend more renewable fuels into the marketplace.
“The decision to withdraw the rule is a win for the renewable fuels industry. While a further delay is unwelcome news, at the end of the day, the most important aspect is that the EPA gets the final rule right. The EPA must implement the RFS as it was originally envisioned and supported by a bipartisan majority in Congress. This policy was established to help improve our environment, create jobs that cannot be outsourced and reduce our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels and foreign oil, all while providing consumers with a choice and savings at the pump by increasing market access to cleaner burning renewable fuels.
“Growth Energy stands ready to work with the administration to ensure that America stays on a path to energy security and innovation by ending the decades old, shortsighted practice of ‘putting our eggs in one basket’ by relying only on foreign oil and fossil fuels. I encourage the EPA to act swiftly to produce a final rule that ensures the methodology allows our industry to move forward and invest in additional production of biofuels, which will help grow an American industry that creates jobs, reduces our dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels, reduces carbon pollution and creates new economic opportunities all over the country.”
Reaction from outside the industry
American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers President Charles T. Drevna
“The Obama Administration’s decision to further delay issuing the 2014 Renewable Volume Obligations (RVO) is a gross dereliction of responsibility that leaves fuel refiners and the biofuels industry alike to navigate a course of ambiguity. Today’s announcement indicates that the Administration plans to continuously mismanage this program in a manner that equates to playing Russian roulette with the nation’s fuel supply at the American consumer’s ultimate expense. The Administration’s inaction demonstrates once again that the non-functioning Renewable Fuel Standard program is irreparably broken. AFPM calls upon Congress to expeditiously resume work on repealing or significantly reforming the RFS. In the meantime, AFPM will seek legal intervention.
“For three years in a row, the Administration has thumbed its nose at Congress and ignored a crystal clear statutory deadline to issue RVOs by November 30 of the preceding year. For this reason, AFPM today filed a notice of intent to sue EPA over its failure to issue the 2014 RFS regulations, which has languished at the White House Office of Management and Budget since August 22, 2014.”
Environmental Working Group policy analyst Mike Lavender
“Today’s announcement is further evidence that Congress must reform our badly broken food-to-fuel policies. By failing to reduce the amount of corn ethanol blended into gasoline, the Obama administration today missed an opportunity to immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions. If we hope to reverse climate change, we need greenhouse gas reductions now, not in 2025, and reducing the amount of corn ethanol in gasoline is among the most effective tools at the administration’s disposal. We urge the administration to quickly finalize a RVO that paves the way for truly “green” biofuels.”
Friends of the Earth Climate and energy campaigner Lukas Ross
“Today’s announcement confirms that the Renewable Fuel Standard system is in absolute chaos. Frankly, this announcement has biofuel watchers stumped. No one is sure how the standard will be administered now or what the implications will be for the industry. Final volume levels or no, the simple fact is that the statute requires too much climate-busting corn ethanol. Today’s announcement shows that Congress handed the EPA an unworkable policy. Now it’s time for Congress to step in and fix the corn ethanol problem they created.” "
Shell: expects to be producing advanced biofuels @scale, in US, by end of decade - BD/S/ABLCN, SAN FRANCISCO - Nov 20, 2014
- J. Lane -
"Shell VP Matthew Tipper, at ABLCNext:
“We will likely begin manufacture in the southeast United States. We plan to be operational by late this decade.
“We believe our best bet is woody biomass and energy crops as feedstocks. We plan to do this with a scale-up of smaller plants with widespread feedstock availability.”
“The RFS is key to Shell’s advanced biofuel manufacturing ambitions. However, we continue to support RFS revision out of necessity. But NOT repeal.”
“Importantly, advanced biofuels could ultimately supply a significant part, perhaps all, of Europe’s transport fuels needs. So we have big plans. We have a credible vision.”
Advanced biofuels at scale and in meaningful volume based on novel technology from Shell’s considerable vault of talent, with a sensible approach to market-creating mechanisms like the Renewable Fuel Standard. Those are the headlines from a remarkable address ‘given by Shell’s VP for Alternative Energies, Matthew Tipper, at ABLCNext, the Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference in San Francisco.
The address is in complete form below. ..."
- J. Lane -
"Shell VP Matthew Tipper, at ABLCNext:
“We will likely begin manufacture in the southeast United States. We plan to be operational by late this decade.
“We believe our best bet is woody biomass and energy crops as feedstocks. We plan to do this with a scale-up of smaller plants with widespread feedstock availability.”
“The RFS is key to Shell’s advanced biofuel manufacturing ambitions. However, we continue to support RFS revision out of necessity. But NOT repeal.”
“Importantly, advanced biofuels could ultimately supply a significant part, perhaps all, of Europe’s transport fuels needs. So we have big plans. We have a credible vision.”
Advanced biofuels at scale and in meaningful volume based on novel technology from Shell’s considerable vault of talent, with a sensible approach to market-creating mechanisms like the Renewable Fuel Standard. Those are the headlines from a remarkable address ‘given by Shell’s VP for Alternative Energies, Matthew Tipper, at ABLCNext, the Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference in San Francisco.
The address is in complete form below. ..."
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.050.428 von Popeye82 am 16.10.14 01:47:07
noch ein Webcast
Carbon Cap +Trade in China: From Experimentation to Nationalization?, An RFF First Wednesday Seminar Dec 3, '14 12:30 - 2:00 p.m. EST Resources for the Future, A light lunch will be provided starting @12:15 p.m.; Seven pilot cap-+-trade programs for carbon currently operate in China as experiments to inform a nationwide program under design @present +slated to start in '16. @this RFF 1st Wed Seminar, RFF's Clayton Munnings +Richard Morgenstern will present key findings from a recent RFF discussion paper, which assesses the design of three of the pilot programs, in Guangdong, Shanghai +Shenzhen. RFF's Zhongmin Wang will then moderate a diverse panel, where experts will provide their thoughts on the pilot cap-+-trade programs +discuss the prospects of nationalizing cap +trade in China - RFF - Dec 3, 2014
www.rff.org/live/
noch ein Webcast
Carbon Cap +Trade in China: From Experimentation to Nationalization?, An RFF First Wednesday Seminar Dec 3, '14 12:30 - 2:00 p.m. EST Resources for the Future, A light lunch will be provided starting @12:15 p.m.; Seven pilot cap-+-trade programs for carbon currently operate in China as experiments to inform a nationwide program under design @present +slated to start in '16. @this RFF 1st Wed Seminar, RFF's Clayton Munnings +Richard Morgenstern will present key findings from a recent RFF discussion paper, which assesses the design of three of the pilot programs, in Guangdong, Shanghai +Shenzhen. RFF's Zhongmin Wang will then moderate a diverse panel, where experts will provide their thoughts on the pilot cap-+-trade programs +discuss the prospects of nationalizing cap +trade in China - RFF - Dec 3, 2014
www.rff.org/live/
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.980.372 von Popeye82 am 08.10.14 23:46:22
RFF Nobel Laureate Series, Nobel Laureate Mario Molina on Understanding Climate Risk, A Call to Action, Nobel Laureate Mario Molina joined RFF President Phil Sharp +American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS) CEO Alan Leshner, to discuss the economic +financial risks associated with climate change, as well as the role of uncertainty in planning for future climate impacts. Video from the presentation +Dr. Molina's slides can be found heeeeere
---> www.rff.org/Events/Pages/RFF-and-AAAS-Present-a-Conversation…
RFF Nobel Laureate Series, Nobel Laureate Mario Molina on Understanding Climate Risk, A Call to Action, Nobel Laureate Mario Molina joined RFF President Phil Sharp +American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS) CEO Alan Leshner, to discuss the economic +financial risks associated with climate change, as well as the role of uncertainty in planning for future climate impacts. Video from the presentation +Dr. Molina's slides can be found heeeeere
---> www.rff.org/Events/Pages/RFF-and-AAAS-Present-a-Conversation…
Assessing the Design of Three Pilot Programs for Carbon Trading in China, RFF Discussion Paper - RFF - Nov 24, 2014
- Clayton Munnings, Richard D. Morgenstern, Zhongmin Wang, Xu Liu -
- China started seven carbon cap-and-trade pilot programs in order to inform the development of a future national cap-and-trade market. This paper assesses the design of three of the longer-running cap-and-trade pilot programs in Guangdong, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Based on extensive stakeholder interviews and a detailed literature review we formulate a series of recommendations to improve the design of these three pilots, including: strengthening the legal foundations for the cap-and-trade pilots, incorporating achievement of goals established by the cap-and-trade pilots into the performance reviews of participating government officials and executives of state-owned entities, further clarifying the cap-setting process, increasing the transparency of the cap, reducing or eliminating within-compliance period adjustments to enterprise-level allowance allocation, gradually moving away from free allocation toward auctioning, reforming enforcement policy, and adopting a symmetric safety valve to manage prices. By making these recommendations, we hope to shed light on ways that Chinese regulators might adapt cap and trade, a fundamentally market-based tool, to China's economy that has many non-market features. ...-
www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP-14-36.pdf
www.rff.org/Publications/Pages/PublicationDetails.aspx?Publi…
- Clayton Munnings, Richard D. Morgenstern, Zhongmin Wang, Xu Liu -
- China started seven carbon cap-and-trade pilot programs in order to inform the development of a future national cap-and-trade market. This paper assesses the design of three of the longer-running cap-and-trade pilot programs in Guangdong, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Based on extensive stakeholder interviews and a detailed literature review we formulate a series of recommendations to improve the design of these three pilots, including: strengthening the legal foundations for the cap-and-trade pilots, incorporating achievement of goals established by the cap-and-trade pilots into the performance reviews of participating government officials and executives of state-owned entities, further clarifying the cap-setting process, increasing the transparency of the cap, reducing or eliminating within-compliance period adjustments to enterprise-level allowance allocation, gradually moving away from free allocation toward auctioning, reforming enforcement policy, and adopting a symmetric safety valve to manage prices. By making these recommendations, we hope to shed light on ways that Chinese regulators might adapt cap and trade, a fundamentally market-based tool, to China's economy that has many non-market features. ...-
www.rff.org/RFF/Documents/RFF-DP-14-36.pdf
www.rff.org/Publications/Pages/PublicationDetails.aspx?Publi…
Doppelschreiben
World Bank warns effects of warming climate now unavoidable
www.clickgreen.org.uk/analysis/general-analysis/125264-world…
www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2014/11/23/climate-report-…
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/20595
"As the planet continues to warm, heat-waves and other extreme weather events that today occur once in hundreds of years, if ever, will become the “new climate normal,” creating a world of increased risks and instability, a new World Bank study warns.
The consequences for development would be severe as crop yields decline, water resources shift, sea-levels rise, and the livelihoods of millions of people are put at risk, according to a new scientific report released today by the World Bank Group.
In parts of Central Asia and the Western Balkans specifically, unprecedented heat extremes could occur in over 60 percent of summer months and drought risk could increase by 20 percent in a 4°C warmer world, the report finds. At the same time, projections suggest an increase in riverine flood risk, mainly in spring and winter, due to more intense snow melt in spring and heavier rainfall in the winter months.
Climate change impacts such as extreme heat events may now be unavoidable because the Earth’s atmospheric system is locked into warming close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century, the report said. Even very ambitious mitigation action taken today will not change this, it said.
“Today’s report confirms what scientists have been saying – past emissions have set an unavoidable course to warming over the next two decades, which will affect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people the most,” said Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group. “We’re already seeing record-breaking temperatures occurring more frequently, rainfall increasing in intensity in some places, and drought-prone regions like the Mediterranean becoming drier.”
“These changes make it more difficult to reduce poverty and put in jeopardy the livelihoods of millions of people,” Kim said. “They also have serious consequences for development budgets, and for institutions like the World Bank Group, where our investments, support and advice must now also build resilience and help affected populations adapt.”
Polar Bear on ice flow image via Shutterstock.
Read more at ENN Affiliate, ClickGreen. "
World Bank warns effects of warming climate now unavoidable
www.clickgreen.org.uk/analysis/general-analysis/125264-world…
www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2014/11/23/climate-report-…
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/20595
"As the planet continues to warm, heat-waves and other extreme weather events that today occur once in hundreds of years, if ever, will become the “new climate normal,” creating a world of increased risks and instability, a new World Bank study warns.
The consequences for development would be severe as crop yields decline, water resources shift, sea-levels rise, and the livelihoods of millions of people are put at risk, according to a new scientific report released today by the World Bank Group.
In parts of Central Asia and the Western Balkans specifically, unprecedented heat extremes could occur in over 60 percent of summer months and drought risk could increase by 20 percent in a 4°C warmer world, the report finds. At the same time, projections suggest an increase in riverine flood risk, mainly in spring and winter, due to more intense snow melt in spring and heavier rainfall in the winter months.
Climate change impacts such as extreme heat events may now be unavoidable because the Earth’s atmospheric system is locked into warming close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by mid-century, the report said. Even very ambitious mitigation action taken today will not change this, it said.
“Today’s report confirms what scientists have been saying – past emissions have set an unavoidable course to warming over the next two decades, which will affect the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people the most,” said Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group. “We’re already seeing record-breaking temperatures occurring more frequently, rainfall increasing in intensity in some places, and drought-prone regions like the Mediterranean becoming drier.”
“These changes make it more difficult to reduce poverty and put in jeopardy the livelihoods of millions of people,” Kim said. “They also have serious consequences for development budgets, and for institutions like the World Bank Group, where our investments, support and advice must now also build resilience and help affected populations adapt.”
Polar Bear on ice flow image via Shutterstock.
Read more at ENN Affiliate, ClickGreen. "
NASA Airborne Campaigns Tackle Climate Questions, from Africa to Arctic - CT/PRNW/NASA - Nov 26, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/26/nasa-airborne-campaigns-t…
www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow
"Five new NASA airborne field campaigns will take to the skies starting in 2015 to investigate how long-range air pollution, warming ocean waters, and fires in Africa affect our climate.
These studies into several incompletely understood Earth system processes were competitively-selected as part of NASA's Earth Venture-class projects. Each project is funded at a total cost of no more than $30 million over five years. This funding includes initial development, field campaigns and analysis of data.
This is NASA's second series of Earth Venture suborbital investigations -- regularly solicited, quick-turnaround projects recommended by the National Research Council in 2007. The first series of five projects was selected in 2010.
"These new investigations address a variety of key scientific questions critical to advancing our understanding of how Earth works," said Jack Kaye, associate director for research in NASA's Earth Science Division in Washington. "These innovative airborne experiments will let us probe inside processes and locations in unprecedented detail that complements what we can do with our fleet of Earth-observing satellites."
The five selected Earth Venture investigations are:
- Atmospheric chemistry and air pollution –Steven Wofsy of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will lead the Atmospheric Tomography project to study the impact of human-produced air pollution on certain greenhouse gases. Airborne instruments will look at how atmospheric chemistry is transformed by various air pollutants and at the impact on methane and ozone which affect climate. Flights aboard NASA's DC-8 will originate from the Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, fly north to the western Arctic, south to the South Pacific, east to the Atlantic, north to Greenland, and return to California across central North America.
- Ecosystem changes in a warming ocean –Michael Behrenfeld of Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, will lead the North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study, which seeks to improve predictions of how ocean ecosystems would change with ocean warming. The mission will study the annual life cycle of phytoplankton and the impact small airborne particles derived from marine organisms have on climate in the North Atlantic. The large annual phytoplankton bloom in this region may influence the Earth's energy budget. Research flights by NASA's C-130 aircraft from Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, will be coordinated with a University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) research vessel. UNOLS, located at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography in Narragansett, Rhode Island, is an organization of 62 academic institutions and national laboratories involved in oceanographic research.
- Greenhouse gas sources –Kenneth Davis of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, will lead the Atmospheric Carbon and Transport-America project to quantify the sources of regional carbon dioxide, methane and other gases, and document how weather systems transport these gases in the atmosphere. The research goal is to improve identification and predictions of carbon dioxide and methane sources and sinks using spaceborne, airborne and ground-based data over the eastern United States. Research flights will use NASA's C-130 from Wallops and the UC-12 from Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
- African fires and Atlantic clouds –Jens Redemann of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, will lead the Observations of Aerosols above Clouds and their Interactions project to probe how smoke particles from massive biomass burning in Africa influences cloud cover over the Atlantic. Particles from this seasonal burning that are lofted into the mid-troposphere and transported westward over the southeast Atlantic interact with permanent stratocumulus "climate radiators," which are critical to the regional and global climate system. NASA aircraft, including a Wallops P-3 and an Armstrong ER-2, will be used to conduct the investigation flying out of Walvis Bay, Namibia.
- Melting Greenland glaciers –Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will lead the Oceans Melting Greenland mission to investigate the role of warmer saltier Atlantic subsurface waters in Greenland glacier melting. The study will help pave the way for improved estimates of future sea level rise by observing changes in glacier melting where ice contacts seawater. Measurements of the ocean bottom as well as seawater properties around Greenland will be taken from ships and the air using several aircraft including a NASA S-3 from Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, and Gulfstream III from Armstrong.
Seven NASA centers, 25 educational institutions, three U.S. government agencies and two industry partners are involved in these Earth Venture projects. The five investigations were selected from 33 proposals.
Earth Venture investigations are part of NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program managed at Langley for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The missions in this program provide an innovative approach to address Earth science research with periodic windows of opportunity to accommodate new scientific priorities.
NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, sea, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and surface-based observation campaigns. With this information and computer analysis tools, NASA studies Earth's interconnected systems to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.
For more information about NASA's Earth science activities, visit:
www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/26/nasa-airborne-campaigns-t…
www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow
"Five new NASA airborne field campaigns will take to the skies starting in 2015 to investigate how long-range air pollution, warming ocean waters, and fires in Africa affect our climate.
These studies into several incompletely understood Earth system processes were competitively-selected as part of NASA's Earth Venture-class projects. Each project is funded at a total cost of no more than $30 million over five years. This funding includes initial development, field campaigns and analysis of data.
This is NASA's second series of Earth Venture suborbital investigations -- regularly solicited, quick-turnaround projects recommended by the National Research Council in 2007. The first series of five projects was selected in 2010.
"These new investigations address a variety of key scientific questions critical to advancing our understanding of how Earth works," said Jack Kaye, associate director for research in NASA's Earth Science Division in Washington. "These innovative airborne experiments will let us probe inside processes and locations in unprecedented detail that complements what we can do with our fleet of Earth-observing satellites."
The five selected Earth Venture investigations are:
- Atmospheric chemistry and air pollution –Steven Wofsy of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will lead the Atmospheric Tomography project to study the impact of human-produced air pollution on certain greenhouse gases. Airborne instruments will look at how atmospheric chemistry is transformed by various air pollutants and at the impact on methane and ozone which affect climate. Flights aboard NASA's DC-8 will originate from the Armstrong Flight Research Center in Palmdale, California, fly north to the western Arctic, south to the South Pacific, east to the Atlantic, north to Greenland, and return to California across central North America.
- Ecosystem changes in a warming ocean –Michael Behrenfeld of Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon, will lead the North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study, which seeks to improve predictions of how ocean ecosystems would change with ocean warming. The mission will study the annual life cycle of phytoplankton and the impact small airborne particles derived from marine organisms have on climate in the North Atlantic. The large annual phytoplankton bloom in this region may influence the Earth's energy budget. Research flights by NASA's C-130 aircraft from Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, will be coordinated with a University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) research vessel. UNOLS, located at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography in Narragansett, Rhode Island, is an organization of 62 academic institutions and national laboratories involved in oceanographic research.
- Greenhouse gas sources –Kenneth Davis of Pennsylvania State University in University Park, will lead the Atmospheric Carbon and Transport-America project to quantify the sources of regional carbon dioxide, methane and other gases, and document how weather systems transport these gases in the atmosphere. The research goal is to improve identification and predictions of carbon dioxide and methane sources and sinks using spaceborne, airborne and ground-based data over the eastern United States. Research flights will use NASA's C-130 from Wallops and the UC-12 from Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
- African fires and Atlantic clouds –Jens Redemann of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, will lead the Observations of Aerosols above Clouds and their Interactions project to probe how smoke particles from massive biomass burning in Africa influences cloud cover over the Atlantic. Particles from this seasonal burning that are lofted into the mid-troposphere and transported westward over the southeast Atlantic interact with permanent stratocumulus "climate radiators," which are critical to the regional and global climate system. NASA aircraft, including a Wallops P-3 and an Armstrong ER-2, will be used to conduct the investigation flying out of Walvis Bay, Namibia.
- Melting Greenland glaciers –Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will lead the Oceans Melting Greenland mission to investigate the role of warmer saltier Atlantic subsurface waters in Greenland glacier melting. The study will help pave the way for improved estimates of future sea level rise by observing changes in glacier melting where ice contacts seawater. Measurements of the ocean bottom as well as seawater properties around Greenland will be taken from ships and the air using several aircraft including a NASA S-3 from Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, and Gulfstream III from Armstrong.
Seven NASA centers, 25 educational institutions, three U.S. government agencies and two industry partners are involved in these Earth Venture projects. The five investigations were selected from 33 proposals.
Earth Venture investigations are part of NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program managed at Langley for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The missions in this program provide an innovative approach to address Earth science research with periodic windows of opportunity to accommodate new scientific priorities.
NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, sea, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and surface-based observation campaigns. With this information and computer analysis tools, NASA studies Earth's interconnected systems to better see how our planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.
For more information about NASA's Earth science activities, visit:
www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow "
traue ich mir nicht zu beurteilen
da sind, ja auch, viele Interessen im Spiel
schwierig auseinanderzuhalten
How dangerous ARE fracking chemicals really? - ENN/UoCB/AC, COLORADO/BOULDER - Nov 28/12, 2014
Michael.Thurman@colorado.edu
720-600-9307
Imma.Ferrer@colorado.edu
720-600-9307
Laura.Snider@colorado.edu
303-735-0528
www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2014/11/12/major-class-fracki…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48045
"The “surfactant” chemicals found in samples of fracking fluid collected in five states were no more toxic than substances commonly found in homes, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Fracking fluid is largely comprised of water and sand, but oil and gas companies also add a variety of other chemicals, including anti-bacterial agents, corrosion inhibitors and surfactants. Surfactants reduce the surface tension between water and oil, allowing for more oil to be extracted from porous rock underground.
In a new study published in the journal Analytical Chemistry, the research team identified the surfactants found in fracking fluid samples from Colorado, Louisiana, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Texas. The results showed that the chemicals found in the fluid samples were also commonly found in everyday products, from toothpaste to laxatives to detergent to ice cream.
“This is the first published paper that identifies some of the organic fracking chemicals going down the well that companies use,” said Michael Thurman, lead author of the paper and a co-founder of the Laboratory for Environmental Mass Spectrometry in CU-Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. “We found chemicals in the samples we were running that most of us are putting down our drains at home.”
Imma Ferrer, chief scientist at the mass spectrometry laboratory and co-author of the paper said, “Our unique instrumentation with accurate mass and intimate knowledge of ion chemistry was used to identify these chemicals.” The mass spectrometry laboratory is sponsored by Agilent Technologies, Inc., which provides state-of-the art instrumentation and support.
Fracking well image credit Pace Law School. "
da sind, ja auch, viele Interessen im Spiel
schwierig auseinanderzuhalten
How dangerous ARE fracking chemicals really? - ENN/UoCB/AC, COLORADO/BOULDER - Nov 28/12, 2014
Michael.Thurman@colorado.edu
720-600-9307
Imma.Ferrer@colorado.edu
720-600-9307
Laura.Snider@colorado.edu
303-735-0528
www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2014/11/12/major-class-fracki…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48045
"The “surfactant” chemicals found in samples of fracking fluid collected in five states were no more toxic than substances commonly found in homes, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Fracking fluid is largely comprised of water and sand, but oil and gas companies also add a variety of other chemicals, including anti-bacterial agents, corrosion inhibitors and surfactants. Surfactants reduce the surface tension between water and oil, allowing for more oil to be extracted from porous rock underground.
In a new study published in the journal Analytical Chemistry, the research team identified the surfactants found in fracking fluid samples from Colorado, Louisiana, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Texas. The results showed that the chemicals found in the fluid samples were also commonly found in everyday products, from toothpaste to laxatives to detergent to ice cream.
“This is the first published paper that identifies some of the organic fracking chemicals going down the well that companies use,” said Michael Thurman, lead author of the paper and a co-founder of the Laboratory for Environmental Mass Spectrometry in CU-Boulder’s College of Engineering and Applied Science. “We found chemicals in the samples we were running that most of us are putting down our drains at home.”
Imma Ferrer, chief scientist at the mass spectrometry laboratory and co-author of the paper said, “Our unique instrumentation with accurate mass and intimate knowledge of ion chemistry was used to identify these chemicals.” The mass spectrometry laboratory is sponsored by Agilent Technologies, Inc., which provides state-of-the art instrumentation and support.
Fracking well image credit Pace Law School. "
Obama’s Plan to ‘Power Africa’ Gets Off to a Dim Start
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/30/obamas-plan-to-power-afri…
"Barack Obama last year told a cheering crowd in Cape Town that a $7 billion plan to "Power Africa" would double electricity output on the world's poorest continent and bring "light where currently there is darkness".
A year later, the U.S. president's flagship project for Africa has already achieved 25 percent of its goal to deliver 10,000 megawatts of electricity and bring light to 20 million households and businesses, according to its annual report.
But the five-year plan has not yet delivered the power.
Power Africa has not measured its progress by counting actual megawatts added to the grid but promises of additional power made in deals it says it helped negotiate, according to sources inside the project and documents seen by Reuters.
Some projects facilitated by Power Africa -- a program operated by the U.S. aid agency USAID -- were under way years before the scheme's inception, others are still in the planning stage.
It is unclear how much of the $7 billion Obama pledged has actually been spent or if a further $20 billion in private sector investment commitments will materialize.
"Saying you've met targets on projects that might never happen or taking the credit for projects that have been worked on for years makes me uncomfortable," a source working on Power Africa told Reuters. "It's misleading."
Obama's pledge to double power generation in Africa within five years looked highly ambitious from the start. Per capita electricity output in Sub-Saharan Africa has been flat for three decades because most promised power plants never get built.
"We're dealing with megawatts on paper, rather than on the grid," a second source working on the project said.
"Is that really what Obama promised?"
The first African-American U.S. president, the son of a Kenyan father, Obama has often been criticized for a lukewarm engagement in Africa, consisting more of words than deeds.
NASA Earth Observatory handout released December 5, 2012 of a composite image of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East at night, assembled from satellite data in April and October 2012. NASA Earth Observatory/Reuters
"WE'RE LIKE A PHARMACIST"
The 48 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, with a combined population of 800 million, produce roughly the same amount of power as Spain, a country of just 46 million. This constrains Africa's growth and keeps hundreds of millions in poverty.
Power Africa coordinator Andrew Herscowitz told Reuters there had been some confusion about the role of the program. He said it was always intended to "expedite transactions", facilitating private investment rather than handing out aid.
Herscowitz said Power Africa was there to help the private sector deliver electricity and it had already negotiated commitments from companies worth $20 billion, although he did not know how much of this money had been spent.
"We’re like a pharmacist, where people come to us, we reach out to people and figure out what is needed," he said.
"In some projects we may have a lot of involvement and in some we have very little involvement."
Foreign companies sign billions of dollars of agreements with African governments to build infrastructure every year, although a large number never get built.
In April 2011, the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corp., a government aid agency involved in Power Africa, signed a $350 million deal to "revitalize" Malawi's power sector.
More than three years on, 1.7 percent of that money has been spent, according to the programmer's website, which gives no detail on progress on the ground.
Memoranda of understanding Power Africa signed this year with its six focus countries -- Tanzania, Nigeria,Kenya, Ethiopia, Liberia and Ghana -- contain less than $100 million of financial commitments targeted at specific countries, most of which is for consultants.
U.S. consultancy Tetra Tech won a $64 million contract and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Africa Governance Initiative was given a $3 million deal.
As with many African aid projects, rights groups have criticized Power Africa as mostly being a vehicle to subsidize U.S. companies.
Documents show $5 billion out of the $7 billion pledged is for loans for U.S. exports from the government's Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC).
TURN ON THE LIGHTS
"It’s absolutely not true. Power Africa is an opportunity to turn on the lights for millions of Africans by taking investment from all over the world," Herscowitz said.
Herscowitz rejected suggestions Power Africa merely tapped into existing projects, highlighting a 5 megawatt "NextGen" solar project in Tanzania and a 30 megawatt biomass scheme in Kenya which he said "didn't exist before Power Africa".
The NextGen project website, however, says a power purchase agreement for the solar project was signed in January 2013, six months before Power Africa was launched.
It is by no means guaranteed that the Power Africa program, which has an initial five-year mandate, will continue or be seen as a priority when Obama's final term ends in two years, U.S. government sources told Reuters.
In addition, the investment banks EXIM and OPIC are fighting for their survival in Congress, where Obama's Democratic Party was severely weakened in mid-term elections this month.
In a change of tack, the U.S. government said this month it wants to partner with China on improving power in Africa. [ID:nL6N0SW671]
Meanwhile, corruption in the countries that Power Africa operates in remains a problem.
Nigeria's state oil company was accused last year by the then central bank governor of withholding $20 billion in oil funds due to the government, while Tanzania's parliament is currently reviewing a report on graft in its energy sector. "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/30/obamas-plan-to-power-afri…
"Barack Obama last year told a cheering crowd in Cape Town that a $7 billion plan to "Power Africa" would double electricity output on the world's poorest continent and bring "light where currently there is darkness".
A year later, the U.S. president's flagship project for Africa has already achieved 25 percent of its goal to deliver 10,000 megawatts of electricity and bring light to 20 million households and businesses, according to its annual report.
But the five-year plan has not yet delivered the power.
Power Africa has not measured its progress by counting actual megawatts added to the grid but promises of additional power made in deals it says it helped negotiate, according to sources inside the project and documents seen by Reuters.
Some projects facilitated by Power Africa -- a program operated by the U.S. aid agency USAID -- were under way years before the scheme's inception, others are still in the planning stage.
It is unclear how much of the $7 billion Obama pledged has actually been spent or if a further $20 billion in private sector investment commitments will materialize.
"Saying you've met targets on projects that might never happen or taking the credit for projects that have been worked on for years makes me uncomfortable," a source working on Power Africa told Reuters. "It's misleading."
Obama's pledge to double power generation in Africa within five years looked highly ambitious from the start. Per capita electricity output in Sub-Saharan Africa has been flat for three decades because most promised power plants never get built.
"We're dealing with megawatts on paper, rather than on the grid," a second source working on the project said.
"Is that really what Obama promised?"
The first African-American U.S. president, the son of a Kenyan father, Obama has often been criticized for a lukewarm engagement in Africa, consisting more of words than deeds.
NASA Earth Observatory handout released December 5, 2012 of a composite image of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East at night, assembled from satellite data in April and October 2012. NASA Earth Observatory/Reuters
"WE'RE LIKE A PHARMACIST"
The 48 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, with a combined population of 800 million, produce roughly the same amount of power as Spain, a country of just 46 million. This constrains Africa's growth and keeps hundreds of millions in poverty.
Power Africa coordinator Andrew Herscowitz told Reuters there had been some confusion about the role of the program. He said it was always intended to "expedite transactions", facilitating private investment rather than handing out aid.
Herscowitz said Power Africa was there to help the private sector deliver electricity and it had already negotiated commitments from companies worth $20 billion, although he did not know how much of this money had been spent.
"We’re like a pharmacist, where people come to us, we reach out to people and figure out what is needed," he said.
"In some projects we may have a lot of involvement and in some we have very little involvement."
Foreign companies sign billions of dollars of agreements with African governments to build infrastructure every year, although a large number never get built.
In April 2011, the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corp., a government aid agency involved in Power Africa, signed a $350 million deal to "revitalize" Malawi's power sector.
More than three years on, 1.7 percent of that money has been spent, according to the programmer's website, which gives no detail on progress on the ground.
Memoranda of understanding Power Africa signed this year with its six focus countries -- Tanzania, Nigeria,Kenya, Ethiopia, Liberia and Ghana -- contain less than $100 million of financial commitments targeted at specific countries, most of which is for consultants.
U.S. consultancy Tetra Tech won a $64 million contract and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Africa Governance Initiative was given a $3 million deal.
As with many African aid projects, rights groups have criticized Power Africa as mostly being a vehicle to subsidize U.S. companies.
Documents show $5 billion out of the $7 billion pledged is for loans for U.S. exports from the government's Export-Import Bank (EXIM) and Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC).
TURN ON THE LIGHTS
"It’s absolutely not true. Power Africa is an opportunity to turn on the lights for millions of Africans by taking investment from all over the world," Herscowitz said.
Herscowitz rejected suggestions Power Africa merely tapped into existing projects, highlighting a 5 megawatt "NextGen" solar project in Tanzania and a 30 megawatt biomass scheme in Kenya which he said "didn't exist before Power Africa".
The NextGen project website, however, says a power purchase agreement for the solar project was signed in January 2013, six months before Power Africa was launched.
It is by no means guaranteed that the Power Africa program, which has an initial five-year mandate, will continue or be seen as a priority when Obama's final term ends in two years, U.S. government sources told Reuters.
In addition, the investment banks EXIM and OPIC are fighting for their survival in Congress, where Obama's Democratic Party was severely weakened in mid-term elections this month.
In a change of tack, the U.S. government said this month it wants to partner with China on improving power in Africa. [ID:nL6N0SW671]
Meanwhile, corruption in the countries that Power Africa operates in remains a problem.
Nigeria's state oil company was accused last year by the then central bank governor of withholding $20 billion in oil funds due to the government, while Tanzania's parliament is currently reviewing a report on graft in its energy sector. "
Mounting Electronic Waste Poses Major Threat to Environment, Health - CT/R/NW/UN - Nov 29, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/29/mounting-electronic-waste…
"While the fact that 95.5 million Americans said they would shop on Black Friday is good news for retailers, it is a far less positive figure for the environment. Cheap electronics are one of the biggest draws for shoppers on the day (and indeed the rest of the year), but these immediate savings hide the ultimate collective cost - old electronics (e-waste) that are improperly disposed can result in environmental pollution with its attendant health risks, as well as data theft.
In 2012, the world amassed almost 49 million metric tons of e-waste, including everything from last generation cellphones and laptops to televisions and washing machines. The largest contributor, the United States, supplied nearly 66 pounds of e-waste per person that year. And the trend is only growing. One study, conducted by a United Nations partner organization, projects that this number will rise to 65.4 million metric tons by 2017. As the amount of e-waste dramatically increases, solutions for proper disposal have lagged considerably behind.
Some old electronics wind up collecting dust in homes as consumers are either unsure of what to do with their outdated devices, or fear for the security of their data. Others hand their aged gadgets to family members or friends.
But a great deal of e-waste ultimately winds up in landfills, meaning the toxic materials they contain, such as lead, arsenic, beryllium and mercury, often end up leaking into the environment, poisoning ecosystems and harming not only humans but animals and plants too. Improper disposal also poses a risk to data security as any information that has not been wiped from a device can usually be extracted with ease.
- An employee arranges discarded computers at a newly opened electronic waste recycling factory in Wuhan, Hubei province.Stringer/ REUTERS -
E-waste recyclers can be seen to be a responsible response to this problem. Though there has yet to be a centralized response by the federal government to the growing e-waste issue, many of these recyclers have opted to follow self-imposed certification systems that hold them accountable for environmental and data safety.
But awareness of the e-waste issue is fninally growing. John Shegerian, CEO and co-founder of Electronic Recyclers International (ERI) - the largest e-waste recycling company in the US - told Newsweek that when his company launched in April of 2005, ERI recycled 10,000 pounds of e-waste its first month. Last month, Shegerian says ERI recycled nearly 25 million pounds.
ERI has clients ranging from cities and corporations, to New York City apartment buildings. Once the e-waste enters their facility, each item is barcoded and tracked. Customers can then watch the progress of their device’s recycling online. “Transparency is key to responsible recycling,” Shegerian says.
ERI either recycles the parts, or refurbishes the device for reuse according to the contract created with the customer. In the case of recycling, the company separates the different materials and throws the electronic carcass into an industrial shredder. ERI then sells the broken down materials, and pays a responsible smelter to take the glass. If a device is being prepared for reuse, ERI cleans and fixes the item, wipes the data, and then repackages and resells it.
So far, 25 states have passed legislation calling for e-waste recycling, with several more states in the process. But until the problem is dealt with on a national scale, it will continue to flourish. "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/11/29/mounting-electronic-waste…
"While the fact that 95.5 million Americans said they would shop on Black Friday is good news for retailers, it is a far less positive figure for the environment. Cheap electronics are one of the biggest draws for shoppers on the day (and indeed the rest of the year), but these immediate savings hide the ultimate collective cost - old electronics (e-waste) that are improperly disposed can result in environmental pollution with its attendant health risks, as well as data theft.
In 2012, the world amassed almost 49 million metric tons of e-waste, including everything from last generation cellphones and laptops to televisions and washing machines. The largest contributor, the United States, supplied nearly 66 pounds of e-waste per person that year. And the trend is only growing. One study, conducted by a United Nations partner organization, projects that this number will rise to 65.4 million metric tons by 2017. As the amount of e-waste dramatically increases, solutions for proper disposal have lagged considerably behind.
Some old electronics wind up collecting dust in homes as consumers are either unsure of what to do with their outdated devices, or fear for the security of their data. Others hand their aged gadgets to family members or friends.
But a great deal of e-waste ultimately winds up in landfills, meaning the toxic materials they contain, such as lead, arsenic, beryllium and mercury, often end up leaking into the environment, poisoning ecosystems and harming not only humans but animals and plants too. Improper disposal also poses a risk to data security as any information that has not been wiped from a device can usually be extracted with ease.
- An employee arranges discarded computers at a newly opened electronic waste recycling factory in Wuhan, Hubei province.Stringer/ REUTERS -
E-waste recyclers can be seen to be a responsible response to this problem. Though there has yet to be a centralized response by the federal government to the growing e-waste issue, many of these recyclers have opted to follow self-imposed certification systems that hold them accountable for environmental and data safety.
But awareness of the e-waste issue is fninally growing. John Shegerian, CEO and co-founder of Electronic Recyclers International (ERI) - the largest e-waste recycling company in the US - told Newsweek that when his company launched in April of 2005, ERI recycled 10,000 pounds of e-waste its first month. Last month, Shegerian says ERI recycled nearly 25 million pounds.
ERI has clients ranging from cities and corporations, to New York City apartment buildings. Once the e-waste enters their facility, each item is barcoded and tracked. Customers can then watch the progress of their device’s recycling online. “Transparency is key to responsible recycling,” Shegerian says.
ERI either recycles the parts, or refurbishes the device for reuse according to the contract created with the customer. In the case of recycling, the company separates the different materials and throws the electronic carcass into an industrial shredder. ERI then sells the broken down materials, and pays a responsible smelter to take the glass. If a device is being prepared for reuse, ERI cleans and fixes the item, wipes the data, and then repackages and resells it.
So far, 25 states have passed legislation calling for e-waste recycling, with several more states in the process. But until the problem is dealt with on a national scale, it will continue to flourish. "
Education is a key to climate change adaption
www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/trends/125306-study-finds-edu…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48050
"Given that some climate change is already unavoidable investing in empowerment through universal education should be an essential element in climate change adaptation efforts, which so far focus mostly in engineering projects, according to a new study from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
The article draws upon extensive analysis of natural disaster data for 167 countries over the past four decades as well as a number of studies carried out in individual countries and regions, published last year in a special issue of the journal Ecology and Society.
The research shows that in many cases - particularly where the exact consequences of climate change are still unclear - educational expansion could be a better investment in protecting people from the impacts than conventional investments such as building sea walls, dams, irrigation systems, and other infrastructure.
"Education is key in reducing disaster fatalities and enhancing adaptive capacity," says Wolfgang Lutz, Director of IIASA's World Population Program and Founding Director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, a collaboration of IIASA, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Vienna University of Economics, who wrote the article together with IIASA researchers Raya Muttarak and Erich Striessnig, who have dual affiliations with the Vienna Institute of Demography and the Vienna University of Economics and Business, respectively.
"Our research shows that education is more important than GDP in reducing mortality from natural disasters. We also demonstrated that under rapid development and educational expansion across the globe, disaster fatalities will be reduced substantially," says Muttarak.
Group of students studying image via Shutterstock. "
www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/trends/125306-study-finds-edu…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48050
"Given that some climate change is already unavoidable investing in empowerment through universal education should be an essential element in climate change adaptation efforts, which so far focus mostly in engineering projects, according to a new study from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).
The article draws upon extensive analysis of natural disaster data for 167 countries over the past four decades as well as a number of studies carried out in individual countries and regions, published last year in a special issue of the journal Ecology and Society.
The research shows that in many cases - particularly where the exact consequences of climate change are still unclear - educational expansion could be a better investment in protecting people from the impacts than conventional investments such as building sea walls, dams, irrigation systems, and other infrastructure.
"Education is key in reducing disaster fatalities and enhancing adaptive capacity," says Wolfgang Lutz, Director of IIASA's World Population Program and Founding Director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, a collaboration of IIASA, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Vienna University of Economics, who wrote the article together with IIASA researchers Raya Muttarak and Erich Striessnig, who have dual affiliations with the Vienna Institute of Demography and the Vienna University of Economics and Business, respectively.
"Our research shows that education is more important than GDP in reducing mortality from natural disasters. We also demonstrated that under rapid development and educational expansion across the globe, disaster fatalities will be reduced substantially," says Muttarak.
Group of students studying image via Shutterstock. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.468.248 von Popeye82 am 02.12.14 03:33:11
What Drives the Global Warming Debate?
http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2014/politics-not-severe-weathe…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48053
"Scientists have presented the most comprehensive evidence to date that climate extremes such as droughts and record temperatures are failing to change people’s minds about global warming.
Instead, political orientation is the most influential factor in shaping perceptions about climate change, both in the short-term and long-term, said Sandra Marquart-Pyatt, a Michigan State University sociologist and lead investigator on the study.
“The idea that shifting climate patterns are influencing perceptions in the United States – we didn’t find that,” said Marquart-Pyatt, associate professor of sociology. “Our results show that politics has the most important effect on perceptions of climate change.”
The researchers ran more than 100 computer models integrating just over a decade of Gallup survey responses on climate-change perceptions with 50 years of regional climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The 12-page study, which appears in the journal Global Environmental Change, includes a 42-page appendix of data from analyses producing about 800 parameters to support the findings.
Some previous studies suggested temperature patterns do, in fact, influence perceptions about global warming, but none measured climatic conditions as comprehensively as the current investigation. Past research often considers a two-day window or a particular community and a single measure of temperature, not an expansive sweep of multiple climate measures as the authors of this study do.
The study analyzed climatic storm-severity measures used by NOAA – temperature, drought, precipitation and wind velocity – from all 50 states in combination with the 11 years of public opinion data. “This gives us the pulse of the nation,” said Marquart-Pyatt.
While advocates of global warming reduction efforts hope that experience with a changing climate will eventually convince the public of the reality and seriousness of the problem, the current findings do not bode well for that scenario.
Given this expansive treatment of the issue, there is “little grounds for optimism,” the study says, “that public concern about climate change will be driven by future climatic conditions.”
Continue reading at Michigan State University. "
What Drives the Global Warming Debate?
http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2014/politics-not-severe-weathe…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48053
"Scientists have presented the most comprehensive evidence to date that climate extremes such as droughts and record temperatures are failing to change people’s minds about global warming.
Instead, political orientation is the most influential factor in shaping perceptions about climate change, both in the short-term and long-term, said Sandra Marquart-Pyatt, a Michigan State University sociologist and lead investigator on the study.
“The idea that shifting climate patterns are influencing perceptions in the United States – we didn’t find that,” said Marquart-Pyatt, associate professor of sociology. “Our results show that politics has the most important effect on perceptions of climate change.”
The researchers ran more than 100 computer models integrating just over a decade of Gallup survey responses on climate-change perceptions with 50 years of regional climate data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The 12-page study, which appears in the journal Global Environmental Change, includes a 42-page appendix of data from analyses producing about 800 parameters to support the findings.
Some previous studies suggested temperature patterns do, in fact, influence perceptions about global warming, but none measured climatic conditions as comprehensively as the current investigation. Past research often considers a two-day window or a particular community and a single measure of temperature, not an expansive sweep of multiple climate measures as the authors of this study do.
The study analyzed climatic storm-severity measures used by NOAA – temperature, drought, precipitation and wind velocity – from all 50 states in combination with the 11 years of public opinion data. “This gives us the pulse of the nation,” said Marquart-Pyatt.
While advocates of global warming reduction efforts hope that experience with a changing climate will eventually convince the public of the reality and seriousness of the problem, the current findings do not bode well for that scenario.
Given this expansive treatment of the issue, there is “little grounds for optimism,” the study says, “that public concern about climate change will be driven by future climatic conditions.”
Continue reading at Michigan State University. "
New Report Shows Little Hope of Reaching 'Sustainable Population' in Next Century
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/1201-cesare-ucsc-population.ht…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48055
"According to recent projections, the number of people living on Earth could exceed ten billion by the end of this century. Now, a new study has examined what it would take to reverse that unrelenting growth and achieve a sustainable population that is less threatening to biodiversity and ecosystems around the world. Short of a global catastrophe, scientists say, the only way to halt this population momentum is to institute a planet-wide one-child policy within a few decades.
The new study comes on the heels of a statistical projection released in September. It analyzed U.N. data from July and calculated how likely population is to end up in different ranges. In particular, it found an 80 percent chance for a population between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion by century's end, with the most likely figure at around 10.9 billion.
That number is not sustainable, according to Corey Bradshaw, a biologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
"Things like forest elephants? Kiss 'em goodbye. Tigers in India? They're gone," Bradshaw told mongabay.com.
Bradshaw and his Adelaide colleague, Barry Brook, examined whether it's possible to rein in population growth in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They found that without draconian limits on the number of children per family, population growth is "virtually locked in."
The researchers studied computer models of population over the next century, focusing particularly on how different parameters—or levers—affected their models.
"We're not out there trying to predict there will be X number of people on the planet as of 2100," Bradshaw said. "What we didn't really know is the strength of the different levers one can pull."
Bradshaw and Brook pulled on three levers. First was fertility: the average number of children women have. Next was mortality: the likelihood that people die by a certain age. And the last was primiparity: the average age at which women have their first child. They modeled "what if?" scenarios that adjusted these levers. "
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/1201-cesare-ucsc-population.ht…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48055
"According to recent projections, the number of people living on Earth could exceed ten billion by the end of this century. Now, a new study has examined what it would take to reverse that unrelenting growth and achieve a sustainable population that is less threatening to biodiversity and ecosystems around the world. Short of a global catastrophe, scientists say, the only way to halt this population momentum is to institute a planet-wide one-child policy within a few decades.
The new study comes on the heels of a statistical projection released in September. It analyzed U.N. data from July and calculated how likely population is to end up in different ranges. In particular, it found an 80 percent chance for a population between 9.6 billion and 12.3 billion by century's end, with the most likely figure at around 10.9 billion.
That number is not sustainable, according to Corey Bradshaw, a biologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia.
"Things like forest elephants? Kiss 'em goodbye. Tigers in India? They're gone," Bradshaw told mongabay.com.
Bradshaw and his Adelaide colleague, Barry Brook, examined whether it's possible to rein in population growth in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They found that without draconian limits on the number of children per family, population growth is "virtually locked in."
The researchers studied computer models of population over the next century, focusing particularly on how different parameters—or levers—affected their models.
"We're not out there trying to predict there will be X number of people on the planet as of 2100," Bradshaw said. "What we didn't really know is the strength of the different levers one can pull."
Bradshaw and Brook pulled on three levers. First was fertility: the average number of children women have. Next was mortality: the likelihood that people die by a certain age. And the last was primiparity: the average age at which women have their first child. They modeled "what if?" scenarios that adjusted these levers. "
Link1 ist das Papier
Canadian clean energy sector 'rockets, as investors jump on board' - SH/TCP/CEC, OTTAWA - Dec 2, 2014
http://cleanenergycanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/TER-…
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2014/12/02/canadian-clean-e…
"Canadian investments in clean energy totalled $6.5 billion last year, a 45 per cent increase from 2012, according to a new study released Tuesday.
More than half the Canadian investment _ $3.6 billion _ went into wind power, with another $2.5 billion invested in the solar sector, says Clean Energy Canada, an advocacy and research organization.
The investment spike moved Canada up to seventh place among the Group of 20 industrialized nations, from 12th spot a year earlier.
``We hear a lot of talk about pipelines and the oil and gas sector,'' Merran Smith, the director of Clean Energy Canada, said in an interview.
``What we don't hear is that Canada's actually gone from a boutique clean energy industry to really big business.''
Over the past five years, $24 billion has been invested in clean energy, and the sector now accounts for almost 24,000 direct jobs, a total that includes manufacturing but not construction employment.
The report comes as Canadian officials begin two weeks of meetings in Lima, Peru, on the United Nations framework convention on climate change.
Greenhouse gas emissions are rising again in Canada, according to Environment Canada projections, and the country will not come close to meeting its 2020 international target for curbing emissions under the 2009 Copenhagen accord. The talks in Lima are part of negotiations for a post-2020 international agreement that is supposed to be completed next December.
The UN talks were given a jolt of adrenalin last month when the United States and China, the world's two biggest emitters, announced a bilateral deal to curb emissions through 2030.
Both the Chinese and U.S. governments are investing heavily in renewables.
``There's a clean energy transition underway globally already, and they're backing their clean energy industries,'' said Smith.
What makes the Canadian investment story more compelling is that it's happening without much federal government interest.
Private sector financiers _ many from abroad _ and provincial governments are driving the investment boom.
Of the top five financiers of clean energy in Canada over the past five years, investing $3.44 billion among them, two are Japanese, two are German and just one is Canadian, says the study.
Clean Energy Canada would like to see a federal industrial policy, based on tax and research incentives, like the one that helped Canada's aerospace and oil sands industries in their infancy.
``If the federal government got engaged we could be a real world leader in clean energy,'' said Smith. ``But the federal government is really missing in action.'' "
Canadian clean energy sector 'rockets, as investors jump on board' - SH/TCP/CEC, OTTAWA - Dec 2, 2014
http://cleanenergycanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/TER-…
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2014/12/02/canadian-clean-e…
"Canadian investments in clean energy totalled $6.5 billion last year, a 45 per cent increase from 2012, according to a new study released Tuesday.
More than half the Canadian investment _ $3.6 billion _ went into wind power, with another $2.5 billion invested in the solar sector, says Clean Energy Canada, an advocacy and research organization.
The investment spike moved Canada up to seventh place among the Group of 20 industrialized nations, from 12th spot a year earlier.
``We hear a lot of talk about pipelines and the oil and gas sector,'' Merran Smith, the director of Clean Energy Canada, said in an interview.
``What we don't hear is that Canada's actually gone from a boutique clean energy industry to really big business.''
Over the past five years, $24 billion has been invested in clean energy, and the sector now accounts for almost 24,000 direct jobs, a total that includes manufacturing but not construction employment.
The report comes as Canadian officials begin two weeks of meetings in Lima, Peru, on the United Nations framework convention on climate change.
Greenhouse gas emissions are rising again in Canada, according to Environment Canada projections, and the country will not come close to meeting its 2020 international target for curbing emissions under the 2009 Copenhagen accord. The talks in Lima are part of negotiations for a post-2020 international agreement that is supposed to be completed next December.
The UN talks were given a jolt of adrenalin last month when the United States and China, the world's two biggest emitters, announced a bilateral deal to curb emissions through 2030.
Both the Chinese and U.S. governments are investing heavily in renewables.
``There's a clean energy transition underway globally already, and they're backing their clean energy industries,'' said Smith.
What makes the Canadian investment story more compelling is that it's happening without much federal government interest.
Private sector financiers _ many from abroad _ and provincial governments are driving the investment boom.
Of the top five financiers of clean energy in Canada over the past five years, investing $3.44 billion among them, two are Japanese, two are German and just one is Canadian, says the study.
Clean Energy Canada would like to see a federal industrial policy, based on tax and research incentives, like the one that helped Canada's aerospace and oil sands industries in their infancy.
``If the federal government got engaged we could be a real world leader in clean energy,'' said Smith. ``But the federal government is really missing in action.'' "
Melt rate of West Antarctic glaciers has tripled - ENN/UCI/NASA, JPL/PPRS, IRVINE - Dec 3, 2014
http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/west-antarctic-melt-rate-…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48060
"A comprehensive, 21-year analysis of the fastest-melting region of Antarctica has found that the melt rate of glaciers there has tripled during the last decade.
The glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica are hemorrhaging ice faster than any other part of Antarctica and are the most significant Antarctic contributors to sea level rise. This study is the first to evaluate and reconcile observations from four different measurement techniques to produce an authoritative estimate of the amount and the rate of loss over the last two decades.
“The mass loss of these glaciers is increasing at an amazing rate,” said scientist Isabella Velicogna, jointly of the UC Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Velicogna is a coauthor of a paper on the results, which has been accepted for Dec. 5 publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Lead author Tyler Sutterley, a UCI doctoral candidate, and his team did the analysis to verify that the melting in this part of Antarctica is shifting into high gear. “Previous studies had suggested that this region is starting to change very dramatically since the 1990s, and we wanted to see how all the different techniques compared,” Sutterley said. “The remarkable agreement among the techniques gave us confidence that we are getting this right.”
The researchers reconciled measurements of the mass balance of glaciers flowing into the Amundsen Sea Embayment. Mass balance is a measure of how much ice the glaciers gain and lose over time from accumulating or melting snow, discharges of ice as icebergs, and other causes. Measurements from all four techniques were available from 2003 to 2009. Combined, the four data sets span the years 1992 to 2013.
The glaciers in the embayment lost mass throughout the entire period. The researchers calculated two separate quantities: the total amount of loss, and the changes in the rate of loss.
The total amount of loss averaged 83 gigatons per year (91.5 billion U.S. tons). By comparison, Mt. Everest weighs about 161 gigatons, meaning the Antarctic glaciers lost a Mt.-Everest’s-worth amount of water weight every two years over the last 21 years.
The rate of loss accelerated an average of 6.1 gigatons (6.7 billion U.S. tons) per year since 1992.
From 2003 to 2009, when all four observational techniques overlapped, the melt rate increased an average of 16.3 gigatons per year — almost three times the rate of increase for the full 21-year period. The total amount of loss was close to the average at 84 gigatons. "
http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/west-antarctic-melt-rate-…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48060
"A comprehensive, 21-year analysis of the fastest-melting region of Antarctica has found that the melt rate of glaciers there has tripled during the last decade.
The glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica are hemorrhaging ice faster than any other part of Antarctica and are the most significant Antarctic contributors to sea level rise. This study is the first to evaluate and reconcile observations from four different measurement techniques to produce an authoritative estimate of the amount and the rate of loss over the last two decades.
“The mass loss of these glaciers is increasing at an amazing rate,” said scientist Isabella Velicogna, jointly of the UC Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Velicogna is a coauthor of a paper on the results, which has been accepted for Dec. 5 publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Lead author Tyler Sutterley, a UCI doctoral candidate, and his team did the analysis to verify that the melting in this part of Antarctica is shifting into high gear. “Previous studies had suggested that this region is starting to change very dramatically since the 1990s, and we wanted to see how all the different techniques compared,” Sutterley said. “The remarkable agreement among the techniques gave us confidence that we are getting this right.”
The researchers reconciled measurements of the mass balance of glaciers flowing into the Amundsen Sea Embayment. Mass balance is a measure of how much ice the glaciers gain and lose over time from accumulating or melting snow, discharges of ice as icebergs, and other causes. Measurements from all four techniques were available from 2003 to 2009. Combined, the four data sets span the years 1992 to 2013.
The glaciers in the embayment lost mass throughout the entire period. The researchers calculated two separate quantities: the total amount of loss, and the changes in the rate of loss.
The total amount of loss averaged 83 gigatons per year (91.5 billion U.S. tons). By comparison, Mt. Everest weighs about 161 gigatons, meaning the Antarctic glaciers lost a Mt.-Everest’s-worth amount of water weight every two years over the last 21 years.
The rate of loss accelerated an average of 6.1 gigatons (6.7 billion U.S. tons) per year since 1992.
From 2003 to 2009, when all four observational techniques overlapped, the melt rate increased an average of 16.3 gigatons per year — almost three times the rate of increase for the full 21-year period. The total amount of loss was close to the average at 84 gigatons. "
UK considers sustainable aviation fuel
www.clickgreen.org.uk/news/national-news/125325-sustainable-…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48056
"A coalition of the UK’s airlines, airports, manufacturers and air navigation service provider NATS, has launched its latest industry road map, which considers the opportunities for sustainable aviation fuels.
The Sustainable Aviation (SA) research identifies the potential for a 24 per cent reduction in aviation carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and the generation of £265 million in economic value plus the creation of 4,400 jobs in the UK over the next 15 years.
However, the report, launched today at a reception at the Houses of Parliament, warns Government support will be vital to achieve this potential.
The research identifies and forecasts the potential volumes of sustainable aviation fuel to 2050, both for the UK and globally. It highlights the possible contribution such fuels can make to supporting the decarbonisation of the UK economy, the opportunities for job creation and economic growth as well as the viability of the market for producers, refiners and investors.
SA says it hopes to build on the successful work promoting innovation that Government has already undertaken with industry, in order to develop a shared vision that focuses on investing in the commercialisation of high-value sustainable aviation fuels.
The leading findings of today’s road-map, include:
- Forecasts that by 2030 there could be 90-160 operational sustainable fuel plants globally with revenue estimated at £8-17 billion – with up to 12 plants in the UK
- Defines an opportunity to develop a domestic industry for sustainable aviation fuels generating up to £265 million in economic value, and supporting up to 4,400 jobs
- Identifies that with the right policy and investment framework, UK aviation can reduce its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by up to 24% by 2050 through the deployment of sustainable alternative fuels.
- Recommends the establishment of a public-private initiative to help realise these opportunities, similar to the USA’s Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuel Initiative (CAAFI).
Jonathon Counsell, chair of Sustainable Aviation, said: “The UK aviation industry is committed to reducing its impact on the environment and this Road- Map not only demonstrates an additional way for us to do so but also identifies a new industry that could supply thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions pounds to our economy. "
www.clickgreen.org.uk/news/national-news/125325-sustainable-…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48056
"A coalition of the UK’s airlines, airports, manufacturers and air navigation service provider NATS, has launched its latest industry road map, which considers the opportunities for sustainable aviation fuels.
The Sustainable Aviation (SA) research identifies the potential for a 24 per cent reduction in aviation carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 and the generation of £265 million in economic value plus the creation of 4,400 jobs in the UK over the next 15 years.
However, the report, launched today at a reception at the Houses of Parliament, warns Government support will be vital to achieve this potential.
The research identifies and forecasts the potential volumes of sustainable aviation fuel to 2050, both for the UK and globally. It highlights the possible contribution such fuels can make to supporting the decarbonisation of the UK economy, the opportunities for job creation and economic growth as well as the viability of the market for producers, refiners and investors.
SA says it hopes to build on the successful work promoting innovation that Government has already undertaken with industry, in order to develop a shared vision that focuses on investing in the commercialisation of high-value sustainable aviation fuels.
The leading findings of today’s road-map, include:
- Forecasts that by 2030 there could be 90-160 operational sustainable fuel plants globally with revenue estimated at £8-17 billion – with up to 12 plants in the UK
- Defines an opportunity to develop a domestic industry for sustainable aviation fuels generating up to £265 million in economic value, and supporting up to 4,400 jobs
- Identifies that with the right policy and investment framework, UK aviation can reduce its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by up to 24% by 2050 through the deployment of sustainable alternative fuels.
- Recommends the establishment of a public-private initiative to help realise these opportunities, similar to the USA’s Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuel Initiative (CAAFI).
Jonathon Counsell, chair of Sustainable Aviation, said: “The UK aviation industry is committed to reducing its impact on the environment and this Road- Map not only demonstrates an additional way for us to do so but also identifies a new industry that could supply thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions pounds to our economy. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 47.891.366 von Popeye82 am 27.09.14 17:19:09
finde das, beabsichtigte, Bezugsschreiben nicht mehr
dann nehme ich mal Dieses
"3) SolarCity CFO: "Buckle up, it's going to be an amazing ride" One of our core beliefs at CoPower is that with greater scale and easier access to capital, new deployment of clean energy will continue to outpace other forms of energy. SolarCity, the solar installation company headed by Tesla Motors' Elon Musk, recently held an earnings call where they explained how they're on track to reach a cost of under $2 per installed watt of residential solar power, a figure that's competitive with grid power in almost every US state. ...
www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/SolarCity-CFO-Buckle-Up… "
Zitat von Popeye82: National Lab "Shows Another Year of Double Digit Solar Price Reduction", We work to make solar more affordable +more accessible to more Americans, +today we’re celebrating 'another marker, on the path to success'. According to a new study released this week by the research gurus @Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the cost of going solar in the United States continued its rapid decline" - CT/TVSI/DoE/LBNL, BERKELEY - Sep 19, 2014
http://emp.lbl.gov/sites/all/files/lbnl-6350e.pdf
http://cleantechies.com/2014/09/19/national-lab-shows-anothe…
finde das, beabsichtigte, Bezugsschreiben nicht mehr
dann nehme ich mal Dieses
"3) SolarCity CFO: "Buckle up, it's going to be an amazing ride" One of our core beliefs at CoPower is that with greater scale and easier access to capital, new deployment of clean energy will continue to outpace other forms of energy. SolarCity, the solar installation company headed by Tesla Motors' Elon Musk, recently held an earnings call where they explained how they're on track to reach a cost of under $2 per installed watt of residential solar power, a figure that's competitive with grid power in almost every US state. ...
www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/SolarCity-CFO-Buckle-Up… "
New Technology Brings Temperatures Down - ENN/C2 - Dec 9, 2014
- S.E. Smith -
www.care2.com/causes/new-technology-brings-temperatures-down…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48073
"Greek villages are famous for their glittering white walls and beautiful blue painted accents, which make them a dazzling sight whether you’re approaching the sea or looking out across them from the windows of your blessedly cool room — which stays cool even in the height of summer heat. If you look around, you might notice that there’s no air conditioning. The Greeks don’t need it, because their homes are specifically designed to control temperatures and keep people comfortable. Thick walls insulate rooms to keep temperatures stable, while those handsome white roofs and walls reflect heat.
Researchers inspired by this ancient and simple climate control technique just developed a high tech version that keeps buildings cool without the use of electricity. The technology is critical for a world in which many nations are struggling to reduce energy usage and make more environmentally friendly homes, offices and other buildings. With this modern update, an old-fashioned tactic already known and beloved will get a new lease on life.
Dubbed photonic radiative cooling, the technology, while relies on layers of materials, is really more like two technologies — bundled into one. The first is one many of us (including the Greeks) are familiar with: A reflective layer on the top bounces sunlight off a structure so it won’t heat up over the course of the day. This allows buildings to stay as cool as possible, even when they sit in direct sun. But there’s another problem: even if sunlight is reflected, buildings can still heat up. Ambient climate conditions as well as activities inside the building may drive internal temperatures up, possibly to an uncomfortable level, leaving people inside longing for additional relief.
That’s why the technology also includes layers of materials that radiate heat from the inside of the building outwards. However, there’s a small trick here. Such heat, known as infrared radiation, would just make the environment around the building warmer, creating a cyclical heat problem. Instead, it needs to be vented somewhere, preferably far, far away. The solution from the team of researchers is rather ingenious — the materials inside their technology increase the wavelengths of the infrared radiation, allowing it to escape to space instead of trapping it right next to the building. In essence, they’re using space as their heat sink. "
- S.E. Smith -
www.care2.com/causes/new-technology-brings-temperatures-down…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48073
"Greek villages are famous for their glittering white walls and beautiful blue painted accents, which make them a dazzling sight whether you’re approaching the sea or looking out across them from the windows of your blessedly cool room — which stays cool even in the height of summer heat. If you look around, you might notice that there’s no air conditioning. The Greeks don’t need it, because their homes are specifically designed to control temperatures and keep people comfortable. Thick walls insulate rooms to keep temperatures stable, while those handsome white roofs and walls reflect heat.
Researchers inspired by this ancient and simple climate control technique just developed a high tech version that keeps buildings cool without the use of electricity. The technology is critical for a world in which many nations are struggling to reduce energy usage and make more environmentally friendly homes, offices and other buildings. With this modern update, an old-fashioned tactic already known and beloved will get a new lease on life.
Dubbed photonic radiative cooling, the technology, while relies on layers of materials, is really more like two technologies — bundled into one. The first is one many of us (including the Greeks) are familiar with: A reflective layer on the top bounces sunlight off a structure so it won’t heat up over the course of the day. This allows buildings to stay as cool as possible, even when they sit in direct sun. But there’s another problem: even if sunlight is reflected, buildings can still heat up. Ambient climate conditions as well as activities inside the building may drive internal temperatures up, possibly to an uncomfortable level, leaving people inside longing for additional relief.
That’s why the technology also includes layers of materials that radiate heat from the inside of the building outwards. However, there’s a small trick here. Such heat, known as infrared radiation, would just make the environment around the building warmer, creating a cyclical heat problem. Instead, it needs to be vented somewhere, preferably far, far away. The solution from the team of researchers is rather ingenious — the materials inside their technology increase the wavelengths of the infrared radiation, allowing it to escape to space instead of trapping it right next to the building. In essence, they’re using space as their heat sink. "
An app to save 400,000,000 animals
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/1211-alex-rodriguez-urubu-wild…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48097
"Brazilian biologist Alex Bager has been leading a crusade to raise awareness of a major but neglected threat to biodiversity in his country.
Every year over 475 million animals die in Brazil as victims of roadkill, according to an estimate by Centro Brasileiro de Ecologia de Estradas (the Brazilian Centre for the Study of Road Ecology) or CBEE, an initiative funded and coordinated by Bager. This means 15 animals are run down every second on Brazilian roads and highways.
"The numbers are really scary and we need people to know about them," Bager said.
To register cases of roadkill throughout the country, Bager came up with the idea of an app, now used by thousands of citizen scientists. And a national day of action in November saw hundreds of volunteers participate in events to highlight the impact of roadkill on biodiversity.
- Puma that was hit by a vehicle in the state of Sao Paulo. Photo by ZOO/BAURU -
Estimates
Bager, a biology professor at the Federal University of Lavras, in the state of Minas Gerais, presented his estimate at the Brazilian Congress on Road Ecology earlier this year and aims to publish a detailed study on the figures in 2015.
How did he reach the estimate of 475 million?
"We based our estimate on 14 scientific studies on this problem in different parts of the country. This allowed us to calculate a roadkill rate that we adjusted according to the type of road, area, local biodiversity etc.," Bager explained. "Finally we extrapolated the data to the massive Brazilian road network of 1.7 million kilometers and compiled the estimate for the whole of the country."
Brazil’s great biodiversity combined with an expanding road network are a perilous combination, according to Bager, who said that "our estimate is quite conservative, we fear the real numbers are even higher."
Citizen scientists
To gather more data about the impact of roadkill, Bager worked with developers to create an app for smartphones.
"This is one of the best examples of citizen science in Brazil I am aware of," he says. The app is called Urubu mobile, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the word in Portuguese for black vulture, an animal that looks for carcasses.
"When somebody sends a photo of a roadkill the exact site is registered with GPS. We have over 6.000 registered users in the whole of the country," Badger said, adding. "Anybody can join."
The app is part of a wider Urubu System. Each photo is analyzed by five researchers from a team of 500, and only then is integrated into a map that visualizes key problem areas throughout the country. "
http://news.mongabay.com/2014/1211-alex-rodriguez-urubu-wild…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48097
"Brazilian biologist Alex Bager has been leading a crusade to raise awareness of a major but neglected threat to biodiversity in his country.
Every year over 475 million animals die in Brazil as victims of roadkill, according to an estimate by Centro Brasileiro de Ecologia de Estradas (the Brazilian Centre for the Study of Road Ecology) or CBEE, an initiative funded and coordinated by Bager. This means 15 animals are run down every second on Brazilian roads and highways.
"The numbers are really scary and we need people to know about them," Bager said.
To register cases of roadkill throughout the country, Bager came up with the idea of an app, now used by thousands of citizen scientists. And a national day of action in November saw hundreds of volunteers participate in events to highlight the impact of roadkill on biodiversity.
- Puma that was hit by a vehicle in the state of Sao Paulo. Photo by ZOO/BAURU -
Estimates
Bager, a biology professor at the Federal University of Lavras, in the state of Minas Gerais, presented his estimate at the Brazilian Congress on Road Ecology earlier this year and aims to publish a detailed study on the figures in 2015.
How did he reach the estimate of 475 million?
"We based our estimate on 14 scientific studies on this problem in different parts of the country. This allowed us to calculate a roadkill rate that we adjusted according to the type of road, area, local biodiversity etc.," Bager explained. "Finally we extrapolated the data to the massive Brazilian road network of 1.7 million kilometers and compiled the estimate for the whole of the country."
Brazil’s great biodiversity combined with an expanding road network are a perilous combination, according to Bager, who said that "our estimate is quite conservative, we fear the real numbers are even higher."
Citizen scientists
To gather more data about the impact of roadkill, Bager worked with developers to create an app for smartphones.
"This is one of the best examples of citizen science in Brazil I am aware of," he says. The app is called Urubu mobile, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the word in Portuguese for black vulture, an animal that looks for carcasses.
"When somebody sends a photo of a roadkill the exact site is registered with GPS. We have over 6.000 registered users in the whole of the country," Badger said, adding. "Anybody can join."
The app is part of a wider Urubu System. Each photo is analyzed by five researchers from a team of 500, and only then is integrated into a map that visualizes key problem areas throughout the country. "
Europe’s ‘supergrid’ ambitions show how complicated shifting to renewable energy is going to be, As international negotiators in Lima struggle to set emissions targets, battles in the EU are highlighting trouble ahead for the next phase of tackling climate change - CT/GP, BERLIN - Dec 12, 2014
- Jason Overdorf -
http://cleantechies.com/2014/12/12/europes-supergrid-ambitio…
"
As international negotiators in Lima, Peru struggle to agree a major deal that would cut emissions at a UN climate change convention on Friday, Europe's efforts to forge a united front at home suggest that any binding commitments on reducing greenhouse gases would be only the first of many hurdles in any serious effort to keep global temperatures down.
The European Union is leading the way in some respects.
Before the UN could come up with a plan, the EU passed its own binding commitment in October to slash greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent of 1990 levels before 2030.
Last week, Germany's cabinet also agreed to cut emissions by 78 million metric tons a full decade ahead of that deadline by forcing coal-fired power plants to shut down.
Already, Germany's program of Energiewende, or “energy transition,” has changed market conditions so dramatically that two of its largest energy suppliers — Stockholm-based Vattenfall and Dusseldorf-based EON — have announced plans to quit burning coal or sell off their fossil fuels assets altogether.
But as Europe's conflict with Russia raises concerns about energy security on the continent, the competing agendas of the EU's member states and their various electricity companies has made progress on the key prerequisite to meeting emissions reduction targets painfully slow.
There’s nearly unanimous agreement that the cheapest and fastest way to reach the targets is to connect all 28 member states to the same electricity “supergrid.” The European Commission has made more than $7 billion in funding available to spur construction.
Some believe the supergrid could begin to bear fruit as soon as 2018.
But the work needed to put those electricity grid connections in place is so huge, it's easy to see the commission's financing scheme as little more than window dressing, says Andrew McKillop, former in-house policy analyst at the European Commission's energy directorate.
“Cross-border gas transport and storage infrastructures are massively developed relative to the same thing for electricity, which almost do not exist,” he says.
Some forecast that the supergrid won't see “serious development” until at least 2035, after an investment of “several hundred billion euros,” he adds.
But with fixed tariffs for green energy providing a guaranteed return on investments, financing is one of the smaller obstacles.
The real hurdle is that behind every new connection stands a complex set of stakeholders for whom the greater good isn't always good for everyone.
“The overall social welfare effect in Europe [of linking national electricity grids] is almost always positive,” says Markus Steigenberger of the Berlin-based climate think-tank Agora Energiewende.
“But if you go down to look at a single country, the situation might be different.”
The need for the supergrid is well-established.
Because the energy supply from the sun and wind varies according to weather conditions and time of day, distributors will have to build in oversupply and costly storage capacity to meet Europe's goal of generating as much as 80 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2050.
But connecting national electricity grids will dramatically reduce that redundant capacity, the result of a “smoothing effect” from incorporating a larger geographical area so that strong sun in Spain can balance a dearth of wind in Germany, the former EU adviser McKillop says.
“The question of intermittancy of renewables would be resolved or reduced,” he says.
That would mean substantially lower costs.
By some estimates, in order for EU member states to reach the 2020 target of generating just 40 percent of their power from renewables without linking the national grids, they would have to build 70 percent more reserve capacity.
That required reserve increases significantly when the target for the share of renewables is boosted to 80 percent.
“Not doing the grid doesn't mean you can't decarbonize,” Steigenberger says. “But it's many times more expensive.”
Anyone can do the math. But just as the different perspectives of rich and poor countries have stymied the UN negotiations on emission cuts, the different needs of the various EU member states and influential companies continue to plague the nuts-and-bolts efforts to build the supergrid.
It's not always the case that the advance guard of the conversion to renewables — chiefly countries in Western Europe — are pitted against the coal-powered East.
A planned connection between the German and Norwegian electricity grids called NordLink will enable Germany to offload excess wind power to hydropower-rich Norway during its dry season and stabilize its own supply the rest of the year.
Although power companies are keen on the plan, Norway's energy-intensive industries have fought to lock in the country's electricity in the hope of keeping prices down.
Such concerns have thwarted efforts to link Norway to wider European markets since the 1990s, according to a 2012 report commissioned by the Smart Energy for Europe Platform.
Analysts found that another scheme — to increase linkages between Germany and western Denmark — would have a negative effect on social welfare in both countries even though the plan would benefit Europe as a whole. That project was recently shelved.
In another case, experts believe adding a third cable to the two existing links connecting the Polish and German electricity grids would benefit both nations and their neighbors, some of which already receive electricity generated in Germany and routed through Poland's grid.
Polish and German companies, too, were keen on the plan, which has been under discussion since 2006. Wind energy from Germany might have allowed Poland to speed the shutdown of its coal-burning power plants.
Nevertheless, the scheme has yet to get off the ground because of the Polish government's fears that spikes in supply from Germany's wind producers would result in nationwide brownouts.
More from GlobalPost: Britain grapples with its role in the torture of terror suspects
As renewables grow to account for an ever-larger share of the world's energy supply, such problems are poised to become increasingly complex.
Managing a grid dominated by a steady supply from conventional power plants is relatively simple. But with renewables allowing consumers to plug in and drop out, draw power and contribute supply, it can become well-nigh impossible — as suggested by a Hawaiian electricity company's move to stop homeowners from installing solar panels last year.
For the UN negotiators trying to set emissions targets, that’s not a good sign that the next phase of the battle to control climate change will be any easier. "
- Jason Overdorf -
http://cleantechies.com/2014/12/12/europes-supergrid-ambitio…
"
As international negotiators in Lima, Peru struggle to agree a major deal that would cut emissions at a UN climate change convention on Friday, Europe's efforts to forge a united front at home suggest that any binding commitments on reducing greenhouse gases would be only the first of many hurdles in any serious effort to keep global temperatures down.
The European Union is leading the way in some respects.
Before the UN could come up with a plan, the EU passed its own binding commitment in October to slash greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent of 1990 levels before 2030.
Last week, Germany's cabinet also agreed to cut emissions by 78 million metric tons a full decade ahead of that deadline by forcing coal-fired power plants to shut down.
Already, Germany's program of Energiewende, or “energy transition,” has changed market conditions so dramatically that two of its largest energy suppliers — Stockholm-based Vattenfall and Dusseldorf-based EON — have announced plans to quit burning coal or sell off their fossil fuels assets altogether.
But as Europe's conflict with Russia raises concerns about energy security on the continent, the competing agendas of the EU's member states and their various electricity companies has made progress on the key prerequisite to meeting emissions reduction targets painfully slow.
There’s nearly unanimous agreement that the cheapest and fastest way to reach the targets is to connect all 28 member states to the same electricity “supergrid.” The European Commission has made more than $7 billion in funding available to spur construction.
Some believe the supergrid could begin to bear fruit as soon as 2018.
But the work needed to put those electricity grid connections in place is so huge, it's easy to see the commission's financing scheme as little more than window dressing, says Andrew McKillop, former in-house policy analyst at the European Commission's energy directorate.
“Cross-border gas transport and storage infrastructures are massively developed relative to the same thing for electricity, which almost do not exist,” he says.
Some forecast that the supergrid won't see “serious development” until at least 2035, after an investment of “several hundred billion euros,” he adds.
But with fixed tariffs for green energy providing a guaranteed return on investments, financing is one of the smaller obstacles.
The real hurdle is that behind every new connection stands a complex set of stakeholders for whom the greater good isn't always good for everyone.
“The overall social welfare effect in Europe [of linking national electricity grids] is almost always positive,” says Markus Steigenberger of the Berlin-based climate think-tank Agora Energiewende.
“But if you go down to look at a single country, the situation might be different.”
The need for the supergrid is well-established.
Because the energy supply from the sun and wind varies according to weather conditions and time of day, distributors will have to build in oversupply and costly storage capacity to meet Europe's goal of generating as much as 80 percent of its electricity from renewables by 2050.
But connecting national electricity grids will dramatically reduce that redundant capacity, the result of a “smoothing effect” from incorporating a larger geographical area so that strong sun in Spain can balance a dearth of wind in Germany, the former EU adviser McKillop says.
“The question of intermittancy of renewables would be resolved or reduced,” he says.
That would mean substantially lower costs.
By some estimates, in order for EU member states to reach the 2020 target of generating just 40 percent of their power from renewables without linking the national grids, they would have to build 70 percent more reserve capacity.
That required reserve increases significantly when the target for the share of renewables is boosted to 80 percent.
“Not doing the grid doesn't mean you can't decarbonize,” Steigenberger says. “But it's many times more expensive.”
Anyone can do the math. But just as the different perspectives of rich and poor countries have stymied the UN negotiations on emission cuts, the different needs of the various EU member states and influential companies continue to plague the nuts-and-bolts efforts to build the supergrid.
It's not always the case that the advance guard of the conversion to renewables — chiefly countries in Western Europe — are pitted against the coal-powered East.
A planned connection between the German and Norwegian electricity grids called NordLink will enable Germany to offload excess wind power to hydropower-rich Norway during its dry season and stabilize its own supply the rest of the year.
Although power companies are keen on the plan, Norway's energy-intensive industries have fought to lock in the country's electricity in the hope of keeping prices down.
Such concerns have thwarted efforts to link Norway to wider European markets since the 1990s, according to a 2012 report commissioned by the Smart Energy for Europe Platform.
Analysts found that another scheme — to increase linkages between Germany and western Denmark — would have a negative effect on social welfare in both countries even though the plan would benefit Europe as a whole. That project was recently shelved.
In another case, experts believe adding a third cable to the two existing links connecting the Polish and German electricity grids would benefit both nations and their neighbors, some of which already receive electricity generated in Germany and routed through Poland's grid.
Polish and German companies, too, were keen on the plan, which has been under discussion since 2006. Wind energy from Germany might have allowed Poland to speed the shutdown of its coal-burning power plants.
Nevertheless, the scheme has yet to get off the ground because of the Polish government's fears that spikes in supply from Germany's wind producers would result in nationwide brownouts.
More from GlobalPost: Britain grapples with its role in the torture of terror suspects
As renewables grow to account for an ever-larger share of the world's energy supply, such problems are poised to become increasingly complex.
Managing a grid dominated by a steady supply from conventional power plants is relatively simple. But with renewables allowing consumers to plug in and drop out, draw power and contribute supply, it can become well-nigh impossible — as suggested by a Hawaiian electricity company's move to stop homeowners from installing solar panels last year.
For the UN negotiators trying to set emissions targets, that’s not a good sign that the next phase of the battle to control climate change will be any easier. "
Earth grows new layer, under Icelandic Volcano
www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/3642/scientists_observe_the_ear…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48101
"New research into an Icelandic eruption has shed light on how the Earth’s crust forms, according to a paper published today in Nature.
When the Bárðarbunga volcano, which is buried beneath Iceland’s Vatnajökull ice cap, reawakened in August 2014, scientists had a rare opportunity to monitor how the magma flowed through cracks in the rock away from the volcano.
The molten rock forms vertical sheet-like features known as dykes, which force the surrounding rock apart.
Study co-author Professor Andy Hooper from the Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, volcanoes and Tectonics (COMET) at the University of Leeds explained: “New crust forms where two tectonic plates are moving away from each other. Mostly this happens beneath the oceans, where it is difficult to observe.
“However, in Iceland this happens beneath dry land. The events leading to the eruption in August 2014 are the first time that such a rifting episode has occurred there and been observed with modern tools, like GPS and satellite radar.”
Although it has a long history of eruptions, Bárðarbunga has been increasingly restless since 2005. There was a particularly dynamic period in August and September this year, when more than 22,000 earthquakes were recorded in or around the volcano in just four weeks, due to stress being released as magma forced its way through the rock.
Using GPS and satellite measurements, the team were able to track the path of the magma for over 45km before it reached a point where it began to erupt, and continues to do so to this day. The rate of dyke propagation was variable and slowed as the magma reached natural barriers, which were overcome by the build-up of pressure, creating a new segment.
The dyke grows in segments, breaking through from one to the next by the build up of pressure. This explains how focused upwelling of magma under central volcanoes is effectively redistributed over large distances to create new upper crust at divergent plate boundaries, the authors conclude.
As well as the dyke, the team found ‘ice cauldrons’ – shallow depressions in the ice with circular crevasses, where the base of the glacier had been melted by magma. In addition, radar measurements showed that the ice inside Bárðarbunga’s crater had sunk by 16m, as the volcano floor collapsed.
Continue reading at the University of Leeds. "
www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/3642/scientists_observe_the_ear…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48101
"New research into an Icelandic eruption has shed light on how the Earth’s crust forms, according to a paper published today in Nature.
When the Bárðarbunga volcano, which is buried beneath Iceland’s Vatnajökull ice cap, reawakened in August 2014, scientists had a rare opportunity to monitor how the magma flowed through cracks in the rock away from the volcano.
The molten rock forms vertical sheet-like features known as dykes, which force the surrounding rock apart.
Study co-author Professor Andy Hooper from the Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, volcanoes and Tectonics (COMET) at the University of Leeds explained: “New crust forms where two tectonic plates are moving away from each other. Mostly this happens beneath the oceans, where it is difficult to observe.
“However, in Iceland this happens beneath dry land. The events leading to the eruption in August 2014 are the first time that such a rifting episode has occurred there and been observed with modern tools, like GPS and satellite radar.”
Although it has a long history of eruptions, Bárðarbunga has been increasingly restless since 2005. There was a particularly dynamic period in August and September this year, when more than 22,000 earthquakes were recorded in or around the volcano in just four weeks, due to stress being released as magma forced its way through the rock.
Using GPS and satellite measurements, the team were able to track the path of the magma for over 45km before it reached a point where it began to erupt, and continues to do so to this day. The rate of dyke propagation was variable and slowed as the magma reached natural barriers, which were overcome by the build-up of pressure, creating a new segment.
The dyke grows in segments, breaking through from one to the next by the build up of pressure. This explains how focused upwelling of magma under central volcanoes is effectively redistributed over large distances to create new upper crust at divergent plate boundaries, the authors conclude.
As well as the dyke, the team found ‘ice cauldrons’ – shallow depressions in the ice with circular crevasses, where the base of the glacier had been melted by magma. In addition, radar measurements showed that the ice inside Bárðarbunga’s crater had sunk by 16m, as the volcano floor collapsed.
Continue reading at the University of Leeds. "
Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum had similarities to current warming
http://unews.utah.edu/news_releases/past-global-warming-simi…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48100
"The rate at which carbon emissions warmed Earth’s climate almost 56 million years ago resembles modern, human-caused global warming much more than previously believed, but involved two pulses of carbon to the atmosphere, University of Utah researchers and their colleagues found.
The findings mean the so-called Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM, can provide clues to the future of modern climate change. The good news: Earth and most species survived. The bad news: It took millennia to recover from the episode, when temperatures rose by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit).
“There is a positive note in that the world persisted, it did not go down in flames, it has a way of self-correcting and righting itself,” says University of Utah geochemist Gabe Bowen, lead author of the study published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. “However, in this event it took almost 200,000 years before things got back to normal.”
Bowen and colleagues report that carbonate or limestone nodules in Wyoming sediment cores show the global warming episode 55.5 million to 55.3 million years ago involved the average annual release of a minimum of 0.9 petagrams (1.98 trillion pounds) of carbon to the atmosphere, and probably much more over shorter periods.
That is “within an order of magnitude of, and may have approached, the 9.5 petagrams [20.9 trillion pounds] per year associated with modern anthropogenic carbon emissions,” the researchers wrote. Since 1900, human burning of fossil fuels emitted an average of 3 petagrams per year – even closer to the rate 55.5 million years ago.
Each pulse of carbon emissions lasted no more than 1,500 years. Previous conflicting evidence indicated the carbon release lasted anywhere from less than a year to tens of thousands of years. The new research shows atmospheric carbon levels returned to normal within a few thousand years after the first pulse, probably as carbon dissolved in the ocean. It took up to 200,000 years for conditions to normalize after the second pulse.
Saber Tooth Tiger image via Shutterstock.
Read more at University of Utah news. "
http://unews.utah.edu/news_releases/past-global-warming-simi…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48100
"The rate at which carbon emissions warmed Earth’s climate almost 56 million years ago resembles modern, human-caused global warming much more than previously believed, but involved two pulses of carbon to the atmosphere, University of Utah researchers and their colleagues found.
The findings mean the so-called Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM, can provide clues to the future of modern climate change. The good news: Earth and most species survived. The bad news: It took millennia to recover from the episode, when temperatures rose by 5 to 8 degrees Celsius (9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit).
“There is a positive note in that the world persisted, it did not go down in flames, it has a way of self-correcting and righting itself,” says University of Utah geochemist Gabe Bowen, lead author of the study published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. “However, in this event it took almost 200,000 years before things got back to normal.”
Bowen and colleagues report that carbonate or limestone nodules in Wyoming sediment cores show the global warming episode 55.5 million to 55.3 million years ago involved the average annual release of a minimum of 0.9 petagrams (1.98 trillion pounds) of carbon to the atmosphere, and probably much more over shorter periods.
That is “within an order of magnitude of, and may have approached, the 9.5 petagrams [20.9 trillion pounds] per year associated with modern anthropogenic carbon emissions,” the researchers wrote. Since 1900, human burning of fossil fuels emitted an average of 3 petagrams per year – even closer to the rate 55.5 million years ago.
Each pulse of carbon emissions lasted no more than 1,500 years. Previous conflicting evidence indicated the carbon release lasted anywhere from less than a year to tens of thousands of years. The new research shows atmospheric carbon levels returned to normal within a few thousand years after the first pulse, probably as carbon dissolved in the ocean. It took up to 200,000 years for conditions to normalize after the second pulse.
Saber Tooth Tiger image via Shutterstock.
Read more at University of Utah news. "
A "global fleet of composite planes could reduce carbon emissions by up to 15 per cent", A global fleet of composite planes could reduce carbon emissions by up to 15 per cent, but the lighter planes alone will not enable the aviation industry to meet its emissions targets, according to new research
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=38473.php?utm_source=fee…
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11367-014-0824-0
"A global fleet of composite planes could reduce carbon emissions by up to 15 per cent, but the lighter planes alone will not enable the aviation industry to meet its emissions targets, according to new research.
The study, by the Universities of Sheffield, Cambridge and UCL (University College London), is the first to carry out a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of a composite plane, such as the Boeing Dreamliner 787 or Airbus 350, and extrapolate the results to the global fleet.
The LCA covers manufacture, use and disposal, using publicly available information on the Boeing Dreamliner 787 fuselage and from the supply chain – such as the energy usage of the robots that construct the planes. The study compares the results to the traditional – and heavier – aluminium planes.
Emissions during the manufacture of composite planes are over double those of aluminium planes. But because the lighter aircraft use significantly less fuel, these increased emissions are offset after just a few international flights. Over its lifetime, a composite plane creates up to 20 per cent fewer CO2 emissions than its aluminium equivalent.
Professor in Advanced Materials Technologies at the University of Sheffield, Alma Hodzic, says: “This study shows that the fuel consumption savings with composites far outweigh the increased environmental impact from their manufacture. Despite ongoing debates within the industry, the environmental and financial savings from composites mean that these materials offer a much better solution.”
The researchers fed the data from the LCA into a wider transport model to gauge the impact on CO2 emissions as composite planes are introduced into the global fleet over the next 25 years, taking into account other factors including population, economic prosperity, oil prices and speed of adoption of the new technology.
The study – published in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment ("Environmental impact assessment of aviation emission reduction through the implementation of composite materials") – estimated that by 2050, composite planes could reduce emissions from the global fleet by 14-15 per cent relative to a fleet that maintains its existing aluminium-based configuration.
Professor in Energy and Transport at UCL, Andreas Schäfer, explains: “The overall emissions reduction for the global fleet is lower than the reduction for an individual plane, partly, because by 2050, not all the fleet will be of composite construction. New planes entering the fleet before 2020 could still be in use by 2050, but the faster the uptake of this technology, the greater the environmental benefits will be.”
Dr Lynette Dray from Cambridge's Department of Architecture agrees: “Given that global air traffic is projected to increase four-fold between now and 2050, changing the materials used could avoid 500 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2050 alone, a value that roughly corresponds to current emission levels.”
Professor Hodzic adds: “The industry target is to halve CO2 emissions for all aircraft by 2020 and while composites will contribute to this, it cannot be achieved by the introduction of lighter composite planes alone. However, our findings show that composites – alongside other technology and efficiency measures – should be part of the picture.”
Source: University of Cambridge "
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=38473.php?utm_source=fee…
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11367-014-0824-0
"A global fleet of composite planes could reduce carbon emissions by up to 15 per cent, but the lighter planes alone will not enable the aviation industry to meet its emissions targets, according to new research.
The study, by the Universities of Sheffield, Cambridge and UCL (University College London), is the first to carry out a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of a composite plane, such as the Boeing Dreamliner 787 or Airbus 350, and extrapolate the results to the global fleet.
The LCA covers manufacture, use and disposal, using publicly available information on the Boeing Dreamliner 787 fuselage and from the supply chain – such as the energy usage of the robots that construct the planes. The study compares the results to the traditional – and heavier – aluminium planes.
Emissions during the manufacture of composite planes are over double those of aluminium planes. But because the lighter aircraft use significantly less fuel, these increased emissions are offset after just a few international flights. Over its lifetime, a composite plane creates up to 20 per cent fewer CO2 emissions than its aluminium equivalent.
Professor in Advanced Materials Technologies at the University of Sheffield, Alma Hodzic, says: “This study shows that the fuel consumption savings with composites far outweigh the increased environmental impact from their manufacture. Despite ongoing debates within the industry, the environmental and financial savings from composites mean that these materials offer a much better solution.”
The researchers fed the data from the LCA into a wider transport model to gauge the impact on CO2 emissions as composite planes are introduced into the global fleet over the next 25 years, taking into account other factors including population, economic prosperity, oil prices and speed of adoption of the new technology.
The study – published in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment ("Environmental impact assessment of aviation emission reduction through the implementation of composite materials") – estimated that by 2050, composite planes could reduce emissions from the global fleet by 14-15 per cent relative to a fleet that maintains its existing aluminium-based configuration.
Professor in Energy and Transport at UCL, Andreas Schäfer, explains: “The overall emissions reduction for the global fleet is lower than the reduction for an individual plane, partly, because by 2050, not all the fleet will be of composite construction. New planes entering the fleet before 2020 could still be in use by 2050, but the faster the uptake of this technology, the greater the environmental benefits will be.”
Dr Lynette Dray from Cambridge's Department of Architecture agrees: “Given that global air traffic is projected to increase four-fold between now and 2050, changing the materials used could avoid 500 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in 2050 alone, a value that roughly corresponds to current emission levels.”
Professor Hodzic adds: “The industry target is to halve CO2 emissions for all aircraft by 2020 and while composites will contribute to this, it cannot be achieved by the introduction of lighter composite planes alone. However, our findings show that composites – alongside other technology and efficiency measures – should be part of the picture.”
Source: University of Cambridge "
Greenland may lose ice more rapidly than previously thought - ENN/UoB, BUFFALO - Dec 17, 2014
www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/research/news.host.html/content/s…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48105
"The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second-largest body of ice on Earth. It covers an area about five times the size of New York State and Kansas combined, and if it melts completely, oceans could rise by 20 feet. Coastal communities from Florida to Bangladesh would suffer extensive damage.
Now, a new study is revealing just how little we understand this northern behemoth.
Led by geophysicist Beata Csatho, UB associate professor of geology, the research provides what the authors think is the first comprehensive picture of how Greenland’s ice is vanishing. It suggests that current ice sheet modeling studies are too simplistic to accurately predict future sea level rise, and that Greenland may lose ice more rapidly in the near future than previously thought.
“The great importance of our data is that for the first time, we have a comprehensive picture of how all of Greenland’s glaciers have changed over the past decade,” Csatho says.
“This information is crucial for developing and validating numerical models that predict how the ice sheet may change and contribute to global sea level over the next few hundred years,” says Cornelis J. van der Veen, professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Kansas, who played a key role in interpreting glaciological changes.
The project was a massive undertaking, using satellite and aerial data from NASA’s ICESat spacecraft and Operation IceBridge field campaign to reconstruct how the height of the Greenland Ice Sheet changed at nearly 100,000 locations from 1993 to 2012.
Ice loss takes place in a complex manner, with the ice sheet both melting and calving ice into the ocean.
The study had two major findings:
- Scientists were able to provide new estimates of annual ice loss at high spatial resolution (see below).
- The research revealed that current models fail to accurately capture how the entire Greenland Ice Sheet is changing and contributing to rising oceans.
The second point is crucial to climate change modelers.
Today’s simulations use the activity of four well-studied glaciers — Jakobshavn, Helheim, Kangerlussuaq and Petermann — to forecast how the entire ice sheet will dump ice into the oceans.
But the new research shows activity at these four locations may not be representative of what is happening with glaciers across the ice sheet. In fact, glaciers undergo patterns of thinning and thickening that current climate change simulations fail to address, Csatho says.
Continue reading at the University of Buffalo. "
www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/research/news.host.html/content/s…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48105
"The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second-largest body of ice on Earth. It covers an area about five times the size of New York State and Kansas combined, and if it melts completely, oceans could rise by 20 feet. Coastal communities from Florida to Bangladesh would suffer extensive damage.
Now, a new study is revealing just how little we understand this northern behemoth.
Led by geophysicist Beata Csatho, UB associate professor of geology, the research provides what the authors think is the first comprehensive picture of how Greenland’s ice is vanishing. It suggests that current ice sheet modeling studies are too simplistic to accurately predict future sea level rise, and that Greenland may lose ice more rapidly in the near future than previously thought.
“The great importance of our data is that for the first time, we have a comprehensive picture of how all of Greenland’s glaciers have changed over the past decade,” Csatho says.
“This information is crucial for developing and validating numerical models that predict how the ice sheet may change and contribute to global sea level over the next few hundred years,” says Cornelis J. van der Veen, professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Kansas, who played a key role in interpreting glaciological changes.
The project was a massive undertaking, using satellite and aerial data from NASA’s ICESat spacecraft and Operation IceBridge field campaign to reconstruct how the height of the Greenland Ice Sheet changed at nearly 100,000 locations from 1993 to 2012.
Ice loss takes place in a complex manner, with the ice sheet both melting and calving ice into the ocean.
The study had two major findings:
- Scientists were able to provide new estimates of annual ice loss at high spatial resolution (see below).
- The research revealed that current models fail to accurately capture how the entire Greenland Ice Sheet is changing and contributing to rising oceans.
The second point is crucial to climate change modelers.
Today’s simulations use the activity of four well-studied glaciers — Jakobshavn, Helheim, Kangerlussuaq and Petermann — to forecast how the entire ice sheet will dump ice into the oceans.
But the new research shows activity at these four locations may not be representative of what is happening with glaciers across the ice sheet. In fact, glaciers undergo patterns of thinning and thickening that current climate change simulations fail to address, Csatho says.
Continue reading at the University of Buffalo. "
Annual US Solar-Plus-Storage Market to Surpass $1,000,000,000, by 2018 - CT - Dec 19, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/12/19/annual-us-solar-plus-stor…
"According to the latest report from GTM Research the U.S. solar energy storage market will expand rapidly over the next 4-5 years. The report, The Future of Solar-Plus-Storage in the U.S., forecasts the nation to install 318 cumulative megawatts of behind-the-meter solar-plus-storage capacity through 2018.
- FIGURE: U.S. Solar-Plus-Storage Annual Market Size Forecast -
Between California’s recent mandate for the state to procure 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage for its grid and the announcement of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the energy storage market is nearing a tipping point. Paired with solar, energy storage becomes even more attractive given its ability to take advantage of the 30 percent federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) in certain situations. It also allows the owner to scale down the size of the system, as opposed to installing a stand-alone system, resulting in lower effective upfront costs.
The report identifies several trends helping solar-plus-storage grow to a billion dollar business in the U.S. including strong solar PV growth, falling battery costs, state incentives, net energy metering (NEM) changes and resiliency needs.
However, significant barriers do remain. While the cost for lithium-ion storage is falling by 20-30 percent annually, the price-point for both lithium-ion and other technologies is still high. Additionally, the report expresses concern about the ability of solar-plus-storage to participate in multiple use cases such as demand response and ancillary services. “Currently only PJM and a handful of other pilot programs allow participation of aggregated solar-plus-storage in wholesale markets or for grid services,” said Senior Energy Storage Analyst and report author Ravi Manghani.
The report provides a detailed state-level forecast, breakdown of the vendor ecosystem, market drivers and barriers, and an economic analysis for residential and non-residential end customers.
By 2018, GTM Research expects that one in ten new commercial solar customer will pair its installation with solar. “The key driver for this growth in commercial solar-plus-storage deployments is attractive end-customer economics,” said Manghani. “In this report, we quantify end-customer economics for three end-customer types across multiple utilities and conclude that for some of those customer-utility combinations, the economics look promising even today.”
Additional Key Findings from the report:
- Behind-the-meter solar-plus-storage in the U.S. will be a 169 MW market in 2018
- The annual market value in dollars will grow from $42 million in 2014 to more than $1 billion by 2018
- California will have the largest market share of solar-plus-storage through 2018, largely due to the fact that it will continue to be the biggest behind-the-meter solar market
- For a typical commercial end customer, solar-plus-storage systems can provide electricity bill savings of 20% to 30%, depending on system size
- Solar-plus-storage penetration for commercial customers is set to grow from 1% in 2014 to 11% by 2018 "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/12/19/annual-us-solar-plus-stor…
"According to the latest report from GTM Research the U.S. solar energy storage market will expand rapidly over the next 4-5 years. The report, The Future of Solar-Plus-Storage in the U.S., forecasts the nation to install 318 cumulative megawatts of behind-the-meter solar-plus-storage capacity through 2018.
- FIGURE: U.S. Solar-Plus-Storage Annual Market Size Forecast -
Between California’s recent mandate for the state to procure 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage for its grid and the announcement of Tesla’s Gigafactory, the energy storage market is nearing a tipping point. Paired with solar, energy storage becomes even more attractive given its ability to take advantage of the 30 percent federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) in certain situations. It also allows the owner to scale down the size of the system, as opposed to installing a stand-alone system, resulting in lower effective upfront costs.
The report identifies several trends helping solar-plus-storage grow to a billion dollar business in the U.S. including strong solar PV growth, falling battery costs, state incentives, net energy metering (NEM) changes and resiliency needs.
However, significant barriers do remain. While the cost for lithium-ion storage is falling by 20-30 percent annually, the price-point for both lithium-ion and other technologies is still high. Additionally, the report expresses concern about the ability of solar-plus-storage to participate in multiple use cases such as demand response and ancillary services. “Currently only PJM and a handful of other pilot programs allow participation of aggregated solar-plus-storage in wholesale markets or for grid services,” said Senior Energy Storage Analyst and report author Ravi Manghani.
The report provides a detailed state-level forecast, breakdown of the vendor ecosystem, market drivers and barriers, and an economic analysis for residential and non-residential end customers.
By 2018, GTM Research expects that one in ten new commercial solar customer will pair its installation with solar. “The key driver for this growth in commercial solar-plus-storage deployments is attractive end-customer economics,” said Manghani. “In this report, we quantify end-customer economics for three end-customer types across multiple utilities and conclude that for some of those customer-utility combinations, the economics look promising even today.”
Additional Key Findings from the report:
- Behind-the-meter solar-plus-storage in the U.S. will be a 169 MW market in 2018
- The annual market value in dollars will grow from $42 million in 2014 to more than $1 billion by 2018
- California will have the largest market share of solar-plus-storage through 2018, largely due to the fact that it will continue to be the biggest behind-the-meter solar market
- For a typical commercial end customer, solar-plus-storage systems can provide electricity bill savings of 20% to 30%, depending on system size
- Solar-plus-storage penetration for commercial customers is set to grow from 1% in 2014 to 11% by 2018 "
Organic Chemistry Found on Mars
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
818-354-6278
www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-432&rn=news.xml&…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48113
"NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory's drill.
"This temporary increase in methane -- sharply up and then back down -- tells us there must be some relatively localized source," said Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, a member of the Curiosity rover science team. "There are many possible sources, biological or non-biological, such as interaction of water and rock."
Researchers used Curiosity's onboard Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory a dozen times in a 20-month period to sniff methane in the atmosphere. During two of those months, in late 2013 and early 2014, four measurements averaged seven parts per billion. Before and after that, readings averaged only one-tenth that level.
Curiosity also detected different Martian organic chemicals in powder drilled from a rock dubbed Cumberland, the first definitive detection of organics in surface materials of Mars. These Martian organics could either have formed on Mars or been delivered to Mars by meteorites.
Organic molecules, which contain carbon and usually hydrogen, are chemical building blocks of life, although they can exist without the presence of life. Curiosity's findings from analyzing samples of atmosphere and rock powder do not reveal whether Mars has ever harbored living microbes, but the findings do shed light on a chemically active modern Mars and on favorable conditions for life on ancient Mars.
"We will keep working on the puzzles these findings present," said John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Can we learn more about the active chemistry causing such fluctuations in the amount of methane in the atmosphere? Can we choose rock targets where identifiable organics have been preserved?"
Researchers worked many months to determine whether any of the organic material detected in the Cumberland sample was truly Martian. Curiosity's SAM lab detected in several samples some organic carbon compounds that were, in fact, transported from Earth inside the rover. However, extensive testing and analysis yielded confidence in the detection of Martian organics.
Identifying which specific Martian organics are in the rock is complicated by the presence of perchlorate minerals in Martian rocks and soils. When heated inside SAM, the perchlorates alter the structures of the organic compounds, so the identities of the Martian organics in the rock remain uncertain.
Continue reading at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "
guy.webster@jpl.nasa.gov
818-354-6278
www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-432&rn=news.xml&…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48113
"NASA's Mars Curiosity rover has measured a tenfold spike in methane, an organic chemical, in the atmosphere around it and detected other organic molecules in a rock-powder sample collected by the robotic laboratory's drill.
"This temporary increase in methane -- sharply up and then back down -- tells us there must be some relatively localized source," said Sushil Atreya of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, a member of the Curiosity rover science team. "There are many possible sources, biological or non-biological, such as interaction of water and rock."
Researchers used Curiosity's onboard Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory a dozen times in a 20-month period to sniff methane in the atmosphere. During two of those months, in late 2013 and early 2014, four measurements averaged seven parts per billion. Before and after that, readings averaged only one-tenth that level.
Curiosity also detected different Martian organic chemicals in powder drilled from a rock dubbed Cumberland, the first definitive detection of organics in surface materials of Mars. These Martian organics could either have formed on Mars or been delivered to Mars by meteorites.
Organic molecules, which contain carbon and usually hydrogen, are chemical building blocks of life, although they can exist without the presence of life. Curiosity's findings from analyzing samples of atmosphere and rock powder do not reveal whether Mars has ever harbored living microbes, but the findings do shed light on a chemically active modern Mars and on favorable conditions for life on ancient Mars.
"We will keep working on the puzzles these findings present," said John Grotzinger, Curiosity project scientist of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Can we learn more about the active chemistry causing such fluctuations in the amount of methane in the atmosphere? Can we choose rock targets where identifiable organics have been preserved?"
Researchers worked many months to determine whether any of the organic material detected in the Cumberland sample was truly Martian. Curiosity's SAM lab detected in several samples some organic carbon compounds that were, in fact, transported from Earth inside the rover. However, extensive testing and analysis yielded confidence in the detection of Martian organics.
Identifying which specific Martian organics are in the rock is complicated by the presence of perchlorate minerals in Martian rocks and soils. When heated inside SAM, the perchlorates alter the structures of the organic compounds, so the identities of the Martian organics in the rock remain uncertain.
Continue reading at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "
Chicago Releases Its 1st Energy Benchmarking Report - coc.org - Dec 19, 2014
www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/progs/env/EnergyBench…
www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/progs/env/EnergyBench…
'Identified Global Wind Potential' almost 100 Million Megawatts - CT - Dec 18, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/12/18/identified-global-wind-po…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/12/18/identified-global-wind-po…
Indian government 'pushing hard, for alternative fuel vehicles' - BD/IT, NEW DELHI - Dec 22, 2014
- Meghan Sapp -
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/auto/news/polic…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/12/22/indian-government-…
"In India, the government has proposed slashing all excise taxes on the purchase of vehicles that run on 100% biofuels, including personal transportation as well as buses. Currently excise taxes on vehicles run between 6-8%. Excise taxes for hybrid vehicles would be cut to 2%. The transport minister is pushing hard, especially for biofuels in public transportation."
- Meghan Sapp -
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/auto/news/polic…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2014/12/22/indian-government-…
"In India, the government has proposed slashing all excise taxes on the purchase of vehicles that run on 100% biofuels, including personal transportation as well as buses. Currently excise taxes on vehicles run between 6-8%. Excise taxes for hybrid vehicles would be cut to 2%. The transport minister is pushing hard, especially for biofuels in public transportation."
NASA maps CO2 emissions over the entire planet
http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/nasa-satellit…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48130
"It’s been a busy five months for NASA’s newest carbon dioxide-monitoring satellite, snapping up to 1 million measurements a day of how carbon dioxide moves across the planet. Now NASA scientists have shared the first global maps created using that data, showing one of the most detailed views of CO2 ever created.
The satellite — known as OCO-2 — has been in orbit since July. While it’s returned some preliminary data, NASA showed off its global reach for the first time on Thursday at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting.
Over the next 200 years, the ocean is expected to rise 10 feet, putting many major cities worldwide underwater. Can we stop it?
- CO2 concentrations around the world in early November. -
According to deputy project science Annmarie Eldering, previous CO2-monitoring satellites were returning just 1-2 percent of the data that OCO-2 is sending back to Earth. And while the satellite can’t peer through clouds, it has still provided scientists with a staggering amount of information to create comprehensive maps of CO2 and plant growth.
“Measuring an atmospheric gas to a fraction of a percent makes OCO-2 one of the most challenging remote sensing missions that have ever been attempted,” Paul Wennberg, a professor at Caltech, said.
Map shows CO2 concentrations around the world in early November. (NASA via DiscoveryNews). "
http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/nasa-satellit…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48130
"It’s been a busy five months for NASA’s newest carbon dioxide-monitoring satellite, snapping up to 1 million measurements a day of how carbon dioxide moves across the planet. Now NASA scientists have shared the first global maps created using that data, showing one of the most detailed views of CO2 ever created.
The satellite — known as OCO-2 — has been in orbit since July. While it’s returned some preliminary data, NASA showed off its global reach for the first time on Thursday at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting.
Over the next 200 years, the ocean is expected to rise 10 feet, putting many major cities worldwide underwater. Can we stop it?
- CO2 concentrations around the world in early November. -
According to deputy project science Annmarie Eldering, previous CO2-monitoring satellites were returning just 1-2 percent of the data that OCO-2 is sending back to Earth. And while the satellite can’t peer through clouds, it has still provided scientists with a staggering amount of information to create comprehensive maps of CO2 and plant growth.
“Measuring an atmospheric gas to a fraction of a percent makes OCO-2 one of the most challenging remote sensing missions that have ever been attempted,” Paul Wennberg, a professor at Caltech, said.
Map shows CO2 concentrations around the world in early November. (NASA via DiscoveryNews). "
World’s Largest Floating Solar Project-13.4MW in Japan - CT/1Sun4All/K/CTL, TOKYO - Dec 31, 2014
http://cleantechies.com/2014/12/31/worlds-largest-floating-s…
"A 13.4-megawatt (MW) floating solar power plant will be developed and operated on the Yamakura Dam reservoir in Japan by Kyocera and Century Tokyo Leasing in a joint venture established by the two companies. The plant will become the largest floating solar installation in the world, according to Kyocera .
The project will be comprised of approximately 50,000 Kyocera solar modules installed over a water surface area of 180,000m2 (square meters) . The plant will generate an estimated 15,635 megawatt hours (MWh) per year - enough electricity to power approximately 4,700 typical households - while offsetting about 7,800 tons of CO2 emissions annually.
- Credit: Floating Solar UK -
We are excited to work with our partners on this project, taking another step forward by utilizing untapped bodies of water as solar power generation sites. –Nobuo Kitamura, senior executive officer at Kyocera.
By cooperating with local companies on construction and operation, and establishing an environmental education facility adjacent to the plant to provide environmental classes for local elementary school students, Kyocera and Century Tokyo Leasing hope that the project will play a role in the development of the local community. The companies are committed to promoting solar energy as a means to attain a low-carbon society.
The modules will be installed on floating platforms manufactured by the French company, Ciel et Terre.
You may also want to check out: UK's 1st Floating Solar Farm, Sheeplands: Time Lapse VIDEO
By Amber Archangel "
http://cleantechies.com/2014/12/31/worlds-largest-floating-s…
"A 13.4-megawatt (MW) floating solar power plant will be developed and operated on the Yamakura Dam reservoir in Japan by Kyocera and Century Tokyo Leasing in a joint venture established by the two companies. The plant will become the largest floating solar installation in the world, according to Kyocera .
The project will be comprised of approximately 50,000 Kyocera solar modules installed over a water surface area of 180,000m2 (square meters) . The plant will generate an estimated 15,635 megawatt hours (MWh) per year - enough electricity to power approximately 4,700 typical households - while offsetting about 7,800 tons of CO2 emissions annually.
- Credit: Floating Solar UK -
We are excited to work with our partners on this project, taking another step forward by utilizing untapped bodies of water as solar power generation sites. –Nobuo Kitamura, senior executive officer at Kyocera.
By cooperating with local companies on construction and operation, and establishing an environmental education facility adjacent to the plant to provide environmental classes for local elementary school students, Kyocera and Century Tokyo Leasing hope that the project will play a role in the development of the local community. The companies are committed to promoting solar energy as a means to attain a low-carbon society.
The modules will be installed on floating platforms manufactured by the French company, Ciel et Terre.
You may also want to check out: UK's 1st Floating Solar Farm, Sheeplands: Time Lapse VIDEO
By Amber Archangel "
Lust for gold eating up the world’s last rainforests: study, Artisanal +illegal gold mining is fast extending its destructive reach into some of the world’s most untouched landscapes - M.com - Jan 16, 2015
- C. Jamasmie -
www.mining.com/lust-for-gold-eating-up-the-worlds-last-rainf…
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/10/1/014006/article
"
- Pastaza river, Ecuador, Copyright: Ammit Jack | Shutterstock.com -
Global demand for gold is putting some of the most remote and pristine tropical forests at risk, especially in South America, a study published in Environmental Research Letters shows.
Most of the deforestation for mining occurred after 2007, when gold demand increased following the financial crisis as investors sought a safe haven for their money.
Around 1,680 sq. km of rainforest south of Mexico was lost to mostly illegal and artisanal gold mining from 2001 to 2013, the study conducted by University of Puerto Rico researchers found. Most of the deforestation for mining occurred after 2007, when gold demand increased following the financial crisis as investors sought a safe haven for their money.
Forest clearance for gold mining has been concentrated in four main areas — the moist forests of French Guiana and nearby countries, the Tapajós–Xingú region of the Brazilian Amazon, Magdalena Valley-Urabá in Colombia and the Southwest Amazon in Peru.
The total amount of forest lost wasn’t huge—at the 1,600 sites mapped, only about 650 square miles of tropical moist forest was lost to mining, the team found. That's a relatively slow pace compared with other deforestation causes. Brazil, for instance, lost about 400 square km (155 square miles) of Amazonian forest to loggers and farmers in just one month last year.
And while the loss detected was less than 1% of the total, much of it (90%) was tracked to regions with high biodiversity, near conservation areas.
That doesn’t mean gold mining should continue to be overlooked, the researchers warn. The removal of vegetation and development of roads and railways can have long-term impacts.
"Much gold-mining deforestation is occurring around and within protected areas, even when they have a strict protection designation,” says one of the authors, Nora Alvarez-Berrios.
Global gold production has jumped from about 2,445 tonnes in 2000 to roughly 2,770 tonnes in 2013. Despite the ups and down of the metal price, mining for gold in areas such as the soil beneath tropical forests remains a profitable activity.
Artisanal gold mining is also related to pollutants, such as mercury, which can enter rivers and the atmosphere with poisoning consequences.
The researchers conclude it is crucial to encourage more responsible ways of mining gold by helping miners to extract in a more efficient way that reduces deeper damages to the forests. "
- C. Jamasmie -
www.mining.com/lust-for-gold-eating-up-the-worlds-last-rainf…
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/10/1/014006/article
"
- Pastaza river, Ecuador, Copyright: Ammit Jack | Shutterstock.com -
Global demand for gold is putting some of the most remote and pristine tropical forests at risk, especially in South America, a study published in Environmental Research Letters shows.
Most of the deforestation for mining occurred after 2007, when gold demand increased following the financial crisis as investors sought a safe haven for their money.
Around 1,680 sq. km of rainforest south of Mexico was lost to mostly illegal and artisanal gold mining from 2001 to 2013, the study conducted by University of Puerto Rico researchers found. Most of the deforestation for mining occurred after 2007, when gold demand increased following the financial crisis as investors sought a safe haven for their money.
Forest clearance for gold mining has been concentrated in four main areas — the moist forests of French Guiana and nearby countries, the Tapajós–Xingú region of the Brazilian Amazon, Magdalena Valley-Urabá in Colombia and the Southwest Amazon in Peru.
The total amount of forest lost wasn’t huge—at the 1,600 sites mapped, only about 650 square miles of tropical moist forest was lost to mining, the team found. That's a relatively slow pace compared with other deforestation causes. Brazil, for instance, lost about 400 square km (155 square miles) of Amazonian forest to loggers and farmers in just one month last year.
And while the loss detected was less than 1% of the total, much of it (90%) was tracked to regions with high biodiversity, near conservation areas.
That doesn’t mean gold mining should continue to be overlooked, the researchers warn. The removal of vegetation and development of roads and railways can have long-term impacts.
"Much gold-mining deforestation is occurring around and within protected areas, even when they have a strict protection designation,” says one of the authors, Nora Alvarez-Berrios.
Global gold production has jumped from about 2,445 tonnes in 2000 to roughly 2,770 tonnes in 2013. Despite the ups and down of the metal price, mining for gold in areas such as the soil beneath tropical forests remains a profitable activity.
Artisanal gold mining is also related to pollutants, such as mercury, which can enter rivers and the atmosphere with poisoning consequences.
The researchers conclude it is crucial to encourage more responsible ways of mining gold by helping miners to extract in a more efficient way that reduces deeper damages to the forests. "
UBC votes on removing fossil fuel investments from endowment, Divestment intended to put political pressure on the Canadian government to adopt a national carbon pricing system, says campaigner
www.mining.com/web/ubc-votes-on-removing-fossil-fuel-investm…
www.biv.com/article/2015/1/ubc-votes-removing-fossil-fuel-in…
"
Online voting started this week on a proposal to divest the University of British Columbia’s $1.2 billion endowment fund from fossil fuel investments.
UBC faculty will vote in an online referendum being held by the UBC Faculty Association this week and next week. The results will be released February 9.
UBC students voted a year ago to support divestment. Currently, the fund has over $100 million invested in fossil fuel companies, according to UBC C350, a group of UBC professors who are politically active in environmental issues.
“If these two groups vote for divestment, then the board of governors is obliged to consider fossil fuel divestment,” said George Hoberg, a political science professor at UBC who teaches energy policy and has been campaigning for divestment.
The UBC vote follows other successful divestment campaigns at North American universities, including Concordia University in Montreal. After students voted to divest at Concordia, the university announced it would create a $5 million sustainable investment fund.
In November, the board of governors at Dalhousie University in Halifax decided against divestment.
In his blog, UBC economics professor Kevin Milligan said he would be voting no because he does not believe divestment is effective.
“Assets are priced, more or less, on the value of their future income stream. If a large number of investors sells some asset for reasons unrelated to the value of the asset’s future income stream, the sellers may push the asset price down temporarily,” Milligan wrote.
“But so long as there is one well-financed investor who wishes to take advantage of this mis-pricing, the asset price will soon be restored to its original level. This leaves no change in the financial position of the company, but leaves the original investors who have now divested in a worse position because of lost portfolio diversification possibilities. What’s more, this action has also provided a deep-pocketed financier (who by construction does not share the moral stance of the divestors) a profitable arbitrage opportunity.”
Divestment is not about trying to bankrupt big oil companies, Hoberg said. Rather, it’s intended to put political pressure on the Canadian government to adopt a national carbon pricing system.
“Why is that not happening? One of the biggest things is opposition to carbon pricing from big oil,” Hoberg said.
“We’re doing it to reshape power relations over government policy and send signals to policy makers that a lot of people are concerned about fossil fuels and the coming climate crisis.” "
www.mining.com/web/ubc-votes-on-removing-fossil-fuel-investm…
www.biv.com/article/2015/1/ubc-votes-removing-fossil-fuel-in…
"
Online voting started this week on a proposal to divest the University of British Columbia’s $1.2 billion endowment fund from fossil fuel investments.
UBC faculty will vote in an online referendum being held by the UBC Faculty Association this week and next week. The results will be released February 9.
UBC students voted a year ago to support divestment. Currently, the fund has over $100 million invested in fossil fuel companies, according to UBC C350, a group of UBC professors who are politically active in environmental issues.
“If these two groups vote for divestment, then the board of governors is obliged to consider fossil fuel divestment,” said George Hoberg, a political science professor at UBC who teaches energy policy and has been campaigning for divestment.
The UBC vote follows other successful divestment campaigns at North American universities, including Concordia University in Montreal. After students voted to divest at Concordia, the university announced it would create a $5 million sustainable investment fund.
In November, the board of governors at Dalhousie University in Halifax decided against divestment.
In his blog, UBC economics professor Kevin Milligan said he would be voting no because he does not believe divestment is effective.
“Assets are priced, more or less, on the value of their future income stream. If a large number of investors sells some asset for reasons unrelated to the value of the asset’s future income stream, the sellers may push the asset price down temporarily,” Milligan wrote.
“But so long as there is one well-financed investor who wishes to take advantage of this mis-pricing, the asset price will soon be restored to its original level. This leaves no change in the financial position of the company, but leaves the original investors who have now divested in a worse position because of lost portfolio diversification possibilities. What’s more, this action has also provided a deep-pocketed financier (who by construction does not share the moral stance of the divestors) a profitable arbitrage opportunity.”
Divestment is not about trying to bankrupt big oil companies, Hoberg said. Rather, it’s intended to put political pressure on the Canadian government to adopt a national carbon pricing system.
“Why is that not happening? One of the biggest things is opposition to carbon pricing from big oil,” Hoberg said.
“We’re doing it to reshape power relations over government policy and send signals to policy makers that a lot of people are concerned about fossil fuels and the coming climate crisis.” "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.917.864 von Popeye82 am 29.01.15 00:57:29
University of Maine divests from coal, Another domino has toppled in the global divestment movement, with the University of Maine Board of Trustees agreeing to divest from direct holdings in coal-mining companies
www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/28/university-of-maine-coal_n…
www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/university-of-maine-divests-…
"Another domino has toppled in the global divestment movement, with the University of Maine Board of Trustees agreeing to divest from direct holdings in coal-mining companies.
The university released a statement which said the decision was made based on “potential costs of climate change, the steady decline of coal as a non-renewable resource and the emergence of new green technologies”, Reuters reported.
The university only has $502,000 worth of direct investments in coal companies, however it also has $1.7 million in exposure to coal in managed investments, pension and operating funds.
The university also said it would consider divestment from fossil fuels across the board.
Alumni and member of Divest UMaine Iris SanGiovanni said the group was “ecstatic that the Board of Trustees made the right decision.”
“Divesting now protects our assets, and sends the message that we take climate change seriously,” SanGiovanni said. "
University of Maine divests from coal, Another domino has toppled in the global divestment movement, with the University of Maine Board of Trustees agreeing to divest from direct holdings in coal-mining companies
www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/28/university-of-maine-coal_n…
www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/university-of-maine-divests-…
"Another domino has toppled in the global divestment movement, with the University of Maine Board of Trustees agreeing to divest from direct holdings in coal-mining companies.
The university released a statement which said the decision was made based on “potential costs of climate change, the steady decline of coal as a non-renewable resource and the emergence of new green technologies”, Reuters reported.
The university only has $502,000 worth of direct investments in coal companies, however it also has $1.7 million in exposure to coal in managed investments, pension and operating funds.
The university also said it would consider divestment from fossil fuels across the board.
Alumni and member of Divest UMaine Iris SanGiovanni said the group was “ecstatic that the Board of Trustees made the right decision.”
“Divesting now protects our assets, and sends the message that we take climate change seriously,” SanGiovanni said. "
'6 Ways To Make Solar Power More Affordable For All' - CT/SL - Feb 3, 2015
- Jake Richardson -
http://cleantechies.com/2015/02/03/6-ways-to-make-solar-powe…
- Jake Richardson -
http://cleantechies.com/2015/02/03/6-ways-to-make-solar-powe…
Plant turns cow manure, to ethanol
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48253
"Tulare County, California, recently surpassed nearby Fresno County as the top agriculture-producing county in terms of economic value within the U.S. It’s also the country’s top dairy producing county. The result has been more investment and economic growth in a rapidly booming area already home to 450,000 people.
But there is also a downside to the local dairy industry’s continued surge: The San Joaquin Valley suffers from some of worst air pollution in the U.S., and cow effluent is a threat to the region’s already troubled watersheds.
The launch yesterday of the Calgren Ethanol Biogester, a manure-to-ethanol plant in Pixley, about 60 miles south of Fresno, is a step toward reducing emissions and dependence on fossil fuels while helping California meet its clean energy goals. According to the companies that worked together on this project, the plant is also the first digester in California to transform agricultural waste into cleaner natural gas to power another renewable energy facility. Instead of relying on the local grid, the otherwise energy-intensive ethanol plant is part of what is close to a closed loop and zero-waste system.
A coalition of several companies, funded in part with a $4.6 million grant from the California Energy Commission, is behind the plant. Designed by DVO of Wisconsin, the anaerobic digester — the core of this plant — was built by Regenis, a Washington state-based contractor. Calgren Renewable Fuels will operate the plant, which will produce up to 58 million gallons of ethanol annually, enough to fuel 145,000 cars a year.
Cows in pasture image via Shutterstock.
Read more at ENN Affiliate TriplePundit. "
19,500 square miles of polar ice melts into oceans, each year
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48252
"Sea ice increases in Antarctica do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last three decades, according to the stark findings of a new NASA study.
As a whole, the planet has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles (35,000 square kilometers) since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year.
However, the rate of sea ice loss has recently doubled to now reach an alarming rate of nearly 20,000 square miles.
"Even though Antarctic sea ice reached a new record maximum this past September, global sea ice is still decreasing," said Claire Parkinson, author of the study and climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "That's because the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice."
Parkinson used microwave data collected by NASA and Department of Defense satellites for her study, which was published last December in the Journal of Climate. She added Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extents month by month from November 1978 to December 2013 to determine the global ice extent for each month.
Her analysis shows that over the 35-year period, the trend in ice extents was downward in all months of the year, even those corresponding to the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice maximum extents.
Furthermore, the global ice decrease has accelerated: in the first half of the record (1979-96), the sea ice loss was about 8,300 square miles (21,500 square kilometers) per year. This rate more than doubled for the second half of the period (1996 to 2013), when there was an average loss of 19,500 square miles (50,500 square kilometers) per year - an average yearly loss larger than the states of Vermont and New Hampshire combined.
"This doesn't mean the sea ice loss will continue to accelerate," Parkinson said. "After all, there are limits. For instance, once all the Arctic ice is gone in the summer, the Arctic summertime ice loss can't accelerate any further."
Sea ice has diminished in almost all regions of the Arctic, whereas the sea ice increases in the Antarctic are less widespread geographically. Although the sea ice cover expanded in most of the Southern Ocean between 1979 and 2013, it decreased substantially in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen seas. These two seas are close to the Antarctic Peninsula, a region that has warmed significantly over the last decades.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, ClickGreen. "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48252
"Sea ice increases in Antarctica do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last three decades, according to the stark findings of a new NASA study.
As a whole, the planet has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles (35,000 square kilometers) since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year.
However, the rate of sea ice loss has recently doubled to now reach an alarming rate of nearly 20,000 square miles.
"Even though Antarctic sea ice reached a new record maximum this past September, global sea ice is still decreasing," said Claire Parkinson, author of the study and climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "That's because the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice."
Parkinson used microwave data collected by NASA and Department of Defense satellites for her study, which was published last December in the Journal of Climate. She added Arctic and Antarctic sea ice extents month by month from November 1978 to December 2013 to determine the global ice extent for each month.
Her analysis shows that over the 35-year period, the trend in ice extents was downward in all months of the year, even those corresponding to the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice maximum extents.
Furthermore, the global ice decrease has accelerated: in the first half of the record (1979-96), the sea ice loss was about 8,300 square miles (21,500 square kilometers) per year. This rate more than doubled for the second half of the period (1996 to 2013), when there was an average loss of 19,500 square miles (50,500 square kilometers) per year - an average yearly loss larger than the states of Vermont and New Hampshire combined.
"This doesn't mean the sea ice loss will continue to accelerate," Parkinson said. "After all, there are limits. For instance, once all the Arctic ice is gone in the summer, the Arctic summertime ice loss can't accelerate any further."
Sea ice has diminished in almost all regions of the Arctic, whereas the sea ice increases in the Antarctic are less widespread geographically. Although the sea ice cover expanded in most of the Southern Ocean between 1979 and 2013, it decreased substantially in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen seas. These two seas are close to the Antarctic Peninsula, a region that has warmed significantly over the last decades.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, ClickGreen. "
New Study Predicts Plant Responses, to Drought
www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=4119&from=rss#.VNvQhi5d…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48251
"A new U.S. Geological Survey study shows how plants’ vulnerability to drought varies across the landscape; factors such as plant structure and soil type where the plant is growing can either make them more vulnerable or protect them from declines.
Recent elevated temperatures and prolonged droughts in many already water-limited regions throughout the world, including the southwestern U.S., are likely to intensify according to future climate model projections. This warming and drying can negatively affect vegetation and could lead to the degradation of wildlife habitat and ecosystems. It is critical for resource managers and other decision-makers to understand where on the landscape vegetation will be affected so they can prioritize restoration and conservation efforts, and plan for the future.
To better understand the potential detrimental effects of climate change, USGS scientists developed a model to evaluate how plant species will respond to increases in temperature and drought. The model integrates knowledge about how plant responses are modified by landscape, soil and plant attributes that are integral to water availability and use. The model was tested using fifty years of repeat measurements of long-living, or perennial, plant species cover in large permanent plots across the Mojave Desert, one of the most water-limited ecosystems in North America. The report, published in the Journal of Ecology, is available online.
“The impacts of drought are not going away, and sound science to understand how water-limited ecosystems will respond is important for managers to plan climate adaptation strategies,” said Seth Munson, USGS scientist and lead author of the study. “By using monitoring results that scientists and managers have diligently reported for the last several decades, our study helps forecast the future state of drylands.”
Results show that plants respond to climate differently based on the physical attributes of where they are growing in the Mojave Desert. For example, deep-rooted plants were not as vulnerable to drought on soils that allowed for deep-water flow. Also, shallow-rooted plants were better buffered from drought on soils that promoted water retention near the surface. This information may be helpful for resource managers to minimize disturbance in areas that are likely vulnerable to water shortages.
Water moves horizontally and vertically through the landscape, which affects the amount of water plants can take up through their roots. There is more to plant water availability and use than the precipitation that falls out of the sky. Understanding how water moves through ecosystems is critical in regions that already have marginal water available for plant growth.
Continue reading at USGS Newsroom.
Plant image via Shutterstock. "
www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=4119&from=rss#.VNvQhi5d…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48251
"A new U.S. Geological Survey study shows how plants’ vulnerability to drought varies across the landscape; factors such as plant structure and soil type where the plant is growing can either make them more vulnerable or protect them from declines.
Recent elevated temperatures and prolonged droughts in many already water-limited regions throughout the world, including the southwestern U.S., are likely to intensify according to future climate model projections. This warming and drying can negatively affect vegetation and could lead to the degradation of wildlife habitat and ecosystems. It is critical for resource managers and other decision-makers to understand where on the landscape vegetation will be affected so they can prioritize restoration and conservation efforts, and plan for the future.
To better understand the potential detrimental effects of climate change, USGS scientists developed a model to evaluate how plant species will respond to increases in temperature and drought. The model integrates knowledge about how plant responses are modified by landscape, soil and plant attributes that are integral to water availability and use. The model was tested using fifty years of repeat measurements of long-living, or perennial, plant species cover in large permanent plots across the Mojave Desert, one of the most water-limited ecosystems in North America. The report, published in the Journal of Ecology, is available online.
“The impacts of drought are not going away, and sound science to understand how water-limited ecosystems will respond is important for managers to plan climate adaptation strategies,” said Seth Munson, USGS scientist and lead author of the study. “By using monitoring results that scientists and managers have diligently reported for the last several decades, our study helps forecast the future state of drylands.”
Results show that plants respond to climate differently based on the physical attributes of where they are growing in the Mojave Desert. For example, deep-rooted plants were not as vulnerable to drought on soils that allowed for deep-water flow. Also, shallow-rooted plants were better buffered from drought on soils that promoted water retention near the surface. This information may be helpful for resource managers to minimize disturbance in areas that are likely vulnerable to water shortages.
Water moves horizontally and
vertically through the landscape, which affects the amount of water plants can take up through their roots. There is more to plant water availability and use than the precipitation that falls out of the sky. Understanding how water moves through ecosystems is critical in regions that already have marginal water available for plant growth. Continue reading at USGS Newsroom.
Plant image via Shutterstock. "
Children in cities have increased risk of neurological damage, due to air pollution, Pollution in many cities threatens the brain development in children
lilian.calderon@mso.umt.edu
406-243-4785
http://news.umt.edu/2014/09/09814airp.php
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48256
http://iospress.metapress.com/content/xx6582688105j48h/
"Pollution in many cities threatens the brain development in children.
Findings by University of Montana Professor Dr. Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas, MA, MD, Ph.D., and her team of researchers reveal that children living in megacities are at increased risk for brain inflammation and neurodegenerative changes, including Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.
Calderón-Garcidueñas’ findings are detailed in a paper titled “Air pollution and children: Neural and tight junction antibodies and combustion metals, the role of barrier breakdown and brain immunity in neurodegeneration,” which can be found online at http://iospress.metapress.com/content/xx6582688105j48h/.
The study found when air particulate matter and their components such as metals are inhaled or swallowed, they pass through damaged barriers, including respiratory, gastrointestinal and the blood-brain barriers and can result in long-lasting harmful effects.
Calderón-Garcidueñas and her team compared 58 serum and cerebrospinal fluid samples from a control group living in a low-pollution city and matched them by age, gender, socioeconomic status, education and education levels achieved by their parents to 81 children living in Mexico City.
The results found that the children living in Mexico City had significantly higher serum and cerebrospinal fluid levels of autoantibodies against key tight-junction and neural proteins, as well as combustion-related metals.
“We asked why a clinically healthy kid is making autoantibodies against their own brain components,” Calderón-Garcidueñas said. “That is indicative of damage to barriers that keep antigens and neurotoxins away from the brain. Brain autoantibodies are one of the features in the brains of people who have neuroinflammatory diseases like multiple sclerosis.”
The issue is important and relevant for one reason, she explained. The breakdown of the blood-brain barrier and the presence of autoantibodies to important brain proteins will contribute to the neuroinflammation observed in urban children and raises the question of what role air pollution plays in a 400 percent increase of MS cases in Mexico City, making it one of the main diagnoses for neurology referrals.
Calderón-Garcidueñas points out that there is a need for a longitudinal follow-up study to determine if there is a relationship between the cognition deficits and brain MRI alterations previously reported in Mexico City children, and their autoimmune responses. But what is clear is that the kids are suffering from immune dysregulation.
Once there is a breakdown in the blood-brain barrier, not only will particulate matter enter the body but it also opens the door to harmful neurotoxins, bacteria and viruses.
Continue reading at the University of Montana.
Air pollution image via Shutterstock. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.925.115 von Popeye82 am 29.01.15 17:10:29
Coal miners running on borrowed time, In a further sign that coal miners have passed their use-by date, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has sold off 32 coal miners from its portfolio. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), worth more than A$1.1 trillion, revealed last week that it sold out of 32 coal mining companies in 2014 because of risks from regulatory action on climate change. Another 8 were sold out of due to greenhouse gas emissions, along with 5 tar sand producers, 2 cement companies and one coal-based electricity generator. An additional 16 coal miners were dumped because of links to deforestation, as well as two US coal companies involved in mountain-top removal
www.fool.com.au/2015/02/09/coal-miners-running-on-borrowed-t…
www.minefocus.com/2015/02/coal-miners-running-borrowed-time/…
"In a further sign that coal miners have passed their use-by date, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has sold off 32 coal miners from its portfolio.
Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), worth more than A$1.1 trillion, revealed last week that it sold out of 32 coal mining companies in 2014 because of risks from regulatory action on climate change.
Another 8 were sold out of due to greenhouse gas emissions, along with 5 tar sand producers, 2 cement companies and one coal-based electricity generator. An additional 16 coal miners were dumped because of links to deforestation, as well as two US coal companies involved in mountain-top removal.
It’s a growing trend worldwide, with an estimated US$50 billion in fossil fuel company stocks being divested by 180 organisations around the world, according to The Guardian. The University of Sydney is the latest to join the movement, reported by Fairfax Media to be cutting heavy polluters and some fossil fuel companies from its $413 million portfolio.
Last year there was a huge outcry after the Australian National University dropped $16 million worth of shares in seven resources companies from its $1 billion portfolio, after guidance from a consultancy noted that they failed to meet responsible investing guidelines. Those companies included oil and gas producer Santos Ltd (ASX: STO), copper and gold producer Sandfire Resources Ltd (ASX: SFR) and Oil Search Limited (ASX: OSH).
Clearly, the moves by fund managers to reduce their fossil fuel and carbon emitting profiles is not just as a concern for climate change, but to reduce investment risk. As Marthe Skaar told The Guardian, “Our risk-based approach means that we exit sectors and areas where we see elevated levels of risk to our investments in the long term.”
While many will point to ongoing demand for coal as one of the cheapest means of generating electricity and the rise of developing nations and their likely demand for coal, Chinese coal production fell for the first time in 2014.
Investors in ASX-listed coal miners such as Whitehaven Coal Limited (ASX: WHC), New Hope Corporation Limited (ASX: NHC), Cockatoo Coal Limited (ASX: COK) as well as BHP Billiton Limited (ASX: BHP), you have been warned. "
Coal miners running on borrowed time, In a further sign that coal miners have passed their use-by date, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has sold off 32 coal miners from its portfolio. Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), worth more than A$1.1 trillion, revealed last week that it sold out of 32 coal mining companies in 2014 because of risks from regulatory action on climate change. Another 8 were sold out of due to greenhouse gas emissions, along with 5 tar sand producers, 2 cement companies and one coal-based electricity generator. An additional 16 coal miners were dumped because of links to deforestation, as well as two US coal companies involved in mountain-top removal
www.fool.com.au/2015/02/09/coal-miners-running-on-borrowed-t…
www.minefocus.com/2015/02/coal-miners-running-borrowed-time/…
"In a further sign that coal miners have passed their use-by date, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has sold off 32 coal miners from its portfolio.
Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), worth more than A$1.1 trillion, revealed last week that it sold out of 32 coal mining companies in 2014 because of risks from regulatory action on climate change.
Another 8 were sold out of due to greenhouse gas emissions, along with 5 tar sand producers, 2 cement companies and one coal-based electricity generator. An additional 16 coal miners were dumped because of links to deforestation, as well as two US coal companies involved in mountain-top removal.
It’s a growing trend worldwide, with an estimated US$50 billion in fossil fuel company stocks being divested by 180 organisations around the world, according to The Guardian. The University of Sydney is the latest to join the movement, reported by Fairfax Media to be cutting heavy polluters and some fossil fuel companies from its $413 million portfolio.
Last year there was a huge outcry after the Australian National University dropped $16 million worth of shares in seven resources companies from its $1 billion portfolio, after guidance from a consultancy noted that they failed to meet responsible investing guidelines. Those companies included oil and gas producer Santos Ltd (ASX: STO), copper and gold producer Sandfire Resources Ltd (ASX: SFR) and Oil Search Limited (ASX: OSH).
Clearly, the moves by fund managers to reduce their fossil fuel and carbon emitting profiles is not just as a concern for climate change, but to reduce investment risk. As Marthe Skaar told The Guardian, “Our risk-based approach means that we exit sectors and areas where we see elevated levels of risk to our investments in the long term.”
While many will point to ongoing demand for coal as one of the cheapest means of generating electricity and the rise of developing nations and their likely demand for coal, Chinese coal production fell for the first time in 2014.
Investors in ASX-listed coal miners such as Whitehaven Coal Limited (ASX: WHC), New Hope Corporation Limited (ASX: NHC), Cockatoo Coal Limited (ASX: COK) as well as BHP Billiton Limited (ASX: BHP), you have been warned. "
The effects of Global warming on fisheries assessed, in new study
http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2015/feb/global-warmi…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48270
"A report to be published Thursday in the journal Nature suggests that global warming may increase upwelling in several ocean current systems around the world by the end of this century, especially at high latitudes, and will cause major changes in marine biodiversity.
Since upwelling of colder, nutrient-rich water is a driving force behind marine productivity, one possibility may be enhancement of some of the world’s most important fisheries.
However, solar heating due to greenhouse warming may also increase the persistence of “stratification,” or the horizontal layering of ocean water of different temperatures. The result could be a warm, near-surface layer and a deep, cold layer.
If this happens to a significant extent, it could increase global hypoxic, or low-oxygen events, decouple upwelling from the supply of nutrient-rich water, and pose a significant threat to the global function of fisheries and marine ecosystems.
The projected increase in upwelling, in other words, appears clear and definitive. But researchers say its biological impact is far less obvious, which is a significant concern.
These upwelling systems cover less than 2 percent of the ocean surface, but contribute 7 percent to global marine primary production, and 20 percent of global fish catches.
“Our modeling indicates that normally weaker upwelling toward the polar ends of upwelling-dominated regions will strengthen,” said Bruce Menge, the Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology in the College of Science at Oregon State University, and co-author of the report.
“Ordinarily, you would expect that an increase in upwelling would mean an increase in marine coastal productivity, and that might happen,” Menge said.
“However, a thicker and warmer top later, and more stratified ocean waters may put the cold, nutrient-rich waters too deep for upwelling to bring them up, and reduce the ability of upwelling to energize the coastal ocean food web,” he said. “This could have a very negative impact on marine production and fisheries.”
Fish in ocean image via Shutterstock.
Read more at Oregon State University. "
http://oregonstate.edu/ua/ncs/archives/2015/feb/global-warmi…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48270
"A report to be published Thursday in the journal Nature suggests that global warming may increase upwelling in several ocean current systems around the world by the end of this century, especially at high latitudes, and will cause major changes in marine biodiversity.
Since upwelling of colder, nutrient-rich water is a driving force behind marine productivity, one possibility may be enhancement of some of the world’s most important fisheries.
However, solar heating due to greenhouse warming may also increase the persistence of “stratification,” or the horizontal layering of ocean water of different temperatures. The result could be a warm, near-surface layer and a deep, cold layer.
If this happens to a significant extent, it could increase global hypoxic, or low-oxygen events, decouple upwelling from the supply of nutrient-rich water, and pose a significant threat to the global function of fisheries and marine ecosystems.
The projected increase in upwelling, in other words, appears clear and definitive. But researchers say its biological impact is far less obvious, which is a significant concern.
These upwelling systems cover less than 2 percent of the ocean surface, but contribute 7 percent to global marine primary production, and 20 percent of global fish catches.
“Our modeling indicates that normally weaker upwelling toward the polar ends of upwelling-dominated regions will strengthen,” said Bruce Menge, the Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology in the College of Science at Oregon State University, and co-author of the report.
“Ordinarily, you would expect that an increase in upwelling would mean an increase in marine coastal productivity, and that might happen,” Menge said.
“However, a thicker and warmer top later, and more stratified ocean waters may put the cold, nutrient-rich waters too deep for upwelling to bring them up, and reduce the ability of upwelling to energize the coastal ocean food web,” he said. “This could have a very negative impact on marine production and fisheries.”
Fish in ocean image via Shutterstock.
Read more at Oregon State University. "
Church threatens to dump oil shares, after Leonardo DiCaprio film - M.com/SI/CoE/Netflix - Feb 9, 2015
- Michael Allan McCrae -
www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2015/02/eiag-issue…
www.mining.com/leonardo-dicaprio-film-prompts-church-of-engl…
www.socointernational.com/current-status
"
The Church of England says it has "serious concerns" about SOCO International's operations around Virunga National Park and the it may dump its £3m (Can$5.69 million) stake.
"Following Board level engagement between the Church of England Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG) and SOCO International Plc (SOCO), the EIAG has raised serious concerns about the Company's determination to satisfactorily address, in an open and transparent manner, allegations concerning the operations of SOCO in and around the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)," wrote the Church of England board to SOCO Internatinal.
SOCO International, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange and has a market cap of US$1.5 billion, denies adversely affecting the park. Virunga National Park was established in 1925 by King Albert I of Belgium to protect the mountain gorillas. Virunga was designated a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site in 1979.
The British oil firm's activities in the park were highlighted in the documentary Virunga. Undercover footage shows alleged SOCO representatives taking bribes to park rangers to access the park.
SOCO has license to operation within the Virunga National Park, but says it is no longer conducting operations within the block.
"Ethical conduct, in public and in private, is important to SOCO and is at the heart of the Company’s values," writes the company on its website.
"SOCO condemns the use of violence and intimidation, and has implemented and enforces robust policies and procedures to ensure the best working practices." "
- Michael Allan McCrae -
www.churchofengland.org/media-centre/news/2015/02/eiag-issue…
www.mining.com/leonardo-dicaprio-film-prompts-church-of-engl…
www.socointernational.com/current-status
"
The Church of England says it has "serious concerns" about SOCO International's operations around Virunga National Park and the it may dump its £3m (Can$5.69 million) stake.
"Following Board level engagement between the Church of England Ethical Investment Advisory Group (EIAG) and SOCO International Plc (SOCO), the EIAG has raised serious concerns about the Company's determination to satisfactorily address, in an open and transparent manner, allegations concerning the operations of SOCO in and around the Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)," wrote the Church of England board to SOCO Internatinal.
SOCO International, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange and has a market cap of US$1.5 billion, denies adversely affecting the park. Virunga National Park was established in 1925 by King Albert I of Belgium to protect the mountain gorillas. Virunga was designated a UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site in 1979.
The British oil firm's activities in the park were highlighted in the documentary Virunga. Undercover footage shows alleged SOCO representatives taking bribes to park rangers to access the park.
SOCO has license to operation within the Virunga National Park, but says it is no longer conducting operations within the block.
"Ethical conduct, in public and in private, is important to SOCO and is at the heart of the Company’s values," writes the company on its website.
"SOCO condemns the use of violence and intimidation, and has implemented and enforces robust policies and procedures to ensure the best working practices." "
California Energy Commission Takes Step, to Save California Billions of Gallons of Water
http://cleantechies.com/2015/04/13/california-energy-commiss…
"
California is experiencing an epic drought … the worst in more than 1,000 years! And as we face a fourth consecutive year of drought – with no end in sight – that warrants bold and immediate action from the state.
While our state leaders can’t make it rain, there’s a lot they can do to save water and ensure that Californians can also weather the next drought. For example, the California Energy Commission (CEC) today stepped up to save Californians billions of gallons of water.
In a meeting that took place earlier today, the CEC took emergency action to ensure that the toilets, urinals, and faucets sold in California will be the most water-efficient in the country.
According to the CEC, the new standards for kitchen and bathroom faucets, urinals, and toilets will reduce California water use by more than 100 billion gallons of water per year, once the current stock of products is turned over. To put that into perspective, we’ll be saving three times the amount of water used by the City of San Francisco every year! The first year savings are expected to be around 10 billion gallons.
The action taken by the CEC today is unprecedented – no other state has adopted standards that are more efficient than those set by EPA’s WaterSense program (the WaterSense program sets national voluntary standards for water efficient products similar to EnergyStar for energy efficient products). But today, the CEC unanimously voted that to set standards for urinals and residential lavatory faucets that go beyond WaterSense standards.
Next year, all urinals sold in California will use only 1 pint of water or less for each flush (the old standard was 1.0 gallons per flush, WaterSense is 0.5 gpf) and bathroom faucets will use no more than 1.2 gallons of water per minute (the old standard was 2.2 gpm, WaterSense is 1.5 gpm).
California is often the trendsetter when it comes to both water and energy efficiency, and hopefully other states will follow California’s lead.
What does CEC’s Emergency Regulation mean for you? As of January 1, 2016 all toilets, urinals, and lavatory faucets available for purchase in the state – both for homes and business – will be required to meet the new efficient standards. The Emergency Regulation also prevents stockpiling of older, less efficient models by retailers, as we have seen some do in the past just before new standards went into effect.
But the CEC’s Emergency Regulation does NOT require you to replace your inefficient plumbing fixtures. To encourage you to replace those water-guzzling products, the CEC is working on a rebate program to make the purchase of more efficient appliances more affordable.
Wondering what else can you do?
- If you’re not in the market for a new faucet but still want to do your part, install a 1.0 gallon per minute faucet aerator on your bathroom faucet. Many water suppliers offer these aerators to their customers for free, simply check your water suppliers website.
- For even more tips, check out NRDC’s Nine Ways to Save Water or my blog on innovative ways to reduce your water footprint. "
http://cleantechies.com/2015/04/13/california-energy-commiss…
"
California is experiencing an epic drought … the worst in more than 1,000 years! And as we face a fourth consecutive year of drought – with no end in sight – that warrants bold and immediate action from the state.
While our state leaders can’t make it rain, there’s a lot they can do to save water and ensure that Californians can also weather the next drought. For example, the California Energy Commission (CEC) today stepped up to save Californians billions of gallons of water.
In a meeting that took place earlier today, the CEC took emergency action to ensure that the toilets, urinals, and faucets sold in California will be the most water-efficient in the country.
According to the CEC, the new standards for kitchen and bathroom faucets, urinals, and toilets will reduce California water use by more than 100 billion gallons of water per year, once the current stock of products is turned over. To put that into perspective, we’ll be saving three times the amount of water used by the City of San Francisco every year! The first year savings are expected to be around 10 billion gallons.
The action taken by the CEC today is unprecedented – no other state has adopted standards that are more efficient than those set by EPA’s WaterSense program (the WaterSense program sets national voluntary standards for water efficient products similar to EnergyStar for energy efficient products). But today, the CEC unanimously voted that to set standards for urinals and residential lavatory faucets that go beyond WaterSense standards.
Next year, all urinals sold in California will use only 1 pint of water or less for each flush (the old standard was 1.0 gallons per flush, WaterSense is 0.5 gpf) and bathroom faucets will use no more than 1.2 gallons of water per minute (the old standard was 2.2 gpm, WaterSense is 1.5 gpm).
California is often the trendsetter when it comes to both water and energy efficiency, and hopefully other states will follow California’s lead.
What does CEC’s Emergency Regulation mean for you? As of January 1, 2016 all toilets, urinals, and lavatory faucets available for purchase in the state – both for homes and business – will be required to meet the new efficient standards. The Emergency Regulation also prevents stockpiling of older, less efficient models by retailers, as we have seen some do in the past just before new standards went into effect.
But the CEC’s Emergency Regulation does NOT require you to replace your inefficient plumbing fixtures. To encourage you to replace those water-guzzling products, the CEC is working on a rebate program to make the purchase of more efficient appliances more affordable.
Wondering what else can you do?
- If you’re not in the market for a new faucet but still want to do your part, install a 1.0 gallon per minute faucet aerator on your bathroom faucet. Many water suppliers offer these aerators to their customers for free, simply check your water suppliers website.
- For even more tips, check out NRDC’s Nine Ways to Save Water or my blog on innovative ways to reduce your water footprint. "
Species loss linked to unstable production of grassland ecosystem - ENN/UoO/UoM/S, OXFORD/MINNESOTA - Apr 17, 2015
www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-04-17-lose-species-lose-stability-gra…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48456
"Losing plant species is directly linked to long-term declines in the stable productivity of grasslands, a new study has shown.
The study demonstrates for the first time that for every decrease in plant biodiversity there is a proportional decrease in the stable production of plant biomass through time of grassland ecosystems. Over the long-term, factors such as rising levels of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, more frequent grazing, or drought, only affect ecosystem stability in as much as they affect biodiversity.
The findings are likely to be relevant to a variety of ecosystems and suggest that restoring or protecting plant biodiversity should be central to conservation strategies.
The study was led by researchers at Oxford University and the University of Minnesota and involved 12 experiments carried out at the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in Minnesota over a period of 28 years. In the experiments levels of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water, as well as the frequency of fires and grazing, were artificially manipulated and the impacts on biodiversity and stability assessed. The researchers found that only when these individual drivers reduced grassland diversity did they in turn reduce its stability. In other words, the effect of all of these human-induced changes on ecosystem stability were mediated by their impact on biodiversity.
A report of the research is published in the journal Science.
'If, for example, we caused a 30% decrease in plant diversity we could reliably predict that there would be an 8% decrease in the stability of the grassland ecosystem irrespective of the causes of this drop in biodiversity,' said Dr Yann Hautier of Oxford University's Department of Plant Sciences, lead author of the report. 'It seems that biodiversity is the 'middle man' that passes on the impact of individual drivers, such as increased atmospheric carbon dioxide or over-use of nitrogen fertiliser, to the ecosystem, damaging its ability to reliably provide the services we all rely on.'
The researchers showed that whilst increasing nitrogen levels can boost plant biomass production in the short term they have a particularly strong negative effect on biodiversity and this leads to a significant long-term decline in the stable production of plant biomass.
Continue reading at the University of Oxford. "
www.ox.ac.uk/news/2015-04-17-lose-species-lose-stability-gra…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48456
"Losing plant species is directly linked to long-term declines in the stable productivity of grasslands, a new study has shown.
The study demonstrates for the first time that for every decrease in plant biodiversity there is a proportional decrease in the stable production of plant biomass through time of grassland ecosystems. Over the long-term, factors such as rising levels of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, more frequent grazing, or drought, only affect ecosystem stability in as much as they affect biodiversity.
The findings are likely to be relevant to a variety of ecosystems and suggest that restoring or protecting plant biodiversity should be central to conservation strategies.
The study was led by researchers at Oxford University and the University of Minnesota and involved 12 experiments carried out at the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in Minnesota over a period of 28 years. In the experiments levels of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water, as well as the frequency of fires and grazing, were artificially manipulated and the impacts on biodiversity and stability assessed. The researchers found that only when these individual drivers reduced grassland diversity did they in turn reduce its stability. In other words, the effect of all of these human-induced changes on ecosystem stability were mediated by their impact on biodiversity.
A report of the research is published in the journal Science.
'If, for example, we caused a 30% decrease in plant diversity we could reliably predict that there would be an 8% decrease in the stability of the grassland ecosystem irrespective of the causes of this drop in biodiversity,' said Dr Yann Hautier of Oxford University's Department of Plant Sciences, lead author of the report. 'It seems that biodiversity is the 'middle man' that passes on the impact of individual drivers, such as increased atmospheric carbon dioxide or over-use of nitrogen fertiliser, to the ecosystem, damaging its ability to reliably provide the services we all rely on.'
The researchers showed that whilst increasing nitrogen levels can boost plant biomass production in the short term they have a particularly strong negative effect on biodiversity and this leads to a significant long-term decline in the stable production of plant biomass.
Continue reading at the University of Oxford. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 49.087.829 von Popeye82 am 16.02.15 23:21:04
Norway plans to drop worst greenhouse gas emitters, from wealth fund
www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/10/us-norway-wealth-climatec…
www.minefocus.com/2015/04/norway-plans-to-drop-worst-greenho…
"
Norway plans to drop investments in companies emitting unacceptable amounts of greenhouse gases in a sharpening of environmental rules for its $885 billion sovereign wealth fund, the Finance Ministry said on Friday.
The proposed rules would stop short of a blanket divestment from coal and oil by the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, it said. The fund is itself built on revenues from Norway’s offshore oil and gas production.
“The government will introduce a new criterion to exclude companies whose conduct to an unacceptable degree entail greenhouse gas emissions,” it said.
The proposal would target the “worst climate offenders” and both “acts and omissions” that led to emissions, it said. It gave no examples of the type of companies that might be affected. ..."
Norway plans to drop worst greenhouse gas emitters, from wealth fund
www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/10/us-norway-wealth-climatec…
www.minefocus.com/2015/04/norway-plans-to-drop-worst-greenho…
"
Norway plans to drop investments in companies emitting unacceptable amounts of greenhouse gases in a sharpening of environmental rules for its $885 billion sovereign wealth fund, the Finance Ministry said on Friday.
The proposed rules would stop short of a blanket divestment from coal and oil by the world’s biggest sovereign wealth fund, it said. The fund is itself built on revenues from Norway’s offshore oil and gas production.
“The government will introduce a new criterion to exclude companies whose conduct to an unacceptable degree entail greenhouse gas emissions,” it said.
The proposal would target the “worst climate offenders” and both “acts and omissions” that led to emissions, it said. It gave no examples of the type of companies that might be affected. ..."
Limited nutrients may keep plants, from growing as fast as scientists thought
http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2015/04/plants-may-not-pr…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48467
"Plants are one of the last bulwarks against climate change. They feed on carbon dioxide, growing faster and absorbing more of the greenhouse gas as humans produce it. But a new study finds that limited nutrients may keep plants from growing as fast as scientists thought, leading to more global warming than some climate models had predicted by 2100.
Plants need different nutrients to thrive, such as nitrogen for making the light-absorbing pigment chlorophyll and phosphorus for building proteins. Farmers supply these in fertilizer, but in nature, plants have to find their own sources. New nitrogen comes from the air, which is 78% nitrogen by volume, but it is almost all in the form of nitrogen gas. Plants can't break this down, so they rely on soil bacteria to do it for them. Some plants, mainly legumes, have evolved nodules on their roots that harbor these bacteria. New phosphorus comes from weathering rocks or sometimes from sands blown on the wind from deserts.
Yet these two key nutrients are not particularly well accounted for in climate models. Only two of the 11 models used to project future warming in the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considered the effects of limited nitrogen on plant growth; none considered phosphorus, although one paper from 2014 subsequently pointed out this omission.
So biogeochemist William Wieder of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and colleagues looked at the projections for new plant growth in the various models and considered how much new nitrogen and phosphorus would be required for these projections to be met. They then estimated how much extra nitrogen and phosphorus would actually be available from natural sources and found that there would not be enough, revising the models accordingly. ..."
http://news.sciencemag.org/climate/2015/04/plants-may-not-pr…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48467
"Plants are one of the last bulwarks against climate change. They feed on carbon dioxide, growing faster and absorbing more of the greenhouse gas as humans produce it. But a new study finds that limited nutrients may keep plants from growing as fast as scientists thought, leading to more global warming than some climate models had predicted by 2100.
Plants need different nutrients to thrive, such as nitrogen for making the light-absorbing pigment chlorophyll and phosphorus for building proteins. Farmers supply these in fertilizer, but in nature, plants have to find their own sources. New nitrogen comes from the air, which is 78% nitrogen by volume, but it is almost all in the form of nitrogen gas. Plants can't break this down, so they rely on soil bacteria to do it for them. Some plants, mainly legumes, have evolved nodules on their roots that harbor these bacteria. New phosphorus comes from weathering rocks or sometimes from sands blown on the wind from deserts.
Yet these two key nutrients are not particularly well accounted for in climate models. Only two of the 11 models used to project future warming in the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considered the effects of limited nitrogen on plant growth; none considered phosphorus, although one paper from 2014 subsequently pointed out this omission.
So biogeochemist William Wieder of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, and colleagues looked at the projections for new plant growth in the various models and considered how much new nitrogen and phosphorus would be required for these projections to be met. They then estimated how much extra nitrogen and phosphorus would actually be available from natural sources and found that there would not be enough, revising the models accordingly. ..."
Humanity has exceeded 4 out of 9 "planetary boundaries", study warns, Almost half of the processes that are crucial to maintaining the stability of the Earth have become dangerously compromised by human activity, according to an international research team who provide new evidence of significant changes in four of the nine systems which regulate the resilience of the planet - CG/UoW-M, CfL/MGSotE/SM/ANU/SRC/WEF, WISCONSIN-MADISON/DAVOS - Jan 15, 2015
www.news.wisc.edu/23409
www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/trends/125474-nearly-half-the…
www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/1259855.abstract
"Almost half of the processes that are crucial to maintaining the stability of the Earth have become dangerously compromised by human activity, according to an international research team who provide new evidence of significant changes in four of the nine systems which regulate the resilience of the planet.
The study says the boundaries have all passed beyond levels that keeps humanity in a "safe operating space."
One of the report authors, Steve Carpenter, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Limnology, says the study should be a wake-up call to policymakers that "we're running up to and beyond the biophysical boundaries that enable human civilization as we know it to exist."
For the last 11,700 years until roughly 100 years ago, Earth had been in a "remarkably stable state", explains Carpenter. During this time, known as the Holocene epoch, "everything important to civilization" has occurred. From the development of agriculture, to the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, to the Industrial Revolution, the Holocene has been a good time for human endeavors.
But over the last century, some of the parameters that made the Holocene so hospitable have changed.
- Systems which regulate the resilience of the planet are at risk -
While the study focuses on several of these, including climate change and a troubling loss of biodiversity, Carpenter led the examination of biogeochemical cycle changes. Specifically, Carpenter looked at two elements essential to life as we know it, phosphorus and nitrogen.
Both are widely used to fertilize crops, and the rise of large-scale, industrial agriculture has led to an immense increase in the amount of the chemicals entering our ecosystems.
"We've changed nitrogen and phosphorus cycles vastly more than any other element," Carpenter says. "(The increase) is on the order of 200 to 300 percent. In contrast, carbon has only been increased 10 to 20 percent and look at all the uproar that has caused in the climate."
The increase in phosphorus and nitrogen has been especially detrimental to water quality. Phosphorus loading is the leading cause of both harmful algal blooms and the oxygen-starved "dead zone" in Lake Erie. Likewise, nitrogen flowing down the Mississippi River is the main culprit behind the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico.
While nitrogen and phosphorus levels overall are well beyond the Holocene boundaries, Carpenter says the chemical load isn't spread evenly over the planet.
"There are places that are really, really overloaded with nutrient pollution," he says. "Wisconsin and the entire Great Lakes region are some of those. But there are other places where billions of people live that are undersupplied with nitrogen and phosphorus."
For instance, much of Africa is largely lacking these two essential elements, Carpenter says. "We've got certain parts of the world that are overpolluted with nitrogen and phosphorus, and others where people don't even have enough to grow the food they need."
It's a "distribution problem," Carpenter says, and suggests places like the Midwestern U.S. could vastly reduce its use of fertilizers and still maintain productive crops while nutrient-poor regions of the globe increase their use - all while keeping the global levels safely within the study's prescribed "planetary boundary."
"It might be possible for human civilization to live outside Holocene conditions, but it's never been tried before," Carpenter says. "We know civilization can make it in Holocene conditions, so it seems wise to try to maintain them."
The nitrogen-phosphorus cycle which is essential to all life, is particularly important to both food production and the maintenance of clean water.
"People depend on food, and food production depends on clean water," says Prof. Elena Bennett from McGill's School of the Environment who contributed the research on the nitrogen-phosphorus cycle to the study. "This new data shows that our ability both to produce sufficient food in the future and to have clean water to drink and to swim in are at risk."
The research fixing new planetary boundaries (which represent thresholds or tipping points beyond which there will be irreversible and abrupt environmental change) was published today in the journal Science.
It suggests that changes to the Earth's climate, biosphere integrity (a concept covering loss of biodiversity and species extinction), and land-system (through deforestation for example) represent a risk for current and future societies. The fourth process which has become significantly compromised is the nitrogen-phosphorus cycle, which affects both the water we drink and our ability to produce food.
There are two issues relating to the state of the phosphorus-nitrogen cycle. Both elements are essential to plant and animal life. But one of the problems is that phosphorus, which is used as a fertilizer for fields and lawns is in limited supply, and that supply is geopolitically concentrated. Nearly 90% of all known phosphorus reserves are found in just three countries - the vast majority is in Morocco, with China, Algeria coming in next.
The second issue is that the excess of phosphorus-based fertilisers that drain from fields and lawns into neighbouring lakes can have disastrous effects on the surrounding water. It can lead to the sudden growth of algae that can cause the decline or death of other lake organisms and produce toxins that are dangerous to people or animals that swim in the lake or get drinking water from it.
"About half a million residents of the city of Toledo found out that their tap water had been contaminated with a toxin called microcystin last summer. And in 2007 the Quebec government declared that more than 75 lakes were affected by toxins produced by blue-green algae, says Prof. Bennett.
"This kind of problem is likely to become much more common. We will see more lakes closed, will have to pay more to clean our water, and we will face temporary situations where our water is not cleanable or drinkable more and more frequently. That's what it means to have crossed this planetary boundary. It's not a good thing for any of us."
The nine planetary boundaries were identified as:
* Climate change
* Change in biosphere integrity (biodiversity loss and species extinction)
* Stratospheric ozone depletion
* Ocean acidification
* Biogeochemical flows (phosphorus and nitrogen cycles)
* Land-system change (for example deforestation)
* Freshwater use
* Atmospheric aerosol loading (microscopic particles in the atmosphere that affect climate and living organisms)
* Introduction of novel entities (e.g. organic pollutants, radioactive materials, nanomaterials, and micro-plastics).
Another of the report’s authors described how "we are starting to destabilize our own planetary life support system".
Professor Will Steffen from The Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre, added: "For climate change the risk to humans begins increasing as carbon dioxide rises above 350 parts per million (ppm). We're now at nearly 400 ppm; we're coping so far, but we're seeing extreme weather events become worse, loss of polar ice and other worrying impacts.
"Our analysis shows that at 450 ppm the risks are very serious indeed."
Professor Steffen says living within planetary boundaries will not necessarily compromise the prosperity and comfort of humans.
"Experts from technology and engineering say we can prosper with nine billion people, and stay within the planetary boundaries," Professor Steffen added.
"We have to be clever and we have to innovate, but they say we can do it." "
We DID it! McDonald's goes deforestation-free
http://blog.ucsusa.org/mcdonalds-palm-oil-commitments-710
"Dear XXX
Over the last year, UCS supporters like you sent more than 140,000 emails to tell McDonald's and the rest of America's fast food chains that there's no excuse to continue buying palm oil that could cause climate change, loss of endangered species habitat, and tropical deforestation.
You spoke up. McDonald's listened. And acted!
McDonald's, the world's largest fast food chain, just pledged to eliminate deforestation from its global supply chains, making it the first global fast food company to do so. McDonald's pledged to ensure the palm oil, beef, fiber-based packaging, coffee, and poultry in their products does not contribute to tropical deforestation and peatland destruction.
McDonald's size and scale means the new commitment could force real change, pushing the industry to eliminate tropical deforestation from its supply chain, ultimately reducing global warming emissions. You can help make sure that happens by emailing McDonald's today to urge them to release a strong plan.
Just click the TAKE ACTION button below to send this letter to McDonald's now:
Dear McDonald's,
I was pleased to learn that McDonald's has pledged to eliminate deforestation from its global supply chains. As the largest fast food company in the world, McDonald's policies could spur real change, pushing your suppliers to eliminate tropical deforestation from production of commodities, ultimately protecting forests and reducing global warming emissions.
I'm calling on McDonald's to ensure that your upcoming palm oil sourcing targets include:
- a commitment to source palm oil only from suppliers whose entire operations meet McDonald's deforestation commitment principles and practices;
- an ambitious time-bound target for supplier compliance; and
- mechanisms for verification of origin of raw materials down to the palm oil plantation level.
In this way, McDonald's can set an industry-leading standard in the fast food sector for sourcing of deforestation-free palm oil ingredients.
For more than a year, we have worked with McDonald's to help them understand the deforestation risk in their supply chain, and urged them to adopt stronger standards. But without your urging, the company wouldn't have taken this issue seriously. To get the full story of how we used your support to move McDonald's, read our president's blog post.
This is a tremendous step forward for the climate, tropical forests, and endangered species, and we couldn't have done it without you. In a few months, McDonald's will release its palm oil action plan and timeline. Help us ensure this plan is as strong as possible—send a message to McDonald's today.
Together, we are transforming the palm oil industry.
Sincerely,
Miriam Swaffer
Miriam Swaffer
Corporate Policy Advocate
Tropical Forest & Climate Initiative "
https://secure3.convio.net/ucs/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepa…
https://secure3.convio.net/ucs/site/Donation2;jsessionid=AD5…
http://blog.ucsusa.org/mcdonalds-palm-oil-commitments-710
"Dear XXX
Over the last year, UCS supporters like you sent more than 140,000 emails to tell McDonald's and the rest of America's fast food chains that there's no excuse to continue buying palm oil that could cause climate change, loss of endangered species habitat, and tropical deforestation.
You spoke up. McDonald's listened. And acted!
McDonald's, the world's largest fast food chain, just pledged to eliminate deforestation from its global supply chains, making it the first global fast food company to do so. McDonald's pledged to ensure the palm oil, beef, fiber-based packaging, coffee, and poultry in their products does not contribute to tropical deforestation and peatland destruction.
McDonald's size and scale means the new commitment could force real change, pushing the industry to eliminate tropical deforestation from its supply chain, ultimately reducing global warming emissions. You can help make sure that happens by emailing McDonald's today to urge them to release a strong plan.
Just click the TAKE ACTION button below to send this letter to McDonald's now:
Dear McDonald's,
I was pleased to learn that McDonald's has pledged to eliminate deforestation from its global supply chains. As the largest fast food company in the world, McDonald's policies could spur real change, pushing your suppliers to eliminate tropical deforestation from production of commodities, ultimately protecting forests and reducing global warming emissions.
I'm calling on McDonald's to ensure that your upcoming palm oil sourcing targets include:
- a commitment to source palm oil only from suppliers whose entire operations meet McDonald's deforestation commitment principles and practices;
- an ambitious time-bound target for supplier compliance; and
- mechanisms for verification of origin of raw materials down to the palm oil plantation level.
In this way, McDonald's can set an industry-leading standard in the fast food sector for sourcing of deforestation-free palm oil ingredients.
For more than a year, we have worked with McDonald's to help them understand the deforestation risk in their supply chain, and urged them to adopt stronger standards. But without your urging, the company wouldn't have taken this issue seriously. To get the full story of how we used your support to move McDonald's, read our president's blog post.
This is a tremendous step forward for the climate, tropical forests, and endangered species, and we couldn't have done it without you. In a few months, McDonald's will release its palm oil action plan and timeline. Help us ensure this plan is as strong as possible—send a message to McDonald's today.
Together, we are transforming the palm oil industry.
Sincerely,
Miriam Swaffer
Miriam Swaffer
Corporate Policy Advocate
Tropical Forest & Climate Initiative "
https://secure3.convio.net/ucs/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepa…
https://secure3.convio.net/ucs/site/Donation2;jsessionid=AD5…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 49.272.257 von Popeye82 am 08.03.15 15:03:08
Church of England $14,000,000,000 fund blacklists coal, oil sands, Only primary producers like Peabody will be excluded from investment portfolio, so a BHP or Glencore could still make the grade. Met coal also fine - M.com - May 1, 2015
www.mining.com/church-of-england-14bn-fund-blacklists-coal-o…
"The Church of England is one of the world's richest religious institutions with an investment portfolio worth $13.8 billion.
On Thursday the body said that it will no longer make any investment in companies that produce coal or are involved in Canada's oil sands extraction.
Announcing the changes to the investment criteria the Bishop of Salisbury, the church's lead official on the environment, called climate change "the most pressing moral issue in our world".
The Church did leave some space for mining investment however by limiting the ban to companies which are primary producers – constituting more than 10% of revenues – of the two commodities. Metalurgical coal also appears to be exempt under the new investments rules:
The bishop explained it this way reports the FT:
This means it may retain shares in companies such as BHP Billiton, which mines coal but earns a large chunk of revenues from iron ore, copper, and aluminium, said Edward Mason, the Church’s head of responsible investment. But companies that focus on coal mining, such as Peabody in the US, would be excluded.
“It’s about an alignment of interests,” Mr Mason said. “If you are a specialist coal mining company you don’t share the interest that we have in the transition to a low-carbon economy and the sense of it as a moral imperative. But if you are a BHP Billiton, where coal is a small part of your portfolio, we can have a constructive conversation with you about the future of coal for you as a company.”
The move comes nearly three years after Justin Welby, a former senior executive at the now defunct Enterprise Oil firm, was appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury, the church's highest office. "
Church of England $14,000,000,000 fund blacklists coal, oil sands, Only primary producers like Peabody will be excluded from investment portfolio, so a BHP or Glencore could still make the grade. Met coal also fine - M.com - May 1, 2015
www.mining.com/church-of-england-14bn-fund-blacklists-coal-o…
"The Church of England is one of the world's richest religious institutions with an investment portfolio worth $13.8 billion.
On Thursday the body said that it will no longer make any investment in companies that produce coal or are involved in Canada's oil sands extraction.
Announcing the changes to the investment criteria the Bishop of Salisbury, the church's lead official on the environment, called climate change "the most pressing moral issue in our world".
The Church did leave some space for mining investment however by limiting the ban to companies which are primary producers – constituting more than 10% of revenues – of the two commodities. Metalurgical coal also appears to be exempt under the new investments rules:
The bishop explained it this way reports the FT:
This means it may retain shares in companies such as BHP Billiton, which mines coal but earns a large chunk of revenues from iron ore, copper, and aluminium, said Edward Mason, the Church’s head of responsible investment. But companies that focus on coal mining, such as Peabody in the US, would be excluded.
“It’s about an alignment of interests,” Mr Mason said. “If you are a specialist coal mining company you don’t share the interest that we have in the transition to a low-carbon economy and the sense of it as a moral imperative. But if you are a BHP Billiton, where coal is a small part of your portfolio, we can have a constructive conversation with you about the future of coal for you as a company.”
The move comes nearly three years after Justin Welby, a former senior executive at the now defunct Enterprise Oil firm, was appointed as Archbishop of Canterbury, the church's highest office. "
Switzerland to Halve Its, Already Tiny, Emissions, by 2030 - CT - May 11, 2015
- Edouard Stenger -
www.news.admin.ch/dokumentation/00002/00015/index.html?lang=…
http://cleantechies.com/2015/05/11/switzerland-to-halve-its-…
www.letemps.ch/Facet/print/Uuid/bf8246b4-b2b7-11de-a5ef-f451…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/24/eu-leaders-agree-on-40-pe…
www.edouardstenger.com/2010/02/01/a-look-at-the-carbon-emiss…
"
While the surrounding European Union is sticking to its guns with 40 percent greenhouse gases emissions reductions by 2030, Switzerland is showing some leadership by targeting 50 percent cuts by 2030. This is a bold move that deserves to inspire people and countries alike.
Having searched the Internet, I found that Swiss electricity comes almost entirely from low carbon sources with 56 percent of hydro and 39 percent of nuclear. The five remaining percent comes from thermal and renewables alike.
The electricity produced in Switzerland emits a tiny 14 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kiloWatt-hour as the local newspaper Le Temps reports. This has to be compared to an average of 353 grams per kWh of average in the European Union and over 600 grams in the United States (source)
As a result, Swiss citizens emits very low level of carbon dioxide per capita, a mere 6.4 tonnes per capita per year, compared to 8.1 tonnnes for the average EU citizen and a massive 17 tonnes for a US one.
This is why the Swiss decision to halve their emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 is a bold, ambitious move. The country is already at levels that would make others dream. Of course, the fact that Switzerland is a rich country surrounded by mountains makes it easy to have massive hydro capacity. The same Alps mountains are seeing their glaciers decrease each year by rapidly warming temperatures.
The Swiss government plans to reach these goals by concentrating its efforts on the transportation and housing sectors. Industry will also have a role to play.
The official statement stresses the point that the decision is in line with the recommendations from the IPCC climate scientists and is made ahead of the Paris climate talks that will take place in December this year. "
- Edouard Stenger -
www.news.admin.ch/dokumentation/00002/00015/index.html?lang=…
http://cleantechies.com/2015/05/11/switzerland-to-halve-its-…
www.letemps.ch/Facet/print/Uuid/bf8246b4-b2b7-11de-a5ef-f451…
http://cleantechies.com/2014/10/24/eu-leaders-agree-on-40-pe…
www.edouardstenger.com/2010/02/01/a-look-at-the-carbon-emiss…
"
While the surrounding European Union is sticking to its guns with 40 percent greenhouse gases emissions reductions by 2030, Switzerland is showing some leadership by targeting 50 percent cuts by 2030. This is a bold move that deserves to inspire people and countries alike.
Having searched the Internet, I found that Swiss electricity comes almost entirely from low carbon sources with 56 percent of hydro and 39 percent of nuclear. The five remaining percent comes from thermal and renewables alike.
The electricity produced in Switzerland emits a tiny 14 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per kiloWatt-hour as the local newspaper Le Temps reports. This has to be compared to an average of 353 grams per kWh of average in the European Union and over 600 grams in the United States (source)
As a result, Swiss citizens emits very low level of carbon dioxide per capita, a mere 6.4 tonnes per capita per year, compared to 8.1 tonnnes for the average EU citizen and a massive 17 tonnes for a US one.
This is why the Swiss decision to halve their emissions by 2030 compared to 1990 is a bold, ambitious move. The country is already at levels that would make others dream. Of course, the fact that Switzerland is a rich country surrounded by mountains makes it easy to have massive hydro capacity. The same Alps mountains are seeing their glaciers decrease each year by rapidly warming temperatures.
The Swiss government plans to reach these goals by concentrating its efforts on the transportation and housing sectors. Industry will also have a role to play.
The official statement stresses the point that the decision is in line with the recommendations from the IPCC climate scientists and is made ahead of the Paris climate talks that will take place in December this year. "
World Bank provides $100,000,000 loan to clean former mining area in China, to clean-up an old mining area in the Huainan municipality - MT/WB - May 12, 2015
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsworld-bank-provides-100m-…
"World Bank has offered China a $100m loan to clean-up an old mining area in the Huainan municipality.
Post-remediation, the zone will be converted into a park.
According to World Bank, mining industry growth helped to boost the region's economy but also led to large areas of subsidence and degradation of the environment.
About 200km² of former mining land, accounting for about 7% of the municipality, will be cleaned as part of the Huainan Mining Area Rehabilitation project, which will also see the closure of dump sites.
World Bank senior water resources management specialist and the project task team leader Xiaokai Li said: "By applying international good practices in remediation and redevelopment of mining subsidence areas, we hope to help the Huainan Municipal Government redevelop the mining area into a 'green heart' for the city to benefit the local communities.
"As the first operation of its type supported by the World Bank in China, the project can provide valuable experience for other regions facing the challenge of how bringing obsolete and degraded mining areas back to good and greener use."
Under the rehabilitation project, the storm water drainage system will be improved, and vegetation and landscaping will be added, in addition to financing the construction of roads and associated basic infrastructure.
The project intends to support public amenities and economic redevelopment.
According to World Bank, 20,000 local residents will benefit from the improved environmental services. "
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsworld-bank-provides-100m-…
"World Bank has offered China a $100m loan to clean-up an old mining area in the Huainan municipality.
Post-remediation, the zone will be converted into a park.
According to World Bank, mining industry growth helped to boost the region's economy but also led to large areas of subsidence and degradation of the environment.
About 200km² of former mining land, accounting for about 7% of the municipality, will be cleaned as part of the Huainan Mining Area Rehabilitation project, which will also see the closure of dump sites.
World Bank senior water resources management specialist and the project task team leader Xiaokai Li said: "By applying international good practices in remediation and redevelopment of mining subsidence areas, we hope to help the Huainan Municipal Government redevelop the mining area into a 'green heart' for the city to benefit the local communities.
"As the first operation of its type supported by the World Bank in China, the project can provide valuable experience for other regions facing the challenge of how bringing obsolete and degraded mining areas back to good and greener use."
Under the rehabilitation project, the storm water drainage system will be improved, and vegetation and landscaping will be added, in addition to financing the construction of roads and associated basic infrastructure.
The project intends to support public amenities and economic redevelopment.
According to World Bank, 20,000 local residents will benefit from the improved environmental services. "
Antarctic Ice Shelves found to be thinning, from the top AND the bottom - ENN/The Cryosphere/BAS - May 13, 2015
amdi@bas.ac.uk
+44 (0)1223 221441
+44 (0)7909 008516
www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48545
www.the-cryosphere.net/9/1005/2015/tc-9-1005-2015.html
www.the-cryosphere.net/9/957/2015/tc-9-957-2015.html
"A decade-long scientific debate about what’s causing the thinning of one of Antarctica’s largest ice shelves is settled this week (Wednesday 13 May) with the publication of an international study in the journal The Cryosphere.
The Larsen C Ice Shelf — whose neighbours Larsen A and B, collapsed in 1995 and 2002 — is thinning from both its surface and beneath. For years scientists have been unable to determine whether it is warming air temperatures or warmer ocean currents that were causing the Antarctic Peninsula’s floating ice shelves to lose volume and become more vulnerable to collapse. This new study takes an important step forward in assessing Antarctica’s likely contribution to future sea-level rise.
- Map of the Antarctic Peninsula showing the Larsen Ice Shelf -
The research team combined satellite data and eight radar surveys captured during a 15-year period from 1998–2012. They found that Larsen C Ice Shelf lost an average of 4 metres of ice, and had lowered by an average of one metre at the surface.
Lead author, Dr Paul Holland from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), says:
“What’s exciting about this study is we now know that two different processes are causing Larsen C to thin and become less stable. Air is being lost from the top layer of snow (called the firn), which is becoming more compacted — probably because of increased melting by a warmer atmosphere. We know also that Larsen C is losing ice, probably from warmer ocean currents or changing ice flow.
“If this vast ice shelf — which is over two and a half times the size of Wales and 10 times bigger than Larsen B — was to collapse, it would allow the tributary glaciers behind it to flow faster into the sea. This would then contribute to sea-level rise.”
The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth, with a temperature rise of 2.5°C over the last 50 years.
Penguins in Antarctica image via Shutterstock.
Read more at British Antarctic Survey. "
amdi@bas.ac.uk
+44 (0)1223 221441
+44 (0)7909 008516
www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48545
www.the-cryosphere.net/9/1005/2015/tc-9-1005-2015.html
www.the-cryosphere.net/9/957/2015/tc-9-957-2015.html
"A decade-long scientific debate about what’s causing the thinning of one of Antarctica’s largest ice shelves is settled this week (Wednesday 13 May) with the publication of an international study in the journal The Cryosphere.
The Larsen C Ice Shelf — whose neighbours Larsen A and B, collapsed in 1995 and 2002 — is thinning from both its surface and beneath. For years scientists have been unable to determine whether it is warming air temperatures or warmer ocean currents that were causing the Antarctic Peninsula’s floating ice shelves to lose volume and become more vulnerable to collapse. This new study takes an important step forward in assessing Antarctica’s likely contribution to future sea-level rise.
- Map of the Antarctic Peninsula showing the Larsen Ice Shelf -
The research team combined satellite data and eight radar surveys captured during a 15-year period from 1998–2012. They found that Larsen C Ice Shelf lost an average of 4 metres of ice, and had lowered by an average of one metre at the surface.
Lead author, Dr Paul Holland from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), says:
“What’s exciting about this study is we now know that two different processes are causing Larsen C to thin and become less stable. Air is being lost from the top layer of snow (called the firn), which is becoming more compacted — probably because of increased melting by a warmer atmosphere. We know also that Larsen C is losing ice, probably from warmer ocean currents or changing ice flow.
“If this vast ice shelf — which is over two and a half times the size of Wales and 10 times bigger than Larsen B — was to collapse, it would allow the tributary glaciers behind it to flow faster into the sea. This would then contribute to sea-level rise.”
The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth, with a temperature rise of 2.5°C over the last 50 years.
Penguins in Antarctica image via Shutterstock.
Read more at British Antarctic Survey. "
Hawaii Legislature Passes 100% Renewable Energy Goal, Portman's energy efficiency bill signed into law; $35,000,000,000 bill passed, for Energy Department, water projects - ctIQ/Honolulu Civil Beat/AP - May 12, 2015
www.civilbeat.com/2015/05/hawaii-legislature-passes-26b-budg…
http://cleantechiq.com/2015/05/regulatory-news-roundup-hawai…
"Hawaii’s Legislature approved more than 100 bills last week including legislation requiring Hawaii to reach 100 percent renewable energy by 2045, the Honolulu Civil Beat reported.
The two-year budget for capital improvements totaled $2.4 billion, including projects funded by general obligation bonds as well as “all other means of financing.”
The Legislature passed several historic measures relating to energy.
House Bill 623, if voted into law, would make Hawaii the first state to commit to a 100 percent renewable energy goal. Last year, only 22 percent of the state’s energy came from renewable sources.
“This is truly a victory for the globe,” Jeff Mikulina, director of the Blue Planet Foundation, a local nonprofit organization committed to the creation of a world built entirely on renewable energy, said in a press conference to mark the bill’s passing.
“It’s going to save everybody money, it’s going to put less carbon in the air, it’s going to boost jobs in our local energy industry,” Rep. Chris Lee said of the renewable energy goal.
House Bill 1509, if passed into law, would make Hawaii’s state university system the first in the U.S. to have 100 percent renewable energy as a goal, including generating all its own power by 2035, Lee said in a House release.
Portman’s Energy Efficiency Bill Signed Into Law
President Barack Obama signed this Congress’s first energy bill into law, according to an announcement by bill sponsor U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who worked with U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) on the legislation.
The Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015 focuses on improving energy efficiency in buildings—and exempts some thermal storage water heaters from upcoming energy standards.
According to The Hill, the bill follows a years-long push to pass energy-related legislation. A much larger version of the bill debuted earlier this month known as the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act.
The Act’s text is available here.
$35,000,000,000 Bill Passed, for Energy Department, Water Projects
House Republicans passed a $35 billion bill that funds the Energy Department, as well as popular water projects constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers.
The tally fell short of what is required to overcome President Barack Obama’s promised veto, however, the AP reported.
The President and his Democratic supporters say the measure shortchanges renewable energy programs, such as solar power, and includes provisions deemed “anti-environmental.”
The bill includes a large prompt to update America’s nuclear arsenal and also includes funding to keep open Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.
The President also opposes the Yucca funds. "
www.civilbeat.com/2015/05/hawaii-legislature-passes-26b-budg…
http://cleantechiq.com/2015/05/regulatory-news-roundup-hawai…
"Hawaii’s Legislature approved more than 100 bills last week including legislation requiring Hawaii to reach 100 percent renewable energy by 2045, the Honolulu Civil Beat reported.
The two-year budget for capital improvements totaled $2.4 billion, including projects funded by general obligation bonds as well as “all other means of financing.”
The Legislature passed several historic measures relating to energy.
House Bill 623, if voted into law, would make Hawaii the first state to commit to a 100 percent renewable energy goal. Last year, only 22 percent of the state’s energy came from renewable sources.
“This is truly a victory for the globe,” Jeff Mikulina, director of the Blue Planet Foundation, a local nonprofit organization committed to the creation of a world built entirely on renewable energy, said in a press conference to mark the bill’s passing.
“It’s going to save everybody money, it’s going to put less carbon in the air, it’s going to boost jobs in our local energy industry,” Rep. Chris Lee said of the renewable energy goal.
House Bill 1509, if passed into law, would make Hawaii’s state university system the first in the U.S. to have 100 percent renewable energy as a goal, including generating all its own power by 2035, Lee said in a House release.
Portman’s Energy Efficiency Bill Signed Into Law
President Barack Obama signed this Congress’s first energy bill into law, according to an announcement by bill sponsor U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who worked with U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) on the legislation.
The Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015 focuses on improving energy efficiency in buildings—and exempts some thermal storage water heaters from upcoming energy standards.
According to The Hill, the bill follows a years-long push to pass energy-related legislation. A much larger version of the bill debuted earlier this month known as the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act.
The Act’s text is available here.
$35,000,000,000 Bill Passed, for Energy Department, Water Projects
House Republicans passed a $35 billion bill that funds the Energy Department, as well as popular water projects constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers.
The tally fell short of what is required to overcome President Barack Obama’s promised veto, however, the AP reported.
The President and his Democratic supporters say the measure shortchanges renewable energy programs, such as solar power, and includes provisions deemed “anti-environmental.”
The bill includes a large prompt to update America’s nuclear arsenal and also includes funding to keep open Nevada’s Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.
The President also opposes the Yucca funds. "
UK researchers find mining pollution reduces brown trout genetic diversity, Scientists from the UK's University of Exeter have found that heavy metal pollution from mining has dramatically reduced genetic diversity of brown trout in south-west England - MT/UoE, EXETER - May , 2015
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsuk-researchers-find-minin…
"Scientists from the UK's University of Exeter have found that heavy metal pollution from mining has dramatically reduced genetic diversity of brown trout in south-west England.
Human activity, according to the latest findings, may also alter the genetic patterns of wild populations.
Researchers said that occurrence of metal contaminants in rivers across England is directly linked to mining activities that dated back many years.
Exposure to high-concentrations of metals can disturb fishes' health and negatively impact their genetic diversity and population structure.
University of Exeter lead author and postgraduate researcher Josephine Paris said: "Our research shows that brown trout populations have been severely affected by both historical and contemporary mining practices.
"The effects of both metal contamination and changes in environmental geochemistry have driven dramatic changes in the genetic architecture of these fish."
When DNA samples from 15 brown trout populations from heavily-polluted and 'clean' rivers were compared, it was found that all populations from metal contaminated rivers derived from a single common ancestor 960 years ago.
During the industrial revolution around 150 years ago, further genetic separation occurred when rivers were again polluted with increased levels of metal contaminants at a time when trout numbers slipped substantially in heavily polluted areas such as the River Hayle.
University of Exeter research fellow in Biosciences co-author Dr Andrew King said: "The metal contaminated populations are genetically distinct from one another and we think this is a response to the unique cocktail of metals found in each river." "
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsuk-researchers-find-minin…
"Scientists from the UK's University of Exeter have found that heavy metal pollution from mining has dramatically reduced genetic diversity of brown trout in south-west England.
Human activity, according to the latest findings, may also alter the genetic patterns of wild populations.
Researchers said that occurrence of metal contaminants in rivers across England is directly linked to mining activities that dated back many years.
Exposure to high-concentrations of metals can disturb fishes' health and negatively impact their genetic diversity and population structure.
University of Exeter lead author and postgraduate researcher Josephine Paris said: "Our research shows that brown trout populations have been severely affected by both historical and contemporary mining practices.
"The effects of both metal contamination and changes in environmental geochemistry have driven dramatic changes in the genetic architecture of these fish."
When DNA samples from 15 brown trout populations from heavily-polluted and 'clean' rivers were compared, it was found that all populations from metal contaminated rivers derived from a single common ancestor 960 years ago.
During the industrial revolution around 150 years ago, further genetic separation occurred when rivers were again polluted with increased levels of metal contaminants at a time when trout numbers slipped substantially in heavily polluted areas such as the River Hayle.
University of Exeter research fellow in Biosciences co-author Dr Andrew King said: "The metal contaminated populations are genetically distinct from one another and we think this is a response to the unique cocktail of metals found in each river." "
40% of Honey Bee Colonies Lost, Last Year, Summer losses eclipse winter losses, for the 1st time on record - ENN/UoM/USDA/BIP, MARYLAND - May 14, 2015
- Nathalie Steinhauer1, Karen Rennich1, Kathleen Lee2, Jeffery Pettis3, David R. Tarpy4, Juliana Rangel5, Dewey Caron6, Ramesh Sagili6, John A. Skinner7, Michael E. Wilson7, James T. Wilkes8, Keith S. Delaplane9, Robyn Rose10, Dennis vanEngelsdorp1 -
dvane@umd.edu
301-405-9267
www.umdrightnow.umd.edu/news/nations-beekeepers-lost-40-perc…
https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/features/3020
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48547
http://beeinformed.org/2015/05/colony-loss-2014-2015-prelimi…
http://de.scribd.com/doc/263786858/What-Bee-pocalypse-Manage…
www.vanengelsdorpbeelab.com/dr-dennis-vanengelsdorp.html
"Beekeepers across the United States lost more than 40 percent of their honey bee colonies during the year spanning April 2014 to April 2015, according to the latest results of an annual nationwide survey led by a University of Maryland professor. While winter loss rates improved slightly compared to last year, summer losses—and consequently, total annual losses—were more severe. Commercial beekeepers were hit particularly hard by the high rate of summer losses, which outstripped winter losses for the first time in five years, stoking concerns over the long-term trend of poor health in honey bee colonies.
The survey, which asks both commercial and small-scale beekeepers to track the health and survival rates of their honey bee colonies, is conducted each year by the Bee Informed Partnership in collaboration with the Apiary Inspectors of America, with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Survey results for this year and all previous years are publicly available on the Bee Informed website.
“We traditionally thought of winter losses as a more important indicator of health, because surviving the cold winter months is a crucial test for any bee colony,” said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Maryland and project director for the Bee Informed Partnership. “But we now know that summer loss rates are significant too. This is especially so for commercial beekeepers, who are now losing more colonies in the summertime compared to the winter. Years ago, this was unheard of.”
Beekeepers who responded to the survey lost a total of 42.1 percent of their colonies over the course of the year. Winter loss rates decreased from 23.7 percent last year to 23.1 percent this year, while summer loss rates increased from 19.8 percent to 27.4 percent.
Among backyard beekeepers (defined as those who manage fewer than 50 colonies), a clear culprit in losses is the varroa mite, a lethal parasite that can easily spread between colonies. Among commercial beekeepers, the causes of the majority of losses are not as clear.
“Backyard beekeepers were more prone to heavy mite infestations, but we believe that is because a majority of them are not taking appropriate steps to control mites,” vanEngelsdorp said. “Commercial keepers were particularly prone to summer losses. But they typically take more aggressive action against varroa mites, so there must be other factors at play.” "
- Nathalie Steinhauer1, Karen Rennich1, Kathleen Lee2, Jeffery Pettis3, David R. Tarpy4, Juliana Rangel5, Dewey Caron6, Ramesh Sagili6, John A. Skinner7, Michael E. Wilson7, James T. Wilkes8, Keith S. Delaplane9, Robyn Rose10, Dennis vanEngelsdorp1 -
dvane@umd.edu
301-405-9267
www.umdrightnow.umd.edu/news/nations-beekeepers-lost-40-perc…
https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/features/3020
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48547
http://beeinformed.org/2015/05/colony-loss-2014-2015-prelimi…
http://de.scribd.com/doc/263786858/What-Bee-pocalypse-Manage…
www.vanengelsdorpbeelab.com/dr-dennis-vanengelsdorp.html
"Beekeepers across the United States lost more than 40 percent of their honey bee colonies during the year spanning April 2014 to April 2015, according to the latest results of an annual nationwide survey led by a University of Maryland professor. While winter loss rates improved slightly compared to last year, summer losses—and consequently, total annual losses—were more severe. Commercial beekeepers were hit particularly hard by the high rate of summer losses, which outstripped winter losses for the first time in five years, stoking concerns over the long-term trend of poor health in honey bee colonies.
The survey, which asks both commercial and small-scale beekeepers to track the health and survival rates of their honey bee colonies, is conducted each year by the Bee Informed Partnership in collaboration with the Apiary Inspectors of America, with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Survey results for this year and all previous years are publicly available on the Bee Informed website.
“We traditionally thought of winter losses as a more important indicator of health, because surviving the cold winter months is a crucial test for any bee colony,” said Dennis vanEngelsdorp, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Maryland and project director for the Bee Informed Partnership. “But we now know that summer loss rates are significant too. This is especially so for commercial beekeepers, who are now losing more colonies in the summertime compared to the winter. Years ago, this was unheard of.”
Beekeepers who responded to the survey lost a total of 42.1 percent of their colonies over the course of the year. Winter loss rates decreased from 23.7 percent last year to 23.1 percent this year, while summer loss rates increased from 19.8 percent to 27.4 percent.
Among backyard beekeepers (defined as those who manage fewer than 50 colonies), a clear culprit in losses is the varroa mite, a lethal parasite that can easily spread between colonies. Among commercial beekeepers, the causes of the majority of losses are not as clear.
“Backyard beekeepers were more prone to heavy mite infestations, but we believe that is because a majority of them are not taking appropriate steps to control mites,” vanEngelsdorp said. “Commercial keepers were particularly prone to summer losses. But they typically take more aggressive action against varroa mites, so there must be other factors at play.” "
Global CO2 levels reach historic record, The monthly global average concentration of CO2 in Mar was the highest since scientists began tracking this greenhouse gas in the global atmosphere - M.com/NOAA/NASA, JPL/WCA - May 8, 2015
- Cecilia Jamasmie -
monica.allen@noaa.gov
301-734-1123
http://research.noaa.gov/News/NewsArchive/LatestNews/TabId/6…
www.mining.com/global-co2-levels-reach-historic-record/?utm_…
www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/
www.mining.com/climate-change-advocates-will-fail-to-cut-coa…
"
Global carbon dioxide concentrations have reached a new "benchmark" of 400 parts per million, a level unprecedented in at least a million years, data released this week shows.
According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the monthly global average concentration of CO2 in March was the highest since scientists began tracking this greenhouse gas in the global atmosphere.
"This marks the fact that humans burning fossil fuels have caused global [CO2] concentrations to rise more than 120 parts per million since pre-industrial times," said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA's Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network.
Carmen Boening, a scientist in the Climate Physics Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory noted that, in theory, levels this high have only been reached during the Pliocene era, when temperatures and sea level were higher.
According to the World Coal Association, coal currently supplies about 30% of the world’s main energy needs and over 40% of its electricity.
However, consumption of the fossil fuel in China — the world’s biggest consumer— is dwindling. The figure fell in 2014 for the first time in 14 years as the nation works towards banning coal use in smog-cloaked Beijing by 2020.
Yet some top coal producers including Glencore (LON:GLEN) — the world’s No. 1 exporter of coal used in power stations— are optimistic about the future of coal.
Last month, chief executive Ivan Glasenberg said governments would fail to implement measures to cut carbon emissions, such as forcing miners keep its reserves in the ground, adding that growing demand for cheap energy would secure demand for fossil fuels.
Noaa collects its data on global carbon dioxide concentration on air samples taken from 40 sites around the world, including some remote islands. "
- Cecilia Jamasmie -
monica.allen@noaa.gov
301-734-1123
http://research.noaa.gov/News/NewsArchive/LatestNews/TabId/6…
www.mining.com/global-co2-levels-reach-historic-record/?utm_…
www.worldcoal.org/resources/coal-statistics/
www.mining.com/climate-change-advocates-will-fail-to-cut-coa…
"
Global carbon dioxide concentrations have reached a new "benchmark" of 400 parts per million, a level unprecedented in at least a million years, data released this week shows.
According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the monthly global average concentration of CO2 in March was the highest since scientists began tracking this greenhouse gas in the global atmosphere.
"This marks the fact that humans burning fossil fuels have caused global [CO2] concentrations to rise more than 120 parts per million since pre-industrial times," said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA's Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network.
Carmen Boening, a scientist in the Climate Physics Group at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory noted that, in theory, levels this high have only been reached during the Pliocene era, when temperatures and sea level were higher.
According to the World Coal Association, coal currently supplies about 30% of the world’s main energy needs and over 40% of its electricity.
However, consumption of the fossil fuel in China — the world’s biggest consumer— is dwindling. The figure fell in 2014 for the first time in 14 years as the nation works towards banning coal use in smog-cloaked Beijing by 2020.
Yet some top coal producers including Glencore (LON:GLEN) — the world’s No. 1 exporter of coal used in power stations— are optimistic about the future of coal.
Last month, chief executive Ivan Glasenberg said governments would fail to implement measures to cut carbon emissions, such as forcing miners keep its reserves in the ground, adding that growing demand for cheap energy would secure demand for fossil fuels.
Noaa collects its data on global carbon dioxide concentration on air samples taken from 40 sites around the world, including some remote islands. "
An Alaskan Island Goes 100% Renewable - CT/RMIO - May 21, 2015
- Laurie Guevara-Stone -
http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2015_05_19_an_alaskan_island_goes_o…
http://cleantechies.com/2015/05/21/an-alaskan-island-goes-10…
"
As most Alaskans can attest, energy in The Last Frontier is expensive. The average residential electricity rate of more than 18 cents per kWh is a full 50 percent higher than the national average, ranking among the highest in the country. That’s in part because outside the 50 hydro plants throughout the state, most of Alaska’s rural communities rely on imported diesel for their electricity. But the folks of Kodiak Island (pop. 15,000) in southern Alaska—powered almost 100 percent with renewable energy—have a different story to tell.
Although Kodiak Island, the second-largest island in the United States, relied on hydropower for 80 percent of the electricity production, it was also burning 2.8 million gallons of diesel per year, at an annual cost of $7 million. In the face of climate change and high electricity costs, the board and managers at Kodiak Electric Association (KEA) set a goal of producing 95 percent of the community’s electrical needs with renewable energy by 2020. They actually arrived there well ahead of time, and are now 99.7 percent renewably powered by wind and hydro.
MAKING THE TRANSITION
The State of Alaska has a renewable energy fund created in 2008 by the Alaska Energy Authority to help finance renewable energy projects and reduce and stabilize the cost of energy. KEA received $16 million in grant money through the fund, and $39.6 million through clean renewable energy bonds (CREBs). The CREB funds gave KEA a near-zero-interest loan for the project.
The first step was to purchase three General Electric (GE) 1.5 MW wind turbines. The turbines were installed in 2009, which was challenging according to Kodiak Electric Association CEO Darron Scott. “There was not a lot of information back then on how to keep the grid frequency and voltage steady with an influx of variable wind power,” Scott told RMI. “It was uncharted territory.” But after a grid integration study, which assessed the technical and economic impacts on the grid, the first three wind turbines were installed.
UPGRADED HYDRO, FOR GRID STABILITY
A second modeling study was performed with real data from the first phase, and a second phase of three more wind turbines was proposed. But before installing the second phase of wind turbines, KEA wanted to upgrade the existing hydropower system. KEA felt that to ensure grid stability, the amount of wind power being put onto the grid had reached its maximum. The 20-MW, two-turbine Terror Lake hydroelectric plant was built in 1984, and forward-thinking engineers left an empty bay for a third turbine in case Kodiak’s load grew. In 2011, Kodiak’s peak load grew to over 26 MW, and the increased load, along with a desire to rely on more renewables, led to the installation of a third 10-MW turbine.
Besides covering peak loads, this turbine provided the necessary capacity and enhanced grid stability to allow more variable renewable power, like the three new proposed wind turbines, to come online. The new turbine also provided system redundancy, as the 30-year-old turbines require maintenance, which can now be done during low load seasons without switching to diesel.
A ROLE FOR STORAGE
For smaller electricity grids with quickly fluctuating demand and variable renewable energy inputs, a way to store the energy can be a great asset. In 2012, the three additional 1.5-MW wind turbines were installed, along with 3 MW of battery storage. The battery storage systems provide 30–90 seconds of bridging power when the wind output decreases, in order to ramp up the hydro system. Now, the Kodiak port wants to install a new 2-MW crane, potentially causing destabilizing power fluctuations leading to undesirable cycle of the batteries and the potential for consumption of more diesel to provide spinning reserve. Instead, KEA plans to add an additional flywheel energy storage system in about two or three months that will help compensate for the peaking crane loads. The PowerStore flywheel units from ABB will provide voltage and frequency support, will help manage the variable wind power, and will mean fewer cycles through the batteries, extending the life of the battery systems.
ECONOMIC STABILITY
The financial rewards of the project have been great. According to Scott, the community is saving. Electricity rates have gone down, and are now 2.5 percent lower than in 2001. “The stable electricity rates have also brought in more construction, expanded the fishing industry, and brought in more jobs and tax revenue,” Scott told RMI. And, at least one seafood company is capitalizing on the renewable energy to promote its sustainable salmon, as its salmon production plant is powered by wind energy.
The State of Alaska has a goal of reaching 50 percent renewable energy by 2025. Kodiak Island is providing a great example of how to reach and even go beyond that goal. “There are many communities in Alaska with significant microgrid achievement,” George Roe, Research Professor with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, told RMI, “and there is local, national, and global potential for building on Alaskan hard-won experience such as that in Kodiak.” In fact, the Alaska Energy Authority and the Kodiak Electric Association won the 2014 State Leadership in Clean Energy Award for their renewable energy programs. “Both the Alaska Energy Authority and the Kodiak Electric Association are putting into practice five principles that I believe are in our national interest,” said Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski in a congratulatory speech. “And those are to make energy abundant, affordable, clean, diverse, and secure.” Kodiak went beyond its reliance on hydropower, adding different renewable resources and storage, making its electrical system more reliable, secure, and a model for other communities looking to add variable renewable sources to their grid. "
- Laurie Guevara-Stone -
http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2015_05_19_an_alaskan_island_goes_o…
http://cleantechies.com/2015/05/21/an-alaskan-island-goes-10…
"
As most Alaskans can attest, energy in The Last Frontier is expensive. The average residential electricity rate of more than 18 cents per kWh is a full 50 percent higher than the national average, ranking among the highest in the country. That’s in part because outside the 50 hydro plants throughout the state, most of Alaska’s rural communities rely on imported diesel for their electricity. But the folks of Kodiak Island (pop. 15,000) in southern Alaska—powered almost 100 percent with renewable energy—have a different story to tell.
Although Kodiak Island, the second-largest island in the United States, relied on hydropower for 80 percent of the electricity production, it was also burning 2.8 million gallons of diesel per year, at an annual cost of $7 million. In the face of climate change and high electricity costs, the board and managers at Kodiak Electric Association (KEA) set a goal of producing 95 percent of the community’s electrical needs with renewable energy by 2020. They actually arrived there well ahead of time, and are now 99.7 percent renewably powered by wind and hydro.
MAKING THE TRANSITION
The State of Alaska has a renewable energy fund created in 2008 by the Alaska Energy Authority to help finance renewable energy projects and reduce and stabilize the cost of energy. KEA received $16 million in grant money through the fund, and $39.6 million through clean renewable energy bonds (CREBs). The CREB funds gave KEA a near-zero-interest loan for the project.
The first step was to purchase three General Electric (GE) 1.5 MW wind turbines. The turbines were installed in 2009, which was challenging according to Kodiak Electric Association CEO Darron Scott. “There was not a lot of information back then on how to keep the grid frequency and voltage steady with an influx of variable wind power,” Scott told RMI. “It was uncharted territory.” But after a grid integration study, which assessed the technical and economic impacts on the grid, the first three wind turbines were installed.
UPGRADED HYDRO, FOR GRID STABILITY
A second modeling study was performed with real data from the first phase, and a second phase of three more wind turbines was proposed. But before installing the second phase of wind turbines, KEA wanted to upgrade the existing hydropower system. KEA felt that to ensure grid stability, the amount of wind power being put onto the grid had reached its maximum. The 20-MW, two-turbine Terror Lake hydroelectric plant was built in 1984, and forward-thinking engineers left an empty bay for a third turbine in case Kodiak’s load grew. In 2011, Kodiak’s peak load grew to over 26 MW, and the increased load, along with a desire to rely on more renewables, led to the installation of a third 10-MW turbine.
Besides covering peak loads, this turbine provided the necessary capacity and enhanced grid stability to allow more variable renewable power, like the three new proposed wind turbines, to come online. The new turbine also provided system redundancy, as the 30-year-old turbines require maintenance, which can now be done during low load seasons without switching to diesel.
A ROLE FOR STORAGE
For smaller electricity grids with quickly fluctuating demand and variable renewable energy inputs, a way to store the energy can be a great asset. In 2012, the three additional 1.5-MW wind turbines were installed, along with 3 MW of battery storage. The battery storage systems provide 30–90 seconds of bridging power when the wind output decreases, in order to ramp up the hydro system. Now, the Kodiak port wants to install a new 2-MW crane, potentially causing destabilizing power fluctuations leading to undesirable cycle of the batteries and the potential for consumption of more diesel to provide spinning reserve. Instead, KEA plans to add an additional flywheel energy storage system in about two or three months that will help compensate for the peaking crane loads. The PowerStore flywheel units from ABB will provide voltage and frequency support, will help manage the variable wind power, and will mean fewer cycles through the batteries, extending the life of the battery systems.
ECONOMIC STABILITY
The financial rewards of the project have been great. According to Scott, the community is saving. Electricity rates have gone down, and are now 2.5 percent lower than in 2001. “The stable electricity rates have also brought in more construction, expanded the fishing industry, and brought in more jobs and tax revenue,” Scott told RMI. And, at least one seafood company is capitalizing on the renewable energy to promote its sustainable salmon, as its salmon production plant is powered by wind energy.
The State of Alaska has a goal of reaching 50 percent renewable energy by 2025. Kodiak Island is providing a great example of how to reach and even go beyond that goal. “There are many communities in Alaska with significant microgrid achievement,” George Roe, Research Professor with the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, told RMI, “and there is local, national, and global potential for building on Alaskan hard-won experience such as that in Kodiak.” In fact, the Alaska Energy Authority and the Kodiak Electric Association won the 2014 State Leadership in Clean Energy Award for their renewable energy programs. “Both the Alaska Energy Authority and the Kodiak Electric Association are putting into practice five principles that I believe are in our national interest,” said Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski in a congratulatory speech. “And those are to make energy abundant, affordable, clean, diverse, and secure.” Kodiak went beyond its reliance on hydropower, adding different renewable resources and storage, making its electrical system more reliable, secure, and a model for other communities looking to add variable renewable sources to their grid. "
Credit Agricole to stop financing coal mining projects, French bank Credit Agricole has announced it will stop financing coal mining projects or companies, due to environmental concerns - MT/CA/FoE, F, LILLE - May 21, 2015
www.mining-technology.com/news/newscredit-agricole-stop-fina…
"French bank Credit Agricole has announced it will stop financing coal mining projects or companies due to environmental concerns.
According to the bank, its latest decision to withdraw funding the controversial mountaintop removal (MTR) technique that uses explosives to expose coal seams, as lenders are reluctant to fund such projects due to the possible impact on the environment.
Environmental groups pressurising banks to pull funding for coal miners hailed the bank's decision, which was announced at its annual general meeting (AGM) in Lille, France.
At the AGM, Friends of the Earth France (FoE France) challenged the environmental and social impacts of Credit Agricole's investments in the coal sector.
Paul Corbit Brown from Keepers of the Mountains, which accompanied FoE France to the AGM, said: "By supporting Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources, which count among the top three mining companies active in MTR, Crédit Agricole participates in the destruction of one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world.
"The coal industry uses more than 3,000t of explosives daily to blow-up our mountains, burying thousands of miles of rivers and causing rains to spread poisons in our communities.
"MTR is not just an environmental crime but is a real danger to people, and we are seeing cancer cases multiply."
In April, the UK's banking and financial services company Barclay's announced that it would no longer finance the controversial coal mining technique.
Said to be a form of surface mining, MTR is conducted in the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern US. "
www.mining-technology.com/news/newscredit-agricole-stop-fina…
"French bank Credit Agricole has announced it will stop financing coal mining projects or companies due to environmental concerns.
According to the bank, its latest decision to withdraw funding the controversial mountaintop removal (MTR) technique that uses explosives to expose coal seams, as lenders are reluctant to fund such projects due to the possible impact on the environment.
Environmental groups pressurising banks to pull funding for coal miners hailed the bank's decision, which was announced at its annual general meeting (AGM) in Lille, France.
At the AGM, Friends of the Earth France (FoE France) challenged the environmental and social impacts of Credit Agricole's investments in the coal sector.
Paul Corbit Brown from Keepers of the Mountains, which accompanied FoE France to the AGM, said: "By supporting Arch Coal and Alpha Natural Resources, which count among the top three mining companies active in MTR, Crédit Agricole participates in the destruction of one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world.
"The coal industry uses more than 3,000t of explosives daily to blow-up our mountains, burying thousands of miles of rivers and causing rains to spread poisons in our communities.
"MTR is not just an environmental crime but is a real danger to people, and we are seeing cancer cases multiply."
In April, the UK's banking and financial services company Barclay's announced that it would no longer finance the controversial coal mining technique.
Said to be a form of surface mining, MTR is conducted in the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern US. "
Decarbonizing Development, Three Steps to a Zero-Carbon Future, Presentation by Marianne Fay, Chief Economist, Climate Change Vice Presidency, World Bank, Webinar, 28 May '15, 15:30-16:30(Geneva time)
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/blog/decarbonizing-development-…
www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/Climate/dd/…
www.greengrowthknowledge.org/blog/decarbonizing-development-…
www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/Climate/dd/…
Saudi Arabia to Phase Out Fossil Fuels, @least that’s the headline circulating around frenzied eco news outlets +in social media. But watch the video from the Financial Times, to understand the more complete picture behind the headline - CT/FT - May 22, 2015
- Oliver Strube -
http://cleantechies.com/2015/05/22/saudi-arabia-to-phase-out…
www.ft.com/cms/s/89260b8a-ffd4-11e4-bc30-00144feabdc0,Author…
- Oliver Strube -
http://cleantechies.com/2015/05/22/saudi-arabia-to-phase-out…
www.ft.com/cms/s/89260b8a-ffd4-11e4-bc30-00144feabdc0,Author…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 49.829.360 von Popeye82 am 22.05.15 06:57:50
Vancity Fund Drops Fossil Fuel Companies, Credit union members want to put money ‘where their heart +values are ,’ spokesperson says - WS/V/VS, VANCOUVER - May 1, 2015
- Bruce Constantineau -
http://wolverton.ca/vancity-fund-drops-fossil-fuel-companies…
"Vancity has developed what it calls Canada’s first mutual fund that won’t invest in companies associated with fossil fuel production.
“Our members have been asking for something like this for a while now,” Vancity chief operating officer Rick Sielski said in an interview.
“It’s a convergence around what makes sense from a risk-return investment for our members while satisfying their need to really put their money where their heart and values are.”
Oil sands projects will no longer in the portfolio of the IA Clarington Inhance Global Equity SRI Class — which uses Vancity subsidiary Vancity Investment Management as a sub-advisor. Photograph by Tyler Brownbridge
Clarington Inhance Global Equity SRI Class — which uses Vancity subsidiary Vancity Investment Management (VIM) as a subadvisor – had about three per cent of its holdings in fossil fuel companies but recently sold off those investments.
VIM representative Dermot Foley said it’s probably a good time for the fund to unload its fossil-fuel investments because they carry more risk, largely due to the dramatic fall in world oil prices.
“This is historically a more normal price for oil and quite a number of big oil and gas projects probably won’t get built at the normal price,” he said.
Foley said it was sometimes difficult to decide which companies could stay in the fund’s portfolio and which ones had to be sold off.
Selling off its investment in energy giant ConocoPhillips was easy but what about Toyota?
“They’re one of the largest car companies in the world but they’re also the largest producer of hybrid vehicles and that’s one of the solutions to climate change – producing a much more energy-efficient car,” Foley said.
So Toyota remains in the fund, along with rail companies. Some might argue that rail companies transport fossil fuels but Foley said trains offer a very energy-efficient means of transportation, which leads to lower emissions. Well known companies such as Apple, Starbucks, Google and MasterCard are included in the fund’s portfolio.
Responsible Investment Association chief executive officer Deb Abbey said there is a “significant demand” from retail investors for fossil fuel-free investments.
She said Ontario, Quebec and California recently agreed to cap greenhouse gas emissions and establish a carbon market and investment managers are playing close attention to the changing regulatory environment. “They’re reducing their exposure to high carbon assets to eliminate as much of that risk as possible,” Abbey said, noting fossil fuel companies make up about 25 per cent of the TSX. "
Vancity Fund Drops Fossil Fuel Companies, Credit union members want to put money ‘where their heart +values are
,’ spokesperson says - WS/V/VS, VANCOUVER - May 1, 2015- Bruce Constantineau -
http://wolverton.ca/vancity-fund-drops-fossil-fuel-companies…
"Vancity has developed what it calls Canada’s first mutual fund that won’t invest in companies associated with fossil fuel production.
“Our members have been asking for something like this for a while now,” Vancity chief operating officer Rick Sielski said in an interview.
“It’s a convergence around what makes sense from a risk-return investment for our members while satisfying their need to really put their money where their heart and values are.”
Oil sands projects will no longer in the portfolio of the IA Clarington Inhance Global Equity SRI Class — which uses Vancity subsidiary Vancity Investment Management as a sub-advisor. Photograph by Tyler Brownbridge
Clarington Inhance Global Equity SRI Class — which uses Vancity subsidiary Vancity Investment Management (VIM) as a subadvisor – had about three per cent of its holdings in fossil fuel companies but recently sold off those investments.
VIM representative Dermot Foley said it’s probably a good time for the fund to unload its fossil-fuel investments because they carry more risk, largely due to the dramatic fall in world oil prices.
“This is historically a more normal price for oil and quite a number of big oil and gas projects probably won’t get built at the normal price,” he said.
Foley said it was sometimes difficult to decide which companies could stay in the fund’s portfolio and which ones had to be sold off.
Selling off its investment in energy giant ConocoPhillips was easy but what about Toyota?
“They’re one of the largest car companies in the world but they’re also the largest producer of hybrid vehicles and that’s one of the solutions to climate change – producing a much more energy-efficient car,” Foley said.
So Toyota remains in the fund, along with rail companies. Some might argue that rail companies transport fossil fuels but Foley said trains offer a very energy-efficient means of transportation, which leads to lower emissions. Well known companies such as Apple, Starbucks, Google and MasterCard are included in the fund’s portfolio.
Responsible Investment Association chief executive officer Deb Abbey said there is a “significant demand” from retail investors for fossil fuel-free investments.
She said Ontario, Quebec and California recently agreed to cap greenhouse gas emissions and establish a carbon market and investment managers are playing close attention to the changing regulatory environment. “They’re reducing their exposure to high carbon assets to eliminate as much of that risk as possible,” Abbey said, noting fossil fuel companies make up about 25 per cent of the TSX. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 49.835.952 von Popeye82 am 23.05.15 05:34:26
SRI Underperformance Myth Busted, Report from MSCI Inc. finds the performance of fossil-free portfolios to be stronger than conventional portfolios, since 2010 - CK/WS/MSCI Inc./FAFN/HSBC - May 5, 2015
http://wolverton.ca/analysis-busts-myth-that-divestment-is-a…
"“We can’t divest from fossil fuels because it would lead to lower returns, and investors wouldn’t like that.”
That’s the response universities, governments, pension funds and other asset owners typically give when faced with pressure to divest from their fossil-fuel holdings.
But a report from MSCI Inc., which compared the performance of fossil-free portfolios to conventional, fossil-filled portfolios, found that the lower-return argument doesn’t hold – at least not since 2010.
MSCI, the world’s largest stock market index provider, found that portfolios with a mix of coal-, gas- and oil-producing companies returned 11.8 per cent a year. Fossil-free portfolios had an average return of 13 per cent.
The benchmark for this analysis is the MSCI ACWI Index, which represents the broad market by capturing large and mid-cap stocks across 23 developed and 23 emerging countries. That index has returned 62.2 per cent since 2010.
When MSCI eliminates companies that own large fossil-fuel reserves, the index has returned 69.9 per cent since 2010.
This reality may explain why the number of investment professionals in the United States offering fossil-fuel free portfolios to investors has nearly doubled – jumping from 22 per cent in 2013 to 42 per cent this year, according to a divestment survey released in April by First Affirmative Financial Network.
It might also explain why G20 powers are reportedly investigating the risks that fossil-fuel companies are taking by investing in new projects that are incompatible with the move to a low-carbon economy and heightened climate action.
Banking giant HSBC recently warned that it’s not just climate regulations and falling oil prices putting fossil-fuel projects at risk of becoming stranded assets.
“We expect innovation in efficiency and technological advancements, including in renewables, battery storage and enhanced oil recovery, to alter the energy mix and pricing in the energy economy, potentially resulting in further stranding of high carbon and high cost fossil fuels,” the bank said in a sobering April report.
"
SRI Underperformance Myth Busted, Report from MSCI Inc. finds the performance of fossil-free portfolios to be stronger than conventional portfolios, since 2010 - CK/WS/MSCI Inc./FAFN/HSBC - May 5, 2015
http://wolverton.ca/analysis-busts-myth-that-divestment-is-a…
"“We can’t divest from fossil fuels because it would lead to lower returns, and investors wouldn’t like that.”
That’s the response universities, governments, pension funds and other asset owners typically give when faced with pressure to divest from their fossil-fuel holdings.
But a report from MSCI Inc., which compared the performance of fossil-free portfolios to conventional, fossil-filled portfolios, found that the lower-return argument doesn’t hold – at least not since 2010.
MSCI, the world’s largest stock market index provider, found that portfolios with a mix of coal-, gas- and oil-producing companies returned 11.8 per cent a year. Fossil-free portfolios had an average return of 13 per cent.
The benchmark for this analysis is the MSCI ACWI Index, which represents the broad market by capturing large and mid-cap stocks across 23 developed and 23 emerging countries. That index has returned 62.2 per cent since 2010.
When MSCI eliminates companies that own large fossil-fuel reserves, the index has returned 69.9 per cent since 2010.
This reality may explain why the number of investment professionals in the United States offering fossil-fuel free portfolios to investors has nearly doubled
– jumping from 22 per cent in 2013 to 42 per cent this year, according to a divestment survey released in April by First Affirmative Financial Network.It might also explain why G20 powers are reportedly investigating the risks that fossil-fuel companies are taking by investing in new projects that are incompatible with the move to a low-carbon economy and heightened climate action.
Banking giant HSBC recently warned that it’s not just climate regulations and falling oil prices putting fossil-fuel projects at risk of becoming stranded assets.
“We expect innovation in efficiency and technological advancements, including in renewables, battery storage and enhanced oil recovery, to alter the energy mix and pricing in the energy economy, potentially resulting in further stranding of high carbon and high cost fossil fuels,” the bank said in a sobering April report.
"
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 49.835.961 von Popeye82 am 23.05.15 05:46:15
www.msci.com/resources/factsheets/index_fact_sheet/msci-acwi…
www.msci.com/resources/factsheets/index_fact_sheet/msci-acwi…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 49.835.961 von Popeye82 am 23.05.15 05:46:15
http://gofossilfree.org/se/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2014/…
http://gofossilfree.org/se/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2014/…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 49.835.952 von Popeye82 am 23.05.15 05:34:26
350.org, founded in 2008 by writer Bill McKibben, +a team of seven college friends. In <five years, we've helped create a network of >500,000 supporters, +>1,000 partner organizations, in >180 countries. 350.org exists to unite an international grassroots movement, that can solve the climate crisis. Together, our movement works to change the world, through bold, +creative, action. From our global mobilizations to the Fossil Free divestment campaign to stopping the Keystone XL pipeline, 350.org has shown that change often occurs when thousands of people rally together around a common demand, +vision of a better world
------------------------------------------------> http://350.org
350.org, founded in 2008 by writer Bill McKibben, +a team of seven college friends. In <five years, we've helped create a network of >500,000 supporters, +>1,000 partner organizations, in >180 countries. 350.org exists to unite an international grassroots movement, that can solve the climate crisis. Together, our movement works to change the world, through bold, +creative, action. From our global mobilizations to the Fossil Free divestment campaign to stopping the Keystone XL pipeline, 350.org has shown that change often occurs when thousands of people rally together around a common demand, +vision of a better world
------------------------------------------------> http://350.org
Carbon Market Survey Report '15, 'Consolidation is the new Trend' - Thomson Reuters, CR&F, OSLO/WASHINGTON, D.C./BEIJING/LONDON/NEW YORK/SEOUL/KIEV - May 13, 2015
- Emil Dimantchev, Ben Kellerman, Olga Chistyakova, Hongliang Chai, Gayoung Lee, Maria Kolos, Ganna Korniyenko, Natalia Presich, Daryna Grynenko, Anders Nordeng -
key findings:
- One in five survey participants think cap-and-trade of greenhouse gas emission is an ideal abatement instrument, two-thirds think it is the best we can agree on, 8% are of the opinion it does more harm than good.
- Some 45% of compliant entities (the companies whose emission are covered by a cap-and-trade system) see the cost of emissions as a decisive factor for investment decisions.
- Cap-and-trade is the emission abatement instrument that most respondents expect to see in place in 2020, well ahead of subsidies and taxes.
- 49% of European respondents agree that the EU ETS is the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions. Two-thirds believe it will “continue to be the main instrument of EU climate policy”.
- Among the companies compliant under the EU ETS – those whose emissions are capped – 51% say the system has led them to reduce emissions.
- Some 36% of respondents consider it likely that the Paris climate summit in December 2015 will deliver a new international agreement on emission abatement. 38% see it as unlikely; the remaining 28% take a neutral view.
- 17% of American respondents are confident the U.S climate target (26-28% reduction by 2025) is achievable under current and planned policies, 33% say it might be possible, and 34% checked an emphatic “no”.
- Two-thirds of North American respondents think the Environmental Protection Agency will face legal opposition to implementing the Clean Power Plan it presented in June 2014.
- Just over half expect the Western Climate Initiative (California and Quebec)
to take on new members before 2020
- In China, 43% of the respondents expect to see a nationwide emission trading scheme by 2017. Another 40% expect it to be launched sometime in the period 2018 to 2020.
- The Point Carbon Market Survey is the annual market sentiment poll conducted by Thomson Reuters Commodities Research and Forecasts. For ten years it has been a reference report in the world of carbon. The 2015 edition contains feedback from 1,203 respondents from a wide range of stakeholders around the world.
Table of contents
Executive summary
1. Market context, +survey structures
2. Abatement instruments, +Paris expectations
3. The impact of ETS on compliant entities
4. Europe 5. North America
6. China
7. South Korea
8. Kazakhstan 9. New Zealand 10. CDM
11. JI
Appendix: Methodological questions ...
http://trmcs-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/f04056bbf36d51acaba7…
- Emil Dimantchev, Ben Kellerman, Olga Chistyakova, Hongliang Chai, Gayoung Lee, Maria Kolos, Ganna Korniyenko, Natalia Presich, Daryna Grynenko, Anders Nordeng -
key findings:
- One in five survey participants think cap-and-trade of greenhouse gas emission is an ideal abatement instrument, two-thirds think it is the best we can agree on, 8% are of the opinion it does more harm than good.
- Some 45% of compliant entities (the companies whose emission are covered by a cap-and-trade system) see the cost of emissions as a decisive factor for investment decisions.
- Cap-and-trade is the emission abatement instrument that most respondents expect to see in place in 2020, well ahead of subsidies and taxes.
- 49% of European respondents agree that the EU ETS is the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions. Two-thirds believe it will “continue to be the main instrument of EU climate policy”.
- Among the companies compliant under the EU ETS – those whose emissions are capped – 51% say the system has led them to reduce emissions.
- Some 36% of respondents consider it likely that the Paris climate summit in December 2015 will deliver a new international agreement on emission abatement. 38% see it as unlikely; the remaining 28% take a neutral view.
- 17% of American respondents are confident the U.S climate target (26-28% reduction by 2025) is achievable under current and planned policies, 33% say it might be possible, and 34% checked an emphatic “no”.
- Two-thirds of North American respondents think the Environmental Protection Agency will face legal opposition to implementing the Clean Power Plan it presented in June 2014.
- Just over half expect the Western Climate Initiative (California and Quebec)
to take on new members before 2020
- In China, 43% of the respondents expect to see a nationwide emission trading scheme by 2017. Another 40% expect it to be launched sometime in the period 2018 to 2020.
- The Point Carbon Market Survey is the annual market sentiment poll conducted by Thomson Reuters Commodities Research and Forecasts. For ten years it has been a reference report in the world of carbon. The 2015 edition contains feedback from 1,203 respondents from a wide range of stakeholders around the world.
Table of contents
Executive summary
1. Market context, +survey structures
2. Abatement instruments, +Paris expectations
3. The impact of ETS on compliant entities
4. Europe 5. North America
6. China
7. South Korea
8. Kazakhstan 9. New Zealand 10. CDM
11. JI
Appendix: Methodological questions ...
http://trmcs-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/f04056bbf36d51acaba7…
Chris Davies: we'll need EU CCS to reach the targets, Chris Davies, former EU MEP +rapporteur for carbon capture, +storage, believes that European countries will support carbon capture, once they realise they need it to meet their targets - CCJ - May 22, 2015
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3575
"Chris Davies, former EU MEP and rapporteur for carbon capture and storage, believes that European countries will support carbon capture once they realise they need it to meet their targets
Chris Davies, former rapporteur for carbon capture at the European Commission and Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014, believes that EU countries will start making plans to implement carbon capture, once they realise they need it to meet their 2050 carbon emission reduction targets.
EU leaders agreed on 23 October 2014 to a domestic 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target of at least 40 per cent compared to 1990.
But countries have not yet been required to make detailed plans for how they will achieve it, Mr Davies says.
“They don’t have to announce how they will do it,” he says. “It is up to member states to start working towards it. There’s a lot of flesh to be put on the bones.”
The European Union should push every country to publish its plans to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, he believes. “They should have to expose their thoughts to public scrutiny.”
So far, the European Council of Prime Ministers, “has made specific reference to CCS as one technology that needs to be developed,” he said. But “they’ve shied away from setting any targets.”
As an indication of how much work needs to be done, consider that countries have so far only really been considering greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, which is about a quarter of the total, he says.
Emissions from energy intensive industries have barely been considered so far. “You simply cannot reduce CO2 emissions from energy intensive industries without CCS,” he said.
Once it has support, the rollout of carbon capture and storage could happen very quickly in Europe, Mr Davies believes.
It might be a useful example to consider that the UK managed to cover the entire country with railway in just 19 years, between 1830 and 1849, he says. Also, consider that the US already has 4,000 km of CO2 pipeline, he says.
A lot of Brussels resources have been spent on the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), he says.
At the time it was set up in 2003, “The commissioner always said, ‘we’re going to make mistakes, we’re going to learn by doing.’ It has taken a lot longer than any of us thought.”
Chris Davies was a United Kingdom member of the European Parliament from 1999-2014. He served as rapporteur for the CCS Directive in 2008-9 and for the Parliament’s implementation report on CCS in 2013-14. He introduced and promoted the idea for a European funding mechanism that became known as the NER300, one of the world’s largest funding programs for innovative low-carbon energy demonstration projects.
Compare with renewables
There is an interesting comparison between carbon capture and renewables in the way the European Commission has supported it.
In renewables, there was a requirement for every European country to set a target to get 20 per cent of its electricity from renewables, and projects have actually been funded.
“The fear was that the emission trading system was not providing sufficient funding for renewable energy. So additional means could be found,” he says.
Meanwhile the mothballing of many carbon capture projects has been attributed to a low carbon price, with governments saying that the project can only go ahead if the carbon price is high enough to make them viable.
So if the Commission set a target for how much CO2 should be buried using carbon capture, it might be very helpful.
Ultimately, “it is a matter of what people want to see happen,” he says. “People want to see renewable energy developed.”
Making the public pay
“Money for low carbon electricity projects has to come from somewhere, either from taxation or from electricity consumers, and it makes sense to get it directly through electricity bills,” Mr Davies says.
“In Germany they pass all the costs of renewables onto consumers, and protect industry by not requiring industry to pay that contribution! That’s why Germany has the highest electricity prices.”
New Energy Commissioner
Mr Davies reports that the new European Commission Climate and Energy Commissioner, Miguel Arias Canete in April 2015, is proving to be a carbon capture enthusiast .
Mr Davies had a meeting with Mr Canete in April 2015, together with Graeme Sweeney, Chair of the Advisory Council of the European Technology Platform of Zero Emission Fossil Fuels Power Plants (ETP-ZEP), and Andrew Purvis. General Manager, Europe, Middle East and Africa with the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI), and Frederic Hauge, the founder and CEO of Bellona.
“We had an hour with the commissioner,” Mr Davies says. “He showed obvious support for CCS. We knew we were having a meeting to discuss ideas. We had a willing commissioner.”
“He told us that since becoming Commissioner he had rarely made a speech without making a reference to the need for CCS and that he would continue to do so.”
Mr Davies believes that the commissioner does have a large amount of influence over what the European Commission does. He might not have personal powers to direct funding to CCS projects, but he is “essential to shaping the agenda,” he says.
“For example, he can say CCS should be part of the Energy Union Strategy. He can say member state governments have to prepare a strategy for reaching their 80-95% CO2 reductions by 2050.”
“When the climate ministers get together, the commissioner is their team leader,” he says. “It is the commissioner who shapes Europe’s climate and energy agendas.”
So when it comes to decisions about whether Brussels will support European carbon capture projects such as ROAD, “I think the Commissioner could have huge influence,” he said. “If the Commission can pull together the key partners there is nothing technical that need stop ROAD going ahead.”
Germany and France
Mr Davies believes that Germany will eventually start supporting carbon capture, probably for industrial CCS, and France is a stronger supporter of carbon capture than many people believe.
“Germany has been very hostile to CCS as you know,” he says. “They are against nuclear, they are now wanting to close down coal fired power stations. Probably they’ll end up importing electricity from Poland. It’s not quite thought through here.”
“There are days in the year when Germany gets half of its electricity from renewables, and other days it is less than five per cent.”
“There’s a major role for renewables [but] you have got to have fossil fuel back up, otherwise you’re importing fossil fuel electricity from other countries.”
Mr Davies thinks that the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany could be the first region to set up carbon capture, since it is close to the coastline, with possibility to connect to offshore sites by sending CO2 by barge or pipeline.
There are many chemical works in the region, including ammonia manufacturing, where pure CO2 is vented into the atmosphere. This provides opportunities to store CO2 without any separation processes required.
There is more happening in France with carbon capture in terms of pilot projects than the UK, Mr Davies says. This includes a coal fired plant in Le Havre, an Air Liquide plant in Le Havre, and a Total site in Lacq.
France also had the only carbon capture project to qualify for funding on the first round of the NER 300 scheme, with its ‘ULCOS’ project, for capturing CO2 from a steel plant. Unfortunately this project was shelved because the steel plant generating the CO2 was closed.
Other regulatory vehicles
Another regulatory vehicle which could support CCS could be an ‘emissions performance standard’, where coal power plants are restricted in how much CO2 they can vent to the atmosphere, similar to how they are restricted with SO2 and NO2 emissions.
“That’s something that’s been discussed, nothing more than that,” he said. “We need to get off the discussion bench and off the drawing board and into practise.”
We already have a kind of emission standard in Britain, in that there are restrictions on building new coal power plants without carbon capture.
US
Another way to put pressure on Europeans to do something with carbon capture is explain what is happening in the US and China, he says.
“The US is burying 60m tons of CO2 a year, from a mixture of natural sources (40m) and industrial sources (20m) tons. “Most of it is stored together with enhanced oil recovery. But the CO2 goes down there and stays down there.”
By contrast, In Europe, we are capturing about 1.5m tons, of which 1m tons is from the Sleipner project in Norway, which is not even part of the European Union.
“I had a meeting in Washington in March with the US Department of Energy. They say, ‘”we have no doubt CCS is going to come forward, globally it is essential. The American industry in competition with Chinese industry.’”
“The implication is Europe is being left behind.”
Fossil fuel companies doing carbon capture
“Getting the fossil fuel industry to make the changes or make the investments [in carbon capture] makes a lot of sense to me,” Mr Davies says.
But “the fossil fuel providers would be opposed to it to begin with.”
For example, Eurocoal, the European Association for Coal and Lignite, is still opposed to early deployment of carbon capture, he says.
“It will require a degree of political support [to force them to pay] which I don’t think is on the cards yet. In order to overcome this sort of resistance, “you’d need majority support in the European Council for something like that,” he says.
“I think you are five years off before you can start floating the idea.” "
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3575
"Chris Davies, former EU MEP and rapporteur for carbon capture and storage, believes that European countries will support carbon capture once they realise they need it to meet their targets
Chris Davies, former rapporteur for carbon capture at the European Commission and Member of the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014, believes that EU countries will start making plans to implement carbon capture, once they realise they need it to meet their 2050 carbon emission reduction targets.
EU leaders agreed on 23 October 2014 to a domestic 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target of at least 40 per cent compared to 1990.
But countries have not yet been required to make detailed plans for how they will achieve it, Mr Davies says.
“They don’t have to announce how they will do it,” he says. “It is up to member states to start working towards it. There’s a lot of flesh to be put on the bones.”
The European Union should push every country to publish its plans to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, he believes. “They should have to expose their thoughts to public scrutiny.”
So far, the European Council of Prime Ministers, “has made specific reference to CCS as one technology that needs to be developed,” he said. But “they’ve shied away from setting any targets.”
As an indication of how much work needs to be done, consider that countries have so far only really been considering greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, which is about a quarter of the total, he says.
Emissions from energy intensive industries have barely been considered so far. “You simply cannot reduce CO2 emissions from energy intensive industries without CCS,” he said.
Once it has support, the rollout of carbon capture and storage could happen very quickly in Europe, Mr Davies believes.
It might be a useful example to consider that the UK managed to cover the entire country with railway in just 19 years, between 1830 and 1849, he says. Also, consider that the US already has 4,000 km of CO2 pipeline, he says.
A lot of Brussels resources have been spent on the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS), he says.
At the time it was set up in 2003, “The commissioner always said, ‘we’re going to make mistakes, we’re going to learn by doing.’ It has taken a lot longer than any of us thought.”
Chris Davies was a United Kingdom member of the European Parliament from 1999-2014. He served as rapporteur for the CCS Directive in 2008-9 and for the Parliament’s implementation report on CCS in 2013-14. He introduced and promoted the idea for a European funding mechanism that became known as the NER300, one of the world’s largest funding programs for innovative low-carbon energy demonstration projects.
Compare with renewables
There is an interesting comparison between carbon capture and renewables in the way the European Commission has supported it.
In renewables, there was a requirement for every European country to set a target to get 20 per cent of its electricity from renewables, and projects have actually been funded.
“The fear was that the emission trading system was not providing sufficient funding for renewable energy. So additional means could be found,” he says.
Meanwhile the mothballing of many carbon capture projects has been attributed to a low carbon price, with governments saying that the project can only go ahead if the carbon price is high enough to make them viable.
So if the Commission set a target for how much CO2 should be buried using carbon capture, it might be very helpful.
Ultimately, “it is a matter of what people want to see happen,” he says. “People want to see renewable energy developed.”
Making the public pay
“Money for low carbon electricity projects has to come from somewhere, either from taxation or from electricity consumers, and it makes sense to get it directly through electricity bills,” Mr Davies says.
“In Germany they pass all the costs of renewables onto consumers, and protect industry by not requiring industry to pay that contribution! That’s why Germany has the highest electricity prices.”
New Energy Commissioner
Mr Davies reports that the new European Commission Climate and Energy Commissioner, Miguel Arias Canete in April 2015, is proving to be a carbon capture enthusiast
.Mr Davies had a meeting with Mr Canete in April 2015, together with Graeme Sweeney, Chair of the Advisory Council of the European Technology Platform of Zero Emission Fossil Fuels Power Plants (ETP-ZEP), and Andrew Purvis. General Manager, Europe, Middle East and Africa with the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute (GCCSI), and Frederic Hauge, the founder and CEO of Bellona.
“We had an hour with the commissioner,” Mr Davies says. “He showed obvious support for CCS. We knew we were having a meeting to discuss ideas. We had a willing commissioner.”
“He told us that since becoming Commissioner he had rarely made a speech without making a reference to the need for CCS and that he would continue to do so.”
Mr Davies believes that the commissioner does have a large amount of influence over what the European Commission does. He might not have personal powers to direct funding to CCS projects, but he is “essential to shaping the agenda,” he says.
“For example, he can say CCS should be part of the Energy Union Strategy. He can say member state governments have to prepare a strategy for reaching their 80-95% CO2 reductions by 2050.”
“When the climate ministers get together, the commissioner is their team leader,” he says. “It is the commissioner who shapes Europe’s climate and energy agendas.”
So when it comes to decisions about whether Brussels will support European carbon capture projects such as ROAD, “I think the Commissioner could have huge influence,” he said. “If the Commission can pull together the key partners there is nothing technical that need stop ROAD going ahead.”
Germany and France
Mr Davies believes that Germany will eventually start supporting carbon capture, probably for industrial CCS, and France is a stronger supporter of carbon capture than many people believe.
“Germany has been very hostile to CCS as you know,” he says. “They are against nuclear, they are now wanting to close down coal fired power stations. Probably they’ll end up importing electricity from Poland. It’s not quite thought through here.”
“There are days in the year when Germany gets half of its electricity from renewables, and other days it is less than five per cent.”
“There’s a major role for renewables [but] you have got to have fossil fuel back up, otherwise you’re importing fossil fuel electricity from other countries.”
Mr Davies thinks that the North Rhine-Westphalia region of Germany could be the first region to set up carbon capture, since it is close to the coastline, with possibility to connect to offshore sites by sending CO2 by barge or pipeline.
There are many chemical works in the region, including ammonia manufacturing, where pure CO2 is vented into the atmosphere. This provides opportunities to store CO2 without any separation processes required.
There is more happening in France with carbon capture in terms of pilot projects than the UK, Mr Davies says. This includes a coal fired plant in Le Havre, an Air Liquide plant in Le Havre, and a Total site in Lacq.
France also had the only carbon capture project to qualify for funding on the first round of the NER 300 scheme, with its ‘ULCOS’ project, for capturing CO2 from a steel plant. Unfortunately this project was shelved because the steel plant generating the CO2 was closed.
Other regulatory vehicles
Another regulatory vehicle which could support CCS could be an ‘emissions performance standard’, where coal power plants are restricted in how much CO2 they can vent to the atmosphere, similar to how they are restricted with SO2 and NO2 emissions.
“That’s something that’s been discussed, nothing more than that,” he said. “We need to get off the discussion bench and off the drawing board and into practise.”
We already have a kind of emission standard in Britain, in that there are restrictions on building new coal power plants without carbon capture.
US
Another way to put pressure on Europeans to do something with carbon capture is explain what is happening in the US and China, he says.
“The US is burying 60m tons of CO2 a year, from a mixture of natural sources (40m) and industrial sources (20m) tons. “Most of it is stored together with enhanced oil recovery. But the CO2 goes down there and stays down there.”
By contrast, In Europe, we are capturing about 1.5m tons, of which 1m tons is from the Sleipner project in Norway, which is not even part of the European Union.
“I had a meeting in Washington in March with the US Department of Energy. They say, ‘”we have no doubt CCS is going to come forward, globally it is essential. The American industry in competition with Chinese industry.’”
“The implication is Europe is being left behind.”
Fossil fuel companies doing carbon capture
“Getting the fossil fuel industry to make the changes or make the investments [in carbon capture] makes a lot of sense to me,” Mr Davies says.
But “the fossil fuel providers would be opposed to it to begin with.”
For example, Eurocoal, the European Association for Coal and Lignite, is still opposed to early deployment of carbon capture, he says.
“It will require a degree of political support [to force them to pay] which I don’t think is on the cards yet. In order to overcome this sort of resistance, “you’d need majority support in the European Council for something like that,” he says.
“I think you are five years off before you can start floating the idea.” "
European Union moves closer to banning cadmium in TV's
www.euractiv.com/sections/science-policymaking/toxic-cadmium…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48597
www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA…
"The European Parliament voted last week to re-assess the use of cadmium in TV sets sold across Europe, saying safer alternatives to the toxic and carcinogenic substance were now widely available.
Cadmium is widely used in illumination and display lighting applications such as LCD screens used in television sets or desktop computers.
The substance was exempted from the EU directive on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) because safer alternatives were not available at the time of adoption, in 2002. RoHS requires replacing heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium, with safer alternatives, when available."
www.euractiv.com/sections/science-policymaking/toxic-cadmium…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48597
www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA…
"The European Parliament voted last week to re-assess the use of cadmium in TV sets sold across Europe, saying safer alternatives to the toxic and carcinogenic substance were now widely available.
Cadmium is widely used in illumination and display lighting applications such as LCD screens used in television sets or desktop computers.
The substance was exempted from the EU directive on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) because safer alternatives were not available at the time of adoption, in 2002. RoHS requires replacing heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium, with safer alternatives, when available."
Over 84% of New U.S. Generating Capacity YTD is From Renewables - CT/FERC/EIA - May 26, 2015
- Ken Bossong -
www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2015/apr-infrastructure.pdf
www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly
http://cleantechies.com/2015/05/26/over-84-of-new-u-s-genera…
"
In what is becoming a frequent occurrence, if not predictable pattern, renewable energy sources once again dominate in the latest federal monthly update on new electrical generating capacity brought into service in the United States.
According to the recently-released “Energy Infrastructure Update” report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) Office of Energy Projects, wind and solar accounted for all new generating capacity placed in-service in April. For the month, two “units” of wind (the 300-megawatt (MW) Hereford-2 Wind Farm Project in Deaf Smith County, TX and the 211-MW Mesquite Creek Wind Project in Dawson County, TX) came on line in addition to six new units – totaling 50 MW – of solar.
Further, wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower combined have provided over 84 percent (84.1%) of the 1,900 MW of new U.S. electrical generating capacity placed into service during the first third of 2015. This includes 1,170 MW of wind (61.5%), 362 MW of solar (19.1%), 45 MW of geothermal steam (2.4%), and 21 MW of hydropower (1.1%). The balance (302 MW) was provided by five units of natural gas.
FERC has reported no new capacity for the year-to-date from biomass sources nor any from coal, oil, or nuclear power.
The total contribution of geothermal, hydropower, solar, and wind for the first four months of 2015 (1,598 MW) is similar to that for the same period in 2014 (1,611 MW – in addition to 116 MW of biomass). However, for the same period in 2014, natural gas added 1,518 MW of new capacity while coal and nuclear again provided none and oil just 1 MW. Renewable energy sources accounted for half of all new generating capacity added in 2014.
Renewable energy sources now account for 17.05% of total installed operating generating capacity in the U.S.: water – 8.55%, wind – 5.74%, biomass – 1.38%, solar – 1.05%, and geothermal steam – 0.33% (for comparison, renewables were 13.71% of capacity in December 2010 – the first month for which FERC issued an “Energy Infrastructure Update”).
Renewable energy capacity is now greater than that of nuclear (9.14%) and oil (3.92%) combined. In fact, the installed capacity of wind power alone has now surpassed that of oil. In addition, total installed operating generating capacity from solar has now reached and surpassed the one-percent threshold – a ten-fold increase since December 2010. *
“Members of Congress and state legislators proposing to curb support for renewable energy, such as Renewable Portfolio/Electricity Standards and the federal Production Tax Credit and Investment Tax Credit, are swimming against the tide,” noted Ken Bossong, Executive Director of the SUN DAY Campaign. “With renewable energy’s clear track record of success and the ever-worsening threat of climate change, now is not the time to pull back from these technologies but rather to greatly expand investments in them.”
# # # # # # # #
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released its most recent 5-page “Energy Infrastructure Update,” with data through April 30, 2015, on May 22, 2015. See the tables titled “New Generation In-Service (New Build and Expansion)” and “Total Installed Operating Generating Capacity” at: http://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2015/apr-infrastruct… .
* Note that generating capacity is not the same as actual generation. Electrical production per MW of available capacity (i.e., capacity factor) for renewables is often lower than that for fossil fuels and nuclear power. According to the most recent data (i.e., as of February 2015) provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, actual net electrical generation from renewable energy sources now totals 13.4% of total U.S. electrical production (see: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly); however, this figure almost certainly understates renewables’ actual contribution significantly because neither EIA nor FERC fully accounts for all electricity generated by distributed renewable energy sources (e.g., rooftop solar). "
- Ken Bossong -
www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2015/apr-infrastructure.pdf
www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly
http://cleantechies.com/2015/05/26/over-84-of-new-u-s-genera…
"
In what is becoming a frequent occurrence, if not predictable pattern, renewable energy sources once again dominate in the latest federal monthly update on new electrical generating capacity brought into service in the United States.
According to the recently-released “Energy Infrastructure Update” report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) Office of Energy Projects, wind and solar accounted for all new generating capacity placed in-service in April. For the month, two “units” of wind (the 300-megawatt (MW) Hereford-2 Wind Farm Project in Deaf Smith County, TX and the 211-MW Mesquite Creek Wind Project in Dawson County, TX) came on line in addition to six new units – totaling 50 MW – of solar.
Further, wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower combined have provided over 84 percent (84.1%) of the 1,900 MW of new U.S. electrical generating capacity placed into service during the first third of 2015. This includes 1,170 MW of wind (61.5%), 362 MW of solar (19.1%), 45 MW of geothermal steam (2.4%), and 21 MW of hydropower (1.1%). The balance (302 MW) was provided by five units of natural gas.
FERC has reported no new capacity for the year-to-date from biomass sources nor any from coal, oil, or nuclear power.
The total contribution of geothermal, hydropower, solar, and wind for the first four months of 2015 (1,598 MW) is similar to that for the same period in 2014 (1,611 MW – in addition to 116 MW of biomass). However, for the same period in 2014, natural gas added 1,518 MW of new capacity while coal and nuclear again provided none and oil just 1 MW. Renewable energy sources accounted for half of all new generating capacity added in 2014.
Renewable energy sources now account for 17.05% of total installed operating generating capacity in the U.S.: water – 8.55%, wind – 5.74%, biomass – 1.38%, solar – 1.05%, and geothermal steam – 0.33% (for comparison, renewables were 13.71% of capacity in December 2010 – the first month for which FERC issued an “Energy Infrastructure Update”).
Renewable energy capacity is now greater than that of nuclear (9.14%) and oil (3.92%) combined. In fact, the installed capacity of wind power alone has now surpassed that of oil. In addition, total installed operating generating capacity from solar has now reached and surpassed the one-percent threshold – a ten-fold increase since December 2010. *
“Members of Congress and state legislators proposing to curb support for renewable energy, such as Renewable Portfolio/Electricity Standards and the federal Production Tax Credit and Investment Tax Credit, are swimming against the tide,” noted Ken Bossong, Executive Director of the SUN DAY Campaign. “With renewable energy’s clear track record of success and the ever-worsening threat of climate change, now is not the time to pull back from these technologies but rather to greatly expand investments in them.”
# # # # # # # #
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released its most recent 5-page “Energy Infrastructure Update,” with data through April 30, 2015, on May 22, 2015. See the tables titled “New Generation In-Service (New Build and Expansion)” and “Total Installed Operating Generating Capacity” at: http://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2015/apr-infrastruct… .
* Note that generating capacity is not the same as actual generation. Electrical production per MW of available capacity (i.e., capacity factor) for renewables is often lower than that for fossil fuels and nuclear power. According to the most recent data (i.e., as of February 2015) provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, actual net electrical generation from renewable energy sources now totals 13.4% of total U.S. electrical production (see: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly); however, this figure almost certainly understates renewables’ actual contribution significantly because neither EIA nor FERC fully accounts for all electricity generated by distributed renewable energy sources (e.g., rooftop solar). "
New attack on carbon pollution limits, can you help?
https://secure3.convio.net/ucs/site/Donation2;jsessionid=96D…
"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is leading a new assault on the Obama administration's historic power plant pollution limits.
First, he told state officials to ignore the federal rules. Now he's pushing a bill to let even the most polluting states "opt out" of the rules altogether.1 And we have to stay alert, because if this bill does not succeed, you can be sure that he will try again and again to derail these rules.
We worked for years pushing the EPA to limit the amount of carbon pollution that power plants can spew into the air. These limits are going to be finalized this summer, and we've got to mount an immediate, all-out effort to protect them—working directly with members of Congress, while leveraging experts and activists like you to do on-the-ground work in key states. We need your help to ramp up efforts now.
Make a tax-deductible gift to the Union of Concerned Scientists to defend science and secure strong pollution limits. Help meet our end-of-month goal of $25,000—even $10 makes a difference when UCS supporters band together.
New reports show global carbon dioxide concentrations have surpassed 400 parts per million. 450 parts per million is the upper limit of what scientists agree we can endure without triggering massive and devastating effects from global climate change.2
I know you agree that protecting against global warming is a moral imperative—it should be a national priority, not a political battle. Yet the country's most powerful senator is assailing new safeguards that could protect ALL of us for generations to come.
You helped move these rules forward, and when they are finalized this summer it will be because supporters like you spent years pushing the EPA to follow the best available science.
Now that these landmark limits are under attack, it's up to us—all of us—to defend the gains we've made. Please donate now.
Here's our plan: Right now, we're bringing scientists to meet with members of Congress to debunk misinformation, working in battleground states like Virginia and Pennsylvania, and defending renewable energy policies in states across the country.
Meanwhile, our proactive work continues:
- In Minnesota, policy makers are putting our analysis to work to make this state's plan to increase renewable energy one of the strongest in the nation.
- In New Mexico, we're working with the governor's office to increase reliance on renewable energy and protect communities from drought and wildfires.
- In New Jersey, we're helping those affected by Hurricane Sandy demand investments in climate readiness.
- In Florida, we're helping organize coastal communities threatened by sea level rise to demand action from a state government that doesn't officially accept the science on climate change.
You make all of this work possible. We don't solicit funding from corporations or the government—we rely on individuals like you to power our work.
It's campaigns and victories like these that have led Philanthropedia, a division of charity rating site GuideStar, to name us one of the top three most effective non-profits working on climate change.
Chip in $10 now to give our experts, scientists, and activists the resources they need to win this fight and many more. "
https://secure3.convio.net/ucs/site/Donation2;jsessionid=96D…
"Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is leading a new assault on the Obama administration's historic power plant pollution limits.
First, he told state officials to ignore the federal rules. Now he's pushing a bill to let even the most polluting states "opt out" of the rules altogether.1 And we have to stay alert, because if this bill does not succeed, you can be sure that he will try again and again to derail these rules.
We worked for years pushing the EPA to limit the amount of carbon pollution that power plants can spew into the air. These limits are going to be finalized this summer, and we've got to mount an immediate, all-out effort to protect them—working directly with members of Congress, while leveraging experts and activists like you to do on-the-ground work in key states. We need your help to ramp up efforts now.
Make a tax-deductible gift to the Union of Concerned Scientists to defend science and secure strong pollution limits. Help meet our end-of-month goal of $25,000—even $10 makes a difference when UCS supporters band together.
New reports show global carbon dioxide concentrations have surpassed 400 parts per million. 450 parts per million is the upper limit of what scientists agree we can endure without triggering massive and devastating effects from global climate change.2
I know you agree that protecting against global warming is a moral imperative—it should be a national priority, not a political battle. Yet the country's most powerful senator is assailing new safeguards that could protect ALL of us for generations to come.
You helped move these rules forward, and when they are finalized this summer it will be because supporters like you spent years pushing the EPA to follow the best available science.
Now that these landmark limits are under attack, it's up to us—all of us—to defend the gains we've made. Please donate now.
Here's our plan: Right now, we're bringing scientists to meet with members of Congress to debunk misinformation, working in battleground states like Virginia and Pennsylvania, and defending renewable energy policies in states across the country.
Meanwhile, our proactive work continues:
- In Minnesota, policy makers are putting our analysis to work to make this state's plan to increase renewable energy one of the strongest in the nation.
- In New Mexico, we're working with the governor's office to increase reliance on renewable energy and protect communities from drought and wildfires.
- In New Jersey, we're helping those affected by Hurricane Sandy demand investments in climate readiness.
- In Florida, we're helping organize coastal communities threatened by sea level rise to demand action from a state government that doesn't officially accept the science on climate change.
You make all of this work possible. We don't solicit funding from corporations or the government—we rely on individuals like you to power our work.
It's campaigns and victories like these that have led Philanthropedia, a division of charity rating site GuideStar, to name us one of the top three most effective non-profits working on climate change.
Chip in $10 now to give our experts, scientists, and activists the resources they need to win this fight and many more. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 49.835.952 von Popeye82 am 23.05.15 05:34:26
Norway’s $1,200,000,000,000(tn) pension fund told to reduce stakes in coal assets - MT - May 29, 2015
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsnorways-12tn-pension-fund…
"Norway's $1.2tn government pension fund has been urged to sell stakes in coal assets to help cut climate damage.
A bipartisan motion saw the Norwegian Parliament's finance committee[/green] giving its consent to instruct the fund to sell its stakes in companies that generate their output or revenues of more than 30% from activities relating to coal.
Earlier this year, the GPF began selling its coal portfolio as it claimed it increases risks to investments in the long-term.
The fund had left most of its holdings in companies that only mine coal and previously withdrew investments from producers of tobacco, nuclear weapons, and cluster bombs.
The Wall Street Journal reported that stakes in various utilities, including Germany's RWE and E.ON, SSE in the UK, Enel in Italy and Dominion Resources and Duke Energy in the US are held by the fund.
According to the report, 'Still Dirty, Still Dangerous', by the end of 2014 the GPF increased its holdings in coal-based businesses by Nkr3bn ($384m) to Nkr85.8bn ($11bn).
Based on the report, the fund is the biggest single investor in coal mining companies, as well as utilities that are based on the material.
Three environmental groups have analysed and revealed that the fund has dejected more money into coal as part of its proposal to responsible investing, The Guardian reported.
In its report on the Norwegian GPF, US-based thinktank IEEFA said managers should pull out from all mining companies with more 20% of their output from coal. "
Norway’s $1,200,000,000,000(tn) pension fund told to reduce stakes in coal assets - MT - May 29, 2015
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsnorways-12tn-pension-fund…
"Norway's $1.2tn government pension fund has been urged to sell stakes in coal assets to help cut climate damage.
A bipartisan motion saw the Norwegian Parliament's finance committee[/green] giving its consent to instruct the fund to sell its stakes in companies that generate their output or revenues of more than 30% from activities relating to coal.
Earlier this year, the GPF began selling its coal portfolio as it claimed it increases risks to investments in the long-term.
The fund had left most of its holdings in companies that only mine coal and previously withdrew investments from producers of tobacco, nuclear weapons, and cluster bombs.
The Wall Street Journal reported that stakes in various utilities, including Germany's RWE and E.ON, SSE in the UK, Enel in Italy and Dominion Resources and Duke Energy in the US are held by the fund.
According to the report, 'Still Dirty, Still Dangerous', by the end of 2014 the GPF increased its holdings in coal-based businesses by Nkr3bn ($384m) to Nkr85.8bn ($11bn).
Based on the report, the fund is the biggest single investor in coal mining companies, as well as utilities that are based on the material.
Three environmental groups have analysed and revealed that the fund has dejected more money into coal as part of its proposal to responsible investing, The Guardian reported.
In its report on the Norwegian GPF, US-based thinktank IEEFA said managers should pull out from all mining companies with more 20% of their output from coal. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 49.876.282 von Popeye82 am 29.05.15 17:11:45
Total, Shell exit coal mining , Some of the world's top oil producers have decided to abandon coal , +focus instead on ramping up production +trading of liquified natural gas , as a cleaner fossil fuel alternative
www.mining.com/total-shell-exit-coal-mining/?utm_source=dige…
www.hazardexonthenet.net/article/94791/Oil-gas-with-us-for-t…
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-01/total-plans-to-bo…
"
- Six top oil producers are joining forces to make sure coal it is on its way out. -
Oil giants Total SA (NYSE:TOT) and Royal Dutch Shell (LON:RDSA) have decided to abandon coal mining and focus instead on ramping up production and trading of liquified natural gas as a cleaner alternative to cheap coal.
According to Bloomberg, Total aims to produce and trade about 32.5 million metric tons of LNG by 2020 compared with about 18.5 million tons it currently generates. The company, said CEO Patrick Pouyanne, also intends to charter a dozen LNG tankers for future trading, two of them currently under construction.
The move follows Shell CEO Ben Van Beurden’s comments at the Anglo-Dutch group’s annual meeting in The Hague last month, where he said the firm had changed from an “oil-and-gas company” to a “gas-and-oil" one.
Pouyanne and Van Beurden are joining BP boss Bob Dudley, Exxon chief Rex Tillerson, Statoil head Eldar Saetre and Chevron boss John Watson at the World Gas Conference, in Paris, this week to discuss ways to promote gas as the main fuel for a sustainable world.
In a joint statement these companies made a joint call for world leaders to introduce effective carbon pricing systems.
Speaking at the opening day of the event Tuesday, van Beurden reinforced the idea saying that a failure to properly price carbon dioxide emissions was allowing coal to maintain or grow its share in the energy mix alongside renewables, at the expense of gas. "
Total, Shell exit coal mining
, Some of the world's top oil producers have decided to abandon coal , +focus instead on ramping up production +trading of liquified natural gas , as a cleaner fossil fuel alternative www.mining.com/total-shell-exit-coal-mining/?utm_source=dige…
www.hazardexonthenet.net/article/94791/Oil-gas-with-us-for-t…
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-01/total-plans-to-bo…
"
- Six top oil producers are joining forces to make sure coal it is on its way out. -
Oil giants Total SA (NYSE:TOT) and Royal Dutch Shell (LON:RDSA) have decided to abandon coal mining and focus instead on ramping up production and trading of liquified natural gas as a cleaner alternative to cheap coal.
According to Bloomberg, Total aims to produce and trade about 32.5 million metric tons of LNG by 2020 compared with about 18.5 million tons it currently generates. The company, said CEO Patrick Pouyanne, also intends to charter a dozen LNG tankers for future trading, two of them currently under construction.
The move follows Shell CEO Ben Van Beurden’s comments at the Anglo-Dutch group’s annual meeting in The Hague last month, where he said the firm had changed from an “oil-and-gas company” to a “gas-and-oil" one.
Pouyanne and Van Beurden are joining BP boss Bob Dudley, Exxon chief Rex Tillerson, Statoil head Eldar Saetre and Chevron boss John Watson at the World Gas Conference, in Paris, this week to discuss ways to promote gas as the main fuel for a sustainable world.
In a joint statement these companies made a joint call for world leaders to introduce effective carbon pricing systems.
Speaking at the opening day of the event Tuesday, van Beurden reinforced the idea saying that a failure to properly price carbon dioxide emissions was allowing coal to maintain or grow its share in the energy mix alongside renewables, at the expense of gas. "
Merkel: Zwei-Grad-Ziel bei Erderwärmung wichtig
http://web.de/magazine/politik/g7-gipfel/merkel-grad-ziel-er…
sicher ein riesen ding, wenn das funktionieren würde
Pilot project 'to transform oil industry waste water, into geothermal energy' - SH/TCP, CALGARY - Jun 11, 2015
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2015/06/11/pilot-project-to…
"In a few weeks a generator in North Dakota will fire up, powered by nothing more than waste water from an oil well.
The pilot project is designed to show that it's possible to generate geothermal electricity from the boiling water that comes out of the wells.
The concept is something Alison Thompson, managing director of the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association, has long been calling for in Canada's oilpatch.
``We've been advocating for many years to do what we'll call the hot sedimentary-style geothermal, which is really no more than taking what the oil and gas companies are already producing and running it through a little turbine right at their site.''
Canada produces huge amounts of geothermal power, but so far none of it is being used to generate electricity, Thompson said.
``We just actually bring up all that potential to the surface and then do nothing with it. It's actually treated as a waste or a cost to the company.''
She equates the waste to the gas flaring that was common across Alberta until stricter regulations came in to curb the practice in 2000. She says either higher carbon pricing or more regulation would encourage companies to try the technology, but there isn't enough incentive now.
Will Gosnold, a researcher at the University of North Dakota who is leading the pilot project, said that during the shale boom in recent years no one was interested in fiddling with extra equipment, but with oil prices low, companies are looking at any way to save money.
``Now things have slowed down due to the price decrease and they're looking at ways to cut costs, and this is one way they could cut their electrical power cost by generating their own electricity.''
The pilot project in North Dakota, which is being developed with energy company Continental Resources Inc., cost about US$3.5 million and includes several years of research and development. Gosnold said if the pilot project is successful, new geothermal units could be constructed at a cost of US$250,000 each.
The two generators on site have a combined 250 kilowatt hour capacity, which Gosnold estimates could mean about US$150,000 in annual energy cost savings in total. At 250 kwh, the generators would produce enough power to meet the annual needs of about 300 homes.
Gosnold hopes that once the pilot plant starts operating, other companies will see the economic and environmental benefits.
``We're trying to get their attention, and we're really hoping our demo project will do that,'' said Gosnold.
Interest in the technology is picking up in Alberta since the NDP were elected, said Craig Dunn, chief geologist at Calgary-based Borealis Geopower.
``There's more and more interest, especially when we're talking about in Alberta the NDP government, opportunities for a new carbon regime _ that's driving a lot of people to ask these questions.''
Borealis Geopower tried to develop a similar project a few years ago but with a water temperature of 85 degrees Celsius, the project didn't end up working, Dunn said.
He said while that initiative failed, there are many other oil wells in Western Canada that run hotter than 120 C, meaning they would have a better chance of succeeding.
``That is a geothermal resource development opportunity for power,'' said Dunn. "
Pilot project 'to transform oil industry waste water, into geothermal energy' - SH/TCP, CALGARY - Jun 11, 2015
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2015/06/11/pilot-project-to…
"In a few weeks a generator in North Dakota will fire up, powered by nothing more than waste water from an oil well.
The pilot project is designed to show that it's possible to generate geothermal electricity from the boiling water that comes out of the wells.
The concept is something Alison Thompson, managing director of the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association, has long been calling for in Canada's oilpatch.
``We've been advocating for many years to do what we'll call the hot sedimentary-style geothermal, which is really no more than taking what the oil and gas companies are already producing and running it through a little turbine right at their site.''
Canada produces huge amounts of geothermal power, but so far none of it is being used to generate electricity, Thompson said.
``We just actually bring up all that potential to the surface and then do nothing with it. It's actually treated as a waste or a cost to the company.''
She equates the waste to the gas flaring that was common across Alberta until stricter regulations came in to curb the practice in 2000. She says either higher carbon pricing or more regulation would encourage companies to try the technology, but there isn't enough incentive now.
Will Gosnold, a researcher at the University of North Dakota who is leading the pilot project, said that during the shale boom in recent years no one was interested in fiddling with extra equipment, but with oil prices low, companies are looking at any way to save money.
``Now things have slowed down due to the price decrease and they're looking at ways to cut costs, and this is one way they could cut their electrical power cost by generating their own electricity.''
The pilot project in North Dakota, which is being developed with energy company Continental Resources Inc., cost about US$3.5 million and includes several years of research and development. Gosnold said if the pilot project is successful, new geothermal units could be constructed at a cost of US$250,000 each.
The two generators on site have a combined 250 kilowatt hour capacity, which Gosnold estimates could mean about US$150,000 in annual energy cost savings in total. At 250 kwh, the generators would produce enough power to meet the annual needs of about 300 homes.
Gosnold hopes that once the pilot plant starts operating, other companies will see the economic and environmental benefits.
``We're trying to get their attention, and we're really hoping our demo project will do that,'' said Gosnold.
Interest in the technology is picking up in Alberta since the NDP were elected, said Craig Dunn, chief geologist at Calgary-based Borealis Geopower.
``There's more and more interest, especially when we're talking about in Alberta the NDP government, opportunities for a new carbon regime _ that's driving a lot of people to ask these questions.''
Borealis Geopower tried to develop a similar project a few years ago but with a water temperature of 85 degrees Celsius, the project didn't end up working, Dunn said.
He said while that initiative failed, there are many other oil wells in Western Canada that run hotter than 120 C, meaning they would have a better chance of succeeding.
``That is a geothermal resource development opportunity for power,'' said Dunn. "
ARPA-E bets $30,000,000 on "moonshot program", to transform energy crops; The $369.000.000.000 Bioeconomy; 9003, BioPreferred updates - BD/TERRA/ARPA-E, WASHINGTON - Jun 18, 2015
- Jim Lane -
http://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/documents/files…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2015/06/18/arpa-e-awards-30m-…
"In Washington, ARPA-E announced awards totaling $30 million for projects seeking to accelerate the development of sustainable energy crops for the production of renewable transportation fuels from biomass. The projects are led by Clemson, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Purdue, Texas A&M, and the University of Illinois. Partners include Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, Blue River Technologies, Chromatin, IBM, National Robotics Engineering Center, Signetron and Cornell.
Agriculture meets info tech, robotics, and engineering — all in one
It’s a wild and exciting assortment of projects at a convergence point between agriculture, information technology and engineering. Think phenotyping platforms, hyperspectral imagery, 3-D shape data, point- cloud data sets, data streams from ground- based and mobile platforms for automated phenotyping, field deployable mobile robotics platforms, and rover-mounted lasers.
The TERRA program provides $30 million to support six project teams in the development of improved varieties of sorghum, a crop used to produce biofuel, by developing improved plant remote sensing, analysis and breeding methods — and the target is energy sorghum.
TERRA project teams will address the limitations surrounding crop phenotyping (identifying and measuring the physical characteristics of plants) and genotyping (decoding the DNA of a plant), which are both manual and time-intensive processes. Project teams will develop mobile platforms with sensory systems to observe and record the characteristics of plants and create advanced algorithms to analyze data and predict plant growth potential. Additionally, the TERRA program will fund the creation of a large public database comprised of sorghum genotypes and field phenotypes. This database will provide the greater community of plant physiologists, bioinformaticians and geneticists with the knowledge to improve sorghum and bioenergy crops.
And the winners aaaaare…
Clemson University – Clemson, SC
Breeding High Yielding Bioenergy Sorghum for the New Bioenergy Belt – $6,000,000
Clemson University, along with the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute and partners, will phenotype an exhaustive set of international germplasm and plant varieties. Researchers will design and build cutting-edge phenotyping platforms that can rapidly collect visual imagery, hyperspectral imagery and 3-D shape data of test crops multiple times daily. The platforms – ground and aerial – will have the ability to directly contact the plant in order to systematically quantify physical characteristics that were previously measured with labor- intensive, low-throughput methods. The team will use sophisticated cameras and imaging algorithms to develop 3-D models of individual plants and their canopy structure, implement machine-learning techniques to analyze the data gathered and translate this into predictive algorithms for breeding improved biofuel sorghum hybrids.
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center – St. Louis, MO
A Reference Phenotyping System for Energy Sorghum – $8,000,000
The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, along with its research partners, will coordinate a national network of test sites in AZ, KS, MO, SC and TX, to provide broad environmental and genetic diversity essential for understanding phenotype behavior. The team will host a state-of-the-art plant phenotyping system, which provides high-resolution evaluation of crops grown under field conditions. In addition, comprehensive genomic analyses will be conducted to create a high-quality reference dataset of energy sorghum’s physical characteristics and genetic information. The project will ultimately provide data in community-defined formats that will be made available to researchers in a high-performance computing environment and archived for public use.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – Richland, WA
Consortium for Advanced Sorghum Phenomics (CASP) – $3,300,000
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and its research partners will utilize novel phenotyping platforms, predictive modeling techniques and image processing tools to generate maps of plant composition and predict plant growth. The project will focus on simulating drought and salinity stresses in order to develop plant varieties that are more resilient to these environmental challenges. PNNL will perform molecular phenotyping to identify breeding markers for these biotic stresses. Meanwhile, Blue River Technologies will develop autonomous phenotyping systems that can create 3-D models of individual plants and construct point- cloud data sets used to produce the plant composition maps. Finally, Chromatin Inc. will advance improved commercial seed cultivars.
Purdue University – West Lafayette, IN
Automated Sorghum Phenotyping and Trait Development Platform – $6,500,000
Purdue University’s team, along with IBM Research and partners, will acquire and utilize data to develop predictive models for plant growth and to design and implement sophisticated methods for identifying genes controlling sorghum performance. The team will create a system that combines data streams from ground- based and mobile platforms for automated phenotyping. Advanced image and signal processing methods will extract phenotypic information to produce predictive models for plant growth and development. The team will also use high-performance computing platforms and prediction algorithms to analyze and identify links between plant characteristics and their underlying genetics. The end goal is to develop a user-friendly system that will enable breeders and other end users to interact with the data and analytics.
Texas A&M AgriLife Research – College Station, TX
Automated Phenotyping System for Genetic Improvement of Energy Crops – $3,100,000
Texas A&M AgriLife Research (TAMU), along with the National Robotics Engineering Center and partners, will develop an advanced phenotyping system consisting of a suite of sensors mounted on a durable, ground- based, field deployable, mobile robotics platform. The system will employ an extendable, mechanical arm that can penetrate the dense plant canopy to capture images and measurements from above, within and below the crop, yielding previously unattainable sensor data. The team will use TAMU’s existing, world-class collection of sorghum varieties and will employ machine vision and learning algorithms to process the data for predictive modeling of plant growth.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – Champaign, IL
Mobile Energy-Crop Phenotyping Platform (MEPP) – $3,100,000
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with its partners Cornell University and Signetron Inc., will develop small-scale, automated ground rovers with the distinct capability to travel within the crops between rows. Phenotyping platforms will measure crop growth via 3-D reconstruction of plants and stands and assess physiological indicators of performance using reflectance and LiDAR (laser light detection and ranging) sensors. The team will also use sophisticated biophysical growth models and DNA-sequencing technologies to develop innovative methods for accelerating improvement of energy sorghum and identifying key genes that control plant performance. "
- Jim Lane -
http://arpa-e.energy.gov/sites/default/files/documents/files…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2015/06/18/arpa-e-awards-30m-…
"In Washington, ARPA-E announced awards totaling $30 million for projects seeking to accelerate the development of sustainable energy crops for the production of renewable transportation fuels from biomass. The projects are led by Clemson, the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Purdue, Texas A&M, and the University of Illinois. Partners include Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute, Blue River Technologies, Chromatin, IBM, National Robotics Engineering Center, Signetron and Cornell.
Agriculture meets info tech, robotics, and engineering — all in one
It’s a wild and exciting assortment of projects at a convergence point between agriculture, information technology and engineering. Think phenotyping platforms, hyperspectral imagery, 3-D shape data, point- cloud data sets, data streams from ground- based and mobile platforms for automated phenotyping, field deployable mobile robotics platforms, and rover-mounted lasers.
The TERRA program provides $30 million to support six project teams in the development of improved varieties of sorghum, a crop used to produce biofuel, by developing improved plant remote sensing, analysis and breeding methods — and the target is energy sorghum.
TERRA project teams will address the limitations surrounding crop phenotyping (identifying and measuring the physical characteristics of plants) and genotyping (decoding the DNA of a plant), which are both manual and time-intensive processes. Project teams will develop mobile platforms with sensory systems to observe and record the characteristics of plants and create advanced algorithms to analyze data and predict plant growth potential. Additionally, the TERRA program will fund the creation of a large public database comprised of sorghum genotypes and field phenotypes. This database will provide the greater community of plant physiologists, bioinformaticians and geneticists with the knowledge to improve sorghum and bioenergy crops.
And the winners aaaaare…
Clemson University – Clemson, SC
Breeding High Yielding Bioenergy Sorghum for the New Bioenergy Belt – $6,000,000
Clemson University, along with the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute and partners, will phenotype an exhaustive set of international germplasm and plant varieties. Researchers will design and build cutting-edge phenotyping platforms that can rapidly collect visual imagery, hyperspectral imagery and 3-D shape data of test crops multiple times daily. The platforms – ground and aerial – will have the ability to directly contact the plant in order to systematically quantify physical characteristics that were previously measured with labor- intensive, low-throughput methods. The team will use sophisticated cameras and imaging algorithms to develop 3-D models of individual plants and their canopy structure, implement machine-learning techniques to analyze the data gathered and translate this into predictive algorithms for breeding improved biofuel sorghum hybrids.
Donald Danforth Plant Science Center – St. Louis, MO
A Reference Phenotyping System for Energy Sorghum – $8,000,000
The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, along with its research partners, will coordinate a national network of test sites in AZ, KS, MO, SC and TX, to provide broad environmental and genetic diversity essential for understanding phenotype behavior. The team will host a state-of-the-art plant phenotyping system, which provides high-resolution evaluation of crops grown under field conditions. In addition, comprehensive genomic analyses will be conducted to create a high-quality reference dataset of energy sorghum’s physical characteristics and genetic information. The project will ultimately provide data in community-defined formats that will be made available to researchers in a high-performance computing environment and archived for public use.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – Richland, WA
Consortium for Advanced Sorghum Phenomics (CASP) – $3,300,000
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and its research partners will utilize novel phenotyping platforms, predictive modeling techniques and image processing tools to generate maps of plant composition and predict plant growth. The project will focus on simulating drought and salinity stresses in order to develop plant varieties that are more resilient to these environmental challenges. PNNL will perform molecular phenotyping to identify breeding markers for these biotic stresses. Meanwhile, Blue River Technologies will develop autonomous phenotyping systems that can create 3-D models of individual plants and construct point- cloud data sets used to produce the plant composition maps. Finally, Chromatin Inc. will advance improved commercial seed cultivars.
Purdue University – West Lafayette, IN
Automated Sorghum Phenotyping and Trait Development Platform – $6,500,000
Purdue University’s team, along with IBM Research and partners, will acquire and utilize data to develop predictive models for plant growth and to design and implement sophisticated methods for identifying genes controlling sorghum performance. The team will create a system that combines data streams from ground- based and mobile platforms for automated phenotyping. Advanced image and signal processing methods will extract phenotypic information to produce predictive models for plant growth and development. The team will also use high-performance computing platforms and prediction algorithms to analyze and identify links between plant characteristics and their underlying genetics. The end goal is to develop a user-friendly system that will enable breeders and other end users to interact with the data and analytics.
Texas A&M AgriLife Research – College Station, TX
Automated Phenotyping System for Genetic Improvement of Energy Crops – $3,100,000
Texas A&M AgriLife Research (TAMU), along with the National Robotics Engineering Center and partners, will develop an advanced phenotyping system consisting of a suite of sensors mounted on a durable, ground- based, field deployable, mobile robotics platform. The system will employ an extendable, mechanical arm that can penetrate the dense plant canopy to capture images and measurements from above, within and below the crop, yielding previously unattainable sensor data. The team will use TAMU’s existing, world-class collection of sorghum varieties and will employ machine vision and learning algorithms to process the data for predictive modeling of plant growth.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign – Champaign, IL
Mobile Energy-Crop Phenotyping Platform (MEPP) – $3,100,000
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with its partners Cornell University and Signetron Inc., will develop small-scale, automated ground rovers with the distinct capability to travel within the crops between rows. Phenotyping platforms will measure crop growth via 3-D reconstruction of plants and stands and assess physiological indicators of performance using reflectance and LiDAR (laser light detection and ranging) sensors. The team will also use sophisticated biophysical growth models and DNA-sequencing technologies to develop innovative methods for accelerating improvement of energy sorghum and identifying key genes that control plant performance. "
Video: Mark Ruffalo on Energy Solutions, the Pope and Making Social Media Matter, @a Manhattan event rolling out a 50-state plan for moving beyond fossil fuels by '50, Mark Ruffalo explained why he pursues a renewable +just energy future, hailed Pope Francis for his environmental encyclical +spoke about ways to make social media matter in an age of too much information
http://cleantechies.com/2015/06/19/video-mark-ruffalo-on-ene…
much informationhttp://cleantechies.com/2015/06/19/video-mark-ruffalo-on-ene…
Green growth 'has huge potential, for EU SMEs', Green growth report is 1st clear signal of support for Frans Timmermans' better regulation agenda, says rapporteur Philippe De Backer - TPM - Jun , 2015
- Philippe De Backer -
www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/opinion/eu-policymaker…
"
The only way to sustain a growing population and economy with a limited amount of natural resources is by making a change . This is exactly what I wanted to demonstrate with my report entitled 'green growth opportunities for SMEs'. My aim was to identify the very promising opportunities that are out there for our companies.
At the same time, I wanted to lay out the problems faced by small businesses, and to draw a framework for overcoming them.
Green growth has huge potential for European SMEs, but the right conditions must be in place if they are to really benefit from it. I spoke to entrepreneurs, listened to business leaders and hopefully I distilled many of their comments into my report.
Most of the topics covered in the report are ones that were consistently repeated during these discussions. "How do I find adequate financing for my business? How can I be informed about the latest developments in technology and business practices? Who will help me set up a cluster with other SMEs?"
If we can manage to resolve these problems, I am convinced that we will create the framework in which our businesses can thrive in the green economy. It is important we do more to facilitate access to finance, which remains one of the biggest barriers to improving competitiveness and delivering innovation.
Today, there are still too many losses throughout the value chain of current production processes. We must move away from a throwaway society towards a more circular economy, in which we recycle products into resources. We must enable our small businesses to continue investing, innovating and pushing technological progress – this is the only way to ensure that European businesses remain global leaders in sectors such as recycling and energy efficiency.
My report does not only focus on what should be done, such as supporting knowledge transfer, ensuring better access to finance or fostering entrepreneurship and encouraging the spirit of enterprise. In recent years, the European commission has focused on venture capital as a possible means of financing growth, but in reality, this type of funding really only suits a small number of SMEs. Traditional banking and some of the alternative forms of lending to SMEs, such as credit unions, should be prioritised.
If Europe is to become more competitive, then it's vital that we focus on the growth areas – the circular economy will have a huge role to play over the coming years, and this sector offers many opportunities for small businesses; as they say, this is a win-win situation.
There is also a chapter in my report called 'deregulation as an engine for growth' that addresses regulatory issues, and I am pleased that many of my MEP colleagues supported my approach. I am convinced that we are too prescriptive at all levels of government. We often forget to ask ourselves what problem is it that we think we are actually fixing. We need to regulate where it is necessary to do so, in a way that is futureproof and doesn't block innovation or private initiatives.
I believe this report is the first clear signal of support for European commission first vice-president Frans Timmermans and his better regulation agenda. Sometimes, doing less or doing it better creates more opportunities for all
About the author
Philippe De Backer is the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group rapporteur rapporteur on green growth opportunities for SMEs "
- Philippe De Backer -
www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/articles/opinion/eu-policymaker…
"
The only
way to sustain a growing population and economy with a limited amount of natural resources is by making a change . This is exactly what I wanted to demonstrate with my report entitled 'green growth opportunities for SMEs'. My aim was to identify the very promising opportunities that are out there for our companies.At the same time, I wanted to lay out the problems faced by small businesses, and to draw a framework for overcoming them.
Green growth has huge potential for European SMEs, but the right conditions must be in place if they are to really benefit from it. I spoke to entrepreneurs, listened to business leaders and hopefully I distilled many of their comments into my report.
Most of the topics covered in the report are ones that were consistently repeated during these discussions. "How do I find adequate financing for my business? How can I be informed about the latest developments in technology and business practices? Who will help me set up a cluster with other SMEs?"
If we can manage to resolve these problems, I am convinced that we will create the framework in which our businesses can thrive in the green economy. It is important we do more to facilitate access to finance, which remains one of the biggest barriers to improving competitiveness and delivering innovation.
Today, there are still too many losses throughout the value chain of current production processes. We must move away from a throwaway society towards a more circular economy, in which we recycle products into resources. We must enable our small businesses to continue investing, innovating and pushing technological progress – this is the only way to ensure that European businesses remain global leaders in sectors such as recycling and energy efficiency.
My report does not only focus on what should be done, such as supporting knowledge transfer, ensuring better access to finance or fostering entrepreneurship and encouraging the spirit of enterprise. In recent years, the European commission has focused on venture capital as a possible means of financing growth, but in reality, this type of funding really only suits a small number of SMEs. Traditional banking and some of the alternative forms of lending to SMEs, such as credit unions, should be prioritised.
If Europe is to become more competitive, then it's vital that we focus on the growth areas – the circular economy will have a huge role to play over the coming years, and this sector offers many opportunities for small businesses; as they say, this is a win-win situation.
There is also a chapter in my report called 'deregulation as an engine for growth' that addresses regulatory issues, and I am pleased that many of my MEP colleagues supported my approach. I am convinced that we are too prescriptive at all levels of government. We often forget to ask ourselves what problem is it that we think we are actually fixing. We need to regulate where it is necessary to do so, in a way that is futureproof and doesn't block innovation or private initiatives.
I believe this report is the first clear signal of support for European commission first vice-president Frans Timmermans and his better regulation agenda. Sometimes, doing less or doing it better creates more opportunities for all
About the author
Philippe De Backer is the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group rapporteur rapporteur on green growth opportunities for SMEs "
Technologies to curb airplane emissions, As more people take to the skies, global aviation is expanding +its carbon emissions are projected to triple, by 2050. Could technology fix this? National Geographic tells us about five approaches, that hold great potential in limiting heat-trapping emissions from airplanes - NG - Jun 10, 2015
- Wendy Koch -
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/energy/2015/06/150610-tec…
"
- An Airbus A320neo, which features a more fuel-efficient engine, takes off for its first test flight in September, 2014 in Biagnac, France. -
A new step by the Obama Administration toward limiting heat-trapping emissions from airplanes could get a lift from cutting-edge technologies such as non-stick coatings that stop bug guts from clinging to jet wings.
Biofuels, lighter engines, aerodynamic designs, 3D printing of aircraft parts, and, yes, even bug-proof coatings could boost fuel efficiency, which in turn reduces pollutants.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday found that aircraft’s greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to human health by contributing to global warming. This “endangerment” finding allows the agency to develop a proposal to limit emissions from planes as it has done with cars, trucks and power plants. Such a standard would likely take more than a year to finalize.
As more people take to the skies, global aviation is expanding and its carbon emissions are projected to triple by 2050. Already, airplanes account for 2 percent of all human-induced carbon emissions and 12 percent from transportation sources. They also emit pollutants that add to the smog and soot shrouding many cities.
Could technology fix this? While some ideas sound nifty, such as the solar-powered Solar Impulse 2 and NASA’s battery-powered plane, they’re not likely to slash emissions from commercial planes in the near future. These five approaches hold more potential:
1. Fuels made from cooking oil, sugar cane, and biomass.
Though costlier than conventional jet fuel, some biofuels emit less pollution. A biofuel blend cut soot emissions at least 50 percent in NASA testing last year in the California desert.
In a new study, researchers found a way to convert ketones from sugarcane into heavier compounds that could potentially be used as aviation fuel. They said this fuel could cut greenhouse gas emissions up to 80 percent compared with traditional jet fuel.
Co-author Alexis Bell, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says commercialization of the new technology, funded by oil giant BP, is dependent on its costs. “A large investment is required to make a bio-refinery,” he says, adding a U.S. mandate for reduced emissions could spur such spending.
Alaska Airlines is stepping ahead. Consistently ranked first among U.S. domestic airlines for fuel efficiency, it flew 75 commercial flights using a biofuel from cooking oil in 2011 and aims to use a biofuel blend on all flights from at least one airport by 2020. Later this year, it plans the first commercial flight using an alcohol-to-jet fuel and next year, a demonstration flight will use an alternative fuel from forest residue.
- In a NASA-funded project, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are testing a new “double bubble” design that could boost fuel efficiency of aircraft. -
2. Engines feature lighter materials, added gear.
Aircraft manufacturers are using more fuel-efficient engines in new commercial jets. In June, Boeing began production of the 737 MAX and expects initial test flights next year. The single-aisle planes use CFM International’s new LEAP 1-B engine which has a light-weight carbon fiber fan and is up to 15 percent more fuel efficient than current models.
Not to be outdone, Airbus is making the single-aisle A320neo jet with either a CFM engine or a new Pratt & Whitney one that has an extra gear. (Learn why adding a gear saves fuel.) Airbus says it has already tested the jet with both engines and plans to begin deliveries late this year. The jet uses 20 percent less fuel per passenger seat because of the engine and other features, Airbus says.
- In its wind tunnel at the Ames Research Center, NASA used a full-sized airplane tail to test technology aimed at making tails smaller to reduce drag. -
3. Newer shapes and smaller vertical tail.
Researchers are testing new shapes. In a project funded by NASA, engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are exploring whether a wider, double fuselage—the tube-like central body—can improve fuel efficiency. Their concept, known as the “double bubble,” could incorporate engines into the fuselage so the wings could be made of thinner, lighter materials.
Boeing ecoDemonstrator 757 tests latest tail technology
Another idea: a smaller vertical tail. In April, the Boeing ecoDemonstrator 757 made six round-trip flights from Seattle to test the feasibility of reducing a plane’s tail size. It had 31 tiny devices or “sweeping jet actuators” blow air on the tail to create the same side force during takeoff and landing that a larger tail does.
"The ability to reduce the size of the vertical tail would reduce weight and drag and decrease fuel consumption and emissions,” NASA engineer Mike Alexander said in discussing the test flights. NASA’s wind-tunnel tests of the technology in 2013 suggested the tail’s size could be reduced 17 percent, cutting fuel usage by as much as 0.5 percent.
4. Non-stick coatings could repel bug guts.
Other fuel savings could result from non-stick coatings designed to slough insect residue off jet wings. Test flights by Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator 757 found a coating that reduced the number of bugs and residue by 40 percent compared with a control surface.
Bug guts are no small problem. “We learned when a bug hits and its body ruptures the blood starts undergoing some chemical changes to make it stickier,” NASA senior materials scientist Mia Siochi said in announcing the test results. When bugs accumulate on the wings, she said, they cause drag.
5. 3-D printing lightens plane parts.
A Northwestern University case study, published in May, found 3D printing could make plane parts lighter and cut fuel use. Team leader Eric Masanet doesn’t expect such printing of crucial jet parts, such as the wings and engine, anytime soon, but he sees potential in other parts such as brackets, hinges, and buckles.
“There are enough parts that, when replaced, could reduce the weight of the aircraft by 4 to 7 percent,” Masanet said in a press release, adding the result could be a cut in fuel consumption of up to 6.4 percent. Before that happens, though, he said scientists will need to improve 3D printing technology.
Environmental groups say a strict U.S. limit on plane emissions could help spur ingenuity and set a model for the rest of the world. The aviation industry prefers a global standard. (Learn more about the tussle over setting a limit.)
“You boost technological innovation” by setting fuel efficiency standards, says Benjamin Longstreth of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of five environmental groups that sued the EPA to rein in aircraft emissions “We’ve seen that happen with automobiles, and the same should happen with airplanes.”
The story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.
On Twitter: Follow Wendy Koch and get more environment and energy coverage at NatGeoGreen. "
- Wendy Koch -
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/energy/2015/06/150610-tec…
"
- An Airbus A320neo, which features a more fuel-efficient engine, takes off for its first test flight in September, 2014 in Biagnac, France. -
A new step by the Obama Administration toward limiting heat-trapping emissions from airplanes could get a lift from cutting-edge technologies such as non-stick coatings that stop bug guts from clinging to jet wings.
Biofuels, lighter engines, aerodynamic designs, 3D printing of aircraft parts, and, yes, even bug-proof coatings could boost fuel efficiency, which in turn reduces pollutants.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday found that aircraft’s greenhouse gas emissions pose a threat to human health by contributing to global warming. This “endangerment” finding allows the agency to develop a proposal to limit emissions from planes as it has done with cars, trucks and power plants. Such a standard would likely take more than a year to finalize.
As more people take to the skies, global aviation is expanding and its carbon emissions are projected to triple by 2050. Already, airplanes account for 2 percent of all human-induced carbon emissions and 12 percent from transportation sources. They also emit pollutants that add to the smog and soot shrouding many cities.
Could technology fix this? While some ideas sound nifty, such as the solar-powered Solar Impulse 2 and NASA’s battery-powered plane, they’re not likely to slash emissions from commercial planes in the near future. These five approaches hold more potential:
1. Fuels made from cooking oil, sugar cane, and biomass.
Though costlier than conventional jet fuel, some biofuels emit less pollution. A biofuel blend cut soot emissions at least 50 percent in NASA testing last year in the California desert.
In a new study, researchers found a way to convert ketones from sugarcane into heavier compounds that could potentially be used as aviation fuel. They said this fuel could cut greenhouse gas emissions up to 80 percent compared with traditional jet fuel.
Co-author Alexis Bell, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, says commercialization of the new technology, funded by oil giant BP, is dependent on its costs. “A large investment is required to make a bio-refinery,” he says, adding a U.S. mandate for reduced emissions could spur such spending.
Alaska Airlines is stepping ahead. Consistently ranked first among U.S. domestic airlines for fuel efficiency, it flew 75 commercial flights using a biofuel from cooking oil in 2011 and aims to use a biofuel blend on all flights from at least one airport by 2020. Later this year, it plans the first commercial flight using an alcohol-to-jet fuel and next year, a demonstration flight will use an alternative fuel from forest residue.
- In a NASA-funded project, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are testing a new “double bubble” design that could boost fuel efficiency of aircraft. -
2. Engines feature lighter materials, added gear.
Aircraft manufacturers are using more fuel-efficient engines in new commercial jets. In June, Boeing began production of the 737 MAX and expects initial test flights next year. The single-aisle planes use CFM International’s new LEAP 1-B engine which has a light-weight carbon fiber fan and is up to 15 percent more fuel efficient than current models.
Not to be outdone, Airbus is making the single-aisle A320neo jet with either a CFM engine or a new Pratt & Whitney one that has an extra gear. (Learn why adding a gear saves fuel.) Airbus says it has already tested the jet with both engines and plans to begin deliveries late this year. The jet uses 20 percent less fuel per passenger seat because of the engine and other features, Airbus says.
- In its wind tunnel at the Ames Research Center, NASA used a full-sized airplane tail to test technology aimed at making tails smaller to reduce drag. -
3. Newer shapes and smaller vertical tail.
Researchers are testing new shapes. In a project funded by NASA, engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are exploring whether a wider, double fuselage—the tube-like central body—can improve fuel efficiency. Their concept, known as the “double bubble,” could incorporate engines into the fuselage so the wings could be made of thinner, lighter materials.
Boeing ecoDemonstrator 757 tests latest tail technology
Another idea: a smaller vertical tail. In April, the Boeing ecoDemonstrator 757 made six round-trip flights from Seattle to test the feasibility of reducing a plane’s tail size. It had 31 tiny devices or “sweeping jet actuators” blow air on the tail to create the same side force during takeoff and landing that a larger tail does.
"The ability to reduce the size of the vertical tail would reduce weight and drag and decrease fuel consumption and emissions,” NASA engineer Mike Alexander said in discussing the test flights. NASA’s wind-tunnel tests of the technology in 2013 suggested the tail’s size could be reduced 17 percent, cutting fuel usage by as much as 0.5 percent.
4. Non-stick coatings could repel bug guts.
Other fuel savings could result from non-stick coatings designed to slough insect residue off jet wings. Test flights by Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator 757 found a coating that reduced the number of bugs and residue by 40 percent compared with a control surface.
Bug guts are no small problem. “We learned when a bug hits and its body ruptures the blood starts undergoing some chemical changes to make it stickier,” NASA senior materials scientist Mia Siochi said in announcing the test results. When bugs accumulate on the wings, she said, they cause drag.
5. 3-D printing lightens plane parts.
A Northwestern University case study, published in May, found 3D printing could make plane parts lighter and cut fuel use. Team leader Eric Masanet doesn’t expect such printing of crucial jet parts, such as the wings and engine, anytime soon, but he sees potential in other parts such as brackets, hinges, and buckles.
“There are enough parts that, when replaced, could reduce the weight of the aircraft by 4 to 7 percent,” Masanet said in a press release, adding the result could be a cut in fuel consumption of up to 6.4 percent. Before that happens, though, he said scientists will need to improve 3D printing technology.
Environmental groups say a strict U.S. limit on plane emissions could help spur ingenuity and set a model for the rest of the world. The aviation industry prefers a global standard. (Learn more about the tussle over setting a limit.)
“You boost technological innovation” by setting fuel efficiency standards, says Benjamin Longstreth of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of five environmental groups that sued the EPA to rein in aircraft emissions “We’ve seen that happen with automobiles, and the same should happen with airplanes.”
The story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.
On Twitter: Follow Wendy Koch and get more environment and energy coverage at NatGeoGreen. "
LEGO commits $150,000,000, to search for sustainable alternative plastics
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2015/06/23/lego-commits-150m-…
"$150 million, 100+ employees, a new sustainable materials center, and a commitment to move off fossil fuels dependency by 2030.
From Denmark comes the news that LEGO will replace its fossil-based plastics by 2030 with sustainable alternatives. The company announced that it will invest $150 million in the effort to cover research, development and implementation of new raw materials to manufacture LEGO elements as well as packaging materials.. Immediately, the company has established a LEGO Sustainable Materials Centre and expects to recruit more than 100 employees in the effort.
Currently, the company uses 6,000 tons per year of ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) to manufacture more than 60 billion LEGO elements.
The centre will be based at the LEGO Group’s headquarters in Billund, Denmark,and will be established during 2015 and 2016. It is expected that it will include satellite functions located in relevant locations around the globe. In addition, the centre will collaborate and develop partnerships with relevant external stakeholders and experts.
An example is the Climate Savers partnership between the LEGO Group and WWF signed in 2013, which has targets on developing a sustainable materials strategy. A new collaboration with WWF was agreed in spring 2015 and focuses on better assessing the overall sustainability and environmental impact of new bio-based materials for LEGO elements and packaging.
What is ABS anyway, and how could you make it renewably?
ABS is a blend — roughly, half styrene and the other half butadiene and acrylonitrile. Today, styrene is made from fossil fuels, via benzene and ethylene; butadiene is made primarily from butane; and acrylonitrile is made from ammonia and propylene.
So, think sustainable, renewable ammonia, benzene, propylene, ethylene, and butadiene — or, perhaps an alternative, high-performance novel molecule with similar cost and strength performance will be found.
A number of players have jumped into the early stages of the race for renewable butadiene. Genomatica/Versalis are hot on the trail of butadiene, with LanzaTech/INVISTA, Arzeda/INVISTA and Global Bioenergies/Synthos. Axens, IFP Energies nouvelles and Michelin announced a partnership in 2013 to develop a bio-butadiene process. Back in 2011, Amyris announced a collaboration agreement with Kuraray to replace petroleum-derived feedstock such as butadiene and isoprene in the production of specified classes of high-performing polymers, but we haven’t heard much on that lately.
One interesting contender over in the area of benzene is Anellotech, whose single step CFP process, invented by Professor George Huber (then University of Massachusetts-Amherst, now at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and colleagues, enables non-edible renewable biomass to be processed in a fluidized-bed reactor into aromatics, including benzene, toluene and xylenes (BTX) — critical for packaging, nylons, polystyrenes, rubber — even octane boosters in everyday fuels.
Things you can make from BTX
So, there’s lots of current activity on styrene and butadiene — not as much on acrylonitrile. In recent months, Cargill acquired OPX Biotechnologies, which was focused on 3-HP (3-hydroxypropionic acid) via fermentation, which is then converted in one step to bio-based acrylic acid. But that technology has pathways to a collection of target molecules, which include acrylonitrile, as well as butanol, BDO, 3-HP, acetyl-CoA, malonyl-CoA, malonate semialdehyde, 3-HP, acrylic acid, PDO, malonic acid, ethyl 3-HP, propiolactone,acrylamide, methyl acrylate, a polymer including super absorbent polymers and polyacrylic acid.
OPX Bio had developed what is generally believed to be a world-class capability in strain and metabolic engineering towards that end.
What about acrylonitrile’s precursors — ammonia and propylene? Back in 2012 we reported that researchers from the University of Utrecht had teamed with scientists from Dow Chemical to ethylene and propylene using a new kind of iron catalyst made of nanoparticles that they developed. But not much since.
Grand View Research wrote last year, “Trellis Earth Products, which acquired Cereplast in 2014, remains as a single manufacturer engaged in biobased PP. The company has production base situated at Seymour, Indiana and markets its product under the brand name Biopropylene. As of 2014, the company is using sugarcane as a raw material for biobased PP production and pursuing efforts on shifting to algae as a biobased feed stock. Other market players include Global Bioenergies, Braskem, Dow Chemicals and Biobent Polymers.”
Meanwhile, companies such as SynGest and GreenNH3 developed some early-stage approaches towards renewable ammonia but most ventures in this rea have run into the proplems of extreme low-cost natural gas.
Rewind to 2012
Back in 2012, the LEGO Group first shared its ambition to find and implement sustainable alternatives to the current raw materials used to manufacture LEGO products by 2030. The decision to significantly boost the search for sustainable materials was taken at the recent General Assembly of the LEGO Group in May 2015.
What is sustainable?
“There is no common definition of a sustainable material,” says Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO of the LEGO Group. “The LEGO Group believes a new sustainable material must have an ever-lighter footprint than the material it replaces across key environmental and social impact areas such as fossil resource use, human rights and climate change. It is a daunting and exciting challenge.”
Reaction from the stakeholders
Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO and President of the LEGO Group, says: “This is a major step for the LEGO Group on our way towards achieving our 2030 ambition on sustainable materials. We have already taken important steps to reduce our carbon footprint and leave a positive impact on the planet by reducing the packaging size, by introducing FSC certified packaging and through our investment in an offshore wind farm. Now we are accelerating our focus on materials.”
LEGO Group owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen comments on the announcement: “Our mission is to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow. We believe that our main contribution to this is through the creative play experiences we provide to children. The investment announced is a testament to our continued ambition to leave a positive impact on the planet, which future generations will inherit. It is certainly in line with the mission of the LEGO Group and in line with the motto of my grandfather and founder of the LEGO Group, Ole Kirk Kristiansen: Only the best is good enough”.
“The testing and research we have already done has given us greater visibility of the challenges we face to succeed on this agenda and we respond by adding significant resources in order to be ready to move into the next phase of finding and implementing the sustainable materials. I am truly excited by the full commitment of the Board of Directors and our owner family to significantly boost the work to ensure a lasting positive impact,” says Jørgen Vig Knudstorp.
“This is paramount to us as it enables us to provide children with a unique play experience that inspires and develops them and enables them to build a better tomorrow. This is ultimately the reason for our continued efforts to always do better,” says Jørgen Vig Knudstorp. "
Fossil Fuels –A Risky Business?, The fossil fuel industry is inflating a ‘carbon bubble’ based on risky demand & price assumptions.Already under current climate policy settings, companies risk wasting over $1 trillion over the next decade. If the policy settings are ratcheted up to reflect a 2 degrees target then the amount @risk rise dramatically to $20 trillion plus
http://cleantechies.com/2015/07/01/video-fossil-fuels-a-risk…
http://cleantechies.com/2015/07/01/video-fossil-fuels-a-risk…
text scheint nicht kopierbar
Bill Gates to Invest $2,000,000,000 in Renewable Technology Projects, Gates is doubling his investment in cutting-edge renewable technology initiatives, to $2,000,000,000 over the next five years
- Vikas Vij -
http://cleantechies.com/2015/07/01/bill-gates-to-invest-2-bi…
Bill Gates to Invest $2,000,000,000 in Renewable Technology Projects, Gates is doubling his investment in cutting-edge renewable technology initiatives, to $2,000,000,000 over the next five years
- Vikas Vij -
http://cleantechies.com/2015/07/01/bill-gates-to-invest-2-bi…
UNESCO asks Canada, to check impact of oil sands projects on national park
www.mining.com/unesco-asks-canada-to-check-impact-of-oil-san…
Extremely high coastal erosion in northern Alaska
www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=4261&from=rss#.VZXFw0Yq…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48736
"In a new study published today, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey found that the remote northern Alaska coast has some of the highest shoreline erosion rates in the world.Analyzing over half a century of shoreline change data, scientists found the pattern is extremely variable with most of the coast retreating at rates of more than 1 meter a year.
“Coastal erosion along the Arctic coast of Alaska is threatening Native Alaskan villages, sensitive ecosystems, energy and defense related infrastructure, and large tracts of Native Alaskan, State, and Federally managed land,” said Suzette Kimball, acting director of the USGS.
Scientists studied more than 1600 kilometers of the Alaskan coast between the U.S. Canadian border and Icy Cape and found the average rate of shoreline change, taking into account beaches that are both eroding and expanding, was -1.4 meters per year. Of those beaches eroding, the most extreme case exceeded 18.6 meters per year.
“This report provides invaluable objective data to help native communities, scientists and land managers understand natural changes and human impacts on the Alaskan coast,” said Ann Gibbs, USGS Geologist and lead author of the new report.
Coastlines change in response to a variety of factors, including changes in the amount of available sediment, storm impacts, sea-level rise and human activities. How much a coast erodes or expands in any given location is due to some combination of these factors, which vary from place to place.
"There is increasing need for this kind of comprehensive assessment in all coastal environments to guide managed response to sea-level rise and storm impacts," said Dr. Bruce Richmond of the USGS. "It is very difficult to predict what may happen in the future without a solid understanding of what has happened in the past. Comprehensive regional studies such as this are an important tool to better understand coastal change. ”
Compared to other coastal areas of the U.S., where four or more historical shoreline data sets are available, generally back to the mid-1800s, shoreline data for the coast of Alaska are limited. The researchers used two historical data sources, from the 1940s and 2000s, such as maps and aerial photographs, as well as modern data like lidar, or “light detection and ranging,” to measure shoreline change at more than 26,567 locations.
Image from 2006 shows the Barter Island long-range radar station landfill threatened by coastal erosion. The landfill was subsequently relocated further inland, however, the coastal bluffs continue to retreat. Credit Bruce Richmond/Ann Gibbs, USGS. "
www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=4261&from=rss#.VZXFw0Yq…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48736
"In a new study published today, scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey found that the remote northern Alaska coast has some of the highest shoreline erosion rates in the world.Analyzing over half a century of shoreline change data, scientists found the pattern is extremely variable with most of the coast retreating at rates of more than 1 meter a year.
“Coastal erosion along the Arctic coast of Alaska is threatening Native Alaskan villages, sensitive ecosystems, energy and defense related infrastructure, and large tracts of Native Alaskan, State, and Federally managed land,” said Suzette Kimball, acting director of the USGS.
Scientists studied more than 1600 kilometers of the Alaskan coast between the U.S. Canadian border and Icy Cape and found the average rate of shoreline change, taking into account beaches that are both eroding and expanding, was -1.4 meters per year. Of those beaches eroding, the most extreme case exceeded 18.6 meters per year.
“This report provides invaluable objective data to help native communities, scientists and land managers understand natural changes and human impacts on the Alaskan coast,” said Ann Gibbs, USGS Geologist and lead author of the new report.
Coastlines change in response to a variety of factors, including changes in the amount of available sediment, storm impacts, sea-level rise and human activities. How much a coast erodes or expands in any given location is due to some combination of these factors, which vary from place to place.
"There is increasing need for this kind of comprehensive assessment in all coastal environments to guide managed response to sea-level rise and storm impacts," said Dr. Bruce Richmond of the USGS. "It is very difficult to predict what may happen in the future without a solid understanding of what has happened in the past. Comprehensive regional studies such as this are an important tool to better understand coastal change. ”
Compared to other coastal areas of the U.S., where four or more historical shoreline data sets are available, generally back to the mid-1800s, shoreline data for the coast of Alaska are limited. The researchers used two historical data sources, from the 1940s and 2000s, such as maps and aerial photographs, as well as modern data like lidar, or “light detection and ranging,” to measure shoreline change at more than 26,567 locations.
Image from 2006 shows the Barter Island long-range radar station landfill threatened by coastal erosion. The landfill was subsequently relocated further inland, however, the coastal bluffs continue to retreat. Credit Bruce Richmond/Ann Gibbs, USGS. "
China's pledge to cut CO2 emissions, leaves total undetermined, 'saying it will ‘work hard’ to peak emissions earlier, than 2030 target' - CER/TG/UN - Jul 1, 2015
www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/30/china-carbon-emi…
www.chinaeconomicreview.com/node/67489
"China plans to cut its greenhouse gas production from the country's 2005 CO2 level by 60-65% per unit of economic growth in a new pledge ahead of the United Nations climate change talks in Paris later this year, The Guardian reported, citing China's written submission to the UN.
However, China's is the only national plan submitted that does not set a target based on a fixed value taken from a previous year's emissions. Instead, the economic carbon intensity range that China has submitted in its latest pledge can vary substantially based on GDP growth rate figures. "
www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/30/china-carbon-emi…
www.chinaeconomicreview.com/node/67489
"China plans to cut its greenhouse gas production from the country's 2005 CO2 level by 60-65% per unit of economic growth in a new pledge ahead of the United Nations climate change talks in Paris later this year, The Guardian reported, citing China's written submission to the UN.
However, China's is the only national plan submitted that does not set a target based on a fixed value taken from a previous year's emissions. Instead, the economic carbon intensity range that China has submitted in its latest pledge can vary substantially based on GDP growth rate figures. "
Great Barrier reef escapes in-danger listing from UNESCO - M.com - Jul 5, 2015
- Michael Allan McCrae -
www.mining.com/great-barrier-reef-escapes-in-danger-listing-…
- Michael Allan McCrae -
www.mining.com/great-barrier-reef-escapes-in-danger-listing-…
Ocean Energy in Europe 'could supply 115,000,000 homes, by 2050' - EC, CoR/CWE - Jul 7, 2015
- European Commission adopts draft report, 'highlighting future contribution of ocean energy, to Europe’s power supply'
- Ocean Energy Roadmap forecasts 100,000MW of ocean energy, by '50, in Europe
- 'Highlights important role of ocean energy, for island nations' ...
http://stocknessmonster.com/news-item?S=CWE&E=ASX&N=725600
http://cor.europa.eu/en/events/Pages/stakeholder-thomas-ocea…
http://cor.europa.eu/en/events/Documents/thomas-stakeholder-…
- European Commission adopts draft report, 'highlighting future contribution of ocean energy, to Europe’s power supply'
- Ocean Energy Roadmap forecasts 100,000MW of ocean energy, by '50, in Europe
- 'Highlights important role of ocean energy, for island nations' ...
http://stocknessmonster.com/news-item?S=CWE&E=ASX&N=725600
http://cor.europa.eu/en/events/Pages/stakeholder-thomas-ocea…
http://cor.europa.eu/en/events/Documents/thomas-stakeholder-…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.102.361 von Popeye82 am 03.07.15 02:43:02
China CO2 pledge entails massive build-out of hydropower dams
www.ft.com/cms/s/62e7573c-2395-11e5-9c4e-a775d2b173ca,Author…
www.chinaeconomicreview.com/china-co2-pledge-entails-massive…
"Beijing's plans to cut CO2 emissions will commit it to developing a round of ecologically destructive hydropower dams in China's southwest, central and western provinces, The Financial Times reported, citing analysts and advocates.
"By the end of the 13th five-year plan the rivers in southwest China will be basically gone," said Stephanie Jensen-Cormier, spokesperson for NGO International Rivers, referring to China’s policy blueprint to 2020. Installed hydropower capacity is set to rise to 350 gigawatts by 2020, an increase of 60 GW, plus a possible additional 70GW in storage capacity at reservoirs created to mitigate seasonal fluctuations in power generation caused by changing river flow. "
China CO2 pledge entails massive build-out of hydropower dams
www.ft.com/cms/s/62e7573c-2395-11e5-9c4e-a775d2b173ca,Author…
www.chinaeconomicreview.com/china-co2-pledge-entails-massive…
"Beijing's plans to cut CO2 emissions will commit it to developing a round of ecologically destructive hydropower dams in China's southwest, central and western provinces, The Financial Times reported, citing analysts and advocates.
"By the end of the 13th five-year plan the rivers in southwest China will be basically gone," said Stephanie Jensen-Cormier, spokesperson for NGO International Rivers, referring to China’s policy blueprint to 2020. Installed hydropower capacity is set to rise to 350 gigawatts by 2020, an increase of 60 GW, plus a possible additional 70GW in storage capacity at reservoirs created to mitigate seasonal fluctuations in power generation caused by changing river flow. "
US researchers propose eco-friendly strategy to extract deepsea resources, Researchers from the Center for Ocean Solutions in the US +co-authors from various global institutions have proposed a new strategy, to extract deepsea resources without damaging the environment - MT/CfOS/ISA/SM - Jul10, 2015
www.centerforoceansolutions.org/news-stories/protecting-deep…
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsus-researchers-propose-st…
www.centerforoceansolutions.org/news-stories
www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6244/144
"Researchers from the Center for Ocean Solutions in the US and co-authors from various global institutions have proposed a new strategy to extract deepsea resources without damaging the environment.
The paper has been published this week to inform upcoming discussions by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which proposes to extract minerals without affecting the diverse seabed habitats.
The discussions are expected to lead the way for future deepsea environmental protection and mining regulations.
Center for Ocean Solutions lead author Lisa Wedding said: "Our purpose is to point out that the ISA has an important opportunity to create networks of no-mining marine protected areas (MPAs) as part of the regulatory framework they are considering at their July meeting.
"The establishment of regional MPA networks in the deepsea could potentially benefit both mining and biodiversity interests by providing more economic certainty and ecosystem protection."
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) said that the deep seabed is legally a part of the 'common heritage of mankind'.
According to the researchers, the seabed authority has granted 26 mining exploration contracts covering more than one million square kilometers of seabed since 2001.
In the last four years, 18 of the total number of contracts were granted.
As part of its strategic plans to protect deep-seabed habitats and manage mining impacts, the ISA needs to take a precautionary approach, and establishing networks of MPAs prior to granting of additional large claim areas for deep seabed mining.
University of Hawaii at Manoa co-author and professor of oceanography Craig Smith said: "Deepsea areas targeted by mining claims frequently harbor high biodiversity and fragile habitats, and may have very slow rates of recovery from physical disturbance."
_____________________________________________________________
Image: Relicanthus sp is a newly discovered species from a new order of Cnidaria collected at 4,100m in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ). Photo: courtesy of Craig Smith and Diva Amon, ABYSSLINE Project. "
www.centerforoceansolutions.org/news-stories/protecting-deep…
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsus-researchers-propose-st…
www.centerforoceansolutions.org/news-stories
www.sciencemag.org/content/349/6244/144
"Researchers from the Center for Ocean Solutions in the US and co-authors from various global institutions have proposed a new strategy to extract deepsea resources without damaging the environment.
The paper has been published this week to inform upcoming discussions by the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which proposes to extract minerals without affecting the diverse seabed habitats.
The discussions are expected to lead the way for future deepsea environmental protection and mining regulations.
Center for Ocean Solutions lead author Lisa Wedding said: "Our purpose is to point out that the ISA has an important opportunity to create networks of no-mining marine protected areas (MPAs) as part of the regulatory framework they are considering at their July meeting.
"The establishment of regional MPA networks in the deepsea could potentially benefit both mining and biodiversity interests by providing more economic certainty and ecosystem protection."
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) said that the deep seabed is legally a part of the 'common heritage of mankind'.
According to the researchers, the seabed authority has granted 26 mining exploration contracts covering more than one million square kilometers of seabed since 2001.
In the last four years, 18 of the total number of contracts were granted.
As part of its strategic plans to protect deep-seabed habitats and manage mining impacts, the ISA needs to take a precautionary approach, and establishing networks of MPAs prior to granting of additional large claim areas for deep seabed mining.
University of Hawaii at Manoa co-author and professor of oceanography Craig Smith said: "Deepsea areas targeted by mining claims frequently harbor high biodiversity and fragile habitats, and may have very slow rates of recovery from physical disturbance."
_____________________________________________________________
Image: Relicanthus sp is a newly discovered species from a new order of Cnidaria collected at 4,100m in the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture Zone (CCZ). Photo: courtesy of Craig Smith and Diva Amon, ABYSSLINE Project. "
Thermal Fragmentation Allows for Safe, Effective Mining Near Japan’s Sacred Sites - E.com - Jul 7, 2015
www.nippondragon.com/images/PDF-Documents/Thermal%20Fragment…
www.nippondragon.com/images/PDF-Documents/Thermal%20Fragment…
www.nippondragon.com/images/PDF-Documents/Corporate%20Presen…
www.equities.com/spotlight/spotlight-companies/thermal-fragm…
"Though mining is essential for maintaining our modern lifestyle across the years, over the years, the potential for environmental and cultural damage has given some types of mining a bad name. In a country like Japan, with its long and storied cultural and religious history, the negative impacts of mining can be particularly grave, which is what makes the work of prominent mining industry leader Nippon Dragon Resources, Inc. (NIP:CA) soexciting. On Tuesday, June 30th, Nippon Dragon announced that they will be utilizing their cutting-edge thermal fragmentation mining method to safely access gold-bearing ore in a way that leaves sacred forests and temples safe and intact.
Nippon Dragon’s exclusive thermal fragmentation distributor NDR Japan will carry out the company’s mining on a site that has been closed since WW II. Decades ago, the mine was created within a mountain that is home to several religious temples and a beautiful forest, so it is little wonder that safely accessing the ore requires a state-of-the-art mining method involving little to no explosives, and minimal environmental impact.
A 'Significant Step Forward for Nippon Dragon'
Since the inception of the public Canadian mining company, Nippon Dragon has been focused on developing quality assets that will significantly enhance shareholder value. Today, the company is active in exploration and development of gold resources in Quebec among other potentially valuable mineral assets. However, it is perhaps their patented thermal fragmentation method that holds the most potential for revolutionizing the mining methods – and placing Nippon Dragon at the forefront of the industry.
Thermal fragmentation utilizes heat in order to shatter high-grade veins without the use of destructive explosives and reducing dilution. The innovative technique also reduces the risk of environmental disasters and leads to a massive reduction in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission – making a clear case for the method as a touchstone of environmentally-conscious mining in the years to come. Since Nippon Dragon has an exclusive patent on the technology, the coming years will provide them with a remarkable opportunity to capitalize on the innovative technique.
As for the Japan-based operation, distributor NDR Japan will cover all costs related to the mining contract, while Nippon will be paid 15% of revenues derived from sales of the precious metals. Though the project is relatively small for a mining operation, Nippon believe that obtaining the extraction contract is a pivotal step forward, and could even lead to revenues before the end of the year. Of course, this is good news for Nippon Dragon shareholders. As any longtime observer in the mining sector is well aware, certainty in the industry is hard to come by, but when a mining operation proves successful, the windfall can be exceptionally lucrative for a company’s investors.
Disclosure: In the purview of Section 17(B) of the Securities Act of 1933 and in the interest of full disclosure, we call the reader's attention the fact that Equities.com, Inc. may be compensated by the companies profiled in the Spotlight Companies section. The purpose of these profiles is to provide awareness of these companies to investors in the micro, small-cap and growth equity community and should not in any way come across as a recommendation to buy, sell or hold these securities. Equities.com is not a registered broker, broker dealer, investment advisor, analyst, investment banker or underwriter. All profiles are based on information that is available to the public. The information contained herein should not be considered to be all-inclusive and is not guaranteed by Equities.com to be free from misstatement or errors. Readers are reminded to do their own due diligence when researching any companies mentioned on this website
DISCLOSURE: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors, and do not represent the views of equities.com. Readers should not consider statements made by the author as formal recommendations and should consult their financial advisor before making any investment decisions. To read our full disclosure, please go to: http://www.equities.com/disclaimer "
www.nippondragon.com/images/PDF-Documents/Thermal%20Fragment…
www.nippondragon.com/images/PDF-Documents/Thermal%20Fragment…
www.nippondragon.com/images/PDF-Documents/Corporate%20Presen…
www.equities.com/spotlight/spotlight-companies/thermal-fragm…
"Though mining is essential for maintaining our modern lifestyle across the years, over the years, the potential for environmental and cultural damage has given some types of mining a bad name. In a country like Japan, with its long and storied cultural and religious history, the negative impacts of mining can be particularly grave, which is what makes the work of prominent mining industry leader Nippon Dragon Resources, Inc. (NIP:CA) soexciting. On Tuesday, June 30th, Nippon Dragon announced that they will be utilizing their cutting-edge thermal fragmentation mining method to safely access gold-bearing ore in a way that leaves sacred forests and temples safe and intact.
Nippon Dragon’s exclusive thermal fragmentation distributor NDR Japan will carry out the company’s mining on a site that has been closed since WW II. Decades ago, the mine was created within a mountain that is home to several religious temples and a beautiful forest, so it is little wonder that safely accessing the ore requires a state-of-the-art mining method involving little to no explosives, and minimal environmental impact.
A 'Significant Step Forward for Nippon Dragon'
Since the inception of the public Canadian mining company, Nippon Dragon has been focused on developing quality assets that will significantly enhance shareholder value. Today, the company is active in exploration and development of gold resources in Quebec among other potentially valuable mineral assets. However, it is perhaps their patented thermal fragmentation method that holds the most potential for revolutionizing the mining methods – and placing Nippon Dragon at the forefront of the industry.
Thermal fragmentation utilizes heat in order to shatter high-grade veins without the use of destructive explosives and reducing dilution. The innovative technique also reduces the risk of environmental disasters and leads to a massive reduction in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission – making a clear case for the method as a touchstone of environmentally-conscious mining in the years to come. Since Nippon Dragon has an exclusive patent on the technology, the coming years will provide them with a remarkable opportunity to capitalize on the innovative technique.
As for the Japan-based operation, distributor NDR Japan will cover all costs related to the mining contract, while Nippon will be paid 15% of revenues derived from sales of the precious metals. Though the project is relatively small for a mining operation, Nippon believe that obtaining the extraction contract is a pivotal step forward, and could even lead to revenues before the end of the year. Of course, this is good news for Nippon Dragon shareholders. As any longtime observer in the mining sector is well aware, certainty in the industry is hard to come by, but when a mining operation proves successful, the windfall can be exceptionally lucrative for a company’s investors.
Disclosure: In the purview of Section 17(B) of the Securities Act of 1933 and in the interest of full disclosure, we call the reader's attention the fact that Equities.com, Inc. may be compensated by the companies profiled in the Spotlight Companies section. The purpose of these profiles is to provide awareness of these companies to investors in the micro, small-cap and growth equity community and should not in any way come across as a recommendation to buy, sell or hold these securities. Equities.com is not a registered broker, broker dealer, investment advisor, analyst, investment banker or underwriter. All profiles are based on information that is available to the public. The information contained herein should not be considered to be all-inclusive and is not guaranteed by Equities.com to be free from misstatement or errors. Readers are reminded to do their own due diligence when researching any companies mentioned on this website
DISCLOSURE: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors, and do not represent the views of equities.com. Readers should not consider statements made by the author as formal recommendations and should consult their financial advisor before making any investment decisions. To read our full disclosure, please go to: http://www.equities.com/disclaimer "
"Public Attitudes about Climate Change +Clean Energy" - RFF/EESI/SU/USAT - Jan 28, 2014
- Professor Dr. Jon Krosnick, Frederic O. Glover, The Honorable Phil Sharp -
www.rff.org/Documents/Stanford-RFF-USAT-2013-TOPLINE.pdf
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/Public-Attitudes-about-Climate-Chan…
www.eesi.org/012814polling#video
- Professor Dr. Jon Krosnick, Frederic O. Glover, The Honorable Phil Sharp -
www.rff.org/Documents/Stanford-RFF-USAT-2013-TOPLINE.pdf
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/Public-Attitudes-about-Climate-Chan…
www.eesi.org/012814polling#video
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.188.548 von Popeye82 am 15.07.15 03:30:11
Apple, San Diego International Airport, Solarcity +Sapphire Energy Join Call for U.S. Action on Climate Change, 140+ California Companies Say Climate Change is the “Greatest Economic Opportunity Of the 21st Century” - Feb 25, 2014
www.sapphireenergy.com/documents/climate%20declaration%20rel…
www.ceres.org/files/bicep-files/ca-climate-declaration?utm_s…
"As California battles the worst drought in centuries, more than a dozen major California-based businesses, including Apple, SolarCity, San Diego International Airport, Sungevity, and Sapphire Energy today signed the Climate Declaration, a business leader call to action that urges federal and state policymakers to seize the economic opportunity of addressing climate change. The announcement was made at the U.S. Climate Leadership Conference today at the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay.
San Diego-based companies signing the declaration include: Sapphire Energy, Sullivan Solar, Renovate America, the San Diego Regional Airport Authority, and CleanTech San Diego, a trade association and clean tech cluster representing 800 clean tech companies.
Launched last year by Ceres, a nonprofit sustainability advocacy organization, and its business network, Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), the Climate Declaration has more than 750 signatories nationwide, and 140 in California, including iconic brands like General Motors, Unilever, Gap Inc., and eBay Inc. The California signatories have added their own special message to the declaration for Washington:
“As the world’s 8th largest economy, California is a champion of clean energy progress and innovation,” states the declaration. “Thanks in part to its smart energy policies including its landmark climate law, AB32, California has been a global leader in job creation, clean energy investments and GDP growth.”
California leads the nation in renewable energy development, with more than 43,700 jobs in 2012 in the solar industry (one-third of all solar jobs in the U.S.) and more than 7,000 jobs in the wind industry. In 2013, the state doubled its solar rooftop installations, from 1,000 megawatts to 2,000 megawatts. It also ranks 48th in the country in per capita energy consumption, due in part to the state’s strong energy efficiency programs.
“The 140 plus California companies which have signed the Climate Declaration see the financial upside of tackling climate change today, both for their own bottom lines and the overall economy," said Anne Kelly, director of policy and BICEP at Ceres, a Boston-based nonprofit sustainability advocacy group. “We welcome them, invite others to come on board and applaud the state of California for its bold steadfast leadership on climate and energy policy.”
“Climate change is causing more frequent extreme weather that is harming businesses and our economy. I am proud to stand with this coalition of forward-thinking businesses who are seizing this economic opportunity to prepare for the negative effects of a changing climate while also advocating for concrete actions to be better stewards of our environment.” – Rep. Scott Peters (CA-52)
Among those is Sungevity, a Bay-Area based solar provider whose workforce has grown from four to about 400 since 2007. The company has operations in nine U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Europe and Australia, and its global network of customers has offset over 100 million pounds of carbon emissions to date.
“Actively addressing climate change is the biggest economic opportunity of our time,” said Danny Kennedy, co-founder of Sungevity and author of Rooftop Revolution, How to Save Our Economy – and Our Planet – from Dirty Energy. “Sungevity’s rapid growth is proof positive that the solar service sector can spur the economy with high-paying jobs that cannot be easily off-shored, particularly in sales, service and maintenance.”
Another signatory, Los Angeles-based KB Home (NYSE:KBH), one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, has built more than 80,000 ENERGY STAR® certified homes since 2000, saving homeowners an estimated $36 million on their energy bills in 2013, while preventing greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to roughly 39,000 vehicles. The company also has an extensive solar initiative that has already led to the construction of 2,200 solar homes. The company’s new homes also have water-conserving features that help homeowners save an average of 30,000 gallons of water and $300 annually. KB Home is also currently experimenting with advanced water recycling technology and installed its first system on a net-zero home in Southern California.
“KB Home has strategically focused on increasing the environmental performance of every home we build, and today we are proud that our efforts have already helped thousands of our customers save water, energy, and money on their utilities,” said Dan Bridleman, senior vice president of sustainability, technology and strategic sourcing at KB Home. “We believe that continuing to expand upon our industry-leading commitment to sustainability is the right course for our business, our buyers, and our planet.”
San Diego-based Sapphire Energy is pioneering an entirely new industry—Green Crude—that enhances and replaces petroleum-based products with a low carbon, renewable, and scalable fuel. Unlike traditional biofuels, Green Crude products and processes are made solely from photosynthetic microorganisms (algae and cyanobacteria), using sunlight and CO2 as their feedstock. They are not dependent on food crops or valuable farmland, or use potable water. Sapphire has a research and development facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and is currently operating the first Integrated Algal BioRefinery in Columbus, New Mexico.
“Sapphire Energy has always been dedicated to developing a price-competitive, low carbon, renewable source of energy that hastens energy independence and is 100 percent compatible with existing refinery and transportation systems,” said Tim Zenk vice president of corporate affairs at Sapphire Energy, Inc. “Today, with legislation like AB32 and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), we see California as on track to be a leader in addressing climate change, setting an example for the country on how to leverage sustainable, economically viable opportunities that will help to protect our environment for future generations.”
Clean tech companies like Sapphire Energy were estimated to have contributed more than $1.4 billion in economy activity and close to 5,000 jobs to San Diego in 2011, according to CleanTech San Diego. (This includes biofuel; clean transportation; energy storage, efficiency and smart grid; and solar energy companies.)
“Thanks to AB 32 and California's forward thinking energy policies, San Diego is poised to lead the nation in job-creating clean energy technologies,” said Jason Anderson, president CleanTech San Diego. “California’s experience proves that the choice between a robust economy and a vibrant environment is a false one.”
The San Diego International Airport was the country’s first major airport to adopt a formal sustainability policy in 2008 and is actively pursuing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve LEED certification in all new construction.
“We are proud that the San Diego International Airport is the first airport in the nation to sign the Climate Declaration,” said Thella F. Bowens, President/CEO of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, owner and operator of the airport. “We are pleased to join other signatories from the private and public sectors, from California and across the nation, in this unified and steadfast commitment to sustainability.”
Beyond signing the declaration, or taking their own steps to become more sustainable, many of the company signatories are engaging further with policy makers. Seventy percent of the major company signatories (those with over $100 million in annual revenues) have expressed their views on the need for climate policy by lobbying on Capitol Hill, sending a letter, and/or engaging with the public through social media.
“We see the dire impacts of climate change happening now,” said Hans Cole, Environmental Campaigns and Advocacy Manager, Patagonia, Inc. “California’s decreased snow pack in the mountains and corresponding water scarcity will affect everyone. But, there is an opportunity to spur innovation, shift policy and steer a different course. We will continue to support this movement and effective solutions at the state and federal levels.”
View the full list of California signatories.
About Ceres
Ceres is an advocate for sustainability leadership. Ceres mobilizes a powerful coalition of investors, companies and public interest groups to accelerate and expand the adoption of sustainable business practices and solutions to build a healthy global economy. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $12 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP) an advocacy coalition of businesses committed to working with policymakers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation enabling a rapid transition to a low-carbon, 21st century economy. For more information and a list of member companies visit: www.ceres.org, www.ceres.org/bicep, @CeresNews
Contact: Meg Wilcox, 617-319-6457, wilcox@ceres.org
Peyton Fleming, 617-733-6660, fleming@ceres.org "
Apple, San Diego International Airport, Solarcity +Sapphire Energy Join Call for U.S. Action on Climate Change, 140+ California Companies Say Climate Change is the “Greatest Economic Opportunity Of the 21st Century” - Feb 25, 2014
www.sapphireenergy.com/documents/climate%20declaration%20rel…
www.ceres.org/files/bicep-files/ca-climate-declaration?utm_s…
"As California battles the worst drought in centuries, more than a dozen major California-based businesses, including Apple, SolarCity, San Diego International Airport, Sungevity, and Sapphire Energy today signed the Climate Declaration, a business leader call to action that urges federal and state policymakers to seize the economic opportunity of addressing climate change. The announcement was made at the U.S. Climate Leadership Conference today at the Hyatt Regency Mission Bay.
San Diego-based companies signing the declaration include: Sapphire Energy, Sullivan Solar, Renovate America, the San Diego Regional Airport Authority, and CleanTech San Diego, a trade association and clean tech cluster representing 800 clean tech companies.
Launched last year by Ceres, a nonprofit sustainability advocacy organization, and its business network, Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), the Climate Declaration has more than 750 signatories nationwide, and 140 in California, including iconic brands like General Motors, Unilever, Gap Inc., and eBay Inc. The California signatories have added their own special message to the declaration for Washington:
“As the world’s 8th largest economy, California is a champion of clean energy progress and innovation,” states the declaration. “Thanks in part to its smart energy policies including its landmark climate law, AB32, California has been a global leader in job creation, clean energy investments and GDP growth.”
California leads the nation in renewable energy development, with more than 43,700 jobs in 2012 in the solar industry (one-third of all solar jobs in the U.S.) and more than 7,000 jobs in the wind industry. In 2013, the state doubled its solar rooftop installations, from 1,000 megawatts to 2,000 megawatts. It also ranks 48th in the country in per capita energy consumption, due in part to the state’s strong energy efficiency programs.
“The 140 plus California companies which have signed the Climate Declaration see the financial upside of tackling climate change today, both for their own bottom lines and the overall economy," said Anne Kelly, director of policy and BICEP at Ceres, a Boston-based nonprofit sustainability advocacy group. “We welcome them, invite others to come on board and applaud the state of California for its bold steadfast leadership on climate and energy policy.”
“Climate change is causing more frequent extreme weather that is harming businesses and our economy. I am proud to stand with this coalition of forward-thinking businesses who are seizing this economic opportunity to prepare for the negative effects of a changing climate while also advocating for concrete actions to be better stewards of our environment.” – Rep. Scott Peters (CA-52)
Among those is Sungevity, a Bay-Area based solar provider whose workforce has grown from four to about 400 since 2007. The company has operations in nine U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Europe and Australia, and its global network of customers has offset over 100 million pounds of carbon emissions to date.
“Actively addressing climate change is the biggest economic opportunity of our time,” said Danny Kennedy, co-founder of Sungevity and author of Rooftop Revolution, How to Save Our Economy – and Our Planet – from Dirty Energy. “Sungevity’s rapid growth is proof positive that the solar service sector can spur the economy with high-paying jobs that cannot be easily off-shored, particularly in sales, service and maintenance.”
Another signatory, Los Angeles-based KB Home (NYSE:KBH), one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, has built more than 80,000 ENERGY STAR® certified homes since 2000, saving homeowners an estimated $36 million on their energy bills in 2013, while preventing greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to roughly 39,000 vehicles. The company also has an extensive solar initiative that has already led to the construction of 2,200 solar homes. The company’s new homes also have water-conserving features that help homeowners save an average of 30,000 gallons of water and $300 annually. KB Home is also currently experimenting with advanced water recycling technology and installed its first system on a net-zero home in Southern California.
“KB Home has strategically focused on increasing the environmental performance of every home we build, and today we are proud that our efforts have already helped thousands of our customers save water, energy, and money on their utilities,” said Dan Bridleman, senior vice president of sustainability, technology and strategic sourcing at KB Home. “We believe that continuing to expand upon our industry-leading commitment to sustainability is the right course for our business, our buyers, and our planet.”
San Diego-based Sapphire Energy is pioneering an entirely new industry—Green Crude—that enhances and replaces petroleum-based products with a low carbon, renewable, and scalable fuel. Unlike traditional biofuels, Green Crude products and processes are made solely from photosynthetic microorganisms (algae and cyanobacteria), using sunlight and CO2 as their feedstock. They are not dependent on food crops or valuable farmland, or use potable water. Sapphire has a research and development facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and is currently operating the first Integrated Algal BioRefinery in Columbus, New Mexico.
“Sapphire Energy has always been dedicated to developing a price-competitive, low carbon, renewable source of energy that hastens energy independence and is 100 percent compatible with existing refinery and transportation systems,” said Tim Zenk vice president of corporate affairs at Sapphire Energy, Inc. “Today, with legislation like AB32 and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), we see California as on track to be a leader in addressing climate change, setting an example for the country on how to leverage sustainable, economically viable opportunities that will help to protect our environment for future generations.”
Clean tech companies like Sapphire Energy were estimated to have contributed more than $1.4 billion in economy activity and close to 5,000 jobs to San Diego in 2011, according to CleanTech San Diego. (This includes biofuel; clean transportation; energy storage, efficiency and smart grid; and solar energy companies.)
“Thanks to AB 32 and California's forward thinking energy policies, San Diego is poised to lead the nation in job-creating clean energy technologies,” said Jason Anderson, president CleanTech San Diego. “California’s experience proves that the choice between a robust economy and a vibrant environment is a false one.”
The San Diego International Airport was the country’s first major airport to adopt a formal sustainability policy in 2008 and is actively pursuing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve LEED certification in all new construction.
“We are proud that the San Diego International Airport is the first airport in the nation to sign the Climate Declaration,” said Thella F. Bowens, President/CEO of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, owner and operator of the airport. “We are pleased to join other signatories from the private and public sectors, from California and across the nation, in this unified and steadfast commitment to sustainability.”
Beyond signing the declaration, or taking their own steps to become more sustainable, many of the company signatories are engaging further with policy makers. Seventy percent of the major company signatories (those with over $100 million in annual revenues) have expressed their views on the need for climate policy by lobbying on Capitol Hill, sending a letter, and/or engaging with the public through social media.
“We see the dire impacts of climate change happening now,” said Hans Cole, Environmental Campaigns and Advocacy Manager, Patagonia, Inc. “California’s decreased snow pack in the mountains and corresponding water scarcity will affect everyone. But, there is an opportunity to spur innovation, shift policy and steer a different course. We will continue to support this movement and effective solutions at the state and federal levels.”
View the full list of California signatories.
About Ceres
Ceres is an advocate for sustainability leadership. Ceres mobilizes a powerful coalition of investors, companies and public interest groups to accelerate and expand the adoption of sustainable business practices and solutions to build a healthy global economy. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $12 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy (BICEP) an advocacy coalition of businesses committed to working with policymakers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation enabling a rapid transition to a low-carbon, 21st century economy. For more information and a list of member companies visit: www.ceres.org, www.ceres.org/bicep, @CeresNews
Contact: Meg Wilcox, 617-319-6457, wilcox@ceres.org
Peyton Fleming, 617-733-6660, fleming@ceres.org "
Suncor Energy tests use of radio waves, instead of water @oil sands, Instead of high-pressure steam, Canada's largest oil +gas producer wants to send radio waves down, to heat the bitumen
www.suncor.com/en/newsroom/5441.aspx?id=1967229
www.mining.com/suncor-energy-tests-use-of-radio-waves-instea…
"
- Aerial view of Suncor's oil sands extraction facility near Fort McMurray. -
Suncor Energy (TSX, NYSE:SU), Canada's largest oil and gas producer, is looking to replace high-pressure steam used to extract bitumen from oil sands with radio waves and so increase current environmental and energy efficiencies.
The technology, developed by U.S. defense contractor Harris Corporation, could help the oil sand industry reduce costs, greenhouse gas emissions and water usage, the company said in a statement.
The method, Enhanced Solvent Extraction Incorporating Electromagnetic Heating (ESEIEH, pronounced "easy"), consists on heating bitumen with radio frequency energy coming from a surface generator, will be tested for two years at Suncor's Dover oil sands project in northern Alberta.
The ESEIEH project partners are Devon, Nexen Energy ULC, Suncor, Harris Corporation, with funding in part from the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation (CCEMC).
The group has been collaborating on this technology since 2011 with initial physical testing of the technology in 2012 at Suncor's Steepbank mine facility. Testing will now begin at an in situ reservoir for approximately 24 months.
- Here is how it works. (Graphic courtesy of Suncor) -
But that is not the only innovation Suncor is trying to lower the cost of resource extraction in a soft market.
The company has also located nine possible locations to use a replication strategy for steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) extraction projects.
“The reason why we call it the replication strategy is we’re trying to come up with exactly the same designed plants,” the firm’s executive vice president, Mark Little, said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting April 30. “If the resource is there, we’re trying to figure out, how do you bring it to market at a less costly manner?”
Other highly sought-after technologies in the oil industry today are solar reclamation and organic solvent extraction.
Use of solar technology could replace expensive and power-intensive ultraviolet lamps in advanced wastewater filtration systems at a fraction of the cost.
Organic solvent extraction aims to eliminate the use of massive quantities water to heat the bitumen at the oil sands and cut emissions. "
www.suncor.com/en/newsroom/5441.aspx?id=1967229
www.mining.com/suncor-energy-tests-use-of-radio-waves-instea…
"
- Aerial view of Suncor's oil sands extraction facility near Fort McMurray. -
Suncor Energy (TSX, NYSE:SU), Canada's largest oil and gas producer, is looking to replace high-pressure steam used to extract bitumen from oil sands with radio waves and so increase current environmental and energy efficiencies.
The technology, developed by U.S. defense contractor Harris Corporation, could help the oil sand industry reduce costs, greenhouse gas emissions and water usage, the company said in a statement.
The method, Enhanced Solvent Extraction Incorporating Electromagnetic Heating (ESEIEH, pronounced "easy"), consists on heating bitumen with radio frequency energy coming from a surface generator, will be tested for two years at Suncor's Dover oil sands project in northern Alberta.
The ESEIEH project partners are Devon, Nexen Energy ULC, Suncor, Harris Corporation, with funding in part from the Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation (CCEMC).
The group has been collaborating on this technology since 2011 with initial physical testing of the technology in 2012 at Suncor's Steepbank mine facility. Testing will now begin at an in situ reservoir for approximately 24 months.
- Here is how it works. (Graphic courtesy of Suncor) -
But that is not the only innovation Suncor is trying to lower the cost of resource extraction in a soft market.
The company has also located nine possible locations to use a replication strategy for steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) extraction projects.
“The reason why we call it the replication strategy is we’re trying to come up with exactly the same designed plants,” the firm’s executive vice president, Mark Little, said at the company’s annual shareholders meeting April 30. “If the resource is there, we’re trying to figure out, how do you bring it to market at a less costly manner?”
Other highly sought-after technologies in the oil industry today are solar reclamation and organic solvent extraction.
Use of solar technology could replace expensive and power-intensive ultraviolet lamps in advanced wastewater filtration systems at a fraction of the cost.
Organic solvent extraction aims to eliminate the use of massive quantities water to heat the bitumen at the oil sands and cut emissions. "
France estimates the economic costs of air pollution - ENN/EA - Jul 16, 2015
www.euractiv.com/sections/science-policymaking/air-pollution…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48783
"The French Senate has called for new efforts to tackle air pollution, arguing it inflates healthcare costs, reduces economic productivity and agricultural yields, and has put Paris in the EU's bad books.
A Committee of Inquiry in the French Senate has described air pollution as an "economic aberration". The committee's proposals to reduce the phenomenon, which costs France over €100 billion every year, include raising the tax on diesel and taxing emissions of the worst polluting substances.
In the report entitled "Air pollution: the cost of inaction", published on Wednesday 15 July, the Senate committee estimated the annual cost of air Pollution in France at €101.3 billion.
While overall air pollution has fallen in recent years, "the nature of the pollution has changed". Rather than localised industrial pollution, today's problem is more diffuse, caused by transport, heating and agriculture, the report said.
Particle pollution is responsible for 42,000 premature deaths each year in France alone, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The Senate report put the health related cost of air pollution in France (medical treatments, premature death, absenteeism, etc.) at "between €68 and €96 billion", and the non-health related cost (decline in agricultural yield, degradation of buildings, preventative expenditure, etc.) at €4.3 billion.
Air pollution in Paris image via Shutterstock. "
www.euractiv.com/sections/science-policymaking/air-pollution…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48783
"The French Senate has called for new efforts to tackle air pollution, arguing it inflates healthcare costs, reduces economic productivity and agricultural yields, and has put Paris in the EU's bad books.
A Committee of Inquiry in the French Senate has described air pollution as an "economic aberration". The committee's proposals to reduce the phenomenon, which costs France over €100 billion every year, include raising the tax on diesel and taxing emissions of the worst polluting substances.
In the report entitled "Air pollution: the cost of inaction", published on Wednesday 15 July, the Senate committee estimated the annual cost of air Pollution in France at €101.3 billion.
While overall air pollution has fallen in recent years, "the nature of the pollution has changed". Rather than localised industrial pollution, today's problem is more diffuse, caused by transport, heating and agriculture, the report said.
Particle pollution is responsible for 42,000 premature deaths each year in France alone, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).
The Senate report put the health related cost of air pollution in France (medical treatments, premature death, absenteeism, etc.) at "between €68 and €96 billion", and the non-health related cost (decline in agricultural yield, degradation of buildings, preventative expenditure, etc.) at €4.3 billion.
Air pollution in Paris image via Shutterstock. "
Greenland ice sheet melting more rapidly from impact of rainfall - ENN/SD/NERC/RGS//UoA/NG, ABERYSTWYTH - Jul 14, 2015
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150713113447.htm
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48774
"According to a new study published in Nature Geoscience, the Greenland ice sheet has been shown to accelerate in response to surface rainfall and melt associated with late-summer and autumnal cyclonic weather events.
- Crevassed glacier terminus, in West Greenland. -
Samuel Doyle and an international team of colleagues led from Aberystwyth University's Centre for Glaciology combined records of ice motion, water pressure at the ice sheet bed, and river discharge with surface meteorology across the western margin of the Greenland ice sheet and captured the wide-scale effects of an unusual week of warm, wet weather in late August and early September, 2011.
They found that the cyclonic weather system led to extreme surface runoff -- a combination of ice melt and rain -- that overwhelmed the ice sheet's basal drainage system, driving a marked increase in ice flow across the entire western sector of the ice sheet and extending 140 km into the ice sheet's interior.
"It is like an urban sewerage system that is temporarily overwhelmed by an intense rain-storm. The ice sheet plumbing -- literally a network of pipes, cavities and channels -- gets backed up by the sheer quantity of runoff draining into it, leading to flooding and high water pressures, which literally hydraulically lifts the ice sheet up off its bed, reducing basal friction and sending it on its way," said Prof Alun Hubbard the principal investigator who led the 4-year project which was funded by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Royal Geographical Society amongst others.
This particular depression prevailed across a broad swathe of southern and western Greenland, and a correspondingly-widespread acceleration in ice motion was reported from all available satellite and GPS tracking stations. This response was apparent at glaciers that terminate on dry land as well as those that calve into the sea.
Greenland ice flow image via Shutterstock. "
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150713113447.htm
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48774
"According to a new study published in Nature Geoscience, the Greenland ice sheet has been shown to accelerate in response to surface rainfall and melt associated with late-summer and autumnal cyclonic weather events.
- Crevassed glacier terminus, in West Greenland. -
Samuel Doyle and an international team of colleagues led from Aberystwyth University's Centre for Glaciology combined records of ice motion, water pressure at the ice sheet bed, and river discharge with surface meteorology across the western margin of the Greenland ice sheet and captured the wide-scale effects of an unusual week of warm, wet weather in late August and early September, 2011.
They found that the cyclonic weather system led to extreme surface runoff -- a combination of ice melt and rain -- that overwhelmed the ice sheet's basal drainage system, driving a marked increase in ice flow across the entire western sector of the ice sheet and extending 140 km into the ice sheet's interior.
"It is like an urban sewerage system that is temporarily overwhelmed by an intense rain-storm. The ice sheet plumbing -- literally a network of pipes, cavities and channels -- gets backed up by the sheer quantity of runoff draining into it, leading to flooding and high water pressures, which literally hydraulically lifts the ice sheet up off its bed, reducing basal friction and sending it on its way," said Prof Alun Hubbard the principal investigator who led the 4-year project which was funded by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Royal Geographical Society amongst others.
This particular depression prevailed across a broad swathe of southern and western Greenland, and a correspondingly-widespread acceleration in ice motion was reported from all available satellite and GPS tracking stations. This response was apparent at glaciers that terminate on dry land as well as those that calve into the sea.
Greenland ice flow image via Shutterstock. "
NASA finds Greenland glaciers melting faster, than thought - ENN/NASA, JPL/UCI/GRL, CALIFORNIA - Jul 22, 2015
http://news.uci.edu/greenland/
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48801
"Greenland's glaciers flowing into the ocean are grounded deeper below sea level than previously measured, allowing intruding ocean water to badly undercut the glacier faces. That process will raise sea levels around the world much faster than currently estimated, according to a team of researchers led by Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
The researchers battled rough waters and an onslaught of icebergs for three summers to map the remote channels below Greenland's marine-terminating glaciers for the first time. Their results have been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and are now available online.
"Measurements are challenging to obtain beneath hundreds of meters of seawater in poorly charted, ice-infested fjords," Rignot wrote. He and co-authors Ian Fenty of JPL, Cilan Cai and Yun Xu of UCI, and Chris Kemp of Terrasond Ltd., Seattle, obtained and analyzed around-the-clock measurements of the depth, salinity and temperature of channel waters and their intersection with the coastal edge of Greenland's ice sheet.
The team found some glaciers perched on giant earthen sills, protecting them from the punishing salt waters for now, while others were being severely eroded out of sight beneath the surface, meaning they could collapse and melt much sooner. "Numerical ice sheet models do not take into account these interactions and as a result underestimate how fast the glaciers will respond to climate warming," said Rignot.
To see video, photos and a narrative of the August 2014 expedition:
http://news.uci.edu/greenland/
Man in glacier crevase image via Shutterstock.
Read more at NASA JPL. "
http://news.uci.edu/greenland/
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48801
"Greenland's glaciers flowing into the ocean are grounded deeper below sea level than previously measured, allowing intruding ocean water to badly undercut the glacier faces. That process will raise sea levels around the world much faster than currently estimated, according to a team of researchers led by Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine (UCI), and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
The researchers battled rough waters and an onslaught of icebergs for three summers to map the remote channels below Greenland's marine-terminating glaciers for the first time. Their results have been accepted for publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters and are now available online.
"Measurements are challenging to obtain beneath hundreds of meters of seawater in poorly charted, ice-infested fjords," Rignot wrote. He and co-authors Ian Fenty of JPL, Cilan Cai and Yun Xu of UCI, and Chris Kemp of Terrasond Ltd., Seattle, obtained and analyzed around-the-clock measurements of the depth, salinity and temperature of channel waters and their intersection with the coastal edge of Greenland's ice sheet.
The team found some glaciers perched on giant earthen sills, protecting them from the punishing salt waters for now, while others were being severely eroded out of sight beneath the surface, meaning they could collapse and melt much sooner. "Numerical ice sheet models do not take into account these interactions and as a result underestimate how fast the glaciers will respond to climate warming," said Rignot.
To see video, photos and a narrative of the August 2014 expedition:
http://news.uci.edu/greenland/
Man in glacier crevase image via Shutterstock.
Read more at NASA JPL. "
WA to lead the field in carbon capture - MA/ABCN/NGL/UoWA/CU/CSIRO, WA - Jul 24, 2015
- Ben Hagemann -
www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-23/ngl-and-uncover-projects-laun…
www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/wa-to-lead-the-field-in-carb…
"A new carbon capture research facility opened on Wednesday will make WA a world leader in the field of geosequestration.
The $48.4 million National Geosequestration Laboratory (NGL) in Perth was enabled by a collaboration of the CSIRO, Curtin University and the University of WA.
Mines and Petroleum minister Bill Marmion said the government aimed to make the WA centre not only a national, but a global leader in carbon sequestration.
"What we'd be aiming for it to become a world leader, so that the technology that might be developed and the practical application of geosequestration can be basically exported around the world," he said.
Marmion also announced the new UNCOVER roadmap, an industry sponsored initiative which emphasises the need to focus on greenfields and deep exploration and generate new projects.
UNCOVER will see participation by exploration and mining companies, mining equipment and service providers, lobby groups and government geological survey organisations.
"They've actually targeted 16 key areas at the moment to actually, over the next 10 years, come up with better information to target where we are more likely to actually find specific, non-ferrous metals, in Australia,” Marmion said.
Talking to the ABC, Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) chief executive Simon Bennison said the renewed emphasis on greenfields exploration through national strategy would hopefully result in new mines.
"Look I hope so, it's a sign of confidence for a number of the industry partners and government and research collaborators who have obviously seen the light in the context of trying to arrest this declining discovery situation in Australia," he said.
"I'd like to think it's going to instil a lot more confidence in the retail investment side of it and see capital start to feed back into exploration companies, so that they can get out on the ground and translate the road map initiatives into real discoveries." "
- Ben Hagemann -
www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-23/ngl-and-uncover-projects-laun…
www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/wa-to-lead-the-field-in-carb…
"A new carbon capture research facility opened on Wednesday will make WA a world leader in the field of geosequestration.
The $48.4 million National Geosequestration Laboratory (NGL) in Perth was enabled by a collaboration of the CSIRO, Curtin University and the University of WA.
Mines and Petroleum minister Bill Marmion said the government aimed to make the WA centre not only a national, but a global leader in carbon sequestration.
"What we'd be aiming for it to become a world leader, so that the technology that might be developed and the practical application of geosequestration can be basically exported around the world," he said.
Marmion also announced the new UNCOVER roadmap, an industry sponsored initiative which emphasises the need to focus on greenfields and deep exploration and generate new projects.
UNCOVER will see participation by exploration and mining companies, mining equipment and service providers, lobby groups and government geological survey organisations.
"They've actually targeted 16 key areas at the moment to actually, over the next 10 years, come up with better information to target where we are more likely to actually find specific, non-ferrous metals, in Australia,” Marmion said.
Talking to the ABC, Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) chief executive Simon Bennison said the renewed emphasis on greenfields exploration through national strategy would hopefully result in new mines.
"Look I hope so, it's a sign of confidence for a number of the industry partners and government and research collaborators who have obviously seen the light in the context of trying to arrest this declining discovery situation in Australia," he said.
"I'd like to think it's going to instil a lot more confidence in the retail investment side of it and see capital start to feed back into exploration companies, so that they can get out on the ground and translate the road map initiatives into real discoveries." "
Seed study reveals future risks to nature - ENN/CGS/GE&B/UNSW, SoBE&ES - Jul 23, 2015
www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/trends/126284-global-biodiver…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48805
"The first worldwide study of animals and the seeds they eat has overturned a long-held assumption - that large animals mainly eat large seeds.
The finding by UNSW Australia scientists has implications for conservation showing that a wider variety of plants than is often thought could be at risk if large animals go extinct and do not disperse their seeds.
In a comprehensive study, UNSW's Si-Chong Chen and Professor Angela Moles compiled and analysed data on more than 13,000 animal-seed interactions, based on previously published reports.
"It is the first broad-scale study of the relationship between animal body mass and ingested seed size ever undertaken," says Ms Chen, a PhD candidate in the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.
"We covered all vertebrate groups - fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. And we included animals from many different areas - from the Arctic tundra to the tropical rainforests."
The research is published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography.
The smallest seeds in the study were the tiny seeds of the mountain snowberry, and they were eaten by the smallest animals in the study - skinks on the Chatham Islands near New Zealand.
The largest seeds were the 9-centimetre long seeds of the African tropical forest tree, Balanites wilsonia. They were eaten by the largest animals in the study - 4-tonne African elephants.
"It has long been predicted that as the body size of animals increases so does the size of the seeds they ingest," says Ms Chen.
"Big animals do eat some big seeds from fleshy fruits. But the prediction is wrong because it overlooks the fact that big animals like buffalos, cows, deer and zebras also accidentally vacuum up hundreds of small seeds as they graze on short grassy vegetation."
The finding changes the predicted impact of the loss of larger animals due to hunting, habitat loss or climate change.
"If large animals become extinct in an ecosystem, it will not only be the largest-seed species that lose their potential dispersers; some of the smallest-seed species will also be at risk," says Ms Chen.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, ClickGreen. "
www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/trends/126284-global-biodiver…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48805
"The first worldwide study of animals and the seeds they eat has overturned a long-held assumption - that large animals mainly eat large seeds.
The finding by UNSW Australia scientists has implications for conservation showing that a wider variety of plants than is often thought could be at risk if large animals go extinct and do not disperse their seeds.
In a comprehensive study, UNSW's Si-Chong Chen and Professor Angela Moles compiled and analysed data on more than 13,000 animal-seed interactions, based on previously published reports.
"It is the first broad-scale study of the relationship between animal body mass and ingested seed size ever undertaken," says Ms Chen, a PhD candidate in the UNSW School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.
"We covered all vertebrate groups - fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. And we included animals from many different areas - from the Arctic tundra to the tropical rainforests."
The research is published in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography.
The smallest seeds in the study were the tiny seeds of the mountain snowberry, and they were eaten by the smallest animals in the study - skinks on the Chatham Islands near New Zealand.
The largest seeds were the 9-centimetre long seeds of the African tropical forest tree, Balanites wilsonia. They were eaten by the largest animals in the study - 4-tonne African elephants.
"It has long been predicted that as the body size of animals increases so does the size of the seeds they ingest," says Ms Chen.
"Big animals do eat some big seeds from fleshy fruits. But the prediction is wrong because it overlooks the fact that big animals like buffalos, cows, deer and zebras also accidentally vacuum up hundreds of small seeds as they graze on short grassy vegetation."
The finding changes the predicted impact of the loss of larger animals due to hunting, habitat loss or climate change.
"If large animals become extinct in an ecosystem, it will not only be the largest-seed species that lose their potential dispersers; some of the smallest-seed species will also be at risk," says Ms Chen.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, ClickGreen. "
Infographic: 5 Big Brands Using Renewable Energy, It’s no secret that many of the planets biggest brands are advocates of the environment. But, many small business owners believe that a greener business model is a luxury, only afforded to those who have the money to invest into it –but this doesn’t have to be the case - CT - Jul 27, 2015
- Hannah Corbett -
http://cleantechies.com/2015/07/27/infographic-5-big-brands-…
- Hannah Corbett -
http://cleantechies.com/2015/07/27/infographic-5-big-brands-…
Hillary Clinton’s Renewable Energy Plan, Liiike her, ooooor not, her plan for Renewable Energy as described in this video is ambitious. Wiiill it get her elected? The answer is stiiill blowing in the wind, buuut @leaaaaast she is addressing it in a way that the renewable energy industry can support. See fooor yooooourself, +decide whether she deserves your consideration - CT - Jul 27, 2015
- Oliver Strube -
http://cleantechies.com/2015/07/27/video-hillary-clintons-re…
- Oliver Strube -
http://cleantechies.com/2015/07/27/video-hillary-clintons-re…
MID-YEAR REPORT: 70% of New U.S. Generating Capacity in 1st Half '15 is From Renewables, In yet another clear indication of the nation’s energy future, renewable sources(i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) accounted for ~70%(69,75%) of new electrical generation placed in service in the United States, during the 1st six months of '15. According to the recently-released “Energy Infrastructure Update” report, from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects - CT/FERC/EIA - Jul 27, 2015
- Ken Bossong -
------> www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2015/june-infrastructure.pd…
www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/
http://cleantechies.com/2015/07/27/mid-year-report-70-of-new…
"In yet another clear indication of the nation’s energy future, renewable sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) accounted for nearly 70% (69.75%) of new electrical generation placed in service in the United States during the first six months of 2015.
According to the recently-released “Energy Infrastructure Update” report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) Office of Energy Projects, 18 new “units” of wind accounted for 1,969 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity – or more than half (50.64%) of all new capacity year-to-date. Among renewable sources, solar followed with 549 MW (71 units), biomass with 128 MW (7 units), geothermal steam with 45 MW (1 unit), and hydropower with 21 MW (1 unit). Twenty-one units of natural gas contributed 1,173 MW.
FERC reported no new capacity for the year-to-date from oil or nuclear power and just 3 MW from one unit of coal. Thuuuuus, new capacity from renewable energy sources during the first half of 2015 is 904 times greater than that from coal and more than double that from natural gas.
For the month of June alone, wind (320 MW), biomass (95 MW), and solar (62 MW) provided 97% of new capacity with natural gas providing the balance (15 MW).
Renewable energy sources now account for 17.27% of total installed operating generating capacity in the U.S.: water – 8.61%, wind – 5.84%, biomass – 1.40%, solar – 1.08%, and geothermal steam – 0.34%(for comparison, renewables were 16.28% of capacity in June 2014 and 15.81% in June 2013).
Renewable electrical capacity is now greater than that of nuclear (9.20%) and oil (3.87%) combined. In fact, the installed capacity of wind power alone has now surpassed that of oil. On the other hand, generating capacity from coal has declined from 28.96% in mid-2013 to 26.83% today.*
With Congress now debating whether to extend the federal tax incentives for renewable energy sources, it is reasonable to ask whether the American public has gotten a good return on these investments to date. The latest FERC data confirms that the answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’.
# # #
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released its most recent 5-page “Energy Infrastructure Update,” with data through June 30, 2015, on July 21, 2015. See the tables titled “New Generation In-Service (New Build and Expansion)” and “Total Installed Operating Generating Capacity” at: http://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2015/june-infrastruc…
* Note that generating capacity is not the same as actual generation. Electrical production per MW of available capacity (i.e., capacity factor) for renewables is often lower than that for fossil fuels and nuclear power. According to the most recent data (i.e., as of April 2015) provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, actual net electrical generation from renewable energy sources now totals about 14.6% of total U.S. electrical production (see: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly); however, this figure almost certainly understates renewables’ actual contribution significantly because neither EIA nor FERC fully accounts for all electricity generated by distributed renewable energy sources (e.g., uncounted rooftop solar now provides about 45% of U.S. solar capacity).
=====
The SUN DAY Campaign is a non-profit research and educational organization founded in 1992 to aggressively promote sustainable energy technologies as cost-effective alternatives to nuclear power and fossil fuels. "
- Ken Bossong -
------> www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2015/june-infrastructure.pd…
www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/
http://cleantechies.com/2015/07/27/mid-year-report-70-of-new…
"In yet another clear indication of the nation’s energy future, renewable sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, wind) accounted for nearly 70% (69.75%) of new electrical generation placed in service in the United States during the first six months of 2015.
According to the recently-released “Energy Infrastructure Update” report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) Office of Energy Projects, 18 new “units” of wind accounted for 1,969 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity – or more than half (50.64%) of all new capacity year-to-date. Among renewable sources, solar followed with 549 MW (71 units), biomass with 128 MW (7 units), geothermal steam with 45 MW (1 unit), and hydropower with 21 MW (1 unit). Twenty-one units of natural gas contributed 1,173 MW.
FERC reported no new capacity for the year-to-date from oil or nuclear power and just 3 MW from one unit of coal. Thuuuuus, new capacity from renewable energy sources during the first half of 2015 is 904 times greater than that from coal
and more than double that from natural gas.For the month of June alone, wind (320 MW), biomass (95 MW), and solar (62 MW) provided 97% of new capacity with natural gas providing the balance (15 MW).
Renewable energy sources now account for 17.27% of total installed operating generating capacity in the U.S.: water – 8.61%, wind – 5.84%, biomass – 1.40%, solar – 1.08%, and geothermal steam – 0.34%(for comparison, renewables were 16.28% of capacity in June 2014 and 15.81% in June 2013).
Renewable electrical capacity is now greater than that of nuclear (9.20%) and oil (3.87%) combined. In fact, the installed capacity of wind power alone has now surpassed that of oil. On the other hand, generating capacity from coal has declined from 28.96% in mid-2013 to 26.83% today.*
With Congress now debating whether to extend the federal tax incentives for renewable energy sources, it is reasonable to ask whether the American public has gotten a good return on these investments to date. The latest FERC data confirms that the answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’.
# # #
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission released its most recent 5-page “Energy Infrastructure Update,” with data through June 30, 2015, on July 21, 2015. See the tables titled “New Generation In-Service (New Build and Expansion)” and “Total Installed Operating Generating Capacity” at: http://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2015/june-infrastruc…
* Note that generating capacity is not the same as actual generation. Electrical production per MW of available capacity (i.e., capacity factor) for renewables is often lower than that for fossil fuels and nuclear power. According to the most recent data (i.e., as of April 2015) provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, actual net electrical generation from renewable energy sources now totals about 14.6% of total U.S. electrical production (see: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly); however, this figure almost certainly understates renewables’ actual contribution significantly because neither EIA nor FERC fully accounts for all electricity generated by distributed renewable energy sources (e.g., uncounted rooftop solar now provides about 45% of U.S. solar capacity).
=====
The SUN DAY Campaign is a non-profit research and educational organization founded in 1992 to aggressively promote sustainable energy technologies as cost-effective alternatives to nuclear power and fossil fuels. "
Companies To Invest $140,000,000,000 To Fight Climate Change[video] - T/WH, WASHINGTON - Jul 27, 2015
- Justin Worland -
http://time.com/3972642/white-house-climate-change-comapnies…
"The White House organized this large private-sector commitment
More than a dozen leading U.S. companies have committed to investing a total of $140 billion in new funds to combat climate change in a White House-organized effort meant to demonstrate the private sector’s commitment to the issue, the White House announced Monday.
The initiative, the latest in a series of White House moves on climate change, signals the continued effort by the administration to position global warming as a major issue in the lead up to a landmark United Nations conference on climate change in Paris at the end of the year.
“They’re not just committing to support a successful outcome in Paris, they’re walking the walk,” said Brian Deese, the president’s senior climate change advisor, on a conference call for journalists. “Commitments are varied, but the thing they all share is that they’re innovative and ambitious.”
The list of companies committing money and resources to fighting climate change contains many of the country’s most prominent corporations, including retailers, banks and tech companies. And, while many have made previous efforts to combat climate change, the announcements contains new commitments from each of the 13 companies. Financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have committed to financing billions of dollars in renewable energy plants. Tech companies like Google and Microsoft committed to purchasing 100% of the energy for their power-hungry data centers from renewable energy sources, in addition to a variety of other commitments. Companies like Walmart and Pepsico have agreed to rethink elements of their supply chain in an environmentally conscious manner.
“What’s exciting about this is these commitments are new and push beyond what has been done,” said Deese. “They are accountable, measurable and verifiable.”
The announcement also suggests an increased acceptance in the business community to the realities of climate change. The companies total revenue topped $1.3 trillion in 2014, and they have a combined value of more than $2.5 trillion. Still, the list of companies notably lacks an oil company, and it remains to be seen whether one will join the initiative in a future round of pledges. In response to a question on that topic, Deese said that he expects to see “substantial support from across different industry sectors” in the coming months.
The announcement, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes just months before a United Nations conference on climate change in Paris that many hope will lead to the strongest international agreement on the issue yet. Obama has sought to position the U.S. a leader on climate change in the lead up to that conference, committing to cut carbon emissions in the U.S. by 26 to 28% by 2025.
“There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate,” Obama said at the UN climate summit last September. "
- Justin Worland -
http://time.com/3972642/white-house-climate-change-comapnies…
"The White House organized this large private-sector commitment
More than a dozen leading U.S. companies have committed to investing a total of $140 billion in new funds to combat climate change in a White House-organized effort meant to demonstrate the private sector’s commitment to the issue, the White House announced Monday.
The initiative, the latest in a series of White House moves on climate change, signals the continued effort by the administration to position global warming as a major issue in the lead up to a landmark United Nations conference on climate change in Paris at the end of the year.
“They’re not just committing to support a successful outcome in Paris, they’re walking the walk,” said Brian Deese, the president’s senior climate change advisor, on a conference call for journalists. “Commitments are varied, but the thing they all share is that they’re innovative and ambitious.”
The list of companies committing money and resources to fighting climate change contains many of the country’s most prominent corporations, including retailers, banks and tech companies. And, while many have made previous efforts to combat climate change, the announcements contains new commitments from each of the 13 companies. Financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and Bank of America have committed to financing billions of dollars in renewable energy plants. Tech companies like Google and Microsoft committed to purchasing 100% of the energy for their power-hungry data centers from renewable energy sources, in addition to a variety of other commitments. Companies like Walmart and Pepsico have agreed to rethink elements of their supply chain in an environmentally conscious manner.
“What’s exciting about this is these commitments are new and push beyond what has been done,” said Deese. “They are accountable, measurable and verifiable.”
The announcement also suggests an increased acceptance in the business community to the realities of climate change. The companies total revenue topped $1.3 trillion in 2014, and they have a combined value of more than $2.5 trillion. Still, the list of companies notably lacks an oil company, and it remains to be seen whether one will join the initiative in a future round of pledges. In response to a question on that topic, Deese said that he expects to see “substantial support from across different industry sectors” in the coming months.
The announcement, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, comes just months before a United Nations conference on climate change in Paris that many hope will lead to the strongest international agreement on the issue yet. Obama has sought to position the U.S. a leader on climate change in the lead up to that conference, committing to cut carbon emissions in the U.S. by 26 to 28% by 2025.
“There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate,” Obama said at the UN climate summit last September. "
Ban Ivory Sales in US 
Offshore Wind Power Comes to the US - ENN/S.E.S/ C2 - Jul 29, 2015
www.care2.com/causes/offshore-wind-power-comes-to-the-u-s-at…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48822
"The United States marked an energy milestone this week as construction began on a pilot offshore wind program that will be used to test the economic feasibility of offshore wind energy. According to the Bureau of Energy, some four million megawatts of power lie in wait off the coasts and the shores of regions like the Great Lakes, where wind blusters far stronger than it does on land — and even a few miles an hour makes a big difference with turbines. While it’s unlikely all of that territory will be developed, generating more wind energy will help reduce reliance on coal, helping the United States move towards a clean energy future and more energy independence.
Development of wind energy in general, but especially offshore energy, has lagged in the United States. One reason is the sheer cost, as pilot programs are expensive to run and any new technology can be pricey — though nations like Denmark have already illustrated that it’s possible to make wind energy commercially viable. In 2014, 2,488 offshore turbines in 11 farms in Europe generated 8,045 megawatts of energy — enough to meet seven percent of the EU’s energy demand and counting. The Block Island project is suffering from high costs related to poor infrastructure — like a lack of specialized ships equipped for smooth installation of turbines at sea — though the government indicates that it will be providing tax credits and other financial incentives to other pioneering energy companies.
Another issue is regulatory barriers, but, more critically, oppositions from individuals and communities. Many people dislike the thought of seeing energy infrastructure offshore, though wind farms can be as far as three miles out, rather than directly on the horizon. While some may support the idea of offshore wind farms in theory, they don’t want to see it in their backyards — a refrain that may sound familiar. Even in Rhode Island, where the Block Island project is based, not all residents are fans of the program, and this will continue to be an issue across the United States, where some communities have entrenched attitudes about view obstruction.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, Care2. "
www.care2.com/causes/offshore-wind-power-comes-to-the-u-s-at…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48822
"The United States marked an energy milestone this week as construction began on a pilot offshore wind program that will be used to test the economic feasibility of offshore wind energy. According to the Bureau of Energy, some four million megawatts of power lie in wait off the coasts and the shores of regions like the Great Lakes, where wind blusters far stronger than it does on land — and even a few miles an hour makes a big difference with turbines. While it’s unlikely all of that territory will be developed, generating more wind energy will help reduce reliance on coal, helping the United States move towards a clean energy future and more energy independence.
Development of wind energy in general, but especially offshore energy, has lagged in the United States. One reason is the sheer cost, as pilot programs are expensive to run and any new technology can be pricey — though nations like Denmark have already illustrated that it’s possible to make wind energy commercially viable. In 2014, 2,488 offshore turbines in 11 farms in Europe generated 8,045 megawatts of energy — enough to meet seven percent of the EU’s energy demand and counting. The Block Island project is suffering from high costs related to poor infrastructure — like a lack of specialized ships equipped for smooth installation of turbines at sea — though the government indicates that it will be providing tax credits and other financial incentives to other pioneering energy companies.
Another issue is regulatory barriers, but, more critically, oppositions from individuals and communities. Many people dislike the thought of seeing energy infrastructure offshore, though wind farms can be as far as three miles out, rather than directly on the horizon. While some may support the idea of offshore wind farms in theory, they don’t want to see it in their backyards — a refrain that may sound familiar. Even in Rhode Island, where the Block Island project is based, not all residents are fans of the program, and this will continue to be an issue across the United States, where some communities have entrenched attitudes about view obstruction.
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, Care2. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.277.924 von Popeye82 am 28.07.15 06:07:08
War of words, between charity +coal lobbies, Charity group Oxfam Australia has taken aim @the coal industry in a new report, which suggests renewable energy is quicker +cheaper for bringing energy to the developing world than coal-fired power - MA/OI - Jull 30, 2015
- B. Hagemann -
------> www.oxfam.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/coal_report_lowr…
www.oxfam.org.au/2015/07/powering-up-against-poverty-why-ren…
www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/war-of-words-between-charity…
"Charity group Oxfam Australia has taken aim at the coal industry in a new report which suggests renewable energy is quicker and cheaper for bringing energy to the developing world than coal-fired power.
The report ‘Powering up against poverty’ accused Peabody Energy, the Minerals Council of Australia, Adani, and other coal mining interests of aggressively promoting coal as a solution for energy poverty, while going no further than PR campaigns in their own interests.
Oxfam also said that statistics given by the Institute of Public Affairs, that an increase in the supply of Australian coal to India would bring electricity to 82 million people, were rejected by Indian NGO the Vasudha Foundation which said the arguments did not stand up “even the most basic scrutiny”.
Report author Dr Simon Bradshaw said there were many examples of how renewable energy was already helping impoverished people to gain access to energy, bringing job creation and community development.
Bradshaw said the rapid rollout of solar home systems in Bangladesh had brought power to 10 per cent of homes, around 3.5 million households, and that the government sought to have electricity to all homes by 2021.
The report also suggested that the environmental damage done by coal to the atmosphere was linked to 670,000 premature deaths in China in 2012.
The Minerals Council of Australia returned fire yesterday, suggesting Oxfam should “stick to facts not ideology”.
MCA Coal executive director Greg Evans said renewable energy could play a role in the energy mix of the developing world in remote locations, but that the big leaps in economic development were underpinned by baseload energy generated from coal.
“Between 1990 and 2010, about 830 million people - the vast majority in developing countries - gained access to electricity generated by coal-fired plants,” he said.
“For every one person that gained energy access through wind or solar, 13 people gained access through coal.
“We would hope this is welcomed by OXFAM and the meaningful improvement it represents in the lives of many millions of the world’s most needy.” "
War of words, between charity +coal lobbies, Charity group Oxfam Australia has taken aim @the coal industry in a new report, which suggests renewable energy is quicker +cheaper for bringing energy to the developing world than coal-fired power - MA/OI - Jull 30, 2015
- B. Hagemann -
------> www.oxfam.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/coal_report_lowr…
www.oxfam.org.au/2015/07/powering-up-against-poverty-why-ren…
www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/war-of-words-between-charity…
"Charity group Oxfam Australia has taken aim at the coal industry in a new report which suggests renewable energy is quicker and cheaper for bringing energy to the developing world than coal-fired power.
The report ‘Powering up against poverty’ accused Peabody Energy, the Minerals Council of Australia, Adani, and other coal mining interests of aggressively promoting coal as a solution for energy poverty, while going no further than PR campaigns in their own interests.
Oxfam also said that statistics given by the Institute of Public Affairs, that an increase in the supply of Australian coal to India would bring electricity to 82 million people, were rejected by Indian NGO the Vasudha Foundation which said the arguments did not stand up “even the most basic scrutiny”.
Report author Dr Simon Bradshaw said there were many examples of how renewable energy was already helping impoverished people to gain access to energy, bringing job creation and community development.
Bradshaw said the rapid rollout of solar home systems in Bangladesh had brought power to 10 per cent of homes, around 3.5 million households, and that the government sought to have electricity to all homes by 2021.
The report also suggested that the environmental damage done by coal to the atmosphere was linked to 670,000 premature deaths in China in 2012.
The Minerals Council of Australia returned fire yesterday, suggesting Oxfam should “stick to facts not ideology”.
MCA Coal executive director Greg Evans said renewable energy could play a role in the energy mix of the developing world in remote locations, but that the big leaps in economic development were underpinned by baseload energy generated from coal.
“Between 1990 and 2010, about 830 million people - the vast majority in developing countries - gained access to electricity generated by coal-fired plants,” he said.
“For every one person that gained energy access through wind or solar, 13 people gained access through coal.
“We would hope this is welcomed by OXFAM and the meaningful improvement it represents in the lives of many millions of the world’s most needy.” "
U.S. to require CCS for power plants - CCJ/EPA - Aug 3, 2015
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/5EC4F387A996F5F48…
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3603
"President Obama and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy will release the final Clean Power Plan, a historic step in the Obama Administration’s fight against climate change.
The Clean Power Plan establishes the first-ever national standards to limit carbon pollution from power plants. We already set limits that protect public health by reducing soot and other toxic emissions, but until now, existing power plants, the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, could release as much carbon pollution as they wanted.
The final Clean Power Plan sets flexible and achievable standards to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, 9 percent more ambitious than the proposal. By setting carbon pollution reduction goals for power plants and enabling states to develop tailored implementation plans to meet those goals, the Clean Power Plan is a strong, flexible framework that will:
- Provide significant public health benefits – The Clean Power Plan, and other policies put in place to drive a cleaner energy sector, will reduce premature deaths from power plant emissions by nearly 90 percent in 2030 compared to 2005 and decrease the pollutants that contribute to the soot and smog and can lead to more asthma attacks in kids by more than 70 percent. The Clean Power Plan will also avoid up to 3,600 premature deaths, lead to 90,000 fewer asthma attacks in children, and prevent 300,000 missed work and school days.
- Create tens of thousands of jobs while ensuring grid reliability;
- Drive more aggressive investment in clean energy technologies than the proposed rule, resulting in 30 percent more renewable energy generation in 2030 and continuing to lower the costs of renewable energy.
- Save the average American family nearly $85 on their annual energy bill in 2030, reducing enough energy to power 30 million homes, and save consumers a total of $155 billion from 2020-2030;
- Give a head start to wind and solar deployment and prioritize the deployment of energy efficiency improvements in low-income communities that need it most early in the program through a Clean Energy Incentive Program; and
- Continue American leadership on climate change by keeping us on track to meet the economy-wide emissions targets we have set, including the goal of reducing emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and to 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
KEY FEATURES OF THE CLEAN POWER PLAN
The final Clean Power Plan takes into account the unprecedented input EPA received through extensive outreach, including the 4 million comments that were submitted to the agency during the public comment period. The result is a fair, flexible program that will strengthen the fast-growing trend toward cleaner and lower-polluting American energy. The Clean Power Plan significantly reduces carbon pollution from the electric power sector while advancing clean energy innovation, development, and deployment. It ensures the U.S. will stay on a path of long-term clean energy investments that will maintain the reliability of our electric grid, promote affordable and clean energy for all Americans, and continue United States leadership on climate action. The Clean Power Plan:
- Provides Flexibility to States to Choose How to Meet Carbon Standards: EPA’s Clean Power Plan establishes carbon pollution standards for power plants, called carbon dioxide (CO2) emission performance rates. States develop and implement tailored plans to ensure that the power plants in their state meet these standards– either individually, together, or in combination with other measures like improvements in renewable energy and energy efficiency. The final rule provides more flexibility in how state plans can be designed and implemented, including: streamlined opportunities for states to include proven strategies like trading and demand-side energy efficiency in their plans, and allows states to develop “trading ready” plans to participate in “opt in” to an emission credit trading market with other states taking parallel approaches without the need for interstate agreements. All low-carbon electricity generation technologies, including renewables, energy efficiency, natural gas, nuclear and carbon capture and storage, can play a role in state plans. "
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/5EC4F387A996F5F48…
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3603
"President Obama and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy will release the final Clean Power Plan, a historic step in the Obama Administration’s fight against climate change.
The Clean Power Plan establishes the first-ever national standards to limit carbon pollution from power plants. We already set limits that protect public health by reducing soot and other toxic emissions, but until now, existing power plants, the largest source of carbon emissions in the United States, could release as much carbon pollution as they wanted.
The final Clean Power Plan sets flexible and achievable standards to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, 9 percent more ambitious than the proposal. By setting carbon pollution reduction goals for power plants and enabling states to develop tailored implementation plans to meet those goals, the Clean Power Plan is a strong, flexible framework that will:
- Provide significant public health benefits – The Clean Power Plan, and other policies put in place to drive a cleaner energy sector, will reduce premature deaths from power plant emissions by nearly 90 percent in 2030 compared to 2005 and decrease the pollutants that contribute to the soot and smog and can lead to more asthma attacks in kids by more than 70 percent. The Clean Power Plan will also avoid up to 3,600 premature deaths, lead to 90,000 fewer asthma attacks in children, and prevent 300,000 missed work and school days.
- Create tens of thousands of jobs while ensuring grid reliability;
- Drive more aggressive investment in clean energy technologies than the proposed rule, resulting in 30 percent more renewable energy generation in 2030 and continuing to lower the costs of renewable energy.
- Save the average American family nearly $85 on their annual energy bill in 2030, reducing enough energy to power 30 million homes, and save consumers a total of $155 billion from 2020-2030;
- Give a head start to wind and solar deployment and prioritize the deployment of energy efficiency improvements in low-income communities that need it most early in the program through a Clean Energy Incentive Program; and
- Continue American leadership on climate change by keeping us on track to meet the economy-wide emissions targets we have set, including the goal of reducing emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and to 26-28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
KEY FEATURES OF THE CLEAN POWER PLAN
The final Clean Power Plan takes into account the unprecedented input EPA received through extensive outreach, including the 4 million comments that were submitted to the agency during the public comment period. The result is a fair, flexible program that will strengthen the fast-growing trend toward cleaner and lower-polluting American energy. The Clean Power Plan significantly reduces carbon pollution from the electric power sector while advancing clean energy innovation, development, and deployment. It ensures the U.S. will stay on a path of long-term clean energy investments that will maintain the reliability of our electric grid, promote affordable and clean energy for all Americans, and continue United States leadership on climate action. The Clean Power Plan:
- Provides Flexibility to States to Choose How to Meet Carbon Standards: EPA’s Clean Power Plan establishes carbon pollution standards for power plants, called carbon dioxide (CO2) emission performance rates. States develop and implement tailored plans to ensure that the power plants in their state meet these standards– either individually, together, or in combination with other measures like improvements in renewable energy and energy efficiency. The final rule provides more flexibility in how state plans can be designed and implemented, including: streamlined opportunities for states to include proven strategies like trading and demand-side energy efficiency in their plans, and allows states to develop “trading ready” plans to participate in “opt in” to an emission credit trading market with other states taking parallel approaches without the need for interstate agreements. All low-carbon electricity generation technologies, including renewables, energy efficiency, natural gas, nuclear and carbon capture and storage, can play a role in state plans. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.324.445 von Popeye82 am 04.08.15 02:35:44
Obama heralds impact of power plant regulations - SH/TCP, WASHINGTON - Aug 3, 2015
www.stockhouse.com/news/bulletins/2015/08/03/ob-impact-power…
"President Barack Obama says his new power plant regulations are "the single most important step" America has ever taken in the fight against climate change.
The president's plan requires states to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 32 per cent by 2030.
Obama says he is convinced that no challenge poses a greater threat to "our future and future generations" than a changing climate. He says the U.S. can't risk being too late in stopping the effects of climate change.
Opponents plan to sue to stop the rule. "
Obama heralds impact of power plant regulations - SH/TCP, WASHINGTON - Aug 3, 2015
www.stockhouse.com/news/bulletins/2015/08/03/ob-impact-power…
"President Barack Obama says his new power plant regulations are "the single most important step" America has ever taken in the fight against climate change.
The president's plan requires states to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 32 per cent by 2030.
Obama says he is convinced that no challenge poses a greater threat to "our future and future generations" than a changing climate. He says the U.S. can't risk being too late in stopping the effects of climate change.
Opponents plan to sue to stop the rule. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.324.445 von Popeye82 am 04.08.15 02:35:44
We DID it! EPA limits power plant carbon emissions +boosts renewables
https://secure3.convio.net/ucs/site/Donation2;jsessionid=577…
"Together our hard work has paid off. Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its final Clean Power Plan, setting first-ever limits on power plant carbon emissions and taking a critical step forward in tackling climate change. These new limits, developed under the Clean Air Act, represent the most significant opportunity in years to help curb the emissions that contribute to worsening climate change and to advance renewable energy such as wind and solar.
What's more, the EPA listened to UCS supporters like you who called for a stronger rule. In this final plan, the EPA strengthened the role that renewable energy can play in helping states to meet their global warming emissions limits and limited the risk of a rush to natural gas—critical improvements that will hasten our transition to a clean energy future.
Over the past year, the Union of Concerned Scientists and supporters like you have built a powerful case for strong limits on power plant emissions and an increased role for renewable energy in helping meet those limits. Armed with 42,000 comments from people like you and our independent analysis, we met repeatedly with top EPA and White House officials to persuade them to strengthen the proposed standard. Our analytically rigorous proposal to strengthen the Clean Power Plan by ramping up cost-effective renewable energy was endorsed by 13 U.S. senators, a dozen state attorneys general, and leaders in the rapidly growing clean energy sector. We called out the naysayers by demonstrating that many states are already on track to cut emissions affordably and reliably by ramping up renewable energy and energy efficiency, reducing their reliance on coal, and avoiding a rush to overdependence on natural gas. Today it is clear that we have prevailed despite forceful attempts from the fossil fuel industry and their allies to slow down and weaken these historic limits.
This is a truly historic moment—congratulations on this hard won victory! And thank you for everything you do to combat climate change and advance science-based solutions.
Sincerely,
Angela Anderson
Director, Climate & Energy Program
Union of Concerned Scientists "
We DID it! EPA limits power plant carbon emissions +boosts renewables
https://secure3.convio.net/ucs/site/Donation2;jsessionid=577…
"Together our hard work has paid off. Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its final Clean Power Plan, setting first-ever limits on power plant carbon emissions and taking a critical step forward in tackling climate change. These new limits, developed under the Clean Air Act, represent the most significant opportunity in years to help curb the emissions that contribute to worsening climate change and to advance renewable energy such as wind and solar.
What's more, the EPA listened to UCS supporters like you who called for a stronger rule. In this final plan, the EPA strengthened the role that renewable energy can play in helping states to meet their global warming emissions limits and limited the risk of a rush to natural gas—critical improvements that will hasten our transition to a clean energy future.
Over the past year, the Union of Concerned Scientists and supporters like you have built a powerful case for strong limits on power plant emissions and an increased role for renewable energy in helping meet those limits. Armed with 42,000 comments from people like you and our independent analysis, we met repeatedly with top EPA and White House officials to persuade them to strengthen the proposed standard. Our analytically rigorous proposal to strengthen the Clean Power Plan by ramping up cost-effective renewable energy was endorsed by 13 U.S. senators, a dozen state attorneys general, and leaders in the rapidly growing clean energy sector. We called out the naysayers by demonstrating that many states are already on track to cut emissions affordably and reliably by ramping up renewable energy and energy efficiency, reducing their reliance on coal, and avoiding a rush to overdependence on natural gas. Today it is clear that we have prevailed despite forceful attempts from the fossil fuel industry and their allies to slow down and weaken these historic limits.
This is a truly historic moment—congratulations on this hard won victory! And thank you for everything you do to combat climate change and advance science-based solutions.
Sincerely,
Angela Anderson
Director, Climate & Energy Program
Union of Concerned Scientists "
Antarctic life is more diverse, than previously thought; “This is one of the planet’s last, relatively intact, large marine ecosystems. It is unusual in this respect, +thus provides a suite of globally significant conservation benefits +scientific insights” - ENN/BAS/MU, SoBS/UoW/ANU, MONARCH/WAIKATO - Aug 4, 2015
www.bas.ac.uk/media-post/news-story-antarctic-life-highly-di…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48839
"The team of scientists, led by Monash University, along with colleagues from the British Antarctic Survey, University of Waikato in New Zealand, and Australian National University, looked at how recent investigations have revealed the continent and surrounding ocean is rich in species. They are also very highly diversified into a variety of distinct ecological regions that differ greatly from each other.
Lead author, Professor Steven Chown, School of Biological Sciences at Monash, said the team explicitly focussed on demonstrating the diversity of various areas of the Antarctic continent and Southern Ocean. He said:
“Most people think of the continent as a vast, icy waste, and the sea as uniformly populated by whales, seals and penguins. But that’s simply not true”.
“There’s much biodiversity on land, especially among the micro-organisms, such as bacteria, and the seafloor is very rich in larger unusual species, such as sea spiders and isopods (the marine equivalents of slaters or wood lice). More than 8000 species are known from the marine environment.”
Dr Ceridwen Fraser, co-author from the Australian National University.said: “Each area of the Antarctic also has very different groupings of species; while initially they may look the same, they are actually very different.”
The team also noted several unusual ways in which patterns of biodiversity are produced in the region. Geothermal, heated areas, such as volcanoes, have played an important role as refuges from icy, glacial conditions on land. At sea, wind has an especially significant effect on diversity. Windier areas have more seabird species.
“Most people think of the continent as a vast, icy waste, and the sea as uniformly populated by whales, seals and penguins. But that’s simply not true,” he said.
“There’s much biodiversity on land, especially among the micro-organisms, such as bacteria, and the seafloor is very rich in larger unusual species, such as sea spiders and isopods (the marine equivalents of slaters or wood lice). More than 8000 species are known from the marine environment.”
Dr Ceridwen Fraser, co-author from the Australian National University said: “Each area of the Antarctic also has very different groupings of species; while initially they may look the same, they are actually very different.”
The team also noted several unusual ways in which patterns of biodiversity are produced in the region. Geothermal, heated areas, such as volcanoes, have played an important role as refuges from icy, glacial conditions on land. At sea, wind has an especially significant effect on diversity. Windier areas have more seabird species. "
www.bas.ac.uk/media-post/news-story-antarctic-life-highly-di…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48839
"The team of scientists, led by Monash University, along with colleagues from the British Antarctic Survey, University of Waikato in New Zealand, and Australian National University, looked at how recent investigations have revealed the continent and surrounding ocean is rich in species. They are also very highly diversified into a variety of distinct ecological regions that differ greatly from each other.
Lead author, Professor Steven Chown, School of Biological Sciences at Monash, said the team explicitly focussed on demonstrating the diversity of various areas of the Antarctic continent and Southern Ocean. He said:
“Most people think of the continent as a vast, icy waste, and the sea as uniformly populated by whales, seals and penguins. But that’s simply not true”.
“There’s much biodiversity on land, especially among the micro-organisms, such as bacteria, and the seafloor is very rich in larger unusual species, such as sea spiders and isopods (the marine equivalents of slaters or wood lice). More than 8000 species are known from the marine environment.”
Dr Ceridwen Fraser, co-author from the Australian National University.said: “Each area of the Antarctic also has very different groupings of species; while initially they may look the same, they are actually very different.”
The team also noted several unusual ways in which patterns of biodiversity are produced in the region. Geothermal, heated areas, such as volcanoes, have played an important role as refuges from icy, glacial conditions on land. At sea, wind has an especially significant effect on diversity. Windier areas have more seabird species.
“Most people think of the continent as a vast, icy waste, and the sea as uniformly populated by whales, seals and penguins. But that’s simply not true,” he said.
“There’s much biodiversity on land, especially among the micro-organisms, such as bacteria, and the seafloor is very rich in larger unusual species, such as sea spiders and isopods (the marine equivalents of slaters or wood lice). More than 8000 species are known from the marine environment.”
Dr Ceridwen Fraser, co-author from the Australian National University said: “Each area of the Antarctic also has very different groupings of species; while initially they may look the same, they are actually very different.”
The team also noted several unusual ways in which patterns of biodiversity are produced in the region. Geothermal, heated areas, such as volcanoes, have played an important role as refuges from icy, glacial conditions on land. At sea, wind has an especially significant effect on diversity. Windier areas have more seabird species. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.324.445 von Popeye82 am 04.08.15 02:35:44
INVITATION: Gina McCarthy @RFF on the Promise of the Clean Power Plan, A Conversation with Gina McCarthy, Administrator, US Environmental Protection Agency, An RFF Policy Leadership Forum Aug 11, '15, 12:15 -1:15 p.m. EDT, Lunch WILL be available, @12:00 p.m., 1616 P St. NW, Washington, DC 20036,
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/Gina-McCarthy-on-the-Promise-of-the…
INVITATION: Gina McCarthy @RFF on the Promise of the Clean Power Plan, A Conversation with Gina McCarthy, Administrator, US Environmental Protection Agency, An RFF Policy Leadership Forum Aug 11, '15, 12:15 -1:15 p.m. EDT, Lunch WILL be available, @12:00 p.m., 1616 P St. NW, Washington, DC 20036,
www.rff.org/Events/Pages/Gina-McCarthy-on-the-Promise-of-the…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.324.445 von Popeye82 am 04.08.15 02:35:44
We DID it!
www.forbes.com/sites/mindylubber/2015/08/03/why-corporate-am…
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/365-companies-and-investo…
www.ceres.org/issues/climate-change/clean-power-plan/clean-p…
www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/03/obamas-clean-pow…
www.ceres.org/declaration/declaration-home
"Dear XXX,
I was honored to be in the East Room of the White House representing Ceres and hundreds of companies and investors as President Obama and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy announced the biggest step the U.S. has ever taken to tackle climate change - the Clean Power Plan. The plan is the nation's first comprehensive effort to reduce carbon pollution from existing electric power plants - the single largest source of global warming pollution in the country.
The plan gives states flexibility to create their own mix of renewable energy, energy efficiency and clean energy to achieve the goal of reducing power plant carbon pollution by 32 percent by 2030.
Ceres has played a major role in mobilizing businesses and investors who are crucial to supporting implementation of the Clean Power Plan. Days before the final plan was announced, we organized 365 businesses and investors, including General Mills, Mars Inc., Nestle, Staples, Unilever and VF Corporation, to voice their support. They sent letters to more than two-dozen governors, urging them to finalize and implement their state's plans to meet the standards and "expand clean energy solutions, attract new industries to the state, and create thousands of jobs".
The companies and investors wrote, "Clean energy solutions are cost effective and innovative ways to drive investment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Increasingly, businesses rely on renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions to cut costs and improve corporation performance."
- Clean Power Plan Governors State -
Click here to learn more about business and investor support for the Clean Power Plan
The EPA's Clean Power Plan will drive economic value for companies in all 50 states and could help save consumers up to $41 billion in electricity costs in the next 15 years. And its reach will go beyond the U.S. With the upcoming international climate negotiations in Paris later this year, America is showing leadership on climate change.
These 365 companies and investors, along with the 1,500 company signatories of our Climate Declaration, a call to action urging policymakers and business leaders to seize the economic opportunity in tackling climate change, are important voices in affirming the economic and environmental imperative to act.
I could not be more proud of our organization and the leadership from companies and investors in providing vital support for the Clean Power Plan and urging global leaders to protect our future and act on climate.
Thank you,
Mindy 2013
Mindy Lubber
President
Ceres "
We DID it!
www.forbes.com/sites/mindylubber/2015/08/03/why-corporate-am…
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/365-companies-and-investo…
www.ceres.org/issues/climate-change/clean-power-plan/clean-p…
www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/03/obamas-clean-pow…
www.ceres.org/declaration/declaration-home
"Dear XXX,
I was honored to be in the East Room of the White House representing Ceres and hundreds of companies and investors as President Obama and EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy announced the biggest step the U.S. has ever taken to tackle climate change - the Clean Power Plan. The plan is the nation's first comprehensive effort to reduce carbon pollution from existing electric power plants - the single largest source of global warming pollution in the country.
The plan gives states flexibility to create their own mix of renewable energy, energy efficiency and clean energy to achieve the goal of reducing power plant carbon pollution by 32 percent by 2030.
Ceres has played a major role in mobilizing businesses and investors who are crucial to supporting implementation of the Clean Power Plan. Days before the final plan was announced, we organized 365 businesses and investors, including General Mills, Mars Inc., Nestle, Staples, Unilever and VF Corporation, to voice their support. They sent letters to more than two-dozen governors, urging them to finalize and implement their state's plans to meet the standards and "expand clean energy solutions, attract new industries to the state, and create thousands of jobs".
The companies and investors wrote, "Clean energy solutions are cost effective and innovative ways to drive investment and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Increasingly, businesses rely on renewable energy and energy efficiency solutions to cut costs and improve corporation performance."
- Clean Power Plan Governors State -
Click here to learn more about business and investor support for the Clean Power Plan
The EPA's Clean Power Plan will drive economic value for companies in all 50 states and could help save consumers up to $41 billion in electricity costs in the next 15 years. And its reach will go beyond the U.S. With the upcoming international climate negotiations in Paris later this year, America is showing leadership on climate change.
These 365 companies and investors, along with the 1,500 company signatories of our Climate Declaration, a call to action urging policymakers and business leaders to seize the economic opportunity in tackling climate change, are important voices in affirming the economic and environmental imperative to act.
I could not be more proud of our organization and the leadership from companies and investors in providing vital support for the Clean Power Plan and urging global leaders to protect our future and act on climate.
Thank you,
Mindy 2013
Mindy Lubber
President
Ceres "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.324.445 von Popeye82 am 04.08.15 02:35:44
Obama’s Clean Power Plan: A “Huge Win for Algae”, the EPA finalizes its rule for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, +includes strong support for “carbon capture +use” - BD/EPA/WH, WASHINGTON - Aug 4, 2015
- Jim Lane -
------> www.epa.gov/airquality/cpp/cpp-final-rule.pdf
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2015/08/04/obamas-clean-power…
"In Washington, the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan has been hailed by the Algae Biomass Organization and other sections of the advanced bioeconomy as a “huge win for algae” with its OK for carbon capture and use technologies.
The Clean Power Plan sets federal guidelines for states to follow in order to cut carbon emissions by 32 percent before 2030. According to the EPA, CO2 alone is responsible for 84% of the greenhouse gas problem. More than a third of that comes straight from existing power plants.
The Plan is a final rule from the EPA, capping a years-long effort by the Obama Administration to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, after efforts to pass legislation for cap-and-trade failed in the Congress during Obama’s first term. Along the way, the US Supreme Court confirmed the Administration’s right to regulate CO2 as a pollutant.
A signature feature of the plan is having individual state-level plans that manage remediation plans for the obligated emitters in their respective jurisdictions.
As assist, for algae
The Clean Power Plan rule announcement says, “state plans may allow affected [Electric Generating Units] to use qualifying CCU technologies to reduce CO2 emissions that are subject to an emission standard…”
The rule further notes, “state plans may allow affected EGU’s to use qualifying CCU technologies to reduce CO2 emission,” and “emission goals would require a better understanding of the ultimate fate of the captured CO2 and the degree to which the method permanently isolates the captured CO2 or displaces other CO2 emission from the atmosphere.”
According to Algenol, the #3-ranked company in the Advanced Bioeconomy, “just $2 worth of CO2 can make seven barrels of fuel.” Accordingly, carbon capture and use (known collectively as CCU technology) is a carbon remediation strategy critical to virtually every company using microalgae or cyanobacteria to convert CO2 plus water into a range of fuels, chemicals, protein, fertilizer, omega-3 nutraceuticals, cosmetics, biomaterials or other bioeconomy products — making it possible for algae companies and others to obtain CO2 from power plants as part of an overall greenhouse gas reduction program by the obligated parties.
Alternatives to geologic sequestration, for permanent confinement
The Plan also sidestepped efforts to definite carbon capture and sequestration exclusively via landfilling CO2 in geologic formations — for example sequestering CO2 in biobased materials. The Plan notes:
“Potential alternatives to sequestering CO2 in geologic formations are emerging. These relatively new potential alternatives may offer the opportunity to offset the cost of CO2 capture… these technologies not only show promise, but could potentially be demonstrated to show permanent storage of CO2. In the January 2014 proposal, the EPA noted that it would need to adopt a mechanism to evaluate these alternative technologies before any could be used in lieu of geologic sequestration. 79 FR at 1484. The EPA is establishing such a mechanism in this final rule. See §60.5555(g). The rule provides for a case-by-case adjudication by the EPA of applications seeking to demonstrate to the EPA that a non-geologic sequestration technology would result in permanent confinement of captured CO2 from an affected EGU.
The overall Clean Power Plan
The overall EPA Final Rule is here.
US President Barack Obama unveiled his 1300-page Clean Power Plan, focused on limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants — essentially, shifting broadly to renewables such as wind and solar, while maintaining the use of natural gas.
President Obama called it ”the biggest, most important step we have ever taken” on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. I’m convinced no challenge provides a greater threat to the future of the planet. There is such a thing as being too late. If we don’t do it nobody will. America leads the way forward. This is our moment to get something right and get something right for our kids”.
Algae stakeholder reaction
“This is a huge win for the algae industry,” said Matt Carr, executive director of the Algae Biomass Organization, “and one we have been working towards for more than a year. The rule gives new certainty to a number of companies across the nation that are commercializing algae-based technologies that convert carbon dioxide generated at power plants into fuels, feeds, fertilizers and other valuable products. Carbon utilization will reduce the cost of emissions reduction for utilities and rate payers, and in some cases create a new revenue stream. This common-sense, market-driven approach has bi-partisan support throughout Congress and its growing importance is reflected by several bills in the House and Senate that direct federal agencies to increase funding for carbon utilization.
Algenol CEO Paul Woods also hailed the move. “My hope was to move towards an inclusion of carbon utilization with this final rule. Here,.they went farther, they specifically named algae.”
What went right for algae here, why the big win?
“We are the one part of the clean power rule that wasn’t controversial, said Woods. “Carbon utilization is taking advantage of American high tech, and is not a burden on electric customers because we pay for the CO2 we use. So we had bipartisan support for this provision. Now, the utilities have a portfolio of options, and in our case what’s different about ALgenol is that we have the approved EPA pathway. This allows for affordable electricity and clean power, both. We want to buy from the electric company, and see that money flow to the customers.
“That is key. If we want a green economy, we have to have low-cost solutions,” Woods added.
What’s next for algae, we asked Woods, in terms of the final steps before commercial-scale algae renewable fuels can be built in the US?
“Two things would help. Having Master Limited Partnerships opened up to renewable fuels, not just fossil fuels. That would help every company commercializing renewable fuels. Also, renewal of the Production Tax Credit for more than one year, a whole lot more. These one-year retroactive credits don;t help with project finance, the most important thing is to make it certain, and by establishing this in advance it’s no different than doing it retroactively, in terms of the tax impact. But it would make a huge impact for projects.
Reaction, from Presidential candidates
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “I’d defend it. It will need defending. Because Republican doubters and defeatists – including every Republican candidate for president – won’t offer any credible solution. The truth is, they don’t want one.”
Florida US Senator Marco Rubio described the plan’s economic consequences as “catastrophic” and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush called it “irresponsible and over-reaching.” Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said the plan “would bankrupt families,” Ted Cruz called the plan “flatly unconstitutional…lawless and radical attempt to destabilize the nation’s energy system. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walked described it as the “Costly Power Plan”, while Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley tweeted support for the plan. "
Obama’s Clean Power Plan: A “Huge Win for Algae”, the EPA finalizes its rule for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, +includes strong support for “carbon capture +use” - BD/EPA/WH, WASHINGTON - Aug 4, 2015
- Jim Lane -
------> www.epa.gov/airquality/cpp/cpp-final-rule.pdf
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2015/08/04/obamas-clean-power…
"In Washington, the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan has been hailed by the Algae Biomass Organization and other sections of the advanced bioeconomy as a “huge win for algae” with its OK for carbon capture and use technologies.
The Clean Power Plan sets federal guidelines for states to follow in order to cut carbon emissions by 32 percent before 2030. According to the EPA, CO2 alone is responsible for 84% of the greenhouse gas problem. More than a third of that comes straight from existing power plants.
The Plan is a final rule from the EPA, capping a years-long effort by the Obama Administration to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, after efforts to pass legislation for cap-and-trade failed in the Congress during Obama’s first term. Along the way, the US Supreme Court confirmed the Administration’s right to regulate CO2 as a pollutant.
A signature feature of the plan is having individual state-level plans that manage remediation plans for the obligated emitters in their respective jurisdictions.
As assist, for algae
The Clean Power Plan rule announcement says, “state plans may allow affected [Electric Generating Units] to use qualifying CCU technologies to reduce CO2 emissions that are subject to an emission standard…”
The rule further notes, “state plans may allow affected EGU’s to use qualifying CCU technologies to reduce CO2 emission,” and “emission goals would require a better understanding of the ultimate fate of the captured CO2 and the degree to which the method permanently isolates the captured CO2 or displaces other CO2 emission from the atmosphere.”
According to Algenol, the #3-ranked company in the Advanced Bioeconomy, “just $2 worth of CO2 can make seven barrels of fuel.” Accordingly, carbon capture and use (known collectively as CCU technology) is a carbon remediation strategy critical to virtually every company using microalgae or cyanobacteria to convert CO2 plus water into a range of fuels, chemicals, protein, fertilizer, omega-3 nutraceuticals, cosmetics, biomaterials or other bioeconomy products — making it possible for algae companies and others to obtain CO2 from power plants as part of an overall greenhouse gas reduction program by the obligated parties.
Alternatives to geologic sequestration, for permanent confinement
The Plan also sidestepped efforts to definite carbon capture and sequestration exclusively via landfilling CO2 in geologic formations — for example sequestering CO2 in biobased materials. The Plan notes:
“Potential alternatives to sequestering CO2 in geologic formations are emerging. These relatively new potential alternatives may offer the opportunity to offset the cost of CO2 capture… these technologies not only show promise, but could potentially be demonstrated to show permanent storage of CO2. In the January 2014 proposal, the EPA noted that it would need to adopt a mechanism to evaluate these alternative technologies before any could be used in lieu of geologic sequestration. 79 FR at 1484. The EPA is establishing such a mechanism in this final rule. See §60.5555(g). The rule provides for a case-by-case adjudication by the EPA of applications seeking to demonstrate to the EPA that a non-geologic sequestration technology would result in permanent confinement of captured CO2 from an affected EGU.
The overall Clean Power Plan
The overall EPA Final Rule is here.
US President Barack Obama unveiled his 1300-page Clean Power Plan, focused on limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants — essentially, shifting broadly to renewables such as wind and solar, while maintaining the use of natural gas.
President Obama called it ”the biggest, most important step we have ever taken” on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. I’m convinced no challenge provides a greater threat to the future of the planet. There is such a thing as being too late. If we don’t do it nobody will. America leads the way forward. This is our moment to get something right and get something right for our kids”.
Algae stakeholder reaction
“This is a huge win for the algae industry,” said Matt Carr, executive director of the Algae Biomass Organization, “and one we have been working towards for more than a year. The rule gives new certainty to a number of companies across the nation that are commercializing algae-based technologies that convert carbon dioxide generated at power plants into fuels, feeds, fertilizers and other valuable products. Carbon utilization will reduce the cost of emissions reduction for utilities and rate payers, and in some cases create a new revenue stream. This common-sense, market-driven approach has bi-partisan support throughout Congress and its growing importance is reflected by several bills in the House and Senate that direct federal agencies to increase funding for carbon utilization.
Algenol CEO Paul Woods also hailed the move. “My hope was to move towards an inclusion of carbon utilization with this final rule. Here,.they went farther, they specifically named algae.”
What went right for algae here, why the big win?
“We are the one part of the clean power rule that wasn’t controversial, said Woods. “Carbon utilization is taking advantage of American high tech, and is not a burden on electric customers because we pay for the CO2 we use. So we had bipartisan support for this provision. Now, the utilities have a portfolio of options, and in our case what’s different about ALgenol is that we have the approved EPA pathway. This allows for affordable electricity and clean power, both. We want to buy from the electric company, and see that money flow to the customers.
“That is key. If we want a green economy, we have to have low-cost solutions,” Woods added.
What’s next for algae, we asked Woods, in terms of the final steps before commercial-scale algae renewable fuels can be built in the US?
“Two things would help. Having Master Limited Partnerships opened up to renewable fuels, not just fossil fuels. That would help every company commercializing renewable fuels. Also, renewal of the Production Tax Credit for more than one year, a whole lot more. These one-year retroactive credits don;t help with project finance, the most important thing is to make it certain, and by establishing this in advance it’s no different than doing it retroactively, in terms of the tax impact. But it would make a huge impact for projects.
Reaction, from Presidential candidates
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “I’d defend it. It will need defending. Because Republican doubters and defeatists – including every Republican candidate for president – won’t offer any credible solution. The truth is, they don’t want one.”
Florida US Senator Marco Rubio described the plan’s economic consequences as “catastrophic” and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush called it “irresponsible and over-reaching.” Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said the plan “would bankrupt families,” Ted Cruz called the plan “flatly unconstitutional…lawless and radical attempt to destabilize the nation’s energy system. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walked described it as the “Costly Power Plan”, while Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley tweeted support for the plan. "
How the loss of Indonesian mangrove forests is linked to climate change
www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2975926/stop_mangrov…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48855
"The loss of Indonesia's coastal mangrove forests for shrimp farming is a huge source of carbon emissions, writes Prodita Sabarini. But equally, a policy flip to preserve and recreate mangroves offers a major climate win.
Mangroves are important because of their high rates of tree and plant growth, coupled with anaerobic, water-logged soils that slow decomposition, resulting in large, long-term carbon storage. Mangroves store three to five times more carbon than rainforest
Preventing the loss of Indonesian mangroves would help in the global fight against climate change, new research shows.
The study, published recently in Nature Climate Change, estimated that if Indonesia halts mangrove deforestation it could reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions by between 10% to 31%.
That would be globally significant, since Indonesia is among the world's highest contributors to global emissions - ranked 12th in the world in 2012, according to European Commission figures, behind others led by China, the US and the European Union, and just ahead of Australia. "
www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2975926/stop_mangrov…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48855
"The loss of Indonesia's coastal mangrove forests for shrimp farming is a huge source of carbon emissions, writes Prodita Sabarini. But equally, a policy flip to preserve and recreate mangroves offers a major climate win.
Mangroves are important because of their high rates of tree and plant growth, coupled with anaerobic, water-logged soils that slow decomposition, resulting in large, long-term carbon storage. Mangroves store three to five times more carbon than rainforest
Preventing the loss of Indonesian mangroves would help in the global fight against climate change, new research shows.
The study, published recently in Nature Climate Change, estimated that if Indonesia halts mangrove deforestation it could reduce its total greenhouse gas emissions by between 10% to 31%.
That would be globally significant, since Indonesia is among the world's highest contributors to global emissions - ranked 12th in the world in 2012, according to European Commission figures, behind others led by China, the US and the European Union, and just ahead of Australia. "
EPA’s blows it — causes massive mine wastewater spill @Colorado rivers, while the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was investigating pollutants @an old gold mine, it accidentally released an estimated one million gallons of mining waste into a creek - M.com/EPA/FDT, COLORADO - Aug 8, 2015
- C. Jamasmie -
------> http://fox13now.com/2015/08/07/colorado-mine-waste-spill-exp…
www2.epa.gov/region8/gold-king-mine-release-emergency-respon…
www.mining.com/epas-blows-it-causes-massive-mine-wastewater-…
"
- These images, courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency, show the mouth of the Gold King Mine tunnel (left), and the channeled runoff on the mine dump (right). -
Talking about ironies… The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has revealed that one of its clean-up teams working at an old Colorado gold mine Thursday accidentally caused the spill of over one million gallons of mining wastewater into a local river.
According to a statement by the EPA, the contaminated water was hiding out behind debris near the Gold King Mine entrance, where the crew was working with heavy machinery. The mine waste poured out into a nearby creek, eventually leading to the Animas River where the spill spread.
- Gold King Mine discharge. (Screenshot from Fox13 video) -
The agency said is currently testing the polluted water to see what toxins may contain. Previous analysis of the same mine's water has shown it to have iron, aluminum, cadmium, zinc and copper in varying concentrations.
EPA said the spill does not threaten local sources of drinking water and the main contaminants responsible for the leak’s mustard-like colour are unlikely to be dangerous.
"It's not going to look pretty, but it's not a killer," Don Cooper, emergency manager in San Juan County told The Farmington Daily Times.
Still, recreational activity on the affected waterways has been suspended until the orange-coloured plume has dissipated.
- (CLICK on it, to enlarge) -
As the mine spill made its way through the river, authorities told people to avoid contact with the water. EPA recommended recreational users stay out of the water, putting a halt to summer kayaking, swimming and fishing for the time being.
The Animas River is the largest tributary of the San Juan River, which flows through Utah into Lake Powell. "
- C. Jamasmie -
------> http://fox13now.com/2015/08/07/colorado-mine-waste-spill-exp…
www2.epa.gov/region8/gold-king-mine-release-emergency-respon…
www.mining.com/epas-blows-it-causes-massive-mine-wastewater-…
"
- These images, courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency, show the mouth of the Gold King Mine tunnel (left), and the channeled runoff on the mine dump (right). -
Talking about ironies… The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has revealed that one of its clean-up teams working at an old Colorado gold mine Thursday accidentally caused the spill of over one million gallons of mining wastewater into a local river.
According to a statement by the EPA, the contaminated water was hiding out behind debris near the Gold King Mine entrance, where the crew was working with heavy machinery. The mine waste poured out into a nearby creek, eventually leading to the Animas River where the spill spread.
- Gold King Mine discharge. (Screenshot from Fox13 video) -
The agency said is currently testing the polluted water to see what toxins may contain. Previous analysis of the same mine's water has shown it to have iron, aluminum, cadmium, zinc and copper in varying concentrations.
EPA said the spill does not threaten local sources of drinking water and the main contaminants responsible for the leak’s mustard-like colour are unlikely to be dangerous.
"It's not going to look pretty, but it's not a killer," Don Cooper, emergency manager in San Juan County told The Farmington Daily Times.
Still, recreational activity on the affected waterways has been suspended until the orange-coloured plume has dissipated.
- (CLICK on it, to enlarge) -
As the mine spill made its way through the river, authorities told people to avoid contact with the water. EPA recommended recreational users stay out of the water, putting a halt to summer kayaking, swimming and fishing for the time being.
The Animas River is the largest tributary of the San Juan River, which flows through Utah into Lake Powell. "
Power plant CO2 emissions @27 year low - ENN/C2 - Aug 11, 2015
- Kevin Matthews -
www.care2.com/causes/good-news-power-plant-carbon-emissions-…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48860
"Most of the environmental news we hear today is disheartening information about the consequences we’ll soon be facing thanks to climate change. Let’s take a momentary break from that sadness to focus on some good news: U.S. power plants are currently releasing the lowest amount of carbon emissions in 27 years. It seems like we might be making some progress!
The low mark occurred in April of this year, when U.S. power plants generated just 141 million tons of carbon dioxide, a figure we haven’t seen since April of 1988. Because power plants produce roughly one-third of the country’s emissions, this measurement is one of the biggest indicators we have to see how we’re doing at tackling global warming.
While some of this carbon success can be attributed to a rise in renewable resources, experts admit that a lot of the shift is a decreased reliance on coal. Considered dirty energy, burning coal releases more carbon dioxide than other forms of fuel. Instead, more power companies have turned to burning natural gas, which – though still harmful to the environment – creates less carbon emissions. The reason for this shift is not only that power companies are becoming more conscious of their eco-footprint, but also that the price of natural gas has decreased nearly 40 percent in the past twelve months alone making it a much more affordable option.
Though it’s likely that April’s number will rebound a little over the summer months since the heat prompts a surge in air conditioning use, the trend is encouraging overall. Though the amount of carbon emissions have been dropping (fairly) steadily since 2008, the initial drop was attributed mainly to the economic crash and a decline in manufacturing that necessitates power. While the economy has since rebounded and, in turn, required more power, a change in what power plants are burning has kept carbon emissions trending in a downward trajectory anyway.
A 27-year low in power plant emissions is worth celebrating, but it’s still not time to coast on this success. Though burning natural gas is better than coal, switching to wind and solar power on a large scale will be the real victory. To protect the planet, carbon emissions from power plants will eventually need to hover around zero. "
- ENN/C2 - Aug 11, 2015- Kevin Matthews -
www.care2.com/causes/good-news-power-plant-carbon-emissions-…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48860
"Most of the environmental news we hear today is disheartening information about the consequences we’ll soon be facing thanks to climate change. Let’s take a momentary break from that sadness to focus on some good news: U.S. power plants are currently releasing the lowest amount of carbon emissions in 27 years. It seems like we might be making some progress!
The low mark occurred in April of this year, when U.S. power plants generated just 141 million tons of carbon dioxide, a figure we haven’t seen since April of 1988. Because power plants produce roughly one-third of the country’s emissions, this measurement is one of the biggest indicators we have to see how we’re doing at tackling global warming.
While some of this carbon success can be attributed to a rise in renewable resources, experts admit that a lot of the shift is a decreased reliance on coal. Considered dirty energy, burning coal releases more carbon dioxide than other forms of fuel. Instead, more power companies have turned to burning natural gas, which – though still harmful to the environment – creates less carbon emissions. The reason for this shift is not only that power companies are becoming more conscious of their eco-footprint, but also that the price of natural gas has decreased nearly 40 percent in the past twelve months alone making it a much more affordable option.
Though it’s likely that April’s number will rebound a little over the summer months since the heat prompts a surge in air conditioning use, the trend is encouraging overall. Though the amount of carbon emissions have been dropping (fairly) steadily since 2008, the initial drop was attributed mainly to the economic crash and a decline in manufacturing that necessitates power. While the economy has since rebounded and, in turn, required more power, a change in what power plants are burning has kept carbon emissions trending in a downward trajectory anyway.
A 27-year low in power plant emissions is worth celebrating, but it’s still not time to coast on this success. Though burning natural gas is better than coal, switching to wind and solar power on a large scale will be the real victory. To protect the planet, carbon emissions from power plants will eventually need to hover around zero. "
Canada’s Nova Scotia pulls plug on renewable energy plan, The Atlantic province has ended a program that guaranteed small-scale energy producers a sustainable fee for their electricity, and gave citizens an incentive to use renewable energy
www.mining.com/canadas-nova-scotia-pulls-plug-on-renewable-e…
"
- Nova Scotia wind farm (Image courtesy of Renewable Energy Services Limited) -
Atlantic Canada’s Nova Scotia has ended a program that guaranteed small-scale energy producers a sustainable fee for their electricity, and gave citizens an incentive to use renewable energy, saying the scheme would have resulted in rising electricity prices.
The Nova Scotia Community Feed-in Tariff (COMFIT) was designed to encourage community-based, local renewable energy projects by guaranteeing a rate per kilowatt-hour for the energy the project fed into the province’s electrical grid.
But Energy Minister Michel Samson said the program had already served its purpose, adding that more details on renewable energy and its role in the province’s energy future will be released this fall in the government’s electricity plan.
Catherine Abreu, energy co-ordinator at the Halifax Ecology Action Centre, said the success of the renewable energy program “should be cause for celebration, not cancellation.”
“While pressing pause on any new applications makes sense until more renewable capacity can be affordably accommodated on Nova Scotia’s grid, ending the program outright is an unnecessary step backward,” she said in a news release.
Canada is not the first country where a feed-in tariff (FIT) scheme has been cancelled. The UK, which has stopped supporting onshore wind and solar energy, withdrew in 2011 its tax relief from some FITs, leading a number of the larger ones to close. "
www.mining.com/canadas-nova-scotia-pulls-plug-on-renewable-e…
"
- Nova Scotia wind farm (Image courtesy of Renewable Energy Services Limited) -
Atlantic Canada’s Nova Scotia has ended a program that guaranteed small-scale energy producers a sustainable fee for their electricity, and gave citizens an incentive to use renewable energy, saying the scheme would have resulted in rising electricity prices.
The Nova Scotia Community Feed-in Tariff (COMFIT) was designed to encourage community-based, local renewable energy projects by guaranteeing a rate per kilowatt-hour for the energy the project fed into the province’s electrical grid.
But Energy Minister Michel Samson said the program had already served its purpose, adding that more details on renewable energy and its role in the province’s energy future will be released this fall in the government’s electricity plan.
Catherine Abreu, energy co-ordinator at the Halifax Ecology Action Centre, said the success of the renewable energy program “should be cause for celebration, not cancellation.”
“While pressing pause on any new applications makes sense until more renewable capacity can be affordably accommodated on Nova Scotia’s grid, ending the program outright is an unnecessary step backward,” she said in a news release.
Canada is not the first country where a feed-in tariff (FIT) scheme has been cancelled. The UK, which has stopped supporting onshore wind and solar energy, withdrew in 2011 its tax relief from some FITs, leading a number of the larger ones to close. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.339.604 von Popeye82 am 05.08.15 19:22:11
Reforming Today's Conservation +Environmental Policies for Tomorrow's Scarcity(+Abundance), an RFF 1st Wed Seminar, Sep 9, '15 | 12:45 - 2:00 p.m., EDT, Lunch WILL be available, @12:30 p.m., 1616 P St. NW, Washington, DC 20036
- Environmental policies typically reflect an assumption that today's scarcities will be tomorrow's scarcities. Yet in the past, many social and technological innovations have radically altered the nature of scarcity, often reducing environmental impacts in the process. Several current trends (in agriculture, materials use, energy, and water) suggest that, with the right policies and investments, the human footprint could peak and decline in coming decades.
At this RFF First Wednesday Seminar, panelists will discuss the following questions:
- What has been learned from past instances of nature-sparing technological change?
- In which ways can technology complement other efforts to halt biodiversity loss, including protected areas and payments for ecosystem services?
- In looking further toward the future, can we assume the continued capacity to save nature by innovation?
- How can economists, conservationists, policymakers, and others contribute to accelerating positive trends while dealing with inevitable trade-offs?
This seminar will feature the release of a new report from the Breakthrough Institute, Nature Unbound: Decoupling for Conservation, and discuss several of its key themes: how humans destroy nature, how they save nature, and what this implies for conservation.
Moderator: James Boyd, RFF Senior Fellow and Director of RFF's Center for the Management of Ecological Wealth
Panelists:
- Linus Blomqvist, Director of Conservation, The Breakthrough Institute
- Jesse Ausubel, Director, Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University; and University Fellow, RFF
- Thomas Lovejoy, Senior Fellow, United Nations Foundation; and University Professor, George Mason University
Related Seminars
This seminar is part of RFF's continuing discussion series on the "limits to ingenuity," which explores the future of environmental conditions in light of human creativity and technological change. ...-
www.rff.org/events/event/2015-09/reforming-today-s-conservat…
Reforming Today's Conservation +Environmental Policies for Tomorrow's Scarcity(+Abundance), an RFF 1st Wed Seminar, Sep 9, '15 | 12:45 - 2:00 p.m., EDT, Lunch WILL be available, @12:30 p.m., 1616 P St. NW, Washington, DC 20036
- Environmental policies typically reflect an assumption that today's scarcities will be tomorrow's scarcities. Yet in the past, many social and technological innovations have radically altered the nature of scarcity, often reducing environmental impacts in the process. Several current trends (in agriculture, materials use, energy, and water) suggest that, with the right policies and investments, the human footprint could peak and decline in coming decades.
At this RFF First Wednesday Seminar, panelists will discuss the following questions:
- What has been learned from past instances of nature-sparing technological change?
- In which ways can technology complement other efforts to halt biodiversity loss, including protected areas and payments for ecosystem services?
- In looking further toward the future, can we assume the continued capacity to save nature by innovation?
- How can economists, conservationists, policymakers, and others contribute to accelerating positive trends while dealing with inevitable trade-offs?
This seminar will feature the release of a new report from the Breakthrough Institute, Nature Unbound: Decoupling for Conservation, and discuss several of its key themes: how humans destroy nature, how they save nature, and what this implies for conservation.
Moderator: James Boyd, RFF Senior Fellow and Director of RFF's Center for the Management of Ecological Wealth
Panelists:
- Linus Blomqvist, Director of Conservation, The Breakthrough Institute
- Jesse Ausubel, Director, Program for the Human Environment, The Rockefeller University; and University Fellow, RFF
- Thomas Lovejoy, Senior Fellow, United Nations Foundation; and University Professor, George Mason University
Related Seminars
This seminar is part of RFF's continuing discussion series on the "limits to ingenuity," which explores the future of environmental conditions in light of human creativity and technological change. ...-
www.rff.org/events/event/2015-09/reforming-today-s-conservat…
How a warming climate is impacting wild boar in Europe - ENN/TE/PLOS/CNN - Aug 23, 2015
- Paul Brown -
www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2985059/warmer_winte…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48900
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.…
"Increasingly mild winters have caused an abundance of acorns and beech nuts in Europe's woodlands, writes Paul Brown, triggering a wild boar population explosion - just one of the effects of warming climate on wildlife populations.
Wild boar populations in Europe are getting out of control - and scientists are blaming climate change.
There are now millions of wild boar spreading out from their preferred woodland habitat, moving into city suburbs, and even crossing national boundaries to countries that had thought they were extinct.
In some countries, notably France and Germany, which have always had wild boar populations in their forests, they are a major cause of road accidents.
France has an estimated two million boar, and the German state of Hesse alone has 180,000. Berlin, the German capital, is erecting boar fencing around its borders in an attempt to keep the animals out of the city.
Wild boar herd via Shutterstock. "
- Paul Brown -
www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/2985059/warmer_winte…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48900
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.…
"Increasingly mild winters have caused an abundance of acorns and beech nuts in Europe's woodlands, writes Paul Brown, triggering a wild boar population explosion - just one of the effects of warming climate on wildlife populations.
Wild boar populations in Europe are getting out of control - and scientists are blaming climate change.
There are now millions of wild boar spreading out from their preferred woodland habitat, moving into city suburbs, and even crossing national boundaries to countries that had thought they were extinct.
In some countries, notably France and Germany, which have always had wild boar populations in their forests, they are a major cause of road accidents.
France has an estimated two million boar, and the German state of Hesse alone has 180,000. Berlin, the German capital, is erecting boar fencing around its borders in an attempt to keep the animals out of the city.
Wild boar herd via Shutterstock. "
China to spend $330,000,000,000, to fight water pollution -paper
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/02/18/china-water-polluti…
"Feb 18 China plans to spend 2 trillion yuan, or $330 billion, on an action plan to tackle pollution of its scarce water resources, state media said on Tuesday.
China has a fifth of the world's population but just 7 percent of its water resources, and the situation is especially precarious in its parched north, where some regions have less water per capita than the Middle East.
The plan is still being finalised but the budget has been set, exceeding the 1.7 trillion yuan ($277 billion) China plans to spend battling its more-publicised air pollution crisis, the China Securities Journal reported, citing the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
It will aim to improve the quality of China's water by 30 to 50 percent, the paper said, through investments in technologies such as waste water treatment, recycling and membrane technology.
The paper did not say how the funds would be raised, when the plan would take effect, or what timeframe was visualised, however.
Groundwater resources are heavily polluted, threatening access to drinking water, Environment Minister Zhai Qing told a news conference in the capital, Beijing, last week.
According to government data, a 2012 survey of 5,000 groundwater check points found 57.3 percent of samples to be heavily polluted.
China emits around 24 million tonnes of COD, or chemical oxygen demand, a measure of organic matter in waste water, and 2.45 million tonnes of ammonia nitrogen, into its water each year, Zhai said.
Over the next five years, China has previously estimated it will need to spend a total of 60 billion yuan to set up sludge treatment facilities, and a further 10 billion yuan for annual operation, the environment ministry says.
China is short on water to begin with but its water problems are made worse by its reliance on coal - which uses massive amounts of water to suppress dust and clean the fuel before it is burnt - to generate nearly 70 percent of its electricity while self-sufficiency in food remains a key political priority.
(Reporting by Kathy Chen and Stian Reklev; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) "
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/02/18/china-water-polluti…
"Feb 18 China plans to spend 2 trillion yuan, or $330 billion, on an action plan to tackle pollution of its scarce water resources, state media said on Tuesday.
China has a fifth of the world's population but just 7 percent of its water resources, and the situation is especially precarious in its parched north, where some regions have less water per capita than the Middle East.
The plan is still being finalised but the budget has been set, exceeding the 1.7 trillion yuan ($277 billion) China plans to spend battling its more-publicised air pollution crisis, the China Securities Journal reported, citing the Ministry of Environmental Protection.
It will aim to improve the quality of China's water by 30 to 50 percent, the paper said, through investments in technologies such as waste water treatment, recycling and membrane technology.
The paper did not say how the funds would be raised, when the plan would take effect, or what timeframe was visualised, however.
Groundwater resources are heavily polluted, threatening access to drinking water, Environment Minister Zhai Qing told a news conference in the capital, Beijing, last week.
According to government data, a 2012 survey of 5,000 groundwater check points found 57.3 percent of samples to be heavily polluted.
China emits around 24 million tonnes of COD, or chemical oxygen demand, a measure of organic matter in waste water, and 2.45 million tonnes of ammonia nitrogen, into its water each year, Zhai said.
Over the next five years, China has previously estimated it will need to spend a total of 60 billion yuan to set up sludge treatment facilities, and a further 10 billion yuan for annual operation, the environment ministry says.
China is short on water to begin with but its water problems are made worse by its reliance on coal - which uses massive amounts of water to suppress dust and clean the fuel before it is burnt - to generate nearly 70 percent of its electricity while self-sufficiency in food remains a key political priority.
(Reporting by Kathy Chen and Stian Reklev; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) "
The 'world's 1st clean oil sands project': An interview with Dr. Gerald Bailey, after decades of exhaustive attempts to overcome the dirty reputation of oil sands, we finally have an environmentally-friendly +low cost method to tap into these vast resources in the state of Utah —good news both for Mother Nature +all oil +gas investors - M.com/OP, UTAH - Sep 3, 2015
- James Stafford, Dr. R. Gerald Bailey -
www.mining.com/web/the-worlds-first-clean-oil-sands-project-…
- James Stafford, Dr. R. Gerald Bailey -
www.mining.com/web/the-worlds-first-clean-oil-sands-project-…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.301.966 von Popeye82 am 30.07.15 18:34:41
California approves coal divestment bill, the California Assembly in the US has approved a new bill requiring state pension funds, California Public Employees' Retirement System(Calpers) +California State Teachers' Retirement System(CalSTRS), to divest their investments in coal companies - MT/C/CalSTRS, CALIFORNIA - Sep 3, 2015
www.mining-technology.com/news/newscalifornia-approves-coal-…
"The California Assembly in the US has approved a new bill requiring state pension funds, California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers) and California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS), to divest their investments in coal companies.
The bill SB 185 (De León), which passed on a 43-27 vote, will now require the governor's approval.
Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León said: "Coal is losing value quickly and investing in coal is a losing proposition for our retirees; it's a nuisance to public health; and it's inconsistent with our values as a state on the forefront of efforts to address global climate change.
"California's utilities are phasing out coal, and it's time our pension funds did the same."
Presenting the bill, Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) said that coal is the fuel of the past and it is no longer a wise investment for its pensioners.
"California's utilities are phasing out coal, and it's time our pension funds did the same."
The bill is expected to be the first measure of its kind nationwide should it be signed into law.
Public pension funds CalPERS and CalSTRS have $292bn and $191bn in assets respectively, as of August 2015.
At present, CalPERS invests in between 20 and 30 of the type of thermal coal mining companies with a cumulative value of between $100m and $200m.
CalSTRS spokesman said the fund's investment portfolio holds about $40m in thermal coal.
Due to climate concerns several financial institutions, universities and religious organisations are cutting ties with coal companies. "
California approves coal divestment bill, the California Assembly in the US has approved a new bill requiring state pension funds, California Public Employees' Retirement System(Calpers) +California State Teachers' Retirement System(CalSTRS), to divest their investments in coal companies - MT/C/CalSTRS, CALIFORNIA - Sep 3, 2015
www.mining-technology.com/news/newscalifornia-approves-coal-…
"The California Assembly in the US has approved a new bill requiring state pension funds, California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers) and California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS), to divest their investments in coal companies.
The bill SB 185 (De León), which passed on a 43-27 vote, will now require the governor's approval.
Senate President pro Tempore Kevin de León said: "Coal is losing value quickly and investing in coal is a losing proposition for our retirees; it's a nuisance to public health; and it's inconsistent with our values as a state on the forefront of efforts to address global climate change.
"California's utilities are phasing out coal, and it's time our pension funds did the same."
Presenting the bill, Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) said that coal is the fuel of the past and it is no longer a wise investment for its pensioners.
"California's utilities are phasing out coal, and it's time our pension funds did the same."
The bill is expected to be the first measure of its kind nationwide should it be signed into law.
Public pension funds CalPERS and CalSTRS have $292bn and $191bn in assets respectively, as of August 2015.
At present, CalPERS invests in between 20 and 30 of the type of thermal coal mining companies with a cumulative value of between $100m and $200m.
CalSTRS spokesman said the fund's investment portfolio holds about $40m in thermal coal.
Due to climate concerns several financial institutions, universities and religious organisations are cutting ties with coal companies. "
Australian researchers reveal open-cut operations can impact ecosystems beyond mining area, new research by Western Sydney University in Australia has found that open-cut mines can have an impact on ecosystems outside official boundaries, which alter groundwater levels
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsaustralian-researchers-re…
"New research by Western Sydney University in Australia has found that open-cut mines can have an impact on ecosystems outside official boundaries, which alter groundwater levels.
Dr Sebastian Pfautsch from Western Sydney University Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment said: "What we examined in this study is how these trees respond when nearby mine operations start changing underground water supplies."
"Where the water table had fallen to 19m below the surface, water use of trees was much lower compared to trees where the water table remained unchanged at around 6m below ground level."
According to Pfautsch, trees such as eucalypts in Australia can extend 30m deeper roots into the ground to find water.
Pfautsch joined forces with The University of Sydney and Rio Tinto Iron Ore under an Australian Research Council Linkage grant to study eucalypts near open-cut mines in Western Australia's Pilbara region to examine the effect of mining on ecosystems.
"The management of ecological water requirements of trees is essential and has been well-executed in semi-arid landscapes like we studied in the Pilbara, but should also be implemented in other mining regions in Australia."
Published in the international journal Ecohydrology, the study measured the water used by trees at sites where groundwater levels had artificially been lowered or raised and evaluated their health.
Pfautsch said that the water use by trees could be sensitive to changes in ground water levels, some several kilometres away from mining sites.
Pfautsch added: "The management of ecological water requirements of trees is essential and has been well-executed in semi-arid landscapes like we studied in the Pilbara, but should also be implemented in other mining regions in Australia."
Dr Pfautsch's study is expected to have implications for new as well as expanding open-cut mining operations.
The research also highlighted that groundwater levels that fall and rise can impact tree-dominated ecosystems beyond the border of a mine.
Image: Trees can be at risk if mining alters groundwater levels. Photo: courtesy of University of Western Sydney. "
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsaustralian-researchers-re…
"New research by Western Sydney University in Australia has found that open-cut mines can have an impact on ecosystems outside official boundaries, which alter groundwater levels.
Dr Sebastian Pfautsch from Western Sydney University Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment said: "What we examined in this study is how these trees respond when nearby mine operations start changing underground water supplies."
"Where the water table had fallen to 19m below the surface, water use of trees was much lower compared to trees where the water table remained unchanged at around 6m below ground level."
According to Pfautsch, trees such as eucalypts in Australia can extend 30m deeper roots into the ground to find water.
Pfautsch joined forces with The University of Sydney and Rio Tinto Iron Ore under an Australian Research Council Linkage grant to study eucalypts near open-cut mines in Western Australia's Pilbara region to examine the effect of mining on ecosystems.
"The management of ecological water requirements of trees is essential and has been well-executed in semi-arid landscapes like we studied in the Pilbara, but should also be implemented in other mining regions in Australia."
Published in the international journal Ecohydrology, the study measured the water used by trees at sites where groundwater levels had artificially been lowered or raised and evaluated their health.
Pfautsch said that the water use by trees could be sensitive to changes in ground water levels, some several kilometres away from mining sites.
Pfautsch added: "The management of ecological water requirements of trees is essential and has been well-executed in semi-arid landscapes like we studied in the Pilbara, but should also be implemented in other mining regions in Australia."
Dr Pfautsch's study is expected to have implications for new as well as expanding open-cut mining operations.
The research also highlighted that groundwater levels that fall and rise can impact tree-dominated ecosystems beyond the border of a mine.
Image: Trees can be at risk if mining alters groundwater levels. Photo: courtesy of University of Western Sydney. "
MIT study shows climate change mitigation potential, of geoengineering the oceans
http://news.mit.edu/2015/fertilize-ocean-cool-planet-0908
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48954
"Like the leaves of New England maples, phytoplankton, the microalgae at the base of most oceanic food webs, photosynthesize when exposed to sunlight. In the process, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting it to carbohydrates and oxygen. Many phytoplankton species also release dimethyl sulfide (DMS) into the atmosphere, where it forms sulfate aerosols, which can directly reflect sunlight or increase cloud cover and reflectivity, resulting in a cooling effect. The ability of phytoplankton to draw planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and produce aerosols that promote further cooling has made ocean fertilization — through massive dispersal of iron sulfite and other nutrients that stimulate phytoplankton growth — an attractive geoengineering method to reduce global warming.
But undesirable climate impacts could result from such a large-scale operation, which would significantly increase emissions of DMS, the primary source of sulfate aerosol over much of the Earth’s surface, and a key player in the global climate system. Now, in a study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, MIT researchers found that enhanced DMS emissions, while offsetting greenhouse gas-induced warming across most of the world, would induce changes in rainfall patterns that could adversely impact water resources and livelihoods in some regions.
“Discussions of geoengineering are gaining ground recently, so it’s important to understand any unintended consequences,” says Chien Wang, a co-author of the study and a senior research scientist at MIT’s Center for Global Change Science and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. “Our work is the first in-depth analysis of ocean fertilization that has highlighted the potential danger of impacting rainfall adversely.”
To investigate the impact of enhanced DMS emissions on global surface temperature and precipitation, the researchers used one of the global climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which simulates the evolution of and interactions among the ocean, atmosphere, and land masses. Running simulations that compared two scenarios, they found mixed results. In one simulation they implemented a scenario known as RCP4.5 that is used by the IPCC to project greenhouse gas concentrations, aerosol emissions, and land-use change based on policies that lead to moderate mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions over the course of the 21st century. They also used RCP4.5 in a second simulation, with one exception: DMS emissions from the ocean were increased to the maximum feasible levels, or about 2.5 times higher.
The simulations showed that enhanced DMS emissions would reduce the increase in average global surface temperature to half that of the RCP4.5 scenario, resulting in a net increase of 1.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. But the cost would be a substantial reduction in precipitation for some regions.
Image shows a large phytoplankton bloom off the coast of Portugal, courtesy of Jacques Descloitres/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "
http://news.mit.edu/2015/fertilize-ocean-cool-planet-0908
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48954
"Like the leaves of New England maples, phytoplankton, the microalgae at the base of most oceanic food webs, photosynthesize when exposed to sunlight. In the process, they absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting it to carbohydrates and oxygen. Many phytoplankton species also release dimethyl sulfide (DMS) into the atmosphere, where it forms sulfate aerosols, which can directly reflect sunlight or increase cloud cover and reflectivity, resulting in a cooling effect. The ability of phytoplankton to draw planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and produce aerosols that promote further cooling has made ocean fertilization — through massive dispersal of iron sulfite and other nutrients that stimulate phytoplankton growth — an attractive geoengineering method to reduce global warming.
But undesirable climate impacts could result from such a large-scale operation, which would significantly increase emissions of DMS, the primary source of sulfate aerosol over much of the Earth’s surface, and a key player in the global climate system. Now, in a study published in Nature’s Scientific Reports, MIT researchers found that enhanced DMS emissions, while offsetting greenhouse gas-induced warming across most of the world, would induce changes in rainfall patterns that could adversely impact water resources and livelihoods in some regions.
“Discussions of geoengineering are gaining ground recently, so it’s important to understand any unintended consequences,” says Chien Wang, a co-author of the study and a senior research scientist at MIT’s Center for Global Change Science and the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. “Our work is the first in-depth analysis of ocean fertilization that has highlighted the potential danger of impacting rainfall adversely.”
To investigate the impact of enhanced DMS emissions on global surface temperature and precipitation, the researchers used one of the global climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which simulates the evolution of and interactions among the ocean, atmosphere, and land masses. Running simulations that compared two scenarios, they found mixed results. In one simulation they implemented a scenario known as RCP4.5 that is used by the IPCC to project greenhouse gas concentrations, aerosol emissions, and land-use change based on policies that lead to moderate mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions over the course of the 21st century. They also used RCP4.5 in a second simulation, with one exception: DMS emissions from the ocean were increased to the maximum feasible levels, or about 2.5 times higher.
The simulations showed that enhanced DMS emissions would reduce the increase in average global surface temperature to half that of the RCP4.5 scenario, resulting in a net increase of 1.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. But the cost would be a substantial reduction in precipitation for some regions.
Image shows a large phytoplankton bloom off the coast of Portugal, courtesy of Jacques Descloitres/NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.553.878 von Popeye82 am 03.09.15 21:10:22
BHP +SaskPower to accelerate CCS technology ,to support coal demand, Mining major BHP Billiton +Canadian electricity provider SaskPower have signed a memorandum of understanding(MoU), to accelerate the global development of carbon capture +storage(CCS) technology to help support coal demand
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsbhp-saskpower-accelerate-…
"BHP Billiton and Canadian electricity provider SaskPower have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to accelerate the global development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to help support coal demand.
Under the agreement, the companies will establish a centre to support research and cut the costs and risks facing global CCS projects.
In 2014, SaskPower opened a CCS project at a coal-fired plant as part of its efforts to capture 90% of carbon emissions from its Boundary Dam plant located near Estevan in Saskatchewan, Canada.
Boundary Dam CCS Project rebuilt a coal-fired generation unit with carbon capture technology to demonstrate the technical, environmental and economic viability of power generation project using the fossil fuel.
BHP Billiton chief commercial officer Dean Dalla Valle said: "To respond effectively to climate change, we must develop and deploy a wide range of low-emissions technologies more quickly than the usual commercial timeframes.
"The individual components of CCS (capture, transport and storage) have been successfully demonstrated for many years, but Boundary Dam is the first power project to bring all these together."
BHP Billiton Canada president Giles Hellyer said: "As the home of our Jansen Potash project, we have a strong connection with and commitment to Saskatchewan and it's great to see some of the innovative work being done in the region recognised globally as part of such an important effort to reduce the world's emissions.
"We know there is still much more to be done in CCS, but we are encouraged by the results we are seeing today, and the innovations we are working on for tomorrow.
"The Boundary Dam project offers lessons for all of us and we look forward to being part of it."
During CCS process waste carbon dioxide (CO2) will be captured from large point sources, such as fossil fuel power plants and would be transported to a storage site, and deposited at a place where it will not enter the atmosphere.
The technology is aimed at avoiding the release of large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. "
BHP +SaskPower to accelerate CCS technology ,to support coal demand, Mining major BHP Billiton +Canadian electricity provider SaskPower have signed a memorandum of understanding(MoU), to accelerate the global development of carbon capture +storage(CCS) technology to help support coal demand
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsbhp-saskpower-accelerate-…
"BHP Billiton and Canadian electricity provider SaskPower have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to accelerate the global development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to help support coal demand.
Under the agreement, the companies will establish a centre to support research and cut the costs and risks facing global CCS projects.
In 2014, SaskPower opened a CCS project at a coal-fired plant as part of its efforts to capture 90% of carbon emissions from its Boundary Dam plant located near Estevan in Saskatchewan, Canada.
Boundary Dam CCS Project rebuilt a coal-fired generation unit with carbon capture technology to demonstrate the technical, environmental and economic viability of power generation project using the fossil fuel.
BHP Billiton chief commercial officer Dean Dalla Valle said: "To respond effectively to climate change, we must develop and deploy a wide range of low-emissions technologies more quickly than the usual commercial timeframes.
"The individual components of CCS (capture, transport and storage) have been successfully demonstrated for many years, but Boundary Dam is the first power project to bring all these together."
BHP Billiton Canada president Giles Hellyer said: "As the home of our Jansen Potash project, we have a strong connection with and commitment to Saskatchewan and it's great to see some of the innovative work being done in the region recognised globally as part of such an important effort to reduce the world's emissions.
"We know there is still much more to be done in CCS, but we are encouraged by the results we are seeing today, and the innovations we are working on for tomorrow.
"The Boundary Dam project offers lessons for all of us and we look forward to being part of it."
During CCS process waste carbon dioxide (CO2) will be captured from large point sources, such as fossil fuel power plants and would be transported to a storage site, and deposited at a place where it will not enter the atmosphere.
The technology is aimed at avoiding the release of large quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.553.878 von Popeye82 am 03.09.15 21:10:22
- University of California, Berkeley Campus. (Image courtesy of UC) -
University of California sells off $200,000,000 in coal, oil sands assets, Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Bachher said the assets were no longer good investments for the university's $98,200,000,000 fund
------> www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Why-UC-doesn-t-embrace-b…
www.mining.com/university-of-california-sells-off-200-millio…
www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/10/california-divestment-uni…
www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-ln-uc-divest-20140917-…
"The University of California became the latest American educational institution to unload its endowment and pension fund holdings in coal and oil sands companies, in a $200 million move linked to environmental concerns and rising financial risk.
Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Bachher said the assets were no longer good investments for the university's $98.2 billion fund, Reuters reported.
UC still holds about $10 billion in other energy and utilities industry investments — equivalent to about 10% of the system's endowment and pension funds. Bachher noted there were no plans to shed oil and natural gas stocks as, he said, "the world is not switching out of fossil fuels."
However he said in a statement the university believes that climate change is “an active risk factor to consider when we evaluate investment opportunities.”
The decision comes after the California state legislature last week passed a bill requiring its two large state pension funds – Calpers and CalSTRS – to divest from coal mining companies.
It also comes almost exactly a year after the university system’s regents committee announced it would not sell off stocks and holdings in oil, coal and natural gas. At the time, the committee said they were “trying to balance the cause of climate change with the need to earn strong financial returns in the funds that support pensions, faculty chairs and scholarships,” according to Los Angeles Times.
Stanford University and the University of Maine have recently made similar moves. "
- University of California, Berkeley Campus. (Image courtesy of UC) -
University of California sells off $200,000,000 in coal, oil sands assets, Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Bachher said the assets were no longer good investments for the university's $98,200,000,000 fund
------> www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/article/Why-UC-doesn-t-embrace-b…
www.mining.com/university-of-california-sells-off-200-millio…
www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/10/california-divestment-uni…
www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-ln-uc-divest-20140917-…
"The University of California became the latest American educational institution to unload its endowment and pension fund holdings in coal and oil sands companies, in a $200 million move linked to environmental concerns and rising financial risk.
Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Bachher said the assets were no longer good investments for the university's $98.2 billion fund, Reuters reported.
UC still holds about $10 billion in other energy and utilities industry investments — equivalent to about 10% of the system's endowment and pension funds. Bachher noted there were no plans to shed oil and natural gas stocks as, he said, "the world is not switching out of fossil fuels."
However he said in a statement the university believes that climate change is “an active risk factor to consider when we evaluate investment opportunities.”
The decision comes after the California state legislature last week passed a bill requiring its two large state pension funds – Calpers and CalSTRS – to divest from coal mining companies.
It also comes almost exactly a year after the university system’s regents committee announced it would not sell off stocks and holdings in oil, coal and natural gas. At the time, the committee said they were “trying to balance the cause of climate change with the need to earn strong financial returns in the funds that support pensions, faculty chairs and scholarships,” according to Los Angeles Times.
Stanford University and the University of Maine have recently made similar moves. "
Pope Francis: Substitute Fossil Fuels with Renewable Energy, this post is part of the “Prelude to Paris” series highlighting updates +analysis on international climate negotiations, in the lead up to the United Nations climate change conference –the 21st Conference of the Parties(COP 21)— to be held in Paris, this Dec - CT - Jun 25, 2015
- Simon Mahan -
------> http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/d…
http://cleantechies.com/2015/06/25/pope-francis-substitute-f…
"
This post is part of the “Prelude to Paris” series highlighting updates and analysis on international climate negotiations in the lead up to the United Nations climate change conference – the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) — to be held in Paris this December. Other posts in the series are available here.
After months of anticipation, Pope Francis has released his encyclical, Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home. Encyclicals are letters written by a pope to the other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. In his 184-page letter, Pope Francis touched on many environmental issues facing the planet today: climate change, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, animal husbandry, genetically modified organisms and other “aspects of the present ecological crisis.” The encyclical’s title (which means “Praised Be”) is inspired after Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures. St. Francis’s life of simplicity and cooperation with nature is the embodiment of Pope Francis’ encyclical (after all, Pope Francis chose his name after St. Francis).
According to Pope Francis, it was necessary to discuss the breadth of environmental issues because ”Everything is connected. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society.” And indeed, substantial portions of the encyclical discuss the connection between environmental damage and the disproportionate impact such destruction has on people living in poverty. In a press conference yesterday, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, DC, noted that Pope Francis focused on society because “The starting point is the dignity of the human person as part of God’s plan in all of creation.”
In order to solve the multitude of environmental problems, Pope Francis did not limit his audience to Catholics only. Instead, he states, “I wish to address every person living on this planet.” Pope Francis incorporates quotes from a variety of bishops from around the world, and even praises non-Catholic religious leaders, to develop a foundation of global unity. Instead of relying on an overly theological discussion, and in order to speak to a truly universal audience, Pope Francis begins his encyclical with a lengthy review of scientific evidence. The evidence he presents all points to the fact that, “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”
According to the encyclical, society has created a “throwaway culture” heavily entrenched and dependent on overconsumption. “This situation has led to a constant schizophrenia, wherein a technocracy which sees no intrinsic value in lesser beings coexists with the other extreme, which sees no special value in human beings,” Pope Francis writes.
Pope Francis stops short of offering direct policy recommendations for resolving the ecological crisis, noting that for “…many concrete questions, the Church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion..” He goes further to state, “Attempts to resolve all problems through uniform regulations or technical interventions can lead to overlooking the complexities of local problems which demand the active participation of all members of the community.” However, he also states that faith and religion have a role to play in discussing the ecological crisis. “Science and technology are not neutral,” Pope Francis states. Because they leave little room “for aesthetic sensibility, poetry, or even reason’s ability to grasp the ultimate meaning and purpose of things,” faith and religion can provide another avenue for dialog. Specifically, faith and religion can provide a moral and ethical framework for scientific, economic, political and technological progress.
One theme throughout Laudato Si is the juxtaposition of the “tyranny over creation” (anthropocentrism) versus a cooperation and cultivation of nature. As stated by Pope Francis, “If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs.” Fossil fuels including “coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas – needs to be progressively replaced without delay,” are specifically identified as forms of tyranny over creation. In essence, fossil fuels reinforce a consumerist mindset of prideful, greedy and gluttonous (yet, false) control over nature – that humanity can extract and consume fossil fuels on our own terms (some would say, “dispatchable generation”). Alternatively, Pope Francis’ call to a cooperative (fraternal) relationship with creation highlights potential solutions to fossil fuels; “Fraternal love can only be gratuitous…That is why it is possible to love our enemies. This same gratuitousness inspires us to love and accept the wind, the sun and the clouds, even though we cannot control them.” The variability (some would say “intermittency”) of renewable energy provides an opportunity for humanity to exercise temperance, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility with nature. Faithful Catholics may recognize the juxtaposition of mortal sins versus holy virtues.
Even though Pope Francis explicitly states that the “Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics,” he does provide a few glimpses into ways to resolve the ecological crisis. For instance, he states, “There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.” Also, mass transit gets a special mention with his statement that, “Many specialists agree on the need to give priority to public transportation.” But Pope Francis is no wild-eyed idealist. In reference to the use of natural gas instead of coal, he states, “Until greater progress is made in developing widely accessible sources of renewable energy, it is legitimate to choose the lesser of two evils or to find short-term solutions.” Throughout the encyclical are these short asides of non-policy, policy recommendations.
Pope Francis wrote Laudato Si, in part, to prepare for the United Nations Climate Change Conference this winter in Paris (COP21). As the world prepares for COP21, Laudato Si can provide a firm moral grounding for delegates and attendees: “What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?… Leaving an inhabitable planet to future generations is, first and foremost, up to us. ”
You can read the full text of Laudato Si, here.
RECAP: SACE previously wrote a blog entitled, “Sneak Peek at Pope Francis’ Environmental Encyclical,” based heavily on the previous work of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Of course, we didn’t cover the breadth and depth of issues in the encyclical, but for a blog, if we had to grade ourselves, we’d say we nailed it.
ADDITIONAL RECAP: In 2013, when Pope Francis became pope, SACE asked the question, “Is Pope Francis the New Green Pope?” Our answer at the time was, “Pope Francis has exhibited at least a few attributes of his predecessor, as well as his namesake St. Francis, that make a fairly strong case that he may be a Green Pope in the making.” We think we nailed that, too.
– See more at: http://blog.cleanenergy.org/2015/06/19/laudatosi/#more-57749 "
- Simon Mahan -
------> http://w2.vatican.va/content/dam/francesco/pdf/encyclicals/d…
http://cleantechies.com/2015/06/25/pope-francis-substitute-f…
"
This post is part of the “Prelude to Paris” series highlighting updates and analysis on international climate negotiations in the lead up to the United Nations climate change conference – the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP 21) — to be held in Paris this December. Other posts in the series are available here.
After months of anticipation, Pope Francis has released his encyclical, Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home. Encyclicals are letters written by a pope to the other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church. In his 184-page letter, Pope Francis touched on many environmental issues facing the planet today: climate change, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, animal husbandry, genetically modified organisms and other “aspects of the present ecological crisis.” The encyclical’s title (which means “Praised Be”) is inspired after Saint Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures. St. Francis’s life of simplicity and cooperation with nature is the embodiment of Pope Francis’ encyclical (after all, Pope Francis chose his name after St. Francis).
According to Pope Francis, it was necessary to discuss the breadth of environmental issues because ”Everything is connected. Concern for the environment thus needs to be joined to a sincere love for our fellow human beings and an unwavering commitment to resolving the problems of society.” And indeed, substantial portions of the encyclical discuss the connection between environmental damage and the disproportionate impact such destruction has on people living in poverty. In a press conference yesterday, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, DC, noted that Pope Francis focused on society because “The starting point is the dignity of the human person as part of God’s plan in all of creation.”
In order to solve the multitude of environmental problems, Pope Francis did not limit his audience to Catholics only. Instead, he states, “I wish to address every person living on this planet.” Pope Francis incorporates quotes from a variety of bishops from around the world, and even praises non-Catholic religious leaders, to develop a foundation of global unity. Instead of relying on an overly theological discussion, and in order to speak to a truly universal audience, Pope Francis begins his encyclical with a lengthy review of scientific evidence. The evidence he presents all points to the fact that, “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.”
According to the encyclical, society has created a “throwaway culture” heavily entrenched and dependent on overconsumption. “This situation has led to a constant schizophrenia, wherein a technocracy which sees no intrinsic value in lesser beings coexists with the other extreme, which sees no special value in human beings,” Pope Francis writes.
Pope Francis stops short of offering direct policy recommendations for resolving the ecological crisis, noting that for “…many concrete questions, the Church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion..” He goes further to state, “Attempts to resolve all problems through uniform regulations or technical interventions can lead to overlooking the complexities of local problems which demand the active participation of all members of the community.” However, he also states that faith and religion have a role to play in discussing the ecological crisis. “Science and technology are not neutral,” Pope Francis states. Because they leave little room “for aesthetic sensibility, poetry, or even reason’s ability to grasp the ultimate meaning and purpose of things,” faith and religion can provide another avenue for dialog. Specifically, faith and religion can provide a moral and ethical framework for scientific, economic, political and technological progress.
One theme throughout Laudato Si is the juxtaposition of the “tyranny over creation” (anthropocentrism) versus a cooperation and cultivation of nature. As stated by Pope Francis, “If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs.” Fossil fuels including “coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas – needs to be progressively replaced without delay,” are specifically identified as forms of tyranny over creation. In essence, fossil fuels reinforce a consumerist mindset of prideful, greedy and gluttonous (yet, false) control over nature – that humanity can extract and consume fossil fuels on our own terms (some would say, “dispatchable generation”). Alternatively, Pope Francis’ call to a cooperative (fraternal) relationship with creation highlights potential solutions to fossil fuels; “Fraternal love can only be gratuitous…That is why it is possible to love our enemies. This same gratuitousness inspires us to love and accept the wind, the sun and the clouds, even though we cannot control them.” The variability (some would say “intermittency”) of renewable energy provides an opportunity for humanity to exercise temperance, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility with nature. Faithful Catholics may recognize the juxtaposition of mortal sins versus holy virtues.
Even though Pope Francis explicitly states that the “Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics,” he does provide a few glimpses into ways to resolve the ecological crisis. For instance, he states, “There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.” Also, mass transit gets a special mention with his statement that, “Many specialists agree on the need to give priority to public transportation.” But Pope Francis is no wild-eyed idealist. In reference to the use of natural gas instead of coal, he states, “Until greater progress is made in developing widely accessible sources of renewable energy, it is legitimate to choose the lesser of two evils or to find short-term solutions.” Throughout the encyclical are these short asides of non-policy, policy recommendations.
Pope Francis wrote Laudato Si, in part, to prepare for the United Nations Climate Change Conference this winter in Paris (COP21). As the world prepares for COP21, Laudato Si can provide a firm moral grounding for delegates and attendees: “What kind of world do we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up?… Leaving an inhabitable planet to future generations is, first and foremost, up to us. ”
You can read the full text of Laudato Si, here.
RECAP: SACE previously wrote a blog entitled, “Sneak Peek at Pope Francis’ Environmental Encyclical,” based heavily on the previous work of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Of course, we didn’t cover the breadth and depth of issues in the encyclical, but for a blog, if we had to grade ourselves, we’d say we nailed it.
ADDITIONAL RECAP: In 2013, when Pope Francis became pope, SACE asked the question, “Is Pope Francis the New Green Pope?” Our answer at the time was, “Pope Francis has exhibited at least a few attributes of his predecessor, as well as his namesake St. Francis, that make a fairly strong case that he may be a Green Pope in the making.” We think we nailed that, too.
– See more at: http://blog.cleanenergy.org/2015/06/19/laudatosi/#more-57749 "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.613.077 von Popeye82 am 13.09.15 04:06:55
http://action.ucsusa.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=32681&ACTION_…
http://action.ucsusa.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=32681&ACTION_…
Huge Permafrost study will help improve climate models - ENN/AWI, HCfP&MR/SD/GTNfP/EA, QUEBEC - Sep 13/14, 2015
Mrs Sina Loeschke
medien@awi.de
49-471-483-12008
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/awih-cr091015.php
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48968
------> http://gtnp.arcticportal.org/
www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/7/245/2015/essd-7-245-2015.html
"This Saturday at a conference in Quebec, Canada an international research team will present the first online data portal on global permafrost. In the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost researchers first collect all the existing permafrost temperature and active thickness layer data from Arctic, Antarctic and mountain permafrost regions and then make it freely available for download. This new portal can serve as an early warning system for researchers and decision-makers around the globe. A detailed description of the data collection is published today in an open access article on the Earth System Science Data portal.
Although the world's permafrost is one of the most important pieces in Earth's climate-system puzzle, to date it has been missing in most climate models. The reason: data on temperature and the active layer thickness were neither comprehensive nor were they available in a standard format suitable for modelling. With the new Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P), scientists from 25 countries have now filled this gap in the data.
"If we want to understand the extent to which climate change is causing the permafrost to thaw and the effect this thawing will in turn have on our climate, we have to closely observe these regions around the globe, and we also have to make our measurements freely available.
This can only work if it is based on international cooperation, which we managed to achieve comprehensively for the first time in this project," explains database initiator Professor Hugues Lantuit, permafrost expert at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).
Researchers measured the temperature of the permafrost by boring a hole in the frozen ground, inserting sensors and then reading the data on regular expeditions. "So far our database has brought together measurements from 1074 boreholes, 72 of which are in the Antarctic and 31 in the mountain regions of Europe and Asia. The remaining 961 measuring stations are distributed throughout the Arctic," says AWI researcher and GTN-P Director Dr Boris Biskaborn. ...
Map credit: Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P)
Read more at ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR POLAR AND MARINE RESEARCH via EurekAlert. "
Mrs Sina Loeschke
medien@awi.de
49-471-483-12008
www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-09/awih-cr091015.php
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48968
------> http://gtnp.arcticportal.org/
www.earth-syst-sci-data.net/7/245/2015/essd-7-245-2015.html
"This Saturday at a conference in Quebec, Canada an international research team will present the first online data portal on global permafrost. In the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost researchers first collect all the existing permafrost temperature and active thickness layer data from Arctic, Antarctic and mountain permafrost regions and then make it freely available for download. This new portal can serve as an early warning system for researchers and decision-makers around the globe. A detailed description of the data collection is published today in an open access article on the Earth System Science Data portal.
Although the world's permafrost is one of the most important pieces in Earth's climate-system puzzle, to date it has been missing in most climate models. The reason: data on temperature and the active layer thickness were neither comprehensive nor were they available in a standard format suitable for modelling. With the new Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P), scientists from 25 countries have now filled this gap in the data.
"If we want to understand the extent to which climate change is causing the permafrost to thaw and the effect this thawing will in turn have on our climate, we have to closely observe these regions around the globe, and we also have to make our measurements freely available.
This can only work if it is based on international cooperation, which we managed to achieve comprehensively for the first time in this project," explains database initiator Professor Hugues Lantuit, permafrost expert at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).
Researchers measured the temperature of the permafrost by boring a hole in the frozen ground, inserting sensors and then reading the data on regular expeditions. "So far our database has brought together measurements from 1074 boreholes, 72 of which are in the Antarctic and 31 in the mountain regions of Europe and Asia. The remaining 961 measuring stations are distributed throughout the Arctic," says AWI researcher and GTN-P Director Dr Boris Biskaborn. ...
Map credit: Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P)
Read more at ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR POLAR AND MARINE RESEARCH via EurekAlert. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.553.878 von Popeye82 am 03.09.15 21:10:22
sieh an,
sieh an
breaking ÜBERRSCHUNGSnews
NUR die überraschung ist größer,
als breaking
BHP calls miners to challenge anti-coal movement, BHP’s coal chief believes the commodity is likely to remain under pressure for a while
www.mining.com/bhp-calls-miners-to-challenge-anti-coal-movem…
www.bhpbilliton.com/investors/reports/mike-henry-speaks-at-t…
www.bhpbilliton.com/~/media/261934cf655046818d18b3d8b16d7012…
"Anti-coal activists seem to be winning over the public and the resources sector must fight back, BHP Billiton's (ASX, NYSE:BHP) (LON:BLT) coal president Mike Henry said Friday.
Speaking at the American Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Brisbane, the executive said the industry would continue to be swayed by the “no coal campaign,” which had outperformed big business with “simple messages” and an active media profile.
Henry called miners to focus on productivity and build stronger community support for the sector, as depressed prices will likely continue to plague the industry for some time to come.
“There are no signs of things getting better in the immediate term,” he said in a statement.
However, he noted the company believes the fuel will remain an important part of the world's energy mix for decades, even amid the ongoing push to cut carbon emissions.
Price slump
Coal prices have been steadily declining since 2011 due to oversupply, driving producers into the red.
Metallurgical coal, used in the making of steel, is down as much as 30% since the beginning of the year, while thermal coal, used in power generation, is as much as 15% lower.
"Poor returns, and little indication of better times on the immediate horizon, make coal a pretty challenging business at the present time," Henry noted.
In BHP Billiton’s coal business, we made a 3% return on capital in our Australian assets last year and that’s at the good end of the industry spectrum,” he added.
BHP is the world’s largest exporter of steel-making coal, digging up vast quantities of the resource in eastern Australia, in partnership with Mitsubishi Corp.
The company also produces thermal coal, which it believes will be key in meeting energy needs of a "de-carbonizing world" and the resources industry has to be active in the climate change solution, Henry said.
The executive revealed that BHP has several internal projections worked out for long-run thermal-coal demand based on a variety of influences.
“In all scenarios,” Henry said, “thermal-coal demand remains a significant part of the global energy mix for decades to come.” "
sieh an,
sieh an
breaking ÜBERRSCHUNGSnews
NUR die überraschung ist größer,
als breaking
BHP calls miners to challenge anti-coal movement, BHP’s coal chief believes the commodity is likely to remain under pressure for a while
www.mining.com/bhp-calls-miners-to-challenge-anti-coal-movem…
www.bhpbilliton.com/investors/reports/mike-henry-speaks-at-t…
www.bhpbilliton.com/~/media/261934cf655046818d18b3d8b16d7012…
"Anti-coal activists seem to be winning over the public and the resources sector must fight back, BHP Billiton's (ASX, NYSE:BHP) (LON:BLT) coal president Mike Henry said Friday.
Speaking at the American Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Brisbane, the executive said the industry would continue to be swayed by the “no coal campaign,” which had outperformed big business with “simple messages” and an active media profile.
Henry called miners to focus on productivity and build stronger community support for the sector, as depressed prices will likely continue to plague the industry for some time to come.
“There are no signs of things getting better in the immediate term,” he said in a statement.
However, he noted the company believes the fuel will remain an important part of the world's energy mix for decades, even amid the ongoing push to cut carbon emissions.
Price slump
Coal prices have been steadily declining since 2011 due to oversupply, driving producers into the red.
Metallurgical coal, used in the making of steel, is down as much as 30% since the beginning of the year, while thermal coal, used in power generation, is as much as 15% lower.
"Poor returns, and little indication of better times on the immediate horizon, make coal a pretty challenging business at the present time," Henry noted.
In BHP Billiton’s coal business, we made a 3% return on capital in our Australian assets last year and that’s at the good end of the industry spectrum,” he added.
BHP is the world’s largest exporter of steel-making coal, digging up vast quantities of the resource in eastern Australia, in partnership with Mitsubishi Corp.
The company also produces thermal coal, which it believes will be key in meeting energy needs of a "de-carbonizing world" and the resources industry has to be active in the climate change solution, Henry said.
The executive revealed that BHP has several internal projections worked out for long-run thermal-coal demand based on a variety of influences.
“In all scenarios,” Henry said, “thermal-coal demand remains a significant part of the global energy mix for decades to come.” "
Climate talks in Paris may not make enough, of a difference
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/will_the_paris_climate_talks_be…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48970
"It’s Paris OR bust. Climate diplomats are preparing for a United Nations climate conference in the French capital in December that SCIENTISTS SAY IS PROBABLY THE LAST REALISTIC CHANCE FOR THE WORLD, TO PREVENT GLOBAL WARMING BEYOND 2 DEGREES CELSIUS. Some kind of a deal will probably be done. But will it be one more diplomatic fudge or a real triumph for the climate?
In the run-up to Paris, governments have been asked to deliver pledges to cut emissions of the greenhouse gases known to cause climate change. The pledges, covering the period between 2020, when the agreement should enter into force, and 2030, are known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs in the U.N. jargon.
Major nations including the United States, China, the European Union, and Russia have submitted their INDCs. But unlike the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which only set targets for industrialized nations, all countries are expected to make pledges before Paris.
Many of the pledges sound ambitious, but analysis suggest they fall far short of what is likely to be needed to prevent warming beyond 2 degrees C (3.6 F) later this century — a goal set by nations at the Copenhagen climate negotiations in 2009. “It is clear that if the Paris meeting locks in present climate commitments for 2030, holding warming below 2 degrees could essentially become infeasible,” Bill Hare of Climate Analytics, a think tank, said during preliminary negotiations held in Bonn, Germany, this month.
‘The proof is IN THE PUDDING, and the pudding is going to come out of the oven in Paris,’ says a U.N. official.
In fact, he said, they leave the world on course for at least 3 degrees C of warming.
But there is some good news out in the real world. The decade-long boom in coal burning across the world appears to be ending, and radically lower costs for renewables, especially solar power, make them increasingly attractive. One economic study published this summer concluded that green energy was usually “nationally beneficial,” regardless of the climate benefits. Indeed, there is a growing realization in many countries that cutting emissions is not just cheap, but could actually aid economic development. "
Alarming report, on the health of our oceans - ENN/C2/ZSL/WWF - Sep 20, 2015
- Alicia Graef -
www.care2.com/causes/marine-species-have-been-cut-in-half-in…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48990
------> http://assets.wwf.org.uk/downloads/living_blue_planet_report…
"The sheer vastness of the oceans on this planet make it seem almost impossible that our actions could bring them to the point of no return, but a new report has found that we are causing an alarming decline of marine ecosystems and the species who rely on them.
According to the World Wildlife Fund‘s (WWF) recently released Living Blue Planet Report, marine populations have declined by an astonishing 49 percent between 1970 and 2012, with with some fish species, including tuna, declining by almost 75 percent.
The report is based on trends of 5,829 populations of 1,234 mammal, bird, reptile and fish species found in the Living Planet Index, which is maintained by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL).
“The ocean works hard in the background to keep us alive, generating half of the world’s oxygen and absorbing almost a third of the carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels. It also feeds billions of people around the globe, some of whom rely solely on the oceans to survive. These devastating figures reveal how quickly human beings are changing the wildlife in our oceans and are a stark warning of the problems we might face as a result,” said Professor Ken Norris, Director of Science at ZSL.
The dramatic decrease is unsurprisingly driven mainly by human activities ranging from overfishing, resource extraction, pollution and development to climate change, which is causing warming and acidification. ..."
California air regulators to order 10 per cent carbon emissions cut, for all fuel sold in state - SH/TCP -Sep 25, 2015
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2015/09/25/california-air-r…
"California regulators are poised to restore a first-in-the-nation climate change program that requires a 10 per cent cut in carbon emissions on transportation fuels sold in the state by 2020, despite oil industry objections that it could drive up gas prices.
After the program survived a lengthy legal challenge from fuel makers, regulators are expected to vote Friday on the clean fuel standard, which environmentalists and some business groups are hailing as one of California's most important moves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The California Air Resources Board estimates the economic impact to consumers would be a few cents per gallon, costing a typical commuter $5 to $21 extra in 2017, increasing to $12 to $48 annually in 2020.
“It is giving clear direction to the fuel-producing sector that this is the direction of the state,” said John Boesel, president and chief executive of CALSTART, a transportation business group that supports clean-energy technology.
The standard's expected passage was a boost for Gov. Jerry Brown, who has vowed to intensify his fight against climate change after the oil lobby helped kill a Democratic legislative proposal earlier this month to slash statewide petroleum use by half in 15 years.
Unlike other rules the state has adopted requiring cleaner-burning fuel or more fuel-efficient vehicles, the standard, first proposed in a 2007 executive order from then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, calls for counting all the pollution required to deliver gasoline, diesel or alternative fuels to in-state consumers - from drilling a new oil well or planting corn to delivering it to gas stations.
In addition to tailpipe emissions, it includes factors such as whether an ethanol factory uses coal or natural gas to power production or an oil rig uses diesel fuel to drill.
Oil producers say the standard will cost consumers much more in a state with some of the highest gas prices in the nation as the companies try to comply with the mandate or face being shut out of the market.
Supporters say that industry can afford to make it work. They believe the program will encourage greater use of cleaner biofuels and electric vehicles, which can be cheaper to operate than those powered by gasoline or diesel.
The Western States Petroleum Association, which represents oil companies, said there are not enough quantities of low-carbon biofuels to allow refiners to comply with the regulations.
All fuels are measured against a baseline pollution standard. If a fuel falls above or below the baseline, it generates a credit or deficit that other producers can buy and sell to meet the target. It's up to fuel producers to figure out how to meet the goal, whether by changing production methods, using ethanol or electric vehicles for transportation or buying credits on the market.
Regulators are targeting transportation fuels because California's roughly 30 million vehicles account for about 40 per cent of the state's emissions. The rest comes from generating electricity and industrial manufacturing, as well as commercial, residential and agricultural uses.
After the rule's initial adoption, out-of-state refiners and ethanol companies were among those who sued, arguing that transporting the fuels into California alone made them less competitive against in-state producers. They argued the law unconstitutionally limits interstate commerce.
The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a 2013 appeals court decision upholding the fuel standard. Opponents continue to challenge the state's authority to regulate out-of-state production. Oil companies are also trying to block a similar standard enacted in Oregon, the only other state with a clean fuel standard.
Responding to concerns, California's air regulators have proposed changes, including capping the price of credits to avoid price spikes. The board could also add provisions giving credit to refineries for using renewable hydrogen and making other investments to reduce pollutants.
While the reduction target has been frozen at 1 per cent, state officials say the industry has met 2 per cent of the goal as of last year. "
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2015/09/25/california-air-r…
"California regulators are poised to restore a first-in-the-nation climate change program that requires a 10 per cent cut in carbon emissions on transportation fuels sold in the state by 2020, despite oil industry objections that it could drive up gas prices.
After the program survived a lengthy legal challenge from fuel makers, regulators are expected to vote Friday on the clean fuel standard, which environmentalists and some business groups are hailing as one of California's most important moves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The California Air Resources Board estimates the economic impact to consumers would be a few cents per gallon, costing a typical commuter $5 to $21 extra in 2017, increasing to $12 to $48 annually in 2020.
“It is giving clear direction to the fuel-producing sector that this is the direction of the state,” said John Boesel, president and chief executive of CALSTART, a transportation business group that supports clean-energy technology.
The standard's expected passage was a boost for Gov. Jerry Brown, who has vowed to intensify his fight against climate change after the oil lobby helped kill a Democratic legislative proposal earlier this month to slash statewide petroleum use by half in 15 years.
Unlike other rules the state has adopted requiring cleaner-burning fuel or more fuel-efficient vehicles, the standard, first proposed in a 2007 executive order from then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, calls for counting all the pollution required to deliver gasoline, diesel or alternative fuels to in-state consumers - from drilling a new oil well or planting corn to delivering it to gas stations.
In addition to tailpipe emissions, it includes factors such as whether an ethanol factory uses coal or natural gas to power production or an oil rig uses diesel fuel to drill.
Oil producers say the standard will cost consumers much more in a state with some of the highest gas prices in the nation as the companies try to comply with the mandate or face being shut out of the market.
Supporters say that industry can afford to make it work. They believe the program will encourage greater use of cleaner biofuels and electric vehicles, which can be cheaper to operate than those powered by gasoline or diesel.
The Western States Petroleum Association, which represents oil companies, said there are not enough quantities of low-carbon biofuels to allow refiners to comply with the regulations.
All fuels are measured against a baseline pollution standard. If a fuel falls above or below the baseline, it generates a credit or deficit that other producers can buy and sell to meet the target. It's up to fuel producers to figure out how to meet the goal, whether by changing production methods, using ethanol or electric vehicles for transportation or buying credits on the market.
Regulators are targeting transportation fuels because California's roughly 30 million vehicles account for about 40 per cent of the state's emissions. The rest comes from generating electricity and industrial manufacturing, as well as commercial, residential and agricultural uses.
After the rule's initial adoption, out-of-state refiners and ethanol companies were among those who sued, arguing that transporting the fuels into California alone made them less competitive against in-state producers. They argued the law unconstitutionally limits interstate commerce.
The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a 2013 appeals court decision upholding the fuel standard. Opponents continue to challenge the state's authority to regulate out-of-state production. Oil companies are also trying to block a similar standard enacted in Oregon, the only other state with a clean fuel standard.
Responding to concerns, California's air regulators have proposed changes, including capping the price of credits to avoid price spikes. The board could also add provisions giving credit to refineries for using renewable hydrogen and making other investments to reduce pollutants.
While the reduction target has been frozen at 1 per cent, state officials say the industry has met 2 per cent of the goal as of last year. "
India's environment minister says reducing poverty is climate justice - SH/TCP, NEW DELHI - Sep 25, 2015
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2015/09/25/india-s-environm…
"India will confirm plans next week for a fivefold increase in renewable energy by 2020, the environment minister said. But it will continue to champion poor countries in their demand that industrialized nations assume the brunt of responsibility for decades of climate-warming emissions.
Describing poverty as a key source of global pollution, Prakash Javadekar told The Associated Press on Thursday that nations hoping to reach a global climate pact in Paris in December must commit to a world where all 7 billion-plus inhabitants have equal rights and access to electricity, opportunity and justice.
“Poverty is, in a way, a real polluting factor,” Javadekar said, adding that India's top priority is elevating hundreds of millions of Indians still living on less than $2 a day. At the same time, expanding the economy and building infrastructure will cause carbon emissions to grow, as the country relies on burning coal to fuel most of the 254 GW of electricity it generates today.
“But today, I see the carbon space occupied by the developed world,” he said. “We are asking the developed world to vacate the carbon space to accommodate us. That carbon space demand is climate justice. It's our right as a nation. It's our right as people of India, and we want that carbon space.”
India is one of the last major polluters yet to submit its plans for combating and coping with climate change to the United Nations, before the world's nations attempt to nail down a global climate pact in December. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi joins other world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly meeting Friday, experts and officials are eager for India's climate commitments.
Already, countries and territories accounting for at least 60 per cent of global emissions have announced their targets, including the world's No. 1 and 2 polluters, China and the United States. But experts say the pledges so far fall short of what's needed keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius by mid-century - a level beyond which scientists say we'd see extreme climate changes, including sizzling hot summers, much higher sea levels, torrential storms and more severe droughts. Current national pledges put us on track for a 2.9 to 3.1 degree temperature rise.
On Thursday, Indonesia submitted its pledge to the U.N., vowing to strengthen forest protection and increase renewable energy production to account for at least 23 per cent of the Southeast Asian island nation's total capacity by 2025.
Experts have worried that India's position could doom global efforts to limit the rise in temperatures.
“India for a long time has been resistant to the notion of developing countries taking targets at all,” former U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said Thursday in Paris. “Modi has indicated he wants to make a very big push on the economy, focus more on manufacturing. There's a lot of coal in India so the logical fuel for him to choose in driving that growth is coal. If he takes an ambitious climate target, that means he wants to balance that growth with climate ambitions.”
Javadekar said the Indian pledge on climate action will be released Oct. 1, and will include targets not only for increasing renewable energy but also for curbing its emissions intensity, or how much carbon dioxide the country produces divided by its GDP. In 2009, India said it could cut emissions intensity by 20 to 25 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. Javadekar indicated the new intensity target would be more ambitious, but he would not give details.
The pledge will not include targets for cutting overall emissions, and it will not include a projection for when India's emissions growth might peak.
“Nobody has actually asked us for this ... because they know India's particular situation,” the minister said, alluding to India's relatively low emissions rate of 1.6 tons per capita compared with a U.S. rate that is about 10 times higher. While the U.S. and China, emitting around 7 tons per capita, pledged to bring theirs to a common 12 tons per capita by 2030, India “will never reach there,” Javadekar said. “I don't see going beyond 10 any time soon.”
India's plans for a fivefold boost in renewable energy, from about 34 GW today to 175 GW by 2020, had been promised earlier by Modi as he vowed to bring universal electricity access to India's 1.2 billion people by 2020. The 175 GW goal includes 100 GW of new solar power, 60 GW from wind, 10 GW from biomass and 5 GW from small hydropower dams.
It's an astonishing pledge, considering where India is today. A quarter of the country, or 300 million people, still has no access to electricity, while hundreds of millions more make do with just a few hours a day. Blackouts are so common that hospitals and many businesses are forced to use diesel generators, while about a quarter of the 254 GW being produced today is lost in grid leakages and theft.
Experts estimate it will cost at least $150 billion for India to sort out its electricity woes and meet the renewable energy target - funding India does not have. Instead, it will rely on building business opportunities, and will hope for international commitments in waiving high intellectual property costs for technologies that can help India improve its energy production and efficiency.
“We definitely will expect a good amount of technology, affordable technology,” Javadekar said. “Why people should profit from disaster? They should actually help India to build this huge program, making it a reality.”
---
Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.
---
Follow Katy Daigle on Twitter at twitter.com/katydaigle "
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2015/09/25/india-s-environm…
"India will confirm plans next week for a fivefold increase in renewable energy by 2020, the environment minister said. But it will continue to champion poor countries in their demand that industrialized nations assume the brunt of responsibility for decades of climate-warming emissions.
Describing poverty as a key source of global pollution, Prakash Javadekar told The Associated Press on Thursday that nations hoping to reach a global climate pact in Paris in December must commit to a world where all 7 billion-plus inhabitants have equal rights and access to electricity, opportunity and justice.
“Poverty is, in a way, a real polluting factor,” Javadekar said, adding that India's top priority is elevating hundreds of millions of Indians still living on less than $2 a day. At the same time, expanding the economy and building infrastructure will cause carbon emissions to grow, as the country relies on burning coal to fuel most of the 254 GW of electricity it generates today.
“But today, I see the carbon space occupied by the developed world,” he said. “We are asking the developed world to vacate the carbon space to accommodate us. That carbon space demand is climate justice. It's our right as a nation. It's our right as people of India, and we want that carbon space.”
India is one of the last major polluters yet to submit its plans for combating and coping with climate change to the United Nations, before the world's nations attempt to nail down a global climate pact in December. As Prime Minister Narendra Modi joins other world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly meeting Friday, experts and officials are eager for India's climate commitments.
Already, countries and territories accounting for at least 60 per cent of global emissions have announced their targets, including the world's No. 1 and 2 polluters, China and the United States. But experts say the pledges so far fall short of what's needed keep temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius by mid-century - a level beyond which scientists say we'd see extreme climate changes, including sizzling hot summers, much higher sea levels, torrential storms and more severe droughts. Current national pledges put us on track for a 2.9 to 3.1 degree temperature rise.
On Thursday, Indonesia submitted its pledge to the U.N., vowing to strengthen forest protection and increase renewable energy production to account for at least 23 per cent of the Southeast Asian island nation's total capacity by 2025.
Experts have worried that India's position could doom global efforts to limit the rise in temperatures.
“India for a long time has been resistant to the notion of developing countries taking targets at all,” former U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said Thursday in Paris. “Modi has indicated he wants to make a very big push on the economy, focus more on manufacturing. There's a lot of coal in India so the logical fuel for him to choose in driving that growth is coal. If he takes an ambitious climate target, that means he wants to balance that growth with climate ambitions.”
Javadekar said the Indian pledge on climate action will be released Oct. 1, and will include targets not only for increasing renewable energy but also for curbing its emissions intensity, or how much carbon dioxide the country produces divided by its GDP. In 2009, India said it could cut emissions intensity by 20 to 25 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. Javadekar indicated the new intensity target would be more ambitious, but he would not give details.
The pledge will not include targets for cutting overall emissions, and it will not include a projection for when India's emissions growth might peak.
“Nobody has actually asked us for this ... because they know India's particular situation,” the minister said, alluding to India's relatively low emissions rate of 1.6 tons per capita compared with a U.S. rate that is about 10 times higher. While the U.S. and China, emitting around 7 tons per capita, pledged to bring theirs to a common 12 tons per capita by 2030, India “will never reach there,” Javadekar said. “I don't see going beyond 10 any time soon.”
India's plans for a fivefold boost in renewable energy, from about 34 GW today to 175 GW by 2020, had been promised earlier by Modi as he vowed to bring universal electricity access to India's 1.2 billion people by 2020. The 175 GW goal includes 100 GW of new solar power, 60 GW from wind, 10 GW from biomass and 5 GW from small hydropower dams.
It's an astonishing pledge, considering where India is today. A quarter of the country, or 300 million people, still has no access to electricity, while hundreds of millions more make do with just a few hours a day. Blackouts are so common that hospitals and many businesses are forced to use diesel generators, while about a quarter of the 254 GW being produced today is lost in grid leakages and theft.
Experts estimate it will cost at least $150 billion for India to sort out its electricity woes and meet the renewable energy target - funding India does not have. Instead, it will rely on building business opportunities, and will hope for international commitments in waiving high intellectual property costs for technologies that can help India improve its energy production and efficiency.
“We definitely will expect a good amount of technology, affordable technology,” Javadekar said. “Why people should profit from disaster? They should actually help India to build this huge program, making it a reality.”
---
Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.
---
Follow Katy Daigle on Twitter at twitter.com/katydaigle "
Nearly half of US seafood supply is wasted - ENN/CLF/GEC -Sep 25, 2015
www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2015/nearly-half-of-u-s-sea…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/49006
"As much as 47 percent of the edible U.S. seafood supply is lost each year, mainly from consumer waste, new research from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) suggests.
The findings, published in the November issue of Global Environmental Change, come as food waste in general has been in the spotlight and concerns have been raised about the sustainability of the world’s seafood resources. In the U.S. and around the world, people are being advised to eat more seafood, but overfishing, climate change, pollution, habitat destruction and the use of fish for other purposes besides human consumption threaten the global seafood supply.
“If we’re told to eat significantly more seafood but the supply is severely threatened, it is critical and urgent to reduce waste of seafood,” says study leader David Love, PhD, a researcher with the Public Health and Sustainable Aquaculture project at the CLF and an assistant scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The new study analyzed the food waste issue by focusing on the amount of seafood lost annually at each stage of the food supply chain and at the consumer level.
After compiling data from many sources, the researchers estimated the U.S. edible seafood supply at approximately 4.7 billion pounds per year, which includes domestic and imported products minus any exported products. Some of the edible seafood supply is wasted as it moves through the supply chain from hook or net to plate. They found that the amount wasted each year is roughly 2.3 billion pounds. Of that waste, they say that 330 million pounds are lost in distribution and retail, 573 million pounds are lost when commercial fishers catch the wrong species of fish and then discard it (a concept called bycatch) and a staggering 1.3 billion pounds are lost at the consumer level.
The researchers found the greatest portion of seafood loss occurred at the level of consumers (51 to 63 percent of waste). Sixteen to 32 percent of waste is due to bycatch, while 13 to 16 percent is lost in distribution and retail operations. To illustrate the magnitude of the loss, the authors estimate this lost seafood could contain enough protein to fulfill the annual requirements for as many as 10 million men or 12 million women; and there is enough seafood lost to close 36 percent of the gap between current seafood consumption and the levels recommended by the 2010 U.S. Dietary Guidelines. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.624.594 von Popeye82 am 15.09.15 02:07:38
Emissions from Melting Permafrost Could Cost Trillions - ENN/TP/UoC/UoC/N/CC), COLORADO/CAMBRIDGE -Sep 25/23, 2015
www.triplepundit.com/2015/09/emissions-from-melting-permafro…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/49005
"While rain forests have long scored attention for their role in trapping carbon, discussions concerning the Arctic have centered on whether or not, or how much, we are going to allow companies to drill for oil far up north.
Now, scientists are suggesting the Arctic should have renewed focus for another reason: Climate change, accelerated by the melting of permafrost and resulting greenhouse gas emissions, could cost the global economy, in the long run, as much as $43 trillion.
This analysis was published in the journal Nature Climate Change by a joint group of scientists from the University of Colorado and the University of Cambridge. In a letter, the study’s lead authors, Chris Hope and Kevin Schaefer, suggest that the Arctic region is warming at approximately twice the rate of the global average.
Why is this a potential threat? Hope and Schaefer’s team posit that the melting of permafrost, in addition to the loss of ice sheets in Greenland and the far northern islands of Canada, will lead to the release of countless billions of tons of not only carbon dioxide, but also far more damaging methane gas. The release of additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will cause a bevy of problems: Damage and loss to real estate in coastal areas, the loss of crops due to higher temperatures, decrease in electricity from hydropower, and increased use of air conditioning are just a few examples of the hits to the global economy. Those losses would far outweigh any economic benefits, such as the opening of Arctic shipping routes, investment in low-carbon transportation or economic development in the world’s far northern regions. "
Emissions from Melting Permafrost Could Cost Trillions - ENN/TP/UoC/UoC/N/CC), COLORADO/CAMBRIDGE -Sep 25/23, 2015
www.triplepundit.com/2015/09/emissions-from-melting-permafro…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/49005
"While rain forests have long scored attention for their role in trapping carbon, discussions concerning the Arctic have centered on whether or not, or how much, we are going to allow companies to drill for oil far up north.
Now, scientists are suggesting the Arctic should have renewed focus for another reason: Climate change, accelerated by the melting of permafrost and resulting greenhouse gas emissions, could cost the global economy, in the long run, as much as $43 trillion.
This analysis was published in the journal Nature Climate Change by a joint group of scientists from the University of Colorado and the University of Cambridge. In a letter, the study’s lead authors, Chris Hope and Kevin Schaefer, suggest that the Arctic region is warming at approximately twice the rate of the global average.
Why is this a potential threat? Hope and Schaefer’s team posit that the melting of permafrost, in addition to the loss of ice sheets in Greenland and the far northern islands of Canada, will lead to the release of countless billions of tons of not only carbon dioxide, but also far more damaging methane gas. The release of additional greenhouse gases into the atmosphere will cause a bevy of problems: Damage and loss to real estate in coastal areas, the loss of crops due to higher temperatures, decrease in electricity from hydropower, and increased use of air conditioning are just a few examples of the hits to the global economy. Those losses would far outweigh any economic benefits, such as the opening of Arctic shipping routes, investment in low-carbon transportation or economic development in the world’s far northern regions. "
Renewables beat coal, for first time in UK electricity mix, more than a quarter of the UK's electricity came from renewables this spring, official figures show
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data…
www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-energy-statistics-statistical-…
www.mining.com/renewables-beat-coal-for-first-time-in-uk-ele…
"
- A combination of higher wind speeds, more installed solar panels and a 19.5% increase in rainfall contributed to renewables accounting for over 25% of generation in the second quarter of 2015. -
Renewables outstripped coal as a source of electricity in the UK during a full quarter for the first time ever, government data published Thursday shows.
According to the report, a combination of higher wind speeds, more installed solar panels and a 19.5% increase in rainfall — which resulted in record output at hydroelectric power stations — all contributed to renewables accounting for over 25% of generation in the second quarter of 2015.
- Source: Energy Trends Sep. 2015. -
Gas-fired power stations provided the most electricity – 30% – with renewables second. Nuclear power was third with 21.5%, while coal fell back to fourth, with 20.5%.
- Source: Energy Trends Sep. 2015. -
According to industry body RenewableUK’s chief executive, Maria McCaffery, new technologies such as solar and wind power have now become Britain’s second largest source of electricity, generating more than a quarter of the nation’s needs.
- Source: Energy Trends Sep. 2015. -
“The new statistics show that Britain is relying increasingly on dependable renewable sources to keep the country powered up, with onshore and offshore wind playing the leading roles in our clean energy mix,” she noted in an e-mailed statement."
Just how much waste are Americans creating?
www.care2.com/causes/new-study-reveals-americans-throw-out-t…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48999
"A new Yale-led study reveals that we’re disposing of more than twice as much solid waste as we thought we were here in the good ol’ U.S. of A.
Published on Sept. 21 in the Nature Climate Change journal and co-authored by Yale professor Julie Zimmerman and University of Florida professor Timothy G. Townsend, this study found that based on landfill measurements instead of government estimates, analysis of figures revealed that America tosses five pounds of trash per person per day.
Let that soak in for a moment. Five pounds of garbage. Per day. Per person. But it gets better, and by better, I mean worse.
According to the study, 262 million tons of municipal solid waste was disposed of in the United States in 2012 –a 115 percent increase over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) estimate of 122 million tons for the same year. The new estimate also surpasses the World Bank’s projections of municipal solid waste generation for 2025.
So why is there such a discrepancy in the quantity of disposed of waste between what the federal government estimates vs. what this new study claims? Jon Powell, a Ph.D. student in Yale’s Department of Chemical & Environmental Engineering and lead author of the paper explains, “A key difference is in the methodology.” ..."
" 'Wisdom index' indicates we are not prepared, for tsunamis"
www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/09/tsunami-wisd…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/49000
"The world may not be well prepared for the next significant tsunami, reports Northwestern University tsunami expert Emile A. Okal in a new study that includes a “wisdom index” for 17 tsunamis since 2004.
The 2004 Sumatra-Andaman tsunami was the most devastating in recorded history, killing more than 225,000 people, including thousands of tourists. In his review of that event and 16 other significant tsunamis since then, Okal used the concept of a “wisdom index” to grade the performance of scientists, decision-makers and populations at risk. The index was based on the warning issued (or not) during the event and on the response of the population.
Okal found mixed results as to how much wiser people have become about these natural events and how to reduce their impact.
“We cannot foresee how well we will be doing in the next tsunami,” said Okal, a seismologist and professor of Earth and planetary sciences in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. “I found that mitigation of these 17 tsunamis was rather erratic -- there is not sustained improvement with time, nor a clear correlation of the wisdom index with the geographic location of the tsunami source.”
In his paper, Okal reflects on the progress made since the catastrophic event of 2004 in various aspects of tsunami science, warning and mitigation and more generally in tsunami resilience, i.e., the preventive adaptation of communities to this form of natural hazard.
“The Quest for Wisdom: Lessons From Seventeen Tsunamis, 2004-2014” was published Sept. 21 by the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.
In addition to the mixed “wisdom indices,” the key results of Okal’s study are:
- Education is important. “One thing is clear, saving human lives is easier when individuals are educated to the risks in question,” he said. “Education, in all its forms -- formal, classroom, drills, ancestral -- works.”
- Substantial progress has been made in terms of controlling tsunami hazard in the “far field” (a tsunami that originates from a source greater than 1,000 kilometers, or 620 miles, away). Only a handful of deaths have occurred in far field tsunamis since the 2004 Sumatra tsunami.
- The major challenge remains the so-called “tsunami earthquakes,” events which are not strong enough to alarm the population at risk, yet have considerable tsunami potential.
- Some paradigms which led scientists to think that mega-earthquakes occur only in certain geological environments -- featuring young and fast tectonic plates -- had to be revised or abandoned. “For lack of a better understanding, scientists must now assume that mega-earthquakes may occur at any subduction zone,” Okal said. (A subduction zone is where one tectonic plate sinks below another.) ..."
Feds Set (1st)Food Waste Reduction Goals - ENN/EPA/TP/USDA - Sep 22, 2015
- Gina-Marie Cheeseman -
www.triplepundit.com/2015/09/federal-government-sets-first-n…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48997
------> www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?contentid=2015/09/0257…
"Food waste in the U.S. is a big problem, accounting for about 31 percent of the nation’s food supply, or 133 billion pounds. It makes up 21 percent of U.S. municipal solid waste in landfills, and as a result it accounts for the lion’s share of landfill methane emissions. Methane is a greenhouse gas with a warming potential 21 times that of carbon dioxide — and landfills are the third largest source of methane emissions in the U.S.
Given the size of the problem, it is a major deal that last week U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and EPA Deputy Administrator Stan Meiburg announced the nation’s first national food waste reduction goal. The goal is a 50 percent reductionin food waste by 2030. The federal government is leading a new partnership with the private sector, nonprofit organizations, and state and tribal governments to reduce food waste and loss.
“Our new reduction goal demonstrates America’s leadership on a global level in in getting wholesome food to people who need it, protecting our natural resources, cutting environmental pollution, and promoting innovative approaches for reducing food loss and waste,” Vilsack said in a statement.
This isn’t the first time the federal government has worked on the issue of food waste. In 2013, the Department of Agriculture and EPA launched the U.S. Food Waste Challenge, which gives organizations and leaders the place to share practices for reducing, recovering and recycling food waste. By the end of last year, the challenge had over 4,000 active participants, well over the goal of 1,000 participants by 2020. ..."
Rising sea levels +stronger storms increase flood danger
www.clickgreen.org.uk/research/trends/126513-rising-sea-leve…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/48998
"New research has found rising sea levels and stronger storms associated with climate change will produce longer-lasting, more intense periods of flooding.
Many studies predict that future sea-level rise along the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coasts will increase flooding. Others suggest that the human-caused warming driving this rise will also boost the intensity and frequency of big coastal storms.
Up to now, though, these two hazards have been assessed mostly in isolation from each other. Now, a new study quantifies how they could interact to produce alarming spikes in the combined height and duration of flooding. It PROJECTS THAT COASTAL FLOODING COULD POSSIBLY SHOOT UP SEVERAL HUNDREDFOLD BY 2100, from the Northeast to Texas. The study appears this week in the journal Nature Climate Change.
“When you look at hazards separately, it’s bad enough, but when you consider the joint effects of two hazards together, you can get some surprises,” said Radley Horton, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and study coauthor. “Sometimes, 1 plus 1 can equal 3.”
Over the past century, the East Coast has seen sea-level rise far above the 8-inch global average—up to a foot in much of the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, including New York City. Global rise is being driven mainly by melting of ice and expansion of seawater as the ocean warms. In this region, sinking land and currents that chronically drive water coastward have worsened matters. Most projections call for a further 2- to 4-foot rise by 2100; some go as high as 6 feet.
At the same time, separate studies suggest that the intensity of the biggest storms generated in the North Atlantic may increase, because warmer waters contain more energy. Projections of this phenomenon are somewhat less certain, but scientists are taking them with increasing seriousness.
The new study shows how the two factors may work together. The authors analyzed 15 climate models at five locations: Atlantic City, N.J.; Charleston, S.C.; Key West, Fla.; Pensacola, Fla.; and Galveston, Tex. They not only considered both factors, but the chances that they would be correlated—in other words, the probability that they could act together in time to produce more than the sum of their parts. Five models simulated both high local sea-level rises and increases in the strongest storms. "
ZEP plan for enabling CCS in Europe, the Zero Emissions Platform (ZEP) has today released its Executable Plan for enabling CCS in Europe
www.zeroemissionsplatform.eu/news/news/1650-zep-executable-p…
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3636
" The European Commission’s SET-plan identifies Carbon Capture and Storage as one of its ten research priorities towards cost-effectively achieving a fundamental transformation of Europe’s energy system.
To achieve CCS at commercial scale, the EU requires strong political direction, the right funding mechanisms and a robust investment environment. In this context, ZEP’s plan lays out concrete steps for delivering CCS through existing policies and public financing opportunities and introduces a business model that will ensure a strong case for investing in CCS.
Dr Graeme Sweeney, Chairman of the Zero Emissions Platform, said, "The logic that emitting CO2 is cheaper than capturing and storing it needs to be disrupted. We have a proven technology available but now must remove the remaining obstacles to make a sound business case for infrastructure development. This plan introduces European “Market Makers”, either state-owned or regulated private entities, as efficient and cost-effective mechanisms for accelerating the deployment of CCS by creating flexibility in the market. These can be the catalyst for translating intentions into actions."
Dr Luke Warren, Chief Executive of the CCSA, commented, “This report represents another important step towards re-injecting much-needed momentum into CCS in Europe. ZEP has rightly identified the importance of ensuring that CCS projects in development get over the finish line – this will be vital in the UK where the Government will soon be making critical decisions on the next steps for the White Rose and Peterhead CCS competition projects."
"As the Plan highlights, timely development of transport & storage infrastructure will be key to laying the foundations for CCS clusters across Europe. European funding has already helped to support the early development of transport and storage infrastructure in the Yorkshire and Humber region of the UK – through a grant of Euro 180 million to the Don Valley power project – and we anticipate further EU support for project development under the proposed EU Innovation Fund."
"Alongside the EU institutions, the Plan also emphasises the key role that EU Member States will need to play in enabling the cost-effective deployment of CCS infrastructure. In the UK the CCSA has called on Government to establish grant funding of up to £100 million to bring forward sufficient CO2 storage capacity to support the deployment of CCS in the North Sea over the next decade."
"With the countdown to the Paris COP meeting well and truly underway, and countries such as the US coming forward with ambitious CCS programmes, it is now time for the European Commission and EU Member States to rekindle the CCS fire and demonstrate to the world that CCS is a vital part of the EU’s climate and energy strategy." "
www.zeroemissionsplatform.eu/news/news/1650-zep-executable-p…
www.carboncapturejournal.com/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=3636
" The European Commission’s SET-plan identifies Carbon Capture and Storage as one of its ten research priorities towards cost-effectively achieving a fundamental transformation of Europe’s energy system.
To achieve CCS at commercial scale, the EU requires strong political direction, the right funding mechanisms and a robust investment environment. In this context, ZEP’s plan lays out concrete steps for delivering CCS through existing policies and public financing opportunities and introduces a business model that will ensure a strong case for investing in CCS.
Dr Graeme Sweeney, Chairman of the Zero Emissions Platform, said, "The logic that emitting CO2 is cheaper than capturing and storing it needs to be disrupted. We have a proven technology available but now must remove the remaining obstacles to make a sound business case for infrastructure development. This plan introduces European “Market Makers”, either state-owned or regulated private entities, as efficient and cost-effective mechanisms for accelerating the deployment of CCS by creating flexibility in the market. These can be the catalyst for translating intentions into actions."
Dr Luke Warren, Chief Executive of the CCSA, commented, “This report represents another important step towards re-injecting much-needed momentum into CCS in Europe. ZEP has rightly identified the importance of ensuring that CCS projects in development get over the finish line – this will be vital in the UK where the Government will soon be making critical decisions on the next steps for the White Rose and Peterhead CCS competition projects."
"As the Plan highlights, timely development of transport & storage infrastructure will be key to laying the foundations for CCS clusters across Europe. European funding has already helped to support the early development of transport and storage infrastructure in the Yorkshire and Humber region of the UK – through a grant of Euro 180 million to the Don Valley power project – and we anticipate further EU support for project development under the proposed EU Innovation Fund."
"Alongside the EU institutions, the Plan also emphasises the key role that EU Member States will need to play in enabling the cost-effective deployment of CCS infrastructure. In the UK the CCSA has called on Government to establish grant funding of up to £100 million to bring forward sufficient CO2 storage capacity to support the deployment of CCS in the North Sea over the next decade."
"With the countdown to the Paris COP meeting well and truly underway, and countries such as the US coming forward with ambitious CCS programmes, it is now time for the European Commission and EU Member States to rekindle the CCS fire and demonstrate to the world that CCS is a vital part of the EU’s climate and energy strategy." "
Alberta climate change panel to review report, suggesting $50 carbon tax - SH/TCP, EDMONTON - Sep 28, 2015
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2015/09/28/alberta-climate-…
"Jacking up Alberta's carbon tax is the best way to reduce the province's greenhouse gas emissions from power generation, says a government-funded analysis obtained by The Canadian Press.
Charging large emitters up to $50 a tonne for carbon emissions - an almost 70 per cent increase - would produce the best result, says the report by an international economic consultancy.
But that price would also raise electricity costs more than any other option considered, the Brattle Group concludes.
The study, which has not been released publicly, was delivered to the province's Energy Ministry and electrical regulator in July 2014, before the last provincial election. It is now before a panel charged with designing an overall climate-change policy for Alberta in advance of talks in Paris this December.
Coal-fired power generation is Alberta's second-largest source of greenhouse gases and the 64-page main report weighs nine different ways to reduce them. The options include various carbon prices, early shutdown of coal-powered plants, mandated emissions caps and regulated targets for renewable energy.
The best answer is to beef up Alberta's current system, the report suggests.
“Doing so builds on the existing regulatory framework, can be designed to be effective in reducing emissions, supports the development of renewables through offsets, and is already compatible with the existing wholesale electricity market.”
By 2017, Alberta plans to require large emitters to reduce their emissions by 20 per cent per unit of production. Emissions over that level are to cost $30 a tonne.
The Brattle report says reduction targets should increase to 50 per cent. It says exceedances should cost at least $40 per tonne and $50 would be better.
The so-called 50-50 option, it says, would create a 15 per cent cumulative reduction in emissions by 2034 - more than any other option other than early retirement of coal-fired plants.
The report suggests it would also be the most effective at increasing renewable generation by about a third.
The 50-50 option would also cost consumers the most. Including the price of new transmission lines, power costs would go up by 14 per cent.
Forcing coal plants to retire early would cut more carbon and cost consumers less, the report says. But that option brings other costs.
“Our results do not include any added costs such as decommissioning costs. Nor do they include any costs associated with the loss of future revenue streams for coal unit owners.”
Power companies provided with a copy of the report declined to comment on its conclusions.
So did the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, whose members would also be affected by an increase in carbon pricing. Spokesman Markus Ermisch said that the recent announcement to double carbon costs to $30, together with tax changes brought in by the province's New Democrat government, could add nearly $800 million to industry costs over the next two years.
Ben Thibault of the clean energy think-tank Pembina Institute said the report downplays the benefits of legislation requiring a set amount of renewable energy. Most of those would appear after the report's cutoff date of 2034, he said.
“They don't have a long enough time frame.”
Thibault added the report should have considered a more flexible approach to retiring coal-fired plants early. It's also too concerned with being compatible with Alberta's current carbon-pricing system, he said.
“Does it make sense to double down with the previous government's policy just because it's the one you've already got?”
The Brattle report is one of hundreds of submissions the province's climate-change panel will consider.
It is expected to deliver its conclusions in November.
- Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at ?row1960 "
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2015/09/28/alberta-climate-…
"Jacking up Alberta's carbon tax is the best way to reduce the province's greenhouse gas emissions from power generation, says a government-funded analysis obtained by The Canadian Press.
Charging large emitters up to $50 a tonne for carbon emissions - an almost 70 per cent increase - would produce the best result, says the report by an international economic consultancy.
But that price would also raise electricity costs more than any other option considered, the Brattle Group concludes.
The study, which has not been released publicly, was delivered to the province's Energy Ministry and electrical regulator in July 2014, before the last provincial election. It is now before a panel charged with designing an overall climate-change policy for Alberta in advance of talks in Paris this December.
Coal-fired power generation is Alberta's second-largest source of greenhouse gases and the 64-page main report weighs nine different ways to reduce them. The options include various carbon prices, early shutdown of coal-powered plants, mandated emissions caps and regulated targets for renewable energy.
The best answer is to beef up Alberta's current system, the report suggests.
“Doing so builds on the existing regulatory framework, can be designed to be effective in reducing emissions, supports the development of renewables through offsets, and is already compatible with the existing wholesale electricity market.”
By 2017, Alberta plans to require large emitters to reduce their emissions by 20 per cent per unit of production. Emissions over that level are to cost $30 a tonne.
The Brattle report says reduction targets should increase to 50 per cent. It says exceedances should cost at least $40 per tonne and $50 would be better.
The so-called 50-50 option, it says, would create a 15 per cent cumulative reduction in emissions by 2034 - more than any other option other than early retirement of coal-fired plants.
The report suggests it would also be the most effective at increasing renewable generation by about a third.
The 50-50 option would also cost consumers the most. Including the price of new transmission lines, power costs would go up by 14 per cent.
Forcing coal plants to retire early would cut more carbon and cost consumers less, the report says. But that option brings other costs.
“Our results do not include any added costs such as decommissioning costs. Nor do they include any costs associated with the loss of future revenue streams for coal unit owners.”
Power companies provided with a copy of the report declined to comment on its conclusions.
So did the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, whose members would also be affected by an increase in carbon pricing. Spokesman Markus Ermisch said that the recent announcement to double carbon costs to $30, together with tax changes brought in by the province's New Democrat government, could add nearly $800 million to industry costs over the next two years.
Ben Thibault of the clean energy think-tank Pembina Institute said the report downplays the benefits of legislation requiring a set amount of renewable energy. Most of those would appear after the report's cutoff date of 2034, he said.
“They don't have a long enough time frame.”
Thibault added the report should have considered a more flexible approach to retiring coal-fired plants early. It's also too concerned with being compatible with Alberta's current carbon-pricing system, he said.
“Does it make sense to double down with the previous government's policy just because it's the one you've already got?”
The Brattle report is one of hundreds of submissions the province's climate-change panel will consider.
It is expected to deliver its conclusions in November.
- Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at ?row1960 "
Six Major U.S. Banks Call for Leadership in Addressing Climate Change , Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley & Wells Fargo issue joint statement on the need for global climate agreement
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/major-u.s.-banks-call-for…
------> www.ceres.org/files/bank-statement-on-climate-policy
"Six major U.S. banks – Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo – have issued a joint statement calling for cooperation among governments in reaching a global climate agreement. The statement, published today by the sustainability advocacy nonprofit Ceres, voiced support for policy frameworks that “will provide greater market certainty, accelerate investment, drive innovation in low carbon energy, and create jobs.”
The banks said that their institutions are collectively “committing significant resources toward financing climate solutions” and added that “clear, stable and long-term policy frameworks are needed to accelerate and further scale investments.”
“Financial institutions have a critical role to play in financing the transition to a low-carbon future,” said Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres and director of its $13 trillion Investor Network on Climate Risk. “As U.S. negotiators enter climate talks in Paris, they can say with confidence that the business and financial community in this country is ready for government leadership to address climate change.”
In today’s statement, the banks said they are “aligned on the importance of policies to address the climate challenge.” They also expressed ambition to continue investing directly in climate change mitigation efforts to make cities and communities more resilient.
For more information and to view the statement, visit: www.ceres.org/bankstatement.
About Ceres
Ceres is a nonprofit organization mobilizing business and investor leadership on climate change, water scarcity and other sustainability challenges. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $13 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), an advocacy coalition of 34 businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation. For more information, visit www.ceres.org or follow on Twitter @CeresNews.
###
Additional Quotes:
“Climate change presents enormous challenges for global business, but addressing it also offers tremendous opportunities,” said Alex Liftman, Global Environmental Executive at Bank of America. “Financial institutions play a vital role in accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy.”
“Financing sustainable solutions that matter is central to our business success,” said Valerie Smith, Director of Corporate Sustainability at Citi. “We are increasingly working with our clients across various sectors to not only manage and mitigate risks but also recognize opportunities associated with addressing climate change.”
“One of the critical roles financial institutions play in helping to address climate change is to harness market mechanisms to mobilize much needed capital to facilitate the transition to a low carbon future and build greater physical resiliency. Governments can help markets by establishing a clear, stable policy framework that creates value for these investments and facilitates innovation,” said Kyung-Ah Park, Head of Environmental Markets at Goldman Sachs.
“Significant investments in urban infrastructure and energy will need to be made over the next two decades,” said Matt Arnold, Managing Director and Head of Social and Sustainable Finance at JPMorgan Chase. “Governments need to take the lead in sending clear and timely policy signals to ensure these investments support and enhance sustainable economic growth and development – which includes addressing climate change.”
“Morgan Stanley believes that the capital markets can and must play a positive role scaling solutions to global challenges,” said Audrey Choi, Managing Director and CEO of the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing. “The demand for financial tools that address climate change is strong and growing, and we are committed to continued leadership across a range of climate-focused capital markets activity, including financing for clean-tech and renewable energy businesses, underwriting green bonds, and ensuring our wealth management clients have options to align their portfolios with their environmental goals.”
“Businesses across the spectrum are evaluating the risks and opportunities associated with a changing climate – and taking action,” said Mary Wenzel, Head of Environmental Affairs at Wells Fargo. “Strong, long-term policy frameworks can provide the business certainty needed to accelerate innovation and investment.” "
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/major-u.s.-banks-call-for…
------> www.ceres.org/files/bank-statement-on-climate-policy
"Six major U.S. banks – Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo – have issued a joint statement calling for cooperation among governments in reaching a global climate agreement. The statement, published today by the sustainability advocacy nonprofit Ceres, voiced support for policy frameworks that “will provide greater market certainty, accelerate investment, drive innovation in low carbon energy, and create jobs.”
The banks said that their institutions are collectively “committing significant resources toward financing climate solutions” and added that “clear, stable and long-term policy frameworks are needed to accelerate and further scale investments.”
“Financial institutions have a critical role to play in financing the transition to a low-carbon future,” said Mindy Lubber, President of Ceres and director of its $13 trillion Investor Network on Climate Risk. “As U.S. negotiators enter climate talks in Paris, they can say with confidence that the business and financial community in this country is ready for government leadership to address climate change.”
In today’s statement, the banks said they are “aligned on the importance of policies to address the climate challenge.” They also expressed ambition to continue investing directly in climate change mitigation efforts to make cities and communities more resilient.
For more information and to view the statement, visit: www.ceres.org/bankstatement.
About Ceres
Ceres is a nonprofit organization mobilizing business and investor leadership on climate change, water scarcity and other sustainability challenges. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $13 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), an advocacy coalition of 34 businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation. For more information, visit www.ceres.org or follow on Twitter @CeresNews.
###
Additional Quotes:
“Climate change presents enormous challenges for global business, but addressing it also offers tremendous opportunities,” said Alex Liftman, Global Environmental Executive at Bank of America. “Financial institutions play a vital role in accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy.”
“Financing sustainable solutions that matter is central to our business success,” said Valerie Smith, Director of Corporate Sustainability at Citi. “We are increasingly working with our clients across various sectors to not only manage and mitigate risks but also recognize opportunities associated with addressing climate change.”
“One of the critical roles financial institutions play in helping to address climate change is to harness market mechanisms to mobilize much needed capital to facilitate the transition to a low carbon future and build greater physical resiliency. Governments can help markets by establishing a clear, stable policy framework that creates value for these investments and facilitates innovation,” said Kyung-Ah Park, Head of Environmental Markets at Goldman Sachs.
“Significant investments in urban infrastructure and energy will need to be made over the next two decades,” said Matt Arnold, Managing Director and Head of Social and Sustainable Finance at JPMorgan Chase. “Governments need to take the lead in sending clear and timely policy signals to ensure these investments support and enhance sustainable economic growth and development – which includes addressing climate change.”
“Morgan Stanley believes that the capital markets can and must play a positive role scaling solutions to global challenges,” said Audrey Choi, Managing Director and CEO of the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing. “The demand for financial tools that address climate change is strong and growing, and we are committed to continued leadership across a range of climate-focused capital markets activity, including financing for clean-tech and renewable energy businesses, underwriting green bonds, and ensuring our wealth management clients have options to align their portfolios with their environmental goals.”
“Businesses across the spectrum are evaluating the risks and opportunities associated with a changing climate – and taking action,” said Mary Wenzel, Head of Environmental Affairs at Wells Fargo. “Strong, long-term policy frameworks can provide the business certainty needed to accelerate innovation and investment.” "
California Approves Legislation, to Increase Energy Efficiency +Renewable Energy
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/symantec-levi-strauss-co.…
" Last month, Ceres organized more than two-dozen California companies, many of them Ceres' BICEP members, to send letters to California lawmakers urging support for Senate Bill 350. The bill called for Californians to increase energy efficiency in existing buildings by 50 percent, obtain half their electricity from renewable sources and reduce petroleum use by 50 percent by 2030.
Along with the letter, companies including Dignity Health and Autodesk, wrote supportive OpEds that appeared in key state newspaper and met face to face with key Assembly members whose votes were critical to SB 350's success.
And this month, their efforts paid off.
"While it's disappointing the petroleum provision was scuttled, SB 350's approval is a huge step forward in accelerating renewable energy and energy efficiency across California's economy. Coming from the world's seventh largest economy, it also sends a powerful signal of clean energy's emergence as a global player," said Kirsten James, Director of the California Policy Program.
...
With barely two weeks left in the state legislative session, more than two-dozen California companies today announced their support for two major climate bills – SB 32 and SB 350 – that would set new ambitious state goals for reducing climate-changing pollution, boosting renewable energy and decreasing petroleum use over the next 15 years.
“Our support is firmly grounded in economic reality,” wrote the companies in letters delivered today to legislative leaders. “We know that tackling climate change is one of America’s greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century and we applaud the California State Legislature for taking steps to help seize that opportunity.”
Company executives also held in-person meetings with legislators and joined the bills’ lead sponsors, Senator Fran Pavley and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, at a news conference. The letters and meetings were organized by the nonprofit sustainability advocacy group Ceres.
SB 32, which builds on the progress made by Senator Pavley’s 2006 landmark climate bill AB 32, sets a climate pollution reduction target of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. SB 350, referred to as Golden State Standards 50-50-50, calls for Californians to increase energy efficiency in existing buildings by 50 percent, obtain half their electricity from renewable sources and reduce petroleum use by 50 percent by 2030.
“The power is in our hands today to make a difference in stemming the release of harmful greenhouse gas emissions that we know are already negatively impacting human health, the environment and our economy,” said Rachelle Reyes Wenger, Director, Public Policy and Community Advocacy for Dignity Health, one of the nation’s largest health care companies with 32 hospitals in California, speaking at today’s news conference. “SB 32 and SB 350 are common sense policies that our state needs now. That’s why Dignity Health is standing with Senator Pavley and Senator de Leon today in support of these measures.”
“Moving ahead with these bills will solidify California’s stake as a global leader in addressing climate change," added Anna Walker, Senior Director for Global Policy and Advocacy for Levi Strauss & Co., which is headquartered in San Francisco. "SB 32 and SB 350 will not only help our state advance its climate change goals—which are critical to the long-term prosperity of California businesses, residents and the environment—they will also help our state continue to do one of the things it does best – innovate.”
“SB 32 and SB 350 create a positive environment for companies like Autodesk, and the design community as a whole, to develop innovative solutions around low-carbon technologies, buildings and vehicles that can empower industries and communities to address climate change,” said Ben Thompson, Senior Manager Sustainability at Autodesk.
For the full letters and complete list of companies supporting each of the bills, see: www.ceres.org/files/sb32-company-sign-on-letter and www.ceres.org/files/ca-sb350-sign-on-letter.
"These companies recognize that both SB 350 and SB 32 are vital next steps in California’s leading-edge plan to cut carbon pollution and accelerate low-carbon technologies at the pace and scale called for by climate scientists," said Ceres president Mindy Lubber, whose group with its recently opened California office is mobilizing companies to support strong climate policies through its business network, Business for Innovative Climate & Clean Energy Policy (BICEP), and the Ceres’ Climate Declaration. “Many of these supporting companies have set their own aggressive renewable energy and energy efficiency goals that will be more achievable with enactment of these two climate bills.”
About Ceres
Ceres is a nonprofit organization mobilizing business and investor leadership on climate change, water scarcity and other sustainability challenges. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $13 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), an advocacy coalition of 34 businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation. For more information, visit www.ceres.org or follow on Twitter @CeresNews "
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/symantec-levi-strauss-co.…
" Last month, Ceres organized more than two-dozen California companies, many of them Ceres' BICEP members, to send letters to California lawmakers urging support for Senate Bill 350. The bill called for Californians to increase energy efficiency in existing buildings by 50 percent, obtain half their electricity from renewable sources and reduce petroleum use by 50 percent by 2030.
Along with the letter, companies including Dignity Health and Autodesk, wrote supportive OpEds that appeared in key state newspaper and met face to face with key Assembly members whose votes were critical to SB 350's success.
And this month, their efforts paid off.
"While it's disappointing the petroleum provision was scuttled, SB 350's approval is a huge step forward in accelerating renewable energy and energy efficiency across California's economy. Coming from the world's seventh largest economy, it also sends a powerful signal of clean energy's emergence as a global player," said Kirsten James, Director of the California Policy Program.
...
With barely two weeks left in the state legislative session, more than two-dozen California companies today announced their support for two major climate bills – SB 32 and SB 350 – that would set new ambitious state goals for reducing climate-changing pollution, boosting renewable energy and decreasing petroleum use over the next 15 years.
“Our support is firmly grounded in economic reality,” wrote the companies in letters delivered today to legislative leaders. “We know that tackling climate change is one of America’s greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century and we applaud the California State Legislature for taking steps to help seize that opportunity.”
Company executives also held in-person meetings with legislators and joined the bills’ lead sponsors, Senator Fran Pavley and Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, at a news conference. The letters and meetings were organized by the nonprofit sustainability advocacy group Ceres.
SB 32, which builds on the progress made by Senator Pavley’s 2006 landmark climate bill AB 32, sets a climate pollution reduction target of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. SB 350, referred to as Golden State Standards 50-50-50, calls for Californians to increase energy efficiency in existing buildings by 50 percent, obtain half their electricity from renewable sources and reduce petroleum use by 50 percent by 2030.
“The power is in our hands today to make a difference in stemming the release of harmful greenhouse gas emissions that we know are already negatively impacting human health, the environment and our economy,” said Rachelle Reyes Wenger, Director, Public Policy and Community Advocacy for Dignity Health, one of the nation’s largest health care companies with 32 hospitals in California, speaking at today’s news conference. “SB 32 and SB 350 are common sense policies that our state needs now. That’s why Dignity Health is standing with Senator Pavley and Senator de Leon today in support of these measures.”
“Moving ahead with these bills will solidify California’s stake as a global leader in addressing climate change," added Anna Walker, Senior Director for Global Policy and Advocacy for Levi Strauss & Co., which is headquartered in San Francisco. "SB 32 and SB 350 will not only help our state advance its climate change goals—which are critical to the long-term prosperity of California businesses, residents and the environment—they will also help our state continue to do one of the things it does best – innovate.”
“SB 32 and SB 350 create a positive environment for companies like Autodesk, and the design community as a whole, to develop innovative solutions around low-carbon technologies, buildings and vehicles that can empower industries and communities to address climate change,” said Ben Thompson, Senior Manager Sustainability at Autodesk.
For the full letters and complete list of companies supporting each of the bills, see: www.ceres.org/files/sb32-company-sign-on-letter and www.ceres.org/files/ca-sb350-sign-on-letter.
"These companies recognize that both SB 350 and SB 32 are vital next steps in California’s leading-edge plan to cut carbon pollution and accelerate low-carbon technologies at the pace and scale called for by climate scientists," said Ceres president Mindy Lubber, whose group with its recently opened California office is mobilizing companies to support strong climate policies through its business network, Business for Innovative Climate & Clean Energy Policy (BICEP), and the Ceres’ Climate Declaration. “Many of these supporting companies have set their own aggressive renewable energy and energy efficiency goals that will be more achievable with enactment of these two climate bills.”
About Ceres
Ceres is a nonprofit organization mobilizing business and investor leadership on climate change, water scarcity and other sustainability challenges. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $13 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), an advocacy coalition of 34 businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation. For more information, visit www.ceres.org or follow on Twitter @CeresNews "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.738.919 von Popeye82 am 29.09.15 23:23:59
Investors Applaud EPA’s Methane Emissions Rule - C/WH/EPA, BOSTON - Aug 18, 2015
- Aaron Pickering —
pickering@ceres.org
617-247-0700 ext. 148
cell: 508-951-0919
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/investors-applaud-epa2019…
------> www.ceres.org/files/investor-files/investor-statement-on-met…
"Ceres and members of its $13 trillion Investor Network on Climate Risk applauded the EPA’s announcement today of draft rules to address and reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas industry – the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the U.S.
“As a long-term investor with a fiduciary responsibility to California's educators, CalSTRS is concerned about the loss of revenue associated with methane leakage,” said Anne Sheehan, Director of Corporate Governance at the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS). “As such, CalSTRS supports the EPA’s efforts to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas production and deliver achievable climate benefits.”
“Without strong action to reduce methane emissions, there is a real risk that natural gas will be seen as part of the problem, rather than as a bridge to a low-carbon future,” said Andrew Logan, director of the oil & gas program at the sustainability advocacy nonprofit, Ceres. “We believe that the regulations announced today are therefore in the long-term interest of the industry, as well as the U.S. economy as a whole.”
In July, Ceres and Trillium Asset Management brought together investors representing $1.5 trillion in support of a strong federal standard for methane.
Investors are concerned that methane emissions pose a serious threat to climate stability, accelerating the rate of warming in the near term and threatening infrastructure and economic harm that will weaken not only the companies we invest in, but the nation as a whole.
"Reducing methane emissions is a cost-effective way to combat climate change and strengthen America's economy," said New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer. "As long-term investors, we understand that strong methane emissions regulations will help to stimulate capital investment in the energy sector, reduce reputational risk and improve performance for producers. I applaud President Obama and the EPA for their strong commitment to this critical issue."
“The draft rules demonstrate a positive commitment to confront climate change, promote economic growth and provide more regulatory clarity for the industry, but it is a first step,” said Jonas Kron, Senior Vice President at Trillium Asset Management, LLC. “Addressing existing sources of methane emission is the next logical and reasonable step in this process. Doing so is important not only for the climate, but also for industry and a stable investing environment.”
Strong methane rules are also key to the success of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, since any shift toward greater burning of natural gas for power will only generate climate benefits if methane emissions are kept under control. As American policy and business leaders prepare for the COP21 climate talks in December, investors are pushing for action on carbon dioxide and methane in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions overall and demonstrate American leadership on climate.
“I applaud the White House for its commitment to address climate change and improve air quality by introducing cost effective measures to reduce methane gas leaks in the oil and gas industry,” said New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. “Climate change has the potential to put New Yorkers’ health, our state economy, and the investments of the New York State Common Retirement Fund in harm’s way. We will continue to partner with Ceres and other investors to support common sense policies. We will also continue to exercise our rights as long-term shareholders and urge the companies we invest in to take steps to mitigate climate change, adapt to the risks it presents, and take advantage of opportunities in a new clean energy economy.”
For more information, visit www.ceres.org/methanestatement.
About Ceres
Ceres is a nonprofit organization mobilizing business and investor leadership on climate change, water scarcity and other sustainability challenges. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $13 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), an advocacy coalition of 34 businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation. For more information, visit http://www.ceres.org or follow on Twitter @CeresNews. "
- Aaron Pickering —
pickering@ceres.org
617-247-0700 ext. 148
cell: 508-951-0919
www.ceres.org/press/press-releases/investors-applaud-epa2019…
------> www.ceres.org/files/investor-files/investor-statement-on-met…
"Ceres and members of its $13 trillion Investor Network on Climate Risk applauded the EPA’s announcement today of draft rules to address and reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas industry – the largest industrial source of methane emissions in the U.S.
“As a long-term investor with a fiduciary responsibility to California's educators, CalSTRS is concerned about the loss of revenue associated with methane leakage,” said Anne Sheehan, Director of Corporate Governance at the California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS). “As such, CalSTRS supports the EPA’s efforts to reduce methane emissions from oil and gas production and deliver achievable climate benefits.”
“Without strong action to reduce methane emissions, there is a real risk that natural gas will be seen as part of the problem, rather than as a bridge to a low-carbon future,” said Andrew Logan, director of the oil & gas program at the sustainability advocacy nonprofit, Ceres. “We believe that the regulations announced today are therefore in the long-term interest of the industry, as well as the U.S. economy as a whole.”
In July, Ceres and Trillium Asset Management brought together investors representing $1.5 trillion in support of a strong federal standard for methane.
Investors are concerned that methane emissions pose a serious threat to climate stability, accelerating the rate of warming in the near term and threatening infrastructure and economic harm that will weaken not only the companies we invest in, but the nation as a whole.
"Reducing methane emissions is a cost-effective way to combat climate change and strengthen America's economy," said New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer. "As long-term investors, we understand that strong methane emissions regulations will help to stimulate capital investment in the energy sector, reduce reputational risk and improve performance for producers. I applaud President Obama and the EPA for their strong commitment to this critical issue."
“The draft rules demonstrate a positive commitment to confront climate change, promote economic growth and provide more regulatory clarity for the industry, but it is a first step,” said Jonas Kron, Senior Vice President at Trillium Asset Management, LLC. “Addressing existing sources of methane emission is the next logical and reasonable step in this process. Doing so is important not only for the climate, but also for industry and a stable investing environment.”
Strong methane rules are also key to the success of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, since any shift toward greater burning of natural gas for power will only generate climate benefits if methane emissions are kept under control. As American policy and business leaders prepare for the COP21 climate talks in December, investors are pushing for action on carbon dioxide and methane in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions overall and demonstrate American leadership on climate.
“I applaud the White House for its commitment to address climate change and improve air quality by introducing cost effective measures to reduce methane gas leaks in the oil and gas industry,” said New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. “Climate change has the potential to put New Yorkers’ health, our state economy, and the investments of the New York State Common Retirement Fund in harm’s way. We will continue to partner with Ceres and other investors to support common sense policies. We will also continue to exercise our rights as long-term shareholders and urge the companies we invest in to take steps to mitigate climate change, adapt to the risks it presents, and take advantage of opportunities in a new clean energy economy.”
For more information, visit www.ceres.org/methanestatement.
About Ceres
Ceres is a nonprofit organization mobilizing business and investor leadership on climate change, water scarcity and other sustainability challenges. Ceres directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of over 100 institutional investors with collective assets totaling more than $13 trillion. Ceres also directs Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy (BICEP), an advocacy coalition of 34 businesses committed to working with policy makers to pass meaningful energy and climate legislation. For more information, visit http://www.ceres.org or follow on Twitter @CeresNews. "
Alberta to phase out coal 'as quickly as we reasonably can' says premier, Net carbon pricing may be too low
www.mining.com/alberta-to-phase-out-coal-as-quickly-as-we-re…
------> http://alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=38588D3DBE220-BD2F-A759-00…
"
Despite getting 55% of its energy from coal-fired power plants, the Alberta premier says the province will drop coal.
"We will be looking for a strategy to phase out the use of coal as quickly as we reasonably can—without imposing unnecessary price shocks on consumers; or risking security of supply; or unnecessarily stranding capital," said Premier Rachel Notley speaking to the Montreal Chamber of Commerce.
Notley says the future lays in renewables and energy efficiency.
"We need a roadmap to renewable energy, and we need to get the economics of that conversion right."
She said a number of companies have invested in renewable energy production.
Another inducement to drop coal may be carbon pricing. When the NDP took the government after a spring election, it introduced carbon pricing. It forewarns further hikes may be on the way.
"We made a first move on this question in the spring, when we tripled the net effect of our province’s existing regulatory system, governing the cost of carbon."
"The net price of carbon in Alberta has increased but still remains relatively low. " "
Greenpeace plans to buy coal mines, Greenpeace has announced plans to buy German coal mines in order to shut them down
www.australianmining.com.au/news/greenpeace-plans-to-buy-coa…
www.greenpeace.org/sweden/se/press/pressmeddelanden/Greenpea…
http://corporate.vattenfall.com/press-and-media/press-releas…
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-06/greenpeace-says-i…
"Greenpeace has announced plans to buy German coal mines in order to shut them down.
The group is currently exploring its funding options to buy major European energy generator Vattenfall’s brown coal mines and power plants, according to Bloomberg.
The operator has approximately ten coal assets in the country, with mines and power plants valued at around two to three billion euros.
“All Vattenfall’s lignite generation and mining assets in Germany will be included in the sale; power plants Boxberg, Jänschwalde (which is the largest power plant in Germany), Schwarze Pumpe and Lippendorf block R as well as corresponding mining activities (Jänschwalde, Nochten, Reichwalde, Welzow-Süd and Cottbus Nord),” Vattenfall said in a company statement.
“There are many ways to finance such an acquisition and we are looking at those,” Annika Jacobson, Greenpeace Sweden’s programme manager, said.
Greenpeace “may also look at the possibility of buying strategic parts,” she added.
“We will have a serious discussion with Vattenfall on the acquisition. We have a thorough knowledge on the future of the energy market and on climate politics.”
She went on to state the group’s intention to keep the lignite coal in the ground.
It is considering using crowd-funding or donor money to raise the necessary money to carry out the acquisition.
“Mostly, we would believe it would be our supporters who would be interested in such an acquisition to save the climate," Juha Aromaa, a Greenpeace spokesman, said.
Following this announcement, Vattenfall stated that it would be open to all potential buyers, and “all serious bids are welcome”. "
Exposure to toxic mining metals hinders students’ performance, says study - MT/MU/ABC, SYDNEY - Oct 6, 2015
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsexposure-toxic-mining-met…
"A new study focused on the remote mining town of Broken Hill in New South Wales, Australia, has found a pattern of poor academic performance by children in areas contaminated by toxic mining chemicals.
The study carried out by researchers from Macquarie University in Sydney found that children in the mining town exposed to lead, arsenic and cadmium contaminants may have issues with two or more areas of development.
Macquarie University environmental science professor Mark Taylor told ABC that better grades were scored by students from districts having low levels of heavy metals in the environment.
Taylor said: "The difference between children attending schools in areas with the maximum soil lead risks compared to the lower soil lead risk is 20 NAPLAN points, or about 5%."
The authors reviewed data on air pollution in six different areas of Broken Hill by collecting soil samples.
As part of the study published in the journal Environmental Pollution, the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) data was also considered by the authors.
Taylor said the data, obtained through the combination of AEDC, National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and environment statistics, shows metal contamination of the urban environment contributes to blood lead exposures, affecting academic performances.
Children living close to Broken Hill's lead and zinc mine were highly exposed to toxic air, dust and soils consistently and exhibited the lowest literacy and numeracy scores.
The study also found similar results in lead mining and smelting cities Mount Isa and Port Pirie.
Children exposed to dangerous levels of lead and other toxic chemicals have an increased risk of developmental disorders. "
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsexposure-toxic-mining-met…
"A new study focused on the remote mining town of Broken Hill in New South Wales, Australia, has found a pattern of poor academic performance by children in areas contaminated by toxic mining chemicals.
The study carried out by researchers from Macquarie University in Sydney found that children in the mining town exposed to lead, arsenic and cadmium contaminants may have issues with two or more areas of development.
Macquarie University environmental science professor Mark Taylor told ABC that better grades were scored by students from districts having low levels of heavy metals in the environment.
Taylor said: "The difference between children attending schools in areas with the maximum soil lead risks compared to the lower soil lead risk is 20 NAPLAN points, or about 5%."
The authors reviewed data on air pollution in six different areas of Broken Hill by collecting soil samples.
As part of the study published in the journal Environmental Pollution, the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) data was also considered by the authors.
Taylor said the data, obtained through the combination of AEDC, National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and environment statistics, shows metal contamination of the urban environment contributes to blood lead exposures, affecting academic performances.
Children living close to Broken Hill's lead and zinc mine were highly exposed to toxic air, dust and soils consistently and exhibited the lowest literacy and numeracy scores.
The study also found similar results in lead mining and smelting cities Mount Isa and Port Pirie.
Children exposed to dangerous levels of lead and other toxic chemicals have an increased risk of developmental disorders. "
Itronics ships 1st batch of silver produced, using refining furnace technology - MT -Oct 7, 2015
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsitronics-ships-first-batc…
"Specialty cleantech company Itronics has shipped the first silver bullion produced by its new refining furnace technology.
The new technology has enabled the company to increase energy savings from 34% to 44%.
Commissioned in May, Itronics's new refining furnace operates at 2,100°F and another furnace has since been opened.
Itronics said it has witnessed a 12% increase in operating temperatures, representing a 29% overall improvement since the new furnaces began operations.
"The new furnace technology is working well and provides a level of control and reliability over the refining chemistry that we have never had before."
Itronics president Dr John Whitney previously said: "The new furnace technology is working well and provides a level of control and reliability over the refining chemistry that we have never had before.
"The electrical energy cost savings and reduction in maintenance costs are expected to enhance the profitability of our silver refining operation."
Implementing FeLix and SuLix leaching technologies, the company has been recovering metals and minerals from solid materials.
FeLix recovers zinc and potassium from non-mercury bearing silver batteries, and zinc, manganese and potassium from non-mercury bearing alkaline batteries. SuLix is a process to remove sulphur.
The company intends to scale-up the leaching process to supply large quantities of leached solids to the refinery for silver separation and purification, as improvement in furnace productivity has resulted in a shortage of leached solids feed.
Itronics produces GOLD'n GRO specialty liquid fertilisers and silver bullion from spent photoliquids. It owns aniron oxide copper gold (IOCG) mineral property, Auric Fulstone Project, in Yerington Copper Mining District in north-western Nevada, US. "
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsitronics-ships-first-batc…
"Specialty cleantech company Itronics has shipped the first silver bullion produced by its new refining furnace technology.
The new technology has enabled the company to increase energy savings from 34% to 44%.
Commissioned in May, Itronics's new refining furnace operates at 2,100°F and another furnace has since been opened.
Itronics said it has witnessed a 12% increase in operating temperatures, representing a 29% overall improvement since the new furnaces began operations.
"The new furnace technology is working well and provides a level of control and reliability over the refining chemistry that we have never had before."
Itronics president Dr John Whitney previously said: "The new furnace technology is working well and provides a level of control and reliability over the refining chemistry that we have never had before.
"The electrical energy cost savings and reduction in maintenance costs are expected to enhance the profitability of our silver refining operation."
Implementing FeLix and SuLix leaching technologies, the company has been recovering metals and minerals from solid materials.
FeLix recovers zinc and potassium from non-mercury bearing silver batteries, and zinc, manganese and potassium from non-mercury bearing alkaline batteries. SuLix is a process to remove sulphur.
The company intends to scale-up the leaching process to supply large quantities of leached solids to the refinery for silver separation and purification, as improvement in furnace productivity has resulted in a shortage of leached solids feed.
Itronics produces GOLD'n GRO specialty liquid fertilisers and silver bullion from spent photoliquids. It owns aniron oxide copper gold (IOCG) mineral property, Auric Fulstone Project, in Yerington Copper Mining District in north-western Nevada, US. "
Oil bosses to meet in latest climate change offensive, the leaders of eight of the world's top oil companies will meet in Paris next week to explain how they will help combat climate change, as part of an offensive ahead of a U.N. summit later this year
- Leaders of 8 oil majors to meet in Paris on Oct. 16
- To present proposals ahead of U.N. summit
- Total boss says looking at areas of cooperation such as in CCS (Recasts, updates throughout)
www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/07/total-climate-idUSL8N1271…
"LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The leaders of eight of the world's top oil companies will meet in Paris next week to explain how they will help combat climate change, as part of an offensive ahead of a U.N. summit later this year.
The Oct. 16 meeting will be followed by a press conference, where the company heads are also expected to renew their call for a global carbon pricing mechanism, the chief executive of French oil major Total, Patrick Pouyanne, said on Wednesday at a conference in London.
Pouyanne said the company leaders would present proposals to combat global warming ahead of the December Paris climate talks, where governments will set new goals for combating climate change.
"We need to be on the offensive ... We need to be serious to bring answers and solutions to the table and not leave policy makers raising their fingers that they (oil companies) are the devils," Pouyanne said at the Oil and Money conference.
"We are looking at areas of cooperation, for example in research and development, in CCS (carbon capture and storage) ... We all have some experience individually but it's one area where we could join efforts," Pouyanne added.
The meeting will be part of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a U.N.-backed scheme involving a number of major oil and gas companies.
PRICING SYSTEM
Earlier this year BG Group, BP, Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil and Total wrote to U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, urging governments around the world to introduce a pricing system for carbon emissions.
Pouyanne and other executives have called for replacing coal with less polluting gas to reduce carbon emissions.
Setting a price for each tonne of carbon that emitters produce is meant to encourage companies to adopt cleaner technologies and shift away from fossil fuels, primarily coal.
In a joint statement, the companies acknowledged the current trend in greenhouse gas emissions was too high to meet the United Nation's target of limiting global warming by no more than 2 degrees.
Responding to the letter, Figueres said oil companies needed to step up their own efforts to fight climate change.
Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two largest U.S. oil companies, did not take part in the letter. Exxon chief Rex Tillerson on Wednesday called for a revenue-neutral global carbon tax that would differ in each country.
"We believe the risks posed by climate change are serious. We also believe by taking sound and wise action now we can better mitigate those risks," Tillerson said at the conference.
"We have held the view that a revenue-neutral carbon tax is the best option. The revenue-neutral carbon tax could be a workable policy framework for countries around the world. They can tailor it to their own economic conditions." (Additional reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Susanna Twidale; Editing by Pravin Char and David Holmes)"
- Leaders of 8 oil majors to meet in Paris on Oct. 16
- To present proposals ahead of U.N. summit
- Total boss says looking at areas of cooperation such as in CCS (Recasts, updates throughout)
www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/07/total-climate-idUSL8N1271…
"LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The leaders of eight of the world's top oil companies will meet in Paris next week to explain how they will help combat climate change, as part of an offensive ahead of a U.N. summit later this year.
The Oct. 16 meeting will be followed by a press conference, where the company heads are also expected to renew their call for a global carbon pricing mechanism, the chief executive of French oil major Total, Patrick Pouyanne, said on Wednesday at a conference in London.
Pouyanne said the company leaders would present proposals to combat global warming ahead of the December Paris climate talks, where governments will set new goals for combating climate change.
"We need to be on the offensive ... We need to be serious to bring answers and solutions to the table and not leave policy makers raising their fingers that they (oil companies) are the devils," Pouyanne said at the Oil and Money conference.
"We are looking at areas of cooperation, for example in research and development, in CCS (carbon capture and storage) ... We all have some experience individually but it's one area where we could join efforts," Pouyanne added.
The meeting will be part of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, a U.N.-backed scheme involving a number of major oil and gas companies.
PRICING SYSTEM
Earlier this year BG Group, BP, Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil and Total wrote to U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres, urging governments around the world to introduce a pricing system for carbon emissions.
Pouyanne and other executives have called for replacing coal with less polluting gas to reduce carbon emissions.
Setting a price for each tonne of carbon that emitters produce is meant to encourage companies to adopt cleaner technologies and shift away from fossil fuels, primarily coal.
In a joint statement, the companies acknowledged the current trend in greenhouse gas emissions was too high to meet the United Nation's target of limiting global warming by no more than 2 degrees.
Responding to the letter, Figueres said oil companies needed to step up their own efforts to fight climate change.
Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two largest U.S. oil companies, did not take part in the letter. Exxon chief Rex Tillerson on Wednesday called for a revenue-neutral global carbon tax that would differ in each country.
"We believe the risks posed by climate change are serious. We also believe by taking sound and wise action now we can better mitigate those risks," Tillerson said at the conference.
"We have held the view that a revenue-neutral carbon tax is the best option. The revenue-neutral carbon tax could be a workable policy framework for countries around the world. They can tailor it to their own economic conditions." (Additional reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Susanna Twidale; Editing by Pravin Char and David Holmes)"
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.662.221 von Popeye82 am 19.09.15 18:30:40
WCA CEO: more investment in low-emission coal technologies, not less , following the recent divestment announcements from Citigroup +ANZ bank, Benjamin Sporton, CEO of the World Coal Association has elaborated on why more investment in low-emission coal technologies is needed
www.worldcoal.com/coal/08102015/WCA-CEO-more-investment-in-l…
"Following the recent divestment announcements from Citigroup and ANZ bank, Benjamin Sporton, CEO of the World Coal Association has elaborated on why more investment in low-emission coal technologies is needed. He believes divestment away from coal overlooks the global role coal has and the potential opportunities that high-efficiency low-emission (HELE) coal technologies and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies have.
Sporton indicated: “We need more investment in low-emission coal technologies, not less. The International Energy Agency has said $1.9 trillion of investment is needed in cleaner coal technology to meet their 450 / 2° scenario. Taking investment out of coal actually threatens the deployment of high-efficiency, low-emission and carbon capture and storage technologies.”
He continued: “The many investors who remain involved with coal recognise that stepping away from the coal industry does not mean that the demand for coal goes away – it just means that environmentally conscious investors would lose any influence they had over the operation of those companies.”
Sporton also has drawn focus to the fact that if investment is not put into coal, it could decrease the ability to cut global emissions. He explained demand in southeast Asia is projected to expand by 4.8% y/y until 2035. He therefore reiterated the deployment of most efficient coal-fired power plants and increase investments in all low emission technologies is essential.
It is vital that investors actively engage with the coal industry, according to the World Coal Association CEO.
All low-emission technologies are needed to meet climate targets, according to Sporton. He emphasised energy needs, tackling energy poverty and reducing global emissions cannot be achieved without using all options available, such as low-emissions coal.
Edited from source by Harleigh Hobbs
Published on 08/10/2015 "
WCA CEO: more investment in low-emission coal technologies, not less , following the recent divestment announcements from Citigroup +ANZ bank, Benjamin Sporton, CEO of the World Coal Association has elaborated on why more investment in low-emission coal technologies is needed
www.worldcoal.com/coal/08102015/WCA-CEO-more-investment-in-l…
"Following the recent divestment announcements from Citigroup and ANZ bank, Benjamin Sporton, CEO of the World Coal Association has elaborated on why more investment in low-emission coal technologies is needed. He believes divestment away from coal overlooks the global role coal has and the potential opportunities that high-efficiency low-emission (HELE) coal technologies and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies have.
Sporton indicated: “We need more investment in low-emission coal technologies, not less. The International Energy Agency has said $1.9 trillion of investment is needed in cleaner coal technology to meet their 450 / 2° scenario. Taking investment out of coal actually threatens the deployment of high-efficiency, low-emission and carbon capture and storage technologies.”
He continued: “The many investors who remain involved with coal recognise that stepping away from the coal industry does not mean that the demand for coal goes away – it just means that environmentally conscious investors would lose any influence they had over the operation of those companies.”
Sporton also has drawn focus to the fact that if investment is not put into coal, it could decrease the ability to cut global emissions. He explained demand in southeast Asia is projected to expand by 4.8% y/y until 2035. He therefore reiterated the deployment of most efficient coal-fired power plants and increase investments in all low emission technologies is essential.
It is vital that investors actively engage with the coal industry, according to the World Coal Association CEO.
All low-emission technologies are needed to meet climate targets, according to Sporton. He emphasised energy needs, tackling energy poverty and reducing global emissions cannot be achieved without using all options available, such as low-emissions coal.
Edited from source by Harleigh Hobbs
Published on 08/10/2015 "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.827.470 von Popeye82 am 12.10.15 12:12:22
UK to close all coal plants by 2023: reports, Officials @the Department of Energy +Climate Change(Decc) are planning to set 2023 as the date by which all coal-fired power plants must close, according to reports
http://utilityweek.co.uk/news/uk-to-close-all-coal-plants-by…
"Under the plans, the UK’s 10 remaining coal-fired power stations will be forced to convert to alternative fuels, such as woodchips to fit carbon capture and storage equipment, or else shut down completely.
The Times said it expects energy secretary Amber Rudd to announce the proposal ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Paris in December.
According to trade association Energy UK, coal generated about 30 per cent of UK electricity last year, more than nuclear and renewables.
A Decc spokesperson said: “While fossil fuels have a role to play in meeting our energy demands, evidence shows that coal as a percentage of total generation has fallen from 40 per cent in 2012 to 29 per cent in 2014. This reflects the fact that a number of coal power stations have closed in recent years and we expect this trend to continue.
They insisted the government is “focusing on stimulating investment” in lower-carbon alternatives, “keeping bills as low as possible for both hardworking families and businesses and ensuring our energy supplies are secure and reliable”.
The announcement is likely to reignite fears that new renewables will not come on to the system quickly enough to replace the lost coal-fired generation capacity.
National Grid has predicted a de-rated electricity capacity margin of 5.1 per cent for the coming winter, even with additional balancing measures in place, the tightest in a decade.
Author: Lois Vallely, "
UK to close all coal plants by 2023: reports, Officials @the Department of Energy +Climate Change(Decc) are planning to set 2023 as the date by which all coal-fired power plants must close, according to reports
http://utilityweek.co.uk/news/uk-to-close-all-coal-plants-by…
"Under the plans, the UK’s 10 remaining coal-fired power stations will be forced to convert to alternative fuels, such as woodchips to fit carbon capture and storage equipment, or else shut down completely.
The Times said it expects energy secretary Amber Rudd to announce the proposal ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Paris in December.
According to trade association Energy UK, coal generated about 30 per cent of UK electricity last year, more than nuclear and renewables.
A Decc spokesperson said: “While fossil fuels have a role to play in meeting our energy demands, evidence shows that coal as a percentage of total generation has fallen from 40 per cent in 2012 to 29 per cent in 2014. This reflects the fact that a number of coal power stations have closed in recent years and we expect this trend to continue.
They insisted the government is “focusing on stimulating investment” in lower-carbon alternatives, “keeping bills as low as possible for both hardworking families and businesses and ensuring our energy supplies are secure and reliable”.
The announcement is likely to reignite fears that new renewables will not come on to the system quickly enough to replace the lost coal-fired generation capacity.
National Grid has predicted a de-rated electricity capacity margin of 5.1 per cent for the coming winter, even with additional balancing measures in place, the tightest in a decade.
Author: Lois Vallely, "
EPA +the regulation of greenhouse gasses
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/1E09F93CE1151E778…
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/10/15/fact-sheet-ob…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/49074
"This week, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy joined private and public sector leaders for a second annual White House roundtable discussion about the progress made and new steps taken to curb emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), potent greenhouse gases used in refrigeration and air conditioning. Administrator McCarthy announced several new actions the agency will take to help support a smooth transition to climate-friendly alternatives to HFCs.
"EPA is working closely with industry leaders to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transition to climate-friendly refrigerants, and deploy advanced refrigeration technologies,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “The powerful combination of EPA’s regulatory actions and innovations emerging from the private sector have put our country on track to significantly cut HFC use and deliver on the goals of the President’s Climate Action Plan.”
Among the actions announced today, EPA proposed a rule that would improve the way refrigerant is sold, handled, recovered, and recycled. The proposal would strengthen the existing requirements for handling refrigerants and apply those rules to ozone-depleting and HFC refrigerants. EPA estimates that this rule would further reduce enough HFC emissions in 2025 to equal 7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. EPA will accept comments on the proposal for 60 days following publication in the Federal Register. After reviewing public comments, EPA plans to finalize this rule in 2016.
EPA also announced that it intends to initiate a proposed rulemaking in 2016 under EPA’s Significant New Alternatives Policy Program in 2016 that would change the status for certain high global warming potential HFCs to unacceptable where safer alternatives are available and also approve several new climate-friendly alternatives for a variety of industry applications.
At the roundtable gathering, the Department of Defense announced a suite of new commitments, including installing low-GWP transcritical CO2 refrigeration systems at three U.S. commissaries in 2016 and strengthening existing collaborations and creating mechanisms to build new military-to-military and industry partnerships to share information and lessons-learned on emissions reductions and lower-GWP alternatives. Greenchill Partner Target announced that all of the new stand-alone coolers in its stores with a compressor capacity below 2,200 btu/hr will be HFC-free starting in January 2016. Also, Roundy’s Supermarket announced it joined EPA’s GreenChill Partnership and committed to using HFC-free transcritical CO2 refrigeration technology in its six new stores that are opening next year in Illinois and Wisconsin. ..."
http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/1E09F93CE1151E778…
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/10/15/fact-sheet-ob…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/49074
"This week, EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy joined private and public sector leaders for a second annual White House roundtable discussion about the progress made and new steps taken to curb emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), potent greenhouse gases used in refrigeration and air conditioning. Administrator McCarthy announced several new actions the agency will take to help support a smooth transition to climate-friendly alternatives to HFCs.
"EPA is working closely with industry leaders to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transition to climate-friendly refrigerants, and deploy advanced refrigeration technologies,” said EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy. “The powerful combination of EPA’s regulatory actions and innovations emerging from the private sector have put our country on track to significantly cut HFC use and deliver on the goals of the President’s Climate Action Plan.”
Among the actions announced today, EPA proposed a rule that would improve the way refrigerant is sold, handled, recovered, and recycled. The proposal would strengthen the existing requirements for handling refrigerants and apply those rules to ozone-depleting and HFC refrigerants. EPA estimates that this rule would further reduce enough HFC emissions in 2025 to equal 7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. EPA will accept comments on the proposal for 60 days following publication in the Federal Register. After reviewing public comments, EPA plans to finalize this rule in 2016.
EPA also announced that it intends to initiate a proposed rulemaking in 2016 under EPA’s Significant New Alternatives Policy Program in 2016 that would change the status for certain high global warming potential HFCs to unacceptable where safer alternatives are available and also approve several new climate-friendly alternatives for a variety of industry applications.
At the roundtable gathering, the Department of Defense announced a suite of new commitments, including installing low-GWP transcritical CO2 refrigeration systems at three U.S. commissaries in 2016 and strengthening existing collaborations and creating mechanisms to build new military-to-military and industry partnerships to share information and lessons-learned on emissions reductions and lower-GWP alternatives. Greenchill Partner Target announced that all of the new stand-alone coolers in its stores with a compressor capacity below 2,200 btu/hr will be HFC-free starting in January 2016. Also, Roundy’s Supermarket announced it joined EPA’s GreenChill Partnership and committed to using HFC-free transcritical CO2 refrigeration technology in its six new stores that are opening next year in Illinois and Wisconsin. ..."
Nearly 1/3 of world's cacti species facing extinction - ENN/UoE/NP/IUCN, EXETER - Oct 12,2015
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/49062
www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_475625_en.html
"Thirty-one percent of cactus species are threatened with extinction, according to the first comprehensive, global assessment of the species group by IUCN and partners, published today in the journal Nature Plants.
This places cacti among the most threatened taxonomic groups assessed on The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ - more threatened than mammals and birds.
According to the report, cacti are under increasing pressure from human activity, with more than half of the world’s 1,480 cactus species used by people. The illegal trade of live plants and seeds for the horticultural industry and private collections, as well as their unsustainable harvesting are the main threats to cacti, affecting 47% of threatened species.
Professor Kevin Gaston, Director of the Environment and Sustainability Institute at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus, who co-led the Global Cactus Assessment, said: “The startling results reflect the vital importance of funding and conducting assessments of the threatened status of all of the species in major groups of plants, such as the cacti.
“Only by so doing will we gain the overall picture of what is happening to them, at a time when, as evidenced by the cacti, they may be under immense human pressures.”
“These findings are disturbing,” said Inger Andersen, IUCN Director General. “They confirm that the scale of the illegal wildlife trade - including trade in plants – is much greater than we had previously thought, and that wildlife trafficking concerns many more species than the charismatic rhinos and elephants which tend to receive global attention. We must urgently step up international efforts to tackle the illegal wildlife trade and strengthen the implementation of the CITES Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, if we want to prevent the further decline of these species.”
Other threats to cacti include smallholder livestock ranching affecting 31% of threatened species, and smallholder annual agriculture affecting 24% of threatened species. Residential and commercial development, quarrying and aquaculture – particularly shrimp farming, which expands into cacti’s habitats – are also among major threats faced by these species.
Cacti ARE KEY COMPONENTS OF NEW WORLD ARID ECOSYSTEMSAND ARE CRITICAL TO THE SURVIVAL OF MANY ANIMAL SPECIES. They provide a source of food and water for many species including deer, woodrats, rabbits, coyotes, turkeys, quails, lizards and tortoises, all of which help with cactus seed dispersal in return. Cactus flowers provide nectar to hummingbirds and bats, as well as bees, moths and other insects, which, in turn, pollinate the plants. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.789.970 von Popeye82 am 07.10.15 03:39:02
Greenpeace makes official move on coal mines, Greenpeace has made an official offer for a range of German brown coal mines +power plants
www.australianmining.com.au/news/greenpeace-makes-official-m…
------> www.greenpeace.de/sites/www.greenpeace.de/files/publications…
www.greenpeace.de/themen/energiewende-fossile-energien/kohle…
"Greenpeace has made an official offer for a range of German brown coal mines and power plants.
Earlier this month the group’s Nordic sector announced its plans to acquire European energy generator Vattenfall’s brown coal mines and power plants.
The operator has approximately ten coal assets in the country, with mines and power plants valued at around two to three billion euros.
Greenpeace Nordic has remained true to its word and put in an official statement of interest to Vattenfall, outlining its reasoning behind the acquisition as well as its plans to eventually decommission the operations.
It explained it would develop a group potentially dubbed “Beyond Lignite Foundation’ to aid the transition, with eventual plans to shut all operations and power plants by 2030 AT THE LATEST, moving the region to renewable energy sources.
However, Greenpeace did not outline the potential price of the acquisition, instead outlining the current depressed asset sale price likely to be seen in the market, adding, “Greenpeace’s evaluation of the Target’s value is not positive, which makes the question of our financial capability of acquiring the assets irrelevant.”
"We DON'T WANT TO PAY ANY MONEY FOR IT, IT'sWORTH NOTHING," the head of Greenpeace Energy, Nils Müller, explained.
Greenpeace is reportedly in the running against Czech energy groups CEZ and EPH for the assets, according to The Local.
It is uncertain whether Vattenfall would seriously consider Greenpeace’s offer. "
Greenpeace makes official move on coal mines, Greenpeace has made an official offer for a range of German brown coal mines +power plants
www.australianmining.com.au/news/greenpeace-makes-official-m…
------> www.greenpeace.de/sites/www.greenpeace.de/files/publications…
www.greenpeace.de/themen/energiewende-fossile-energien/kohle…
"Greenpeace has made an official offer for a range of German brown coal mines and power plants.
Earlier this month the group’s Nordic sector announced its plans to acquire European energy generator Vattenfall’s brown coal mines and power plants.
The operator has approximately ten coal assets in the country, with mines and power plants valued at around two to three billion euros.
Greenpeace Nordic has remained true to its word and put in an official statement of interest to Vattenfall, outlining its reasoning behind the acquisition as well as its plans to eventually decommission the operations.
It explained it would develop a group potentially dubbed “Beyond Lignite Foundation’ to aid the transition, with eventual plans to shut all operations and power plants by 2030 AT THE LATEST, moving the region to renewable energy sources.
However, Greenpeace did not outline the potential price of the acquisition, instead outlining the current depressed asset sale price likely to be seen in the market, adding, “Greenpeace’s evaluation of the Target’s value is not positive, which makes the question of our financial capability of acquiring the assets irrelevant.”
"We DON'T WANT TO PAY ANY MONEY FOR IT, IT'sWORTH NOTHING," the head of Greenpeace Energy, Nils Müller, explained.
Greenpeace is reportedly in the running against Czech energy groups CEZ and EPH for the assets, according to The Local.
It is uncertain whether Vattenfall would seriously consider Greenpeace’s offer. "
Majority of Canadians want a more diversified economy, investments in cleantech - CGT - Oct 15, 2015
- Perry Hoffman -
www.canadiangreentech.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=a…
"A recent poll done by Research House for Blue Green Canada says that 80% of Canadians want the federal government to do more to support clean technologies. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of those same survey respondents believe the government should be making greater strides to support a more diversified economy. ..."
- Perry Hoffman -
www.canadiangreentech.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=a…
"A recent poll done by Research House for Blue Green Canada says that 80% of Canadians want the federal government to do more to support clean technologies. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of those same survey respondents believe the government should be making greater strides to support a more diversified economy. ..."
Apple to clean up act in China with commitment to build 2.2 gigawatt of clean energy - SH/TCP, SAN FRANCISCO - Oct 22, 2015
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2015/10/22/apple-to-clean-u…
"Apple is cleaning up its manufacturing operations in China to reduce the air pollution caused by the factories that have assembled hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads during the past eight years.
The world's most valuable company is working with its Chinese suppliers to eventually produce 2.2 gigawatts of solar power and other renewable energy.
The commitment announced Wednesday represents Apple's latest attempt to prevent the popularity of its devices and digital services from increasing the carbon emissions that are widely believed to changing the Earth's climate.
Apple Inc. ESTIMATES 20,000,000 METRIC TONS OF GREENHOUSE GAS POLLUTION WILL BE AVOIDED, AS MORE OF IT'S SUPPLIERS RELYON RENEWABLE ENERGY, BETWEEN NOW AND 2020. That's like having four million fewer cars on the road for a year.
Panels capable of generating about 200 megawatts of solar power will be financed by Apple in the northern, southern and eastern regions of China, where many of its suppliers are located. The Cupertino, California, company is teaming up with its Chinese suppliers to build the capacity for the remaining 2 gigawatts of renewable energy, which will be a mix of solar, wind and hydroelectric power.
Foxconn, which runs the factory where the most iPhones are assembled, is pledging to contribute 400 megawatts of solar power as part of the 2-gigabyte commitment. The solar panels to be built by 2018 in China's Henan Province are supposed to produce as much renewable energy as Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory consumes while making iPhones.
Apple has made protecting the environment a higher priority since Tim Cook replaced the late Steve Jobs as the company's CEO four years ago.
“Climate change is one of the great challenges of our time, and the time for action is now,” Cook said in a statement. “The transition to a new green economy requires innovation, ambition and purpose.”
Apple just completed projects in China that generate 40 megawatts of solar energy to offset the power required by its 24 stores and 19 offices in the country. All of Apple's data centres, offices and stores in the U.S. already have been running on renewable energy.
“When you look at all the air pollution in China, all the manufacturing that is done there has a lot to do with it, so this is a significant step in the right direction,” said Gary Cook, a senior analyst for Greenpeace, a group devoted to protecting the environment.
Apple also has a financial incentive to help make China a better place to live. The greater China region is Apple's second biggest market behind the U.S. Tim Cook has made it clear that he wants the company to make even more inroads as rising incomes enable more of China's population to buy smartphones and other gadgets.
Google, Facebook and other technology companies also have been investing heavily in renewable energy in an effort to cut the pollution caused by power needed to run the data centres that process and store information for the users of the digital services.
By some estimates, technology products and services account for as much of the world's carbon emissions as the airline industry.
Apple can easily afford to go green. The company had $203 billion in cash at the end of June.
_______________________________________________________________
This story has been reflected to correct that Apple and its suppliers haven't set a timetable for producing the 2.2 gigawatts of renewable energy in China. The 2020 timeline mentioned in an earlier version of the story refers to the period that Apple expects to reduce greenhouse gas pollution with its commitment. "
www.stockhouse.com/news/newswire/2015/10/22/apple-to-clean-u…
"Apple is cleaning up its manufacturing operations in China to reduce the air pollution caused by the factories that have assembled hundreds of millions of iPhones and iPads during the past eight years.
The world's most valuable company is working with its Chinese suppliers to eventually produce 2.2 gigawatts of solar power and other renewable energy.
The commitment announced Wednesday represents Apple's latest attempt to prevent the popularity of its devices and digital services from increasing the carbon emissions that are widely believed to changing the Earth's climate.
Apple Inc. ESTIMATES 20,000,000 METRIC TONS OF GREENHOUSE GAS POLLUTION WILL BE AVOIDED, AS MORE OF IT'S SUPPLIERS RELYON RENEWABLE ENERGY, BETWEEN NOW AND 2020. That's like having four million fewer cars on the road for a year.
Panels capable of generating about 200 megawatts of solar power will be financed by Apple in the northern, southern and eastern regions of China, where many of its suppliers are located. The Cupertino, California, company is teaming up with its Chinese suppliers to build the capacity for the remaining 2 gigawatts of renewable energy, which will be a mix of solar, wind and hydroelectric power.
Foxconn, which runs the factory where the most iPhones are assembled, is pledging to contribute 400 megawatts of solar power as part of the 2-gigabyte commitment. The solar panels to be built by 2018 in China's Henan Province are supposed to produce as much renewable energy as Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory consumes while making iPhones.
Apple has made protecting the environment a higher priority since Tim Cook replaced the late Steve Jobs as the company's CEO four years ago.
“Climate change is one of the great challenges of our time, and the time for action is now,” Cook said in a statement. “The transition to a new green economy requires innovation, ambition and purpose.”
Apple just completed projects in China that generate 40 megawatts of solar energy to offset the power required by its 24 stores and 19 offices in the country. All of Apple's data centres, offices and stores in the U.S. already have been running on renewable energy.
“When you look at all the air pollution in China, all the manufacturing that is done there has a lot to do with it, so this is a significant step in the right direction,” said Gary Cook, a senior analyst for Greenpeace, a group devoted to protecting the environment.
Apple also has a financial incentive to help make China a better place to live. The greater China region is Apple's second biggest market behind the U.S. Tim Cook has made it clear that he wants the company to make even more inroads as rising incomes enable more of China's population to buy smartphones and other gadgets.
Google, Facebook and other technology companies also have been investing heavily in renewable energy in an effort to cut the pollution caused by power needed to run the data centres that process and store information for the users of the digital services.
By some estimates, technology products and services account for as much of the world's carbon emissions as the airline industry.
Apple can easily afford to go green. The company had $203 billion in cash at the end of June.
_______________________________________________________________
This story has been reflected to correct that Apple and its suppliers haven't set a timetable for producing the 2.2 gigawatts of renewable energy in China. The 2020 timeline mentioned in an earlier version of the story refers to the period that Apple expects to reduce greenhouse gas pollution with its commitment. "
24 states line up to block Obama's Clean Power Plan, President Obama's climate change plan has run up against some serious opposition among 24 states that are challenging it in federal court
www.ago.wv.gov/pressroom/2015/Documents/File-
stamped%20pet…
www.mining.com/24-states-line-up-to-block-obamas-clean-power…
wvmetronews.com/2015/10/24/publication-of-clean-power-plan-p…
"President Obama's climate change plan has run up against some serious opposition among 24 states that are challenging it in federal court.
On Friday 24 states filed a lawsuit in Washington, DC claiming that the EPA over-reached its authority by demanding that, as part of the Clean Power Plan, states lower their carbon emissions. The suit is being led by West Virginia, a key coal-producing state. Other states challenging the plan include Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wyoming and Wisconsin.
Under the plan, new rules require that states lower their carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The regulations could mean some coal-fired power plants will have to shut down in order to meet the limits.
NBC News reports all but two of the states in the suit are led by Republicans . The legal challenge is being accompanied by other lawsuits, from Murray Energy Corp and the National Mining Association, a lobby group.
"The Clean Power Plan is one of the most far-reaching energy regulations in this nation's history," NBC quotes West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, among those leading the challenges. "I have a responsibility to protect the lives of millions of working families, the elderly and the poor, from such illegal and unconscionable federal government actions."
“The immediacy of substantial harm from this power plant rule is plain from EPA’s own data that show it will cause more than 200 coal-fired power plants to close before courts have time to decide the legality of the rule,” Hal Quinn, president of the National Mining Association, said in a statement.
On the other side of the issue, 15 states plus the District of Columbia are backing the Obama administration and will start complying with the new rules, according to NBC.
On Friday EPA administrator Gina McCarthy defended the climate change plan, saying in a statement, “The Clean Power Plan has strong scientific and legal foundations, provides states with broad flexibilities to design and implement plans, and is clearly within EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act."
The Clean Power Plan, made public in June 2014, is a centrepiece of the Obama administration's climate change strategy. It is also the first time in U.S. history that a President imposed limits on power plant emissions, which could transform a sector that currently relies on coal for nearly 38 percent of electricity. "
www.ago.wv.gov/pressroom/2015/Documents/File-
stamped%20pet…
www.mining.com/24-states-line-up-to-block-obamas-clean-power…
wvmetronews.com/2015/10/24/publication-of-clean-power-plan-p…
"President Obama's climate change plan has run up against some serious opposition among 24 states that are challenging it in federal court.
On Friday 24 states filed a lawsuit in Washington, DC claiming that the EPA over-reached its authority by demanding that, as part of the Clean Power Plan, states lower their carbon emissions. The suit is being led by West Virginia, a key coal-producing state. Other states challenging the plan include Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Wyoming and Wisconsin.
Under the plan, new rules require that states lower their carbon dioxide emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The regulations could mean some coal-fired power plants will have to shut down in order to meet the limits.
NBC News reports all but two of the states in the suit are led by Republicans
. The legal challenge is being accompanied by other lawsuits, from Murray Energy Corp and the National Mining Association, a lobby group."The Clean Power Plan is one of the most far-reaching energy regulations in this nation's history," NBC quotes West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, among those leading the challenges. "I have a responsibility to protect the lives of millions of working families, the elderly and the poor, from such illegal and unconscionable federal government actions."
“The immediacy of substantial harm from this power plant rule is plain from EPA’s own data that show it will cause more than 200 coal-fired power plants to close before courts have time to decide the legality of the rule,” Hal Quinn, president of the National Mining Association, said in a statement.
On the other side of the issue, 15 states plus the District of Columbia are backing the Obama administration and will start complying with the new rules, according to NBC.
On Friday EPA administrator Gina McCarthy defended the climate change plan, saying in a statement, “The Clean Power Plan has strong scientific and legal foundations, provides states with broad flexibilities to design and implement plans, and is clearly within EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act."
The Clean Power Plan, made public in June 2014, is a centrepiece of the Obama administration's climate change strategy. It is also the first time in U.S. history that a President imposed limits on power plant emissions, which could transform a sector that currently relies on coal for nearly 38 percent of electricity. "
Exclusive: UK nuclear deterrent to cost $256,000,000,000, far more than expected - R, LONDON - Oct 25, 2015
- Elizabeth Piper -
- A sign is seen outside EDF Energy's Hinkley Point B nuclear power station in Bridgwater, southwest England December 13, 2012.
Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett -
www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/25/us-britain-defence-triden…
"The overall cost of replacing and maintaining Britain's nuclear deterrent will reach 167 billion pounds ($256 billion), much more than expected, according to a lawmaker's and Reuters' calculations based on official figures.
The Scottish Nationalist Party, which wants Britain's Scotland-based nuclear-armed Trident submarines scrapped, called the sum "unthinkable and indefensible" at a time when deep cuts under the government's "austerity" policies mean "thousands of people across the UK are struggling to afford basics like food".
Some military officials also oppose investment in Trident, saying the money would be better spent on maintaining the army and on more conventional technology, which have also faced cuts.
Until now, Prime Minister David Cameron's government has said replacing the ageing fleet of four submarines which carry nuclear warheads to provide a continuous at-sea deterrent would cost an estimated 15-20 billion pounds.
It has as yet given no official estimate of the cost of its replacement and maintenance.
Critics have previously said Britain will need to spend 100 billion pounds, a figure based on a 2014 report by the independent Trident Commission.
In a written parliamentary response to Crispin Blunt, a lawmaker in Cameron's Conservative party, Minister of State for Defence Procurement Philip Dunne said on Friday the acquisition of four new submarines would cost 25 billion pounds.
He added that the in-service costs would be about 6 percent of the annual defense budget over their lifetime. The total defense budget for 2014/15 reached 33.8 billion pounds and rises to 34.1 billion pounds in 2015/16, according to the ministry.
"My office's calculation based on an in-service date of 2028 and a missile extension until 2060 ... the total cost is 167 billion pounds," Blunt told Reuters.
"The successor Trident program is going to consume more than double the proportion of the defense budget of its predecessor ... The price required, both from the UK taxpayer and our conventional forces, is now too high to be rational or sensible."
His figure was based on a presumption that Britain will spend 2 percent of its annual gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, as Cameron's government has promised.
It also uses existing official government and International Monetary Fund figures, and an assumption of GDP growth of an annual average of 2.48 percent between 2020 and 2060.
Using the same figures, a Reuters calculation came to the same sum of 167 billion pounds.
Asked about the rising cost, a spokesperson for the British Ministry of Defence said the government had published an unclassified version of a review on alternatives to Trident which "demonstrated that no alternative system is as capable, or as cost-effective, as a Trident-based deterrent".
"At around 6 percent of the annual defense budget, the in-service costs of the UK's national deterrent ... are affordable and represent an investment in a capability which plays an important role in ensuring the UK's national security," the spokesperson said.
"DANGEROUS OBSESSION
The deputy leader of the SNP, Stewart Hosie, took aim at the Conservatives, or 'Tories', saying the new figure showed "just how dangerous the Tories' obsession with nuclear really is".
"This is truly an unthinkable and indefensible sum of money to spend on the renewal of an unwanted and unusable nuclear weapons system," he said in a statement.
The SNP's popularity has surged since Scots rejected independence in a vote last year, with millions of supporters won over by its anti-austerity message and criticism of Trident.
The opposition Labour Party had been a supporter of renewal but its new leader, far-left veteran lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn, an anti-war campaigner, is opposed to the plans.
He was widely quoted last month as saying he would not be prepared to use nuclear weapons if he became prime minister.
Spiralling costs are likely to reinforce Corbyn's opposition and possibly alarm many in his party who support renewal.
The new figures tally with comments this month by Jon Thompson, the top civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, when he described the project to replace the nuclear deterrent as a "monster".
"That's the project that keeps me awake at night the most," he told parliament's Public Accounts Committee.
"It's the biggest project the Ministry of Defence is ever going to take on. If the government were to proceed with renewing the deterrent then in due course that would exceed 5 billion (pounds) a year. That is a significant proportion of the defense budget and it's an incredibly complicated area."
He added that it was extremely difficult to estimate what the future costs would be.
A final decision on replacing the existing vessels carrying the Trident missiles -- four Vanguard-class submarines -- is due next year and Cameron says he will press ahead with the renewal.
In August, the government said it would spend more than 500 million pounds refurbishing its Faslane naval base in Scotland.
"I think it is right to maintain our independent nuclear deterrent and anyone who has any doubts of it only has to look at the dangers and uncertainty in our world," Cameron told parliament on Wednesday.
In a speech last week, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said global threats meant renewing Trident was vital.
"I appeal to all moderate MPs (lawmakers), to put our national security first and to support building four new Trident submarines," he said. "Spread across the 30-year life of the new boats, this represents an annual insurance premium of around 0.13 percent of total government spending."
(Editing by Dale Hudson and Timothy Heritage) "
- Elizabeth Piper -
- A sign is seen outside EDF Energy's Hinkley Point B nuclear power station in Bridgwater, southwest England December 13, 2012.
Reuters/Suzanne Plunkett -
www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/25/us-britain-defence-triden…
"The overall cost of replacing and maintaining Britain's nuclear deterrent will reach 167 billion pounds ($256 billion), much more than expected, according to a lawmaker's and Reuters' calculations based on official figures.
The Scottish Nationalist Party, which wants Britain's Scotland-based nuclear-armed Trident submarines scrapped, called the sum "unthinkable and indefensible" at a time when deep cuts under the government's "austerity" policies mean "thousands of people across the UK are struggling to afford basics like food".
Some military officials also oppose investment in Trident, saying the money would be better spent on maintaining the army and on more conventional technology, which have also faced cuts.
Until now, Prime Minister David Cameron's government has said replacing the ageing fleet of four submarines which carry nuclear warheads to provide a continuous at-sea deterrent would cost an estimated 15-20 billion pounds.
It has as yet given no official estimate of the cost of its replacement and maintenance.
Critics have previously said Britain will need to spend 100 billion pounds, a figure based on a 2014 report by the independent Trident Commission.
In a written parliamentary response to Crispin Blunt, a lawmaker in Cameron's Conservative party, Minister of State for Defence Procurement Philip Dunne said on Friday the acquisition of four new submarines would cost 25 billion pounds.
He added that the in-service costs would be about 6 percent of the annual defense budget over their lifetime. The total defense budget for 2014/15 reached 33.8 billion pounds and rises to 34.1 billion pounds in 2015/16, according to the ministry.
"My office's calculation based on an in-service date of 2028 and a missile extension until 2060 ... the total cost is 167 billion pounds," Blunt told Reuters.
"The successor Trident program is going to consume more than double the proportion of the defense budget of its predecessor ... The price required, both from the UK taxpayer and our conventional forces, is now too high to be rational or sensible."
His figure was based on a presumption that Britain will spend 2 percent of its annual gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, as Cameron's government has promised.
It also uses existing official government and International Monetary Fund figures, and an assumption of GDP growth of an annual average of 2.48 percent between 2020 and 2060.
Using the same figures, a Reuters calculation came to the same sum of 167 billion pounds.
Asked about the rising cost, a spokesperson for the British Ministry of Defence said the government had published an unclassified version of a review on alternatives to Trident which "demonstrated that no alternative system is as capable, or as cost-effective, as a Trident-based deterrent".
"At around 6 percent of the annual defense budget, the in-service costs of the UK's national deterrent ... are affordable and represent an investment in a capability which plays an important role in ensuring the UK's national security," the spokesperson said.
"DANGEROUS OBSESSION
The deputy leader of the SNP, Stewart Hosie, took aim at the Conservatives, or 'Tories', saying the new figure showed "just how dangerous the Tories' obsession with nuclear really is".
"This is truly an unthinkable and indefensible sum of money to spend on the renewal of an unwanted and unusable nuclear weapons system," he said in a statement.
The SNP's popularity has surged since Scots rejected independence in a vote last year, with millions of supporters won over by its anti-austerity message and criticism of Trident.
The opposition Labour Party had been a supporter of renewal but its new leader, far-left veteran lawmaker Jeremy Corbyn, an anti-war campaigner, is opposed to the plans.
He was widely quoted last month as saying he would not be prepared to use nuclear weapons if he became prime minister.
Spiralling costs are likely to reinforce Corbyn's opposition and possibly alarm many in his party who support renewal.
The new figures tally with comments this month by Jon Thompson, the top civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, when he described the project to replace the nuclear deterrent as a "monster".
"That's the project that keeps me awake at night the most," he told parliament's Public Accounts Committee.
"It's the biggest project the Ministry of Defence is ever going to take on. If the government were to proceed with renewing the deterrent then in due course that would exceed 5 billion (pounds) a year. That is a significant proportion of the defense budget and it's an incredibly complicated area."
He added that it was extremely difficult to estimate what the future costs would be.
A final decision on replacing the existing vessels carrying the Trident missiles -- four Vanguard-class submarines -- is due next year and Cameron says he will press ahead with the renewal.
In August, the government said it would spend more than 500 million pounds refurbishing its Faslane naval base in Scotland.
"I think it is right to maintain our independent nuclear deterrent and anyone who has any doubts of it only has to look at the dangers and uncertainty in our world," Cameron told parliament on Wednesday.
In a speech last week, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said global threats meant renewing Trident was vital.
"I appeal to all moderate MPs (lawmakers), to put our national security first and to support building four new Trident submarines," he said. "Spread across the 30-year life of the new boats, this represents an annual insurance premium of around 0.13 percent of total government spending."
(Editing by Dale Hudson and Timothy Heritage) "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.613.029 von Popeye82 am 13.09.15 01:46:40
Australian Academy of Science divests from fossil fuel, another divestment domino has fallen, with the Australian Academy of Science announcing this morning it will divest from fossil fuel interests
www.australianmining.com.au/news/australian-academy-of-scien…
"Another divestment domino has fallen, with the Australian Academy of Science announcing this morning it will divest from fossil fuel interests.
Fossil fuel divestment advocacy organisation 350.org congratulated the academy on its decision TO JOIN THE LIST OF MORE THAN 450 GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS THAT HAVE DIVESTED FROM COMPANIES ON ENVIRONMENTAL GROUNDS.
“Comprising 450 of Australia’s leading scientists, many of whom research and teach on climate change, it makes perfect sense that the Academy divests from the industry driving the climate crisis,” 350.org Australia campaigns director Charlie Wood said.
Academy President Professor Andrew Holmes made the announcement this morning at the Greenhouse 2015 climate conference in Hobart.
“We hope his leadership brushes off on the University of Tasmania where students are in the midst of a 2-week sit-in over the University’s refusal to divest, despite 2 years of campaigning from students and staff,” Wood said.
Image: CSIRO "
Australian Academy of Science divests from fossil fuel, another divestment domino has fallen, with the Australian Academy of Science announcing this morning it will divest from fossil fuel interests
www.australianmining.com.au/news/australian-academy-of-scien…
"Another divestment domino has fallen, with the Australian Academy of Science announcing this morning it will divest from fossil fuel interests.
Fossil fuel divestment advocacy organisation 350.org congratulated the academy on its decision TO JOIN THE LIST OF MORE THAN 450 GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS THAT HAVE DIVESTED FROM COMPANIES ON ENVIRONMENTAL GROUNDS.
“Comprising 450 of Australia’s leading scientists, many of whom research and teach on climate change, it makes perfect sense that the Academy divests from the industry driving the climate crisis,” 350.org Australia campaigns director Charlie Wood said.
Academy President Professor Andrew Holmes made the announcement this morning at the Greenhouse 2015 climate conference in Hobart.
“We hope his leadership brushes off on the University of Tasmania where students are in the midst of a 2-week sit-in over the University’s refusal to divest, despite 2 years of campaigning from students and staff,” Wood said.
Image: CSIRO "
Protesters storm climate change sceptic’s coal mine, Land belonging to prominent climate change sceptic Matt Ridley has been stormed by protestors, seeking to shut down England’s largest open-cast coal mine
www.australianmining.com.au/news/protesters-storm-climate-ch…
www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/anti-coal-protes…
"Land belonging to prominent climate change sceptic Matt Ridley has been stormed by protestors seeking to shut down England’s largest open-cast coal mine.
A dozen protestors blocked the main entrance to the site by lying in front of the gate, while four protestors climbed into the Shotton mine and fastened themselves to a 500 tonne excavator, according to the Guardian.
The actions mirror those of German protestors who broke into the Tagebau Garzweiler brown coal mine in August this year, following an initially peaceful protest.
Unlike the protests in England, confrontations in Germany soon became physical with police firing teargas and allegedly assaulting the protestors with batons.
One million tonnes of coal have been extracted from the Shotton surface mine, equating to at least eight per cent of all coal mined in the UK.
Ridley has been vocal about his doubts over climate change science, stating “although the world has certainly warmed since the 19th century, the rate of warming has been slow and erratic…scientists agree that the extra carbon dioxide in the air has contributed to an improvement in crop yields and a roughly 14 per cent increase in the amount of all types of green vegetation on the planet since 1980.”
An on-site spokesman for Banks Mining, Mike Dowdall, believed that coal was still necessary as the UK transitioned towards a low-carbon economy.
Investment in coal, he argued, was needed to maintain electricity powered in schools, hospitals, homes and businesses. "
www.australianmining.com.au/news/protesters-storm-climate-ch…
www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/anti-coal-protes…
"Land belonging to prominent climate change sceptic Matt Ridley has been stormed by protestors seeking to shut down England’s largest open-cast coal mine.
A dozen protestors blocked the main entrance to the site by lying in front of the gate, while four protestors climbed into the Shotton mine and fastened themselves to a 500 tonne excavator, according to the Guardian.
The actions mirror those of German protestors who broke into the Tagebau Garzweiler brown coal mine in August this year, following an initially peaceful protest.
Unlike the protests in England, confrontations in Germany soon became physical with police firing teargas and allegedly assaulting the protestors with batons.
One million tonnes of coal have been extracted from the Shotton surface mine, equating to at least eight per cent of all coal mined in the UK.
Ridley has been vocal about his doubts over climate change science, stating “although the world has certainly warmed since the 19th century, the rate of warming has been slow and erratic…scientists agree that the extra carbon dioxide in the air has contributed to an improvement in crop yields and a roughly 14 per cent increase in the amount of all types of green vegetation on the planet since 1980.”
An on-site spokesman for Banks Mining, Mike Dowdall, believed that coal was still necessary as the UK transitioned towards a low-carbon economy.
Investment in coal, he argued, was needed to maintain electricity powered in schools, hospitals, homes and businesses. "
Living Blue Planet Report, 2015, 'Species, habitats +human well-being' - WWF/ZSoL/IoZ - Sep 15, 2015
- WWF's Living Blue Planet Report takes a deep look @the health of our oceans +the impact of human activity on marine life. Data on marine ecosystems +human impacts upon them is limited, reflecting the lack of attention the ocean has received to date. Nevertheless, the trends shown here present a compelling case for action, to restore our ocean to health.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE: THE STATE OF OUR BLUE PLANET
- The marine Living Planet Index
- Fish
- Other species trends
- Habitats
CHAPTER TWO: OUR OCEAN UNDER PRESSURE
- Our ocean under pressure
- Overfishing
- Aquaculture
- Tourism
- Climate change
- Extractives
- Land-based pollution
CHAPTER 3: WHY WE SHOULD CARE
- Why we should care
- Socio-economic implications of ocean decline
- Invisibility of nature’s value: a major cause of ocean decline
- An ocean of opportunity
CHAPTER 4: TURNING THE TIDE
- Blue planet solutions
- The One Planet Perspective in action
THE NEXT WAVE
REFERENCES ...-
------> http://assets.worldwildlife.org/publications/817/files/origi…
- WWF's Living Blue Planet Report takes a deep look @the health of our oceans +the impact of human activity on marine life. Data on marine ecosystems +human impacts upon them is limited, reflecting the lack of attention the ocean has received to date. Nevertheless, the trends shown here present a compelling case for action, to restore our ocean to health.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE: THE STATE OF OUR BLUE PLANET
- The marine Living Planet Index
- Fish
- Other species trends
- Habitats
CHAPTER TWO: OUR OCEAN UNDER PRESSURE
- Our ocean under pressure
- Overfishing
- Aquaculture
- Tourism
- Climate change
- Extractives
- Land-based pollution
CHAPTER 3: WHY WE SHOULD CARE
- Why we should care
- Socio-economic implications of ocean decline
- Invisibility of nature’s value: a major cause of ocean decline
- An ocean of opportunity
CHAPTER 4: TURNING THE TIDE
- Blue planet solutions
- The One Planet Perspective in action
THE NEXT WAVE
REFERENCES ...-
------> http://assets.worldwildlife.org/publications/817/files/origi…
GE +BHP Billiton partner, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in mining sector - MT - Nov 2, 2015
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsge-and-bhp-billiton-partn…
"GE and BHP Billiton have joined forces in a bid to improve efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the mining sector.
As part of the partnership, the companies will also identify new solutions to address growing global demand for resources, including copper, iron ore and coal.
According to GE, new solutions would be developed under the partnership to reduce the emissions-intensity of mining operations, including transportation and power supply.
GE and BHP Billiton plan to share these outcomes to improve sector-wide economic and environmental performance.
"Our strategic approach to climate change is underpinned by engagement.
GE Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea president and CEO Geoff Culbert said: "The mining and resources sector is a vital part of Australia's economic landscape.
"We are proud to partner with BHP Billiton in this mission, and draw on our combined capability and depth of experience to identify real, impactful ways to benefit the sector."
Under the partnership, the companies will assess mining operations to increase efficiency, optimise energy flows in addition to developing system-level approaches.
BHP Billiton chief commercial officer Dean Dalla Valle said: "Our strategic approach to climate change is underpinned by engagement.
"We look forward to continuing to engage with industry through this partnership and to contributing to the development of new solutions."
The partnership falls under GE's Ecomagination initiative, which was first launched in 2005, and aims to solve global water and energy challenges.
Australia-based BHP Billiton had a market capitalisation of £41.5bn ($69.5bn) as of 19 August 2014. "
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsge-and-bhp-billiton-partn…
"GE and BHP Billiton have joined forces in a bid to improve efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the mining sector.
As part of the partnership, the companies will also identify new solutions to address growing global demand for resources, including copper, iron ore and coal.
According to GE, new solutions would be developed under the partnership to reduce the emissions-intensity of mining operations, including transportation and power supply.
GE and BHP Billiton plan to share these outcomes to improve sector-wide economic and environmental performance.
"Our strategic approach to climate change is underpinned by engagement.
GE Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea president and CEO Geoff Culbert said: "The mining and resources sector is a vital part of Australia's economic landscape.
"We are proud to partner with BHP Billiton in this mission, and draw on our combined capability and depth of experience to identify real, impactful ways to benefit the sector."
Under the partnership, the companies will assess mining operations to increase efficiency, optimise energy flows in addition to developing system-level approaches.
BHP Billiton chief commercial officer Dean Dalla Valle said: "Our strategic approach to climate change is underpinned by engagement.
"We look forward to continuing to engage with industry through this partnership and to contributing to the development of new solutions."
The partnership falls under GE's Ecomagination initiative, which was first launched in 2005, and aims to solve global water and energy challenges.
Australia-based BHP Billiton had a market capitalisation of £41.5bn ($69.5bn) as of 19 August 2014. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.827.719 von Popeye82 am 12.10.15 12:36:44
Last standing underground coal mine in the UK to close next month, the closure of Kellingley Colliery, Britain’s last deep coal mine, marks the end of a 300-year industry that once employed over a million workers
- Kellingley Colliery was once considered one of the most successful in the U.K. (Image from Wikimedia Commons) -
www.mining.com/last-standing-underground-coal-mine-in-the-uk…
www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/world/europe/lights-out-in-britai…
"One of Britain’s last standing coal miners, UK Coal Holdings, is shutting down its remaining underground operation next month, marking the end of a 300-year industry that once employed over a million workers.
“We are the last of the dinosaurs,” Chris Jamieson, one of the miners that will lose his job in a few weeks’ time, told The New York Times.
the closure of Kellingley Colliery in northern England marks the end of underground mining, an industry that helped make Britain an industrial power and top exporter.
While open cast coal extraction will continue in the country, the closure of Kellingley Colliery in northern England marks the end of underground mining, an industry that helped make Britain an industrial power and top exporter.
Over 20% of the nation’s energy needs are still met by coal, which is mostly imported. Since 2000, U.K. power generators Electricite de France SA to RWE AG have bought more of the fuel from abroad, where coal from Australia to Colombia is cheaper, according to the Confederation of U.K. Coal Producers.
Britain’s coal industry is not alone. The global sector is suffering from rock bottom prices, oversupply, and weak demand.
Metallurgical coal prices have dropped below $90 per metric ton, their lowest levels in a decade, pushing producers to slash output. Thermal coal, mostly used for power generation in emerging markets, is trading at $42 per short ton, as countries try to switch power generation to lower-emission options like natural gas or renewables.
Investment bank Goldman Sachs said in September the commodity would never again get enough traction to lift it out of its slump and warrant investment in the sector.
(Read more at The New York Times’ feature)
- Men leaving a UK colliery at the close of a shift. Painting by Gerald Palmer. (Image from Wikipedia) - "
Last standing underground coal mine in the UK to close next month, the closure of Kellingley Colliery, Britain’s last deep coal mine, marks the end of a 300-year industry that once employed over a million workers
- Kellingley Colliery was once considered one of the most successful in the U.K. (Image from Wikimedia Commons) -
www.mining.com/last-standing-underground-coal-mine-in-the-uk…
www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/world/europe/lights-out-in-britai…
"One of Britain’s last standing coal miners, UK Coal Holdings, is shutting down its remaining underground operation next month, marking the end of a 300-year industry that once employed over a million workers.
“We are the last of the dinosaurs,” Chris Jamieson, one of the miners that will lose his job in a few weeks’ time, told The New York Times.
the closure of Kellingley Colliery in northern England marks the end of underground mining, an industry that helped make Britain an industrial power and top exporter.
While open cast coal extraction will continue in the country, the closure of Kellingley Colliery in northern England marks the end of underground mining, an industry that helped make Britain an industrial power and top exporter.
Over 20% of the nation’s energy needs are still met by coal, which is mostly imported. Since 2000, U.K. power generators Electricite de France SA to RWE AG have bought more of the fuel from abroad, where coal from Australia to Colombia is cheaper, according to the Confederation of U.K. Coal Producers.
Britain’s coal industry is not alone. The global sector is suffering from rock bottom prices, oversupply, and weak demand.
Metallurgical coal prices have dropped below $90 per metric ton, their lowest levels in a decade, pushing producers to slash output. Thermal coal, mostly used for power generation in emerging markets, is trading at $42 per short ton, as countries try to switch power generation to lower-emission options like natural gas or renewables.
Investment bank Goldman Sachs said in September the commodity would never again get enough traction to lift it out of its slump and warrant investment in the sector.
(Read more at The New York Times’ feature)
- Men leaving a UK colliery at the close of a shift. Painting by Gerald Palmer. (Image from Wikipedia) - "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 50.986.365 von Popeye82 am 02.11.15 16:28:31
US Senators urge Interior Department to amend federal coal mine programme, a group of US Senators has requested that the Obama administration amend the federal coal mine programme to cut CO2 emissions
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsus-senators-urge-interior…
"A group of US Senators has requested that the Obama administration amend the federal coal mine programme to cut CO2 emissions.
In the letter sent to US Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, Senators Maria Cantwell, Al Franken, Martin Heinrich, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Patty Murray, Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse urged the Interior Department to reduce carbon emissions from coal that is publicly owned and also to ensure a fair return to taxpayers.
The senators requested the administration come up with a new plan that would cut the negative impacts of federal coal.
Furthermore, the department was asked to begin to address the impact of federal coal on climate change by using existing authority under the Mineral Leasing Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
Maria Cantwell said: "Taxpayers deserve a fair return on the sale of resources that they own, but the current programme is broken.
"The Interior Department must eliminate loopholes and better account for carbon pollution."
Heinrich said: "Our federal coal programme isn't accounting for the full cost of coal mined from public lands.
"The Interior Department must eliminate loopholes and better account for carbon pollution.
"Communities across New Mexico and future generations will bear the consequences of extreme weather changes and public health challenges if we don't lead by example to reduce carbon pollution from burning coal."
According to Markey, recent nonpartisan investigations into the programme have revealed that companies are allowed to mine the federal coal at cut prices.
Markey said: "As world leaders prepare to meet in Paris to forge the next international climate agreement, we need to make sure that we are not subsidising coal companies to mine this coal and export increasing quantities of it abroad, where it will be burned to worsen climate change."
According to a recent estimate, federal coal is responsible for 14% of all energy-related US carbon pollution. "
US Senators urge Interior Department to amend federal coal mine programme, a group of US Senators has requested that the Obama administration amend the federal coal mine programme to cut CO2 emissions
www.mining-technology.com/news/newsus-senators-urge-interior…
"A group of US Senators has requested that the Obama administration amend the federal coal mine programme to cut CO2 emissions.
In the letter sent to US Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, Senators Maria Cantwell, Al Franken, Martin Heinrich, Ed Markey, Jeff Merkley, Patty Murray, Elizabeth Warren and Sheldon Whitehouse urged the Interior Department to reduce carbon emissions from coal that is publicly owned and also to ensure a fair return to taxpayers.
The senators requested the administration come up with a new plan that would cut the negative impacts of federal coal.
Furthermore, the department was asked to begin to address the impact of federal coal on climate change by using existing authority under the Mineral Leasing Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act.
Maria Cantwell said: "Taxpayers deserve a fair return on the sale of resources that they own, but the current programme is broken.
"The Interior Department must eliminate loopholes and better account for carbon pollution."
Heinrich said: "Our federal coal programme isn't accounting for the full cost of coal mined from public lands.
"The Interior Department must eliminate loopholes and better account for carbon pollution.
"Communities across New Mexico and future generations will bear the consequences of extreme weather changes and public health challenges if we don't lead by example to reduce carbon pollution from burning coal."
According to Markey, recent nonpartisan investigations into the programme have revealed that companies are allowed to mine the federal coal at cut prices.
Markey said: "As world leaders prepare to meet in Paris to forge the next international climate agreement, we need to make sure that we are not subsidising coal companies to mine this coal and export increasing quantities of it abroad, where it will be burned to worsen climate change."
According to a recent estimate, federal coal is responsible for 14% of all energy-related US carbon pollution. "
Misleading climate comments leave coal giant Peabody reaching for settlement, Peabody Energy has agreed to make greater public disclosures in relation to the risks posed by climate changes to businesses, after settlement of charges that claim it misled investors +the public
www.australianmining.com.au/news/misleading-climate-comments…
www.australianmining.com.au/news/misleading-climate-comments…
Alberta imposes carbon tax, oilsands emissions cap, the measures to address climate change include a carbon tax aimed @individual Albertans, phasing out coal-powered power plants, reducing methane emissions +placing a cap on emissions from the oilsands
www.mining.com/alberta-imposes-carbon-tax-oilsands-emissions…
http://alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=38885E74F7B63-A62D-D1D2-E7…
"The Alberta government has done what it promised to do during its election campaign earlier this year, imposing measures to combat climate change including a carbon tax aimed at individual Albertans, phasing out coal-powered power plants and placing a cap on emissions from the oilsands.
Premier Rachel Notley made the announcement on Sunday afternoon, a day before Canadian premiers meet in Ottawa, the capital, to discuss climate change and a few days before the UN climate change conference in Paris.
Addressing environment and energy groups at the Telus World of Science in Edmonton, Notley said "This is the day that we set a better course for our economic future. This is the day that we start to mobilize capital and resources to create green jobs, green energy, green infrastructure and a strong, environmentally responsible, sustainable and visionary Alberta energy industry with a great future … This is the day we stop denying there is an issue, and this is the day we do our part."
Details of the Climate Leadership Plan are laid out in a government press release. Under the plan:
- Alberta will phase out all pollution created by burning coal and transition to more renewable energy and natural gas generation by 2030.
- Three principles will shape the coal phase-out: maintaining reliability; providing reasonable stability in prices to consumers and business; and, ensuring that capital is not unnecessarily stranded.
- Two-thirds of coal-generated electricity will be replaced by renewables – primarily wind power – while natural gas generation will continue to provide firm base load reliability.
- Renewable energy sources will comprise up to 30 per cent of Alberta’s electricity production by 2030.
- A price on carbon provides an incentive for everyone to reduce greenhouse gas pollution that causes climate change.
- Alberta will phase in this pricing in two steps.
- $20/tonne economy-wide in January 2017
- $30/tonne economy-wide in January 2018
- An overall oil sands emission limit of 100 megatonnes will be set, with provisions for new upgrading and co-generation. (The oilsands currently emit 70 megatonnes per year)
- In collaboration with industry, environmental organizations, and affected First Nations, Alberta will implement a methane reduction strategy to reduce emissions by 45% from 2014 levels by 2025.
According to the Alberta government, all of the proceeds from carbon pricing will be reinvested in Alberta, with a portion plowed into measures to reduce pollution, including clean energy research and technology, public transit and programs to help Albertans reduce their energy use. The carbon tax and associated carbon pricing initiatives are expected to bring in around $3 billion.
The oil and gas industry in Alberta has warned that any additional costs will be disastrous for a sector already under severe pressure due to low oil prices. The neighbouring province of British Columbia passed a carbon tax in 2008. The tax covers most types of fuel use and carbon emissions, and has been deemed a success for not only reducing reducing fuel use but lowering personal income taxes, since the carbon tax is revenue neutral by law. "
www.mining.com/alberta-imposes-carbon-tax-oilsands-emissions…
http://alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=38885E74F7B63-A62D-D1D2-E7…
"The Alberta government has done what it promised to do during its election campaign earlier this year, imposing measures to combat climate change including a carbon tax aimed at individual Albertans, phasing out coal-powered power plants and placing a cap on emissions from the oilsands.
Premier Rachel Notley made the announcement on Sunday afternoon, a day before Canadian premiers meet in Ottawa, the capital, to discuss climate change and a few days before the UN climate change conference in Paris.
Addressing environment and energy groups at the Telus World of Science in Edmonton, Notley said "This is the day that we set a better course for our economic future. This is the day that we start to mobilize capital and resources to create green jobs, green energy, green infrastructure and a strong, environmentally responsible, sustainable and visionary Alberta energy industry with a great future … This is the day we stop denying there is an issue, and this is the day we do our part."
Details of the Climate Leadership Plan are laid out in a government press release. Under the plan:
- Alberta will phase out all pollution created by burning coal and transition to more renewable energy and natural gas generation by 2030.
- Three principles will shape the coal phase-out: maintaining reliability; providing reasonable stability in prices to consumers and business; and, ensuring that capital is not unnecessarily stranded.
- Two-thirds of coal-generated electricity will be replaced by renewables – primarily wind power – while natural gas generation will continue to provide firm base load reliability.
- Renewable energy sources will comprise up to 30 per cent of Alberta’s electricity production by 2030.
- A price on carbon provides an incentive for everyone to reduce greenhouse gas pollution that causes climate change.
- Alberta will phase in this pricing in two steps.
- $20/tonne economy-wide in January 2017
- $30/tonne economy-wide in January 2018
- An overall oil sands emission limit of 100 megatonnes will be set, with provisions for new upgrading and co-generation. (The oilsands currently emit 70 megatonnes per year)
- In collaboration with industry, environmental organizations, and affected First Nations, Alberta will implement a methane reduction strategy to reduce emissions by 45% from 2014 levels by 2025.
According to the Alberta government, all of the proceeds from carbon pricing will be reinvested in Alberta, with a portion plowed into measures to reduce pollution, including clean energy research and technology, public transit and programs to help Albertans reduce their energy use. The carbon tax and associated carbon pricing initiatives are expected to bring in around $3 billion.
The oil and gas industry in Alberta has warned that any additional costs will be disastrous for a sector already under severe pressure due to low oil prices. The neighbouring province of British Columbia passed a carbon tax in 2008. The tax covers most types of fuel use and carbon emissions, and has been deemed a success for not only reducing reducing fuel use but lowering personal income taxes, since the carbon tax is revenue neutral by law. "
San Francisco mandates solar on all new buildings, 10 stories or less
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/49567
EPA On Board, to Develop Emission Rules for Aircraft
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/49847
"The end of last month brought big news in the battle to rein in climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from airplanes pose a threat to human health and the environment and therefore are subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.
The Act was originally passed in 1970 to combat air pollution in the form of airborne lead and mercury, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulates, and ground-level ozone — to name a few. It was updated in 1990 to include emissions that threaten the ozone layer, and again in 2009 to deal with emissions known to contribute to climate change.
This announcement now clears the way for the EPA to develop rules to regulate aircraft emissions, much as the agency has done for emissions from cars and trucks. Aircraft are responsible for roughly 12 percent of all U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions, or a little over 3 percent of all U.S. GHG emissions.
Says Janet McCabe, the EPA’s acting assistant administrator for air and radiation: “EPA has already set effective GHG standards for cars and trucks, and any future aircraft engine standards will also provide important climate and public health benefits.”
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, Triple Pundit.
Image via NASA "
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/49847
"The end of last month brought big news in the battle to rein in climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from airplanes pose a threat to human health and the environment and therefore are subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act.
The Act was originally passed in 1970 to combat air pollution in the form of airborne lead and mercury, sulfur and nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulates, and ground-level ozone — to name a few. It was updated in 1990 to include emissions that threaten the ozone layer, and again in 2009 to deal with emissions known to contribute to climate change.
This announcement now clears the way for the EPA to develop rules to regulate aircraft emissions, much as the agency has done for emissions from cars and trucks. Aircraft are responsible for roughly 12 percent of all U.S. transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions, or a little over 3 percent of all U.S. GHG emissions.
Says Janet McCabe, the EPA’s acting assistant administrator for air and radiation: “EPA has already set effective GHG standards for cars and trucks, and any future aircraft engine standards will also provide important climate and public health benefits.”
Continue reading at ENN affiliate, Triple Pundit.
Image via NASA "
Financial Times Air pollution deaths cost global economy $5tn, annually
www.directorstalk.com/financial-times-air-pollution-deaths-c…
www.directorstalk.com/financial-times-air-pollution-deaths-c…
sehr schön anzusehen
http://web.de/magazine/wissen/wildlife-photographer-of-the-y…
http://web.de/magazine/wissen/wildlife-photographer-of-the-y…
Monsanto-Übernahme wichtig, für Ernährung der Bevölkerung
www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/8929233-bayer-chef-monsan…
"LEVERKUSEN (dpa-AFX) - Bayer -Chef Werner Baumann wehrt sich gegen Kritik an der Milliardenübernahme des umstrittenen US-Saatgutunternehmens Monsanto. Die Übernahme werde anders als von Skeptikern behauptet sogar positive Auswirkungen für die Ernährung der Weltbevölkerung haben, sagte er der "Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung" (FAS). "Gemeinsam können wir noch mehr dazu beitragen, dass im Jahr 2050 zehn Milliarden Menschen satt werden."
In Richtung der Vertreter einer Öko-Landwirtschaft sagte er, eine falsch verstandene Agrarwende werde den globalen Nahrungsmangel weiter verschärfen. "Was wir brauchen, sind neue Technologien, mehr Erträge auf den Feldern, eine entsprechende Wirtschaftlichkeit der Agrarbetriebe, und dies bei höchsten Umwelt- und Sicherheits-Standards. Dazu können wir mit Monsanto einen bedeutenden Beitrag leisten."
NRW-Umweltminister Johannes Remmel (Grüne) warnte hingegen vor den Folgen der Übernahme für Landwirte und Verbraucher. "Man braucht kein Schwarzseher zu sein, um vorauszusagen, dass das Preisniveau steigen und sich der Strukturwandel in der Landwirtschaft weiter verschärfen wird - hin zu immer größeren Betrieben, die nichts mit der bäuerlichen, nachhaltigen und gentechnikfreien Landwirtschaft zu tun haben, die die Gesellschaft etwa in Europa will."
Bayer will das umstrittene US-Saatgutunternehmen kaufen und zahlt dafür inklusive Schuldenübernahme 66 Milliarden US-Dollar (knapp 59 Mrd Euro). Die Monsanto-Aktionäre und die Behörden müssen dem Deal aber noch zustimmen. Die Übernahme wird Bayer zur weltweiten Nummer eins bei Saatgut und Pflanzenschutzmitteln machen./mhe/DP/he"
www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/8929233-bayer-chef-monsan…
"LEVERKUSEN (dpa-AFX) - Bayer -Chef Werner Baumann wehrt sich gegen Kritik an der Milliardenübernahme des umstrittenen US-Saatgutunternehmens Monsanto. Die Übernahme werde anders als von Skeptikern behauptet sogar positive Auswirkungen für die Ernährung der Weltbevölkerung haben, sagte er der "Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung" (FAS). "Gemeinsam können wir noch mehr dazu beitragen, dass im Jahr 2050 zehn Milliarden Menschen satt werden."
In Richtung der Vertreter einer Öko-Landwirtschaft sagte er, eine falsch verstandene Agrarwende werde den globalen Nahrungsmangel weiter verschärfen. "Was wir brauchen, sind neue Technologien, mehr Erträge auf den Feldern, eine entsprechende Wirtschaftlichkeit der Agrarbetriebe, und dies bei höchsten Umwelt- und Sicherheits-Standards. Dazu können wir mit Monsanto einen bedeutenden Beitrag leisten."
NRW-Umweltminister Johannes Remmel (Grüne) warnte hingegen vor den Folgen der Übernahme für Landwirte und Verbraucher. "Man braucht kein Schwarzseher zu sein, um vorauszusagen, dass das Preisniveau steigen und sich der Strukturwandel in der Landwirtschaft weiter verschärfen wird - hin zu immer größeren Betrieben, die nichts mit der bäuerlichen, nachhaltigen und gentechnikfreien Landwirtschaft zu tun haben, die die Gesellschaft etwa in Europa will."
Bayer will das umstrittene US-Saatgutunternehmen kaufen und zahlt dafür inklusive Schuldenübernahme 66 Milliarden US-Dollar (knapp 59 Mrd Euro). Die Monsanto-Aktionäre und die Behörden müssen dem Deal aber noch zustimmen. Die Übernahme wird Bayer zur weltweiten Nummer eins bei Saatgut und Pflanzenschutzmitteln machen./mhe/DP/he"
Monsanto-Übernahme wichtig,
wirklich "wichtig"? siehst du das auch so?
"Man braucht kein Schwarzseher zu sein, um vorauszusagen, dass das Preisniveau steigen und sich der Strukturwandel in der Landwirtschaft weiter verschärfen wird - hin zu immer größeren Betrieben, die nichts mit der bäuerlichen, nachhaltigen und gentechnikfreien Landwirtschaft zu tun haben, die die Gesellschaft etwa in Europa will."
ich tippe auf weiter fallende preise. je mehr ertrag (angebot), bei relativ ausgelasteter nachfrage (jedenfalls in europa), desto geringer die preise. was den aktuellen trend bestätigen würde.
na gut an KTG hat man gesehen, dass großbetriebe nichts mit un"fail"bar zu tun haben müssen.
und ob die gesellschaft tatsächlich "nachhaltige und gentechnikfreie Landwirtschaft will" mag ich bezweifeln. die gesellschaft will in der mehrzahl lieber billig. dem konsumenten ist es halt auch nicht möglich zu verifizieren unter welchen umständen letztlich ein produkt hergestellt wird. von daher sollte die politik doch paar grenzen setzen und dem "freien", "vernunftbegabten" bürger diese wahl erleichtern?!
was meinst du?
wirklich "wichtig"? siehst du das auch so?
"Man braucht kein Schwarzseher zu sein, um vorauszusagen, dass das Preisniveau steigen und sich der Strukturwandel in der Landwirtschaft weiter verschärfen wird - hin zu immer größeren Betrieben, die nichts mit der bäuerlichen, nachhaltigen und gentechnikfreien Landwirtschaft zu tun haben, die die Gesellschaft etwa in Europa will."
ich tippe auf weiter fallende preise. je mehr ertrag (angebot), bei relativ ausgelasteter nachfrage (jedenfalls in europa), desto geringer die preise. was den aktuellen trend bestätigen würde.
na gut an KTG hat man gesehen, dass großbetriebe nichts mit un"fail"bar zu tun haben müssen.
und ob die gesellschaft tatsächlich "nachhaltige und gentechnikfreie Landwirtschaft will" mag ich bezweifeln. die gesellschaft will in der mehrzahl lieber billig. dem konsumenten ist es halt auch nicht möglich zu verifizieren unter welchen umständen letztlich ein produkt hergestellt wird. von daher sollte die politik doch paar grenzen setzen und dem "freien", "vernunftbegabten" bürger diese wahl erleichtern?!
was meinst du?
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.302.305 von sir_krisowaritschko am 19.09.16 10:09:01
Vorab: Das ist sicher(in meiner Gastrozeit hab ich da auch ein bisschen was mitbekommen) ein uuuuunheimlich komplexes Thema.
Runtergebrochen, finde ich es ungefähr so, dass ich beide Seiten(in Dieser "Gegenstellung")schon meine etwas zu verstehen, und Deren Standpunkte("Produktivität, für Alle" "vs." "hässliche Großbetriebe, die den bäuerlichen, nachhaltigen keinen Platz mehr lassen") auch für berechtigt halte,
Das Problem aber ist dass Beide Standpunkte nicht richtig miteinander vereinbar sein werden, wenn die Erdbevölkerung künftig "vernünftig" ernährt werden soll
Vorab: Das ist sicher(in meiner Gastrozeit hab ich da auch ein bisschen was mitbekommen) ein uuuuunheimlich komplexes Thema.
Runtergebrochen, finde ich es ungefähr so, dass ich beide Seiten(in Dieser "Gegenstellung")schon meine etwas zu verstehen, und Deren Standpunkte("Produktivität, für Alle" "vs." "hässliche Großbetriebe, die den bäuerlichen, nachhaltigen keinen Platz mehr lassen") auch für berechtigt halte,
Das Problem aber ist dass Beide Standpunkte nicht richtig miteinander vereinbar sein werden, wenn die Erdbevölkerung künftig "vernünftig" ernährt werden soll
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.302.305 von sir_krisowaritschko am 19.09.16 10:09:01
zu Großkonzernen,
Du kannst Dir z.B. die Wiesenhof Dokumentation(en) mal ansehen
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWDD5VAQVvY
zu Großkonzernen,
Du kannst Dir z.B. die Wiesenhof Dokumentation(en) mal ansehen
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWDD5VAQVvY
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.300.952 von Popeye82 am 19.09.16 00:43:50
food +agriculture just took a turn, for the worst
www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2988132/monsanto_and…
food +agriculture just took a turn, for the worst
www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2988132/monsanto_and…
Dieses Bild ist nicht SSL-verschlüsselt: [url]http://i1.wp.com/www.greenprophet.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Deforestation-Istanbul-560x3731.jpg?w=660
[/url]Dieses Bild ist nicht SSL-verschlüsselt: [url]http://i1.wp.com/www.greenprophet.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Deforestation-Istanbul-560x3731.jpg?w=660
[/url]www.greenprophet.com/2016/09/world-deforestation-were-losing…
Dieses Bild ist nicht mehr verfügbar: [url]http://e360.yale.edu/images/features/HoneybeeGoldenrod_SteveBurtFlickrKB.jpg
[/url]http://e360.yale.edu/feature/bee_collapse_co2_climate_change…
France Becomes First Country To Ban Plastic Cups, +Dishes
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/france-plastic-cup-plates-ban_u…
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/france-plastic-cup-plates-ban_u…
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2016/australia-locked-ambitious-c…
"Australia will be locked into significantly more ambitious climate policies by the end of the year, as one of the key conditions of the far-reaching Paris climate deal was met overnight and the remaining condition appears merely a formality.
The Paris climate deal, which aims to cap average global warming at “well below” 2°C and as low as 1.5°C, will come into force within 30 days of it being ratified by at least 55 countries representing at least 55 per cent of total emissions.
On Wednesday, the first threshold was reached when another 31 countries, including major emitters Mexico and Brazil, and many of Australia’s vulnerable Pacific island neighbours, signed the deal. That took the running total to 60, and 48 per cent of emissions, including the two biggest emitters China and the US.
Another 14 countries, including the UK, France, Germany, and Australia, then promised to ratify the deal by the end of the year. This will ensure that the second condition will also be reached and that the pact will be in place before end of 2016, just a year after the agreement was reached in Paris and then signed in April.
This is virtually unprecedented in international agreements. “This momentum is remarkable,” UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said. “It can sometimes take years or even decades for a treaty to enter into force. It is just nine months since the Paris climate conference. This is testament to the urgency of the crisis we all face.”
Ban said that the early entry into force of the Paris Agreement would trigger the operational provisions of the agreement and accelerate efforts to limit the global temperature rise to well below 2°C, and to build climate resilience.
This is where it impacts Australia. In excerpts of a speech he is due to make in New York (Friday morning Australia time) Turnbull said all the right things.
“We all understand what is at stake – the future of generations around the globe and the wellbeing of our planet.”
And then: “We also know that our commitment to action creates new opportunities for innovation and growth, which means more jobs. Over the past decade or so Australia has reduced emissions and grown the economy by nearly 50%.”
Turnbull says that the significant and complex threat of climate change “demands every one of us to act together towards a better world”.
“We all understand what is at stake – the future of generations around the globe and the wellbeing of our planet.” Australia will play its part, he says, describing the Paris conference of last year as “a shining example of global co-operation for the common good”.
But it is one thing to make pleasing remarks on the international stage and quite another to implement those promises and engagements at home. He has been prime minister for more than 12 months but has yet to move beyond the policies of his climate sceptic predecessor, Tony Abbott.
Even the one initiative he has made, the $1 billion Clean Energy Innovation Fund, is to be stripped of nearly all its funds because of a compromise the government agreed to make on Australian Renewable Energy Agency funding.
But the task for the Turnbull government is monumental. As Reputex pointed out in a report on Wednesday, its current policies will likely leave Australia one billion tonnes of greenhouse gas abatement short of its own modest target of a 26-28 per cent cut in emissions by 2030.
The individual targets committed in Paris still fall well short of the 2°C mark, and a long way from 1.5°C. According to some estimates, it will leave the world facing a warming scenario of 3°C or more. Australia, according to its own Climate Change Authority, will likely need to find another billion tonnes of abatement to meet the fair share promised by Turnbull.
We may have to wait another year to learn what it might be that Turnbull will do, or feel he can do with a one seat majority in parliament, and a large climate science denying conservative rump within his own party.
A review in 2017 could be a launch-pad for tightening baselines, shifting to some sort of trading scheme – as suggested by the CCA and Labour – and expanding and lifting renewable energy targets, or imposing tight emission regulations for vehicles, buildings or coal fired generators.
So far, though, the minister for the environment and energy, Josh Frydenberg, has committed to nothing more than a “sit-rep”, a term so oblique we had to ask what it meant. “A situation report,” we were told. In other words, an assessment of where the country is, not of what it might or should be able to do.
Yet, the case for urgent action is clear, as even Turnbull recognises. The activist group 350.org, which wants warming limited to 1.5°C, says there remains a massive gap between what the agreement calls for and what world governments are actually doing to meet these targets.
“Each of the last 16 consecutive months have been the hottest in history, with 2016 shaping up to be the hottest year on record — a title that we’re getting far too accustomed to applying year after year,” said executive director May Boeve.
The Paris accord, which Australia will ratify and be beholden to, commits the world, Australia included, to zero carbon emissions by the middle of the century. Even the latest CCA report indicates that coal generation will have to disappear by around 2035.
The fact remains that Australia, without strong and clear action, will blow its “climate budget” by 2030 on its current course, and will miss out on the huge economic opportunities that could have been offered a global renewable energy superpower and technology leader.
And the uncomfortable truth for Turnbull and the conservative rump he is forced to deal with is that climate change is inextricably linked with all the major issues facing the country – security, immigration and trade.
US president Barack Obama on Wednesday directed his National Security Council and the Office of Science and Technology Policy to systematically include “climate change assessments” in all national security decisions.
“Climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources like food and water,” the White House said in an accompanying fact sheet.
“It is well-established that climate change is a threat multiplier that catalyzes conflict and creates instability,” said Andrew Light, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute.
“Climate change is a underlying driver of natural disasters and extreme weather events, increases human migration, and contributes to conflicts around resources, such as food and water. Without action, these threats will surely increase.”
In Australia, something has to change, and it has to change soon. But how? "
Dutch parliament votes to close down country's coal industry
www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/23/dutch-parliament…
www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/23/dutch-parliament…
Millions of Trees are Dying Across the US
www.care2.com/causes/millions-of-trees-are-dying-across-the-…
"Throughout the U.S., trees are dying at an astonishing rate. The reasons for the die-off vary from location to location — drought, disease, insects and wildfires – but the root cause in many of these cases is the same: climate change.
The epidemic is even threatening the oldest white oak tree in America, a 600-year-old giant in New Jersey that predates Columbus’ visit to the Americas.
The effect is particularly apparent in mountain states like California, where 66 million trees have simply disappeared from the Sierra Nevada range since 2010. The Forest Service blames the years-long drought in the area and the spread of pine beetles.
In northern California, the ominously named “Sudden Oak Death” is infecting hundreds of different plants, from massive redwoods to backyard oaks. The disease is transmitted through water, so it can easily be spread by wind and rain over long distances. In fact, the spread already spans more than half the length of the state.
The presence of so many dead trees would be a tragedy anywhere, but in the mountains of the West, it’s particularly dangerous because the trees provide fuel for forest fires. It’s impossible for forest workers to chop down and remove millions of trees, so the majority of them are still standing.
In some cases, death and disease have overtaken entire mountainsides. Some researchers estimate that we could lose all needle leaf evergreens in the Southwest U.S. within the next hundred years..
In Hawaii, the islands are losing their once-abundant ohi’a trees at an alarming rate. Over the past six years, the big island has lost nearly 50,000 acres to a previously unknown disease that causes rapid death over the course of just a few short weeks. Because it’s unlike anything scientists have ever seen before, researchers are unsure how to treat it. While the plague is affecting only a limited area now, locals worry it will spread and collapse the entire native ecosystem.
The disease is caused by a fungus, which grows through the vascular system of the trees, preventing them from drawing water from the ground. Though researchers have examined other plant fungi in an attempt to trace the disease’s origins, it appears to be an entirely new strain. There is still no cure for the fungus, so right now the priority is containing the spread of the disease rather than treating it.
In Seattle, tree deaths are even hitting city parks. Pine beetles, once confined to a small part of the country, have spread throughout the U.S., apparently beyond our forests. More than 500 trees have been lost this summer alone — a normal year would see only about 130 trees culled.
While there’s some controversy over whether pine beetles are destroying forests or simply culling unhealthy trees, the fact remains that these tree deaths are a major warning sign.
And it isn’t just the Western U.S. that’s been affected by the epidemic. In recent years, reports of dying forests have come in from every part of the country. Throughout New England, fro instance, hemlock trees have been slowly dying from invasive insect infestations, forever altering the composition of local forests. Again, climate change seems to be enabling the spread of the pests in a way ecologists have never seen before.
Of course, this phenomenon isn’t limited to the U.S.: similar stories are playing out in forests all over the world. And that’s a terrifying thought.
Forests are one of the Earth’s most important protections again climate change. The trees themselves act as carbon sinks, sequestering nearly a quarter of carbon dioxide emissions from the air. When they die, that carbon is released back into the air.
In an interview last year with Rolling Stone, Richard Birdsey of the U.S. Forest Service explained, “if the carbon sink in forests fails, a simple speculation is that global temperatures would increase proportionally to the increase of CO2 concentration, so about 25 percent above current climate projections.”"
www.care2.com/causes/millions-of-trees-are-dying-across-the-…
"Throughout the U.S., trees are dying at an astonishing rate. The reasons for the die-off vary from location to location — drought, disease, insects and wildfires – but the root cause in many of these cases is the same: climate change.
The epidemic is even threatening the oldest white oak tree in America, a 600-year-old giant in New Jersey that predates Columbus’ visit to the Americas.
The effect is particularly apparent in mountain states like California, where 66 million trees have simply disappeared from the Sierra Nevada range since 2010. The Forest Service blames the years-long drought in the area and the spread of pine beetles.
In northern California, the ominously named “Sudden Oak Death” is infecting hundreds of different plants, from massive redwoods to backyard oaks. The disease is transmitted through water, so it can easily be spread by wind and rain over long distances. In fact, the spread already spans more than half the length of the state.
The presence of so many dead trees would be a tragedy anywhere, but in the mountains of the West, it’s particularly dangerous because the trees provide fuel for forest fires. It’s impossible for forest workers to chop down and remove millions of trees, so the majority of them are still standing.
In some cases, death and disease have overtaken entire mountainsides. Some researchers estimate that we could lose all needle leaf evergreens in the Southwest U.S. within the next hundred years..
In Hawaii, the islands are losing their once-abundant ohi’a trees at an alarming rate. Over the past six years, the big island has lost nearly 50,000 acres to a previously unknown disease that causes rapid death over the course of just a few short weeks. Because it’s unlike anything scientists have ever seen before, researchers are unsure how to treat it. While the plague is affecting only a limited area now, locals worry it will spread and collapse the entire native ecosystem.
The disease is caused by a fungus, which grows through the vascular system of the trees, preventing them from drawing water from the ground. Though researchers have examined other plant fungi in an attempt to trace the disease’s origins, it appears to be an entirely new strain. There is still no cure for the fungus, so right now the priority is containing the spread of the disease rather than treating it.
In Seattle, tree deaths are even hitting city parks. Pine beetles, once confined to a small part of the country, have spread throughout the U.S., apparently beyond our forests. More than 500 trees have been lost this summer alone — a normal year would see only about 130 trees culled.
While there’s some controversy over whether pine beetles are destroying forests or simply culling unhealthy trees, the fact remains that these tree deaths are a major warning sign.
And it isn’t just the Western U.S. that’s been affected by the epidemic. In recent years, reports of dying forests have come in from every part of the country. Throughout New England, fro instance, hemlock trees have been slowly dying from invasive insect infestations, forever altering the composition of local forests. Again, climate change seems to be enabling the spread of the pests in a way ecologists have never seen before.
Of course, this phenomenon isn’t limited to the U.S.: similar stories are playing out in forests all over the world. And that’s a terrifying thought.
Forests are one of the Earth’s most important protections again climate change. The trees themselves act as carbon sinks, sequestering nearly a quarter of carbon dioxide emissions from the air. When they die, that carbon is released back into the air.
In an interview last year with Rolling Stone, Richard Birdsey of the U.S. Forest Service explained, “if the carbon sink in forests fails, a simple speculation is that global temperatures would increase proportionally to the increase of CO2 concentration, so about 25 percent above current climate projections.”"
UN Categorizes Antibiotics in the Food System as a Crisis, on Par with AIDS +Ebola
http://qz.com/788548/the-united-nations-historic-meeting-on-…
www.nrdc.org/experts/sasha-stashwick/kfc-gets-f-antibiotics-…
www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/restaurants-antibiotics-use…
------> www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/restaurants-antibiotic-use-…
"For the fourth time in its history, the United Nations has elevated a health issue to crisis level.
The UN General Assembly held a high-level meeting earlier this week (Sept. 21) to address how antibiotics have become less useful when treating human illnesses caused by bacteria. In its 70 year history the General Assembly has called similar meetings to discuss HIV, the rise of non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, and Ebola.
By pushing antibiotic resistance front-and-center as a global problem, the international body has acknowledged that some of the miracles of modern medicine—including the invention of penicillin and tetracyclines—are at risk of becoming ineffective. Already the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 23,000 people die in the US each year as a direct result of antibiotic resistance. Some of those deaths were from illnesses once easily treated with the drugs, including MRSA and some E. coli infections.
At the core of the crisis sits animal agriculture, which includes the some 9 billion food animals slaughtered in the US each year. For years, food companies and farmers have used antibiotics not only to treat sick animals, but also to feed them a steady diet of the drugs to prevent illnesses.
Public health advocacy groups have pushed on the federal government to crack down on how farmers use drugs, but the government has been slow to act in a meaningful way. Food companies are not especially transparent about what drugs are being used on different species and how they are being used, and the government mandates little be made public.
Some of the biggest pressure on farm practice changes comes from corporate America, which has responded to consumer demand for foods from animals not treated with antibiotics. A new report published this week (Sept. 20) by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a coalition of other advocacy groups shows that in just the last year, the number of US fast food chains that have adopted supply chain policies aimed at reducing the on-farm use of antibiotics for the meat products they sell has doubled.
The NRDC each year rates the 25 biggest fast food chains on their antibiotic policies and transparency. This year’s report shows several mammoth restaurant chains successfully implemented new policies to force their meat producers to change how they use on-farm drugs, including McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Subway, and Chick-fil-A. It also highlights companies that continue to maintain abysmal records, including Dunkin’ Donuts, KFC, and Olive Garden—all three received “F” grades, the lowest.
Some of the other findings in the report include:
- Subway, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell are on track to prohibit the routine use of antibiotics in their chicken supply. The NRDC said those companies have made real progress in implementing that policy.
- Perdue Farms, Tyson Foods, and Foster Farms have committed to eliminate routine antibiotics use across all of their chicken farms. Pilgrim’s Pride remains a straggler.
- KFC is a major chicken buyer but has yet to commit to a more responsible policy.
Currently there’s a global patchwork of antibiotic use enforcement, which means farm animal producers operate differently in different countries. That makes it difficult for restaurants such as McDonald’s and others to commit to eliminating antibiotics from meat sources in places with poor antibiotic track records, such as China, the world’s second largest economy and a key area for growth.
There have been some signs of hope in China. In October 2015, the Chinese government instituted a strict new food safety law, which included more oversight over production practices (though nothing specific to antibiotics has been discussed yet). And on Sept. 18, the country announced it would spend $450 billion by 2020 to modernize its agricultural sector, according to Reuters.
The UN General Assembly’s 193 member states this week signed a declaration committing to the fight against resistance, though the details have yet to be hashed out.
Health advocates, including at the Pew Charitable Trusts, have said they expect many countries will look to the US to take the lead in determining how best to best tackle resistance. The progress made by US food chains is a start; the key will be applying those same standards to sources abroad.
“It can’t be the end of the discussion,” said Gail Hansen, a veterinarian and expert in antibiotic resistance, referring to the pressure put on the US supply chain by fast-food giants. “Companies should have the social responsibility to do what they can in other countries.”"
http://qz.com/788548/the-united-nations-historic-meeting-on-…
www.nrdc.org/experts/sasha-stashwick/kfc-gets-f-antibiotics-…
www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/restaurants-antibiotics-use…
------> www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/restaurants-antibiotic-use-…
"For the fourth time in its history, the United Nations has elevated a health issue to crisis level.
The UN General Assembly held a high-level meeting earlier this week (Sept. 21) to address how antibiotics have become less useful when treating human illnesses caused by bacteria. In its 70 year history the General Assembly has called similar meetings to discuss HIV, the rise of non-communicable diseases such as heart disease, and Ebola.
By pushing antibiotic resistance front-and-center as a global problem, the international body has acknowledged that some of the miracles of modern medicine—including the invention of penicillin and tetracyclines—are at risk of becoming ineffective. Already the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 23,000 people die in the US each year as a direct result of antibiotic resistance. Some of those deaths were from illnesses once easily treated with the drugs, including MRSA and some E. coli infections.
At the core of the crisis sits animal agriculture, which includes the some 9 billion food animals slaughtered in the US each year. For years, food companies and farmers have used antibiotics not only to treat sick animals, but also to feed them a steady diet of the drugs to prevent illnesses.
Public health advocacy groups have pushed on the federal government to crack down on how farmers use drugs, but the government has been slow to act in a meaningful way. Food companies are not especially transparent about what drugs are being used on different species and how they are being used, and the government mandates little be made public.
Some of the biggest pressure on farm practice changes comes from corporate America, which has responded to consumer demand for foods from animals not treated with antibiotics. A new report published this week (Sept. 20) by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a coalition of other advocacy groups shows that in just the last year, the number of US fast food chains that have adopted supply chain policies aimed at reducing the on-farm use of antibiotics for the meat products they sell has doubled.
The NRDC each year rates the 25 biggest fast food chains on their antibiotic policies and transparency. This year’s report shows several mammoth restaurant chains successfully implemented new policies to force their meat producers to change how they use on-farm drugs, including McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Subway, and Chick-fil-A. It also highlights companies that continue to maintain abysmal records, including Dunkin’ Donuts, KFC, and Olive Garden—all three received “F” grades, the lowest.
Some of the other findings in the report include:
- Subway, Chick-fil-A, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Taco Bell are on track to prohibit the routine use of antibiotics in their chicken supply. The NRDC said those companies have made real progress in implementing that policy.
- Perdue Farms, Tyson Foods, and Foster Farms have committed to eliminate routine antibiotics use across all of their chicken farms. Pilgrim’s Pride remains a straggler.
- KFC is a major chicken buyer but has yet to commit to a more responsible policy.
Currently there’s a global patchwork of antibiotic use enforcement, which means farm animal producers operate differently in different countries. That makes it difficult for restaurants such as McDonald’s and others to commit to eliminating antibiotics from meat sources in places with poor antibiotic track records, such as China, the world’s second largest economy and a key area for growth.
There have been some signs of hope in China. In October 2015, the Chinese government instituted a strict new food safety law, which included more oversight over production practices (though nothing specific to antibiotics has been discussed yet). And on Sept. 18, the country announced it would spend $450 billion by 2020 to modernize its agricultural sector, according to Reuters.
The UN General Assembly’s 193 member states this week signed a declaration committing to the fight against resistance, though the details have yet to be hashed out.
Health advocates, including at the Pew Charitable Trusts, have said they expect many countries will look to the US to take the lead in determining how best to best tackle resistance. The progress made by US food chains is a start; the key will be applying those same standards to sources abroad.
“It can’t be the end of the discussion,” said Gail Hansen, a veterinarian and expert in antibiotic resistance, referring to the pressure put on the US supply chain by fast-food giants. “Companies should have the social responsibility to do what they can in other countries.”"
Investors Urge Food Companies to Shift, from Meat to Plants; A group of 40 investors, managing $1.25T in assets, have launched a campaign, to encourage 16 big food companies to change the way they source protein, to help reduce environmental +health risks
http://in.reuters.com/article/investors-food-idINKCN11W0LA?m…
"A group of 40 investors managing $1.25 trillion in assets have launched a campaign to encourage 16 global food companies to change the way they source protein for their products to help to reduce environmental and health risks.
The investors, which include the fund arm of insurer Aviva and several Swedish state pension funds, wrote to the food companies on Sept. 23 urging them to respond to the "material" risks of industrial farming and to diversify into plant-based sources of protein.
Among the companies targeted were Kraft Heinz, Nestle, Unilever, Tesco and Walmart, a statement by the Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return Initiative, which organised the investor group, said on Monday.
"The world's over reliance on factory farmed livestock to feed the growing global demand for protein is a recipe for a financial, social and environmental crisis," said Jeremy Coller, founder of the FAIRR initiative and chief investment officer at private equity company Coller Capital.
Pollution from intensive livestock production is already at too high a level, while safety and welfare standards are too low and the industry cannot cope with the projected increase in global protein demand, Coller said.
"Investors want to know if major food companies have a strategy to avoid this protein bubble and to profit from a plant-based protein market set to grow by 8.4 percent annually over the next five years," Coller said.
The campaign follows an Oxford University study which said $1.5 trillion in healthcare and climate change-related costs could be saved by 2050 if people reduced their reliance on meat in their diet.
The study also pointed to growing political pressure on companies to change, citing a consultation in Denmark on the introduction of a red meat tax and a Chinese government plan to reduce its citizens' meat consumption by 50 percent, FAIRR said.
Ella McKinley, ethics analyst at Australian Ethical Investment, which is taking part in the campaign, said the need to change food production models was essential to help to limit climate change.
"Forward-looking companies can move now to encourage more sustainable diets by reducing reliance on meat and growing the market for plant-based protein alternatives. In the process, companies make their own protein supply chains more resilient to future shocks," she said.
The other companies written to by FAIRR were General Mills, Mondelez International, Ahold-Delhaize, The Co-operative Group, Costco Wholesale Corporation, Kroger Company, Marks & Spencer, Wm Morrison Supermarkets, Ocado, Sainsbury's and Whole Foods Market.
A Nestle spokeswoman said the company did not use much meat, "so our main strategy is not to focus on replacing the meat that we do use as its impact would be minimal. Our main opportunities lie in innovating new products using alternate proteins".
"In terms of timetables and targets, this is still a relatively new area, where in many countries the consumers are not fully prepared to replace or reduce meat in their diets. Our focus is to innovate great tasting solutions to encourage consumers to try them and over time make small, sustainable shifts towards a higher plant-based, more balanced diet."
Kraft Heinz declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. The Co-Op said it had yet to receive the letter. Mondelez also declined to comment because it had not yet seen the letter, while a Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: "We're aware of the issue and are looking forward to receiving a copy of the letter."
A Walmart spokesman said the company was not familiar with the campaign and so could not provide comment, while a Kroger spokesman said the firm had not received the letter but was happy to talk with the investor group.
The remaining companies were not immediately available to comment.
Among the other investors to join the campaign were Nordea Asset Management, the fund arm of Norwegian lender Nordea, Boston Common Asset Management, and Impax Asset Management, as well as a number of charities and other ethical investors.
(Additional reporting by Martinne Geller, James Davey and Siddarth Cavale. Editing by Jane Merriman and Louise Heavens) "
http://in.reuters.com/article/investors-food-idINKCN11W0LA?m…
"A group of 40 investors managing $1.25 trillion in assets have launched a campaign to encourage 16 global food companies to change the way they source protein for their products to help to reduce environmental and health risks.
The investors, which include the fund arm of insurer Aviva and several Swedish state pension funds, wrote to the food companies on Sept. 23 urging them to respond to the "material" risks of industrial farming and to diversify into plant-based sources of protein.
Among the companies targeted were Kraft Heinz, Nestle, Unilever, Tesco and Walmart, a statement by the Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return Initiative, which organised the investor group, said on Monday.
"The world's over reliance on factory farmed livestock to feed the growing global demand for protein is a recipe for a financial, social and environmental crisis," said Jeremy Coller, founder of the FAIRR initiative and chief investment officer at private equity company Coller Capital.
Pollution from intensive livestock production is already at too high a level, while safety and welfare standards are too low and the industry cannot cope with the projected increase in global protein demand, Coller said.
"Investors want to know if major food companies have a strategy to avoid this protein bubble and to profit from a plant-based protein market set to grow by 8.4 percent annually over the next five years," Coller said.
The campaign follows an Oxford University study which said $1.5 trillion in healthcare and climate change-related costs could be saved by 2050 if people reduced their reliance on meat in their diet.
The study also pointed to growing political pressure on companies to change, citing a consultation in Denmark on the introduction of a red meat tax and a Chinese government plan to reduce its citizens' meat consumption by 50 percent, FAIRR said.
Ella McKinley, ethics analyst at Australian Ethical Investment, which is taking part in the campaign, said the need to change food production models was essential to help to limit climate change.
"Forward-looking companies can move now to encourage more sustainable diets by reducing reliance on meat and growing the market for plant-based protein alternatives. In the process, companies make their own protein supply chains more resilient to future shocks," she said.
The other companies written to by FAIRR were General Mills, Mondelez International, Ahold-Delhaize, The Co-operative Group, Costco Wholesale Corporation, Kroger Company, Marks & Spencer, Wm Morrison Supermarkets, Ocado, Sainsbury's and Whole Foods Market.
A Nestle spokeswoman said the company did not use much meat, "so our main strategy is not to focus on replacing the meat that we do use as its impact would be minimal. Our main opportunities lie in innovating new products using alternate proteins".
"In terms of timetables and targets, this is still a relatively new area, where in many countries the consumers are not fully prepared to replace or reduce meat in their diets. Our focus is to innovate great tasting solutions to encourage consumers to try them and over time make small, sustainable shifts towards a higher plant-based, more balanced diet."
Kraft Heinz declined to comment when contacted by Reuters. The Co-Op said it had yet to receive the letter. Mondelez also declined to comment because it had not yet seen the letter, while a Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: "We're aware of the issue and are looking forward to receiving a copy of the letter."
A Walmart spokesman said the company was not familiar with the campaign and so could not provide comment, while a Kroger spokesman said the firm had not received the letter but was happy to talk with the investor group.
The remaining companies were not immediately available to comment.
Among the other investors to join the campaign were Nordea Asset Management, the fund arm of Norwegian lender Nordea, Boston Common Asset Management, and Impax Asset Management, as well as a number of charities and other ethical investors.
(Additional reporting by Martinne Geller, James Davey and Siddarth Cavale. Editing by Jane Merriman and Louise Heavens) "
/cdn3.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/50911339/electricity.0.jpg)
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.352.936 von Popeye82 am 27.09.16 04:40:47
http://rem-main.rem.sfu.ca/papers/jaccard/Jaccard-Hein-Vass%…
http://rem-main.rem.sfu.ca/papers/jaccard/Jaccard-Hein-Vass%…
SoyMeds Gets, Additional, $1,000,000 NIH Grant; a two-year, $1,050,000 grant from NIH will help advance the biopharmaceutical company's unique system, for "growing" a medicine in transgenic soybean
(1)(1)(1)(1)(1)(1).jpg)
www.ncbiotech.org/article/soymeds-gets-additional-1m-nih-gra…
"Charlotte-area biopharmaceutical company SoyMeds has been awarded a $1.05 million two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to help advance its unique system for “growing” a medicine in transgenic soybeans.
The grant is the latest round of NIH funding to support the work of the Davidson spin-out from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. The company was awarded about $550,000 in NIH funding in 2013.
Since its founding in 2005 by UNC Charlotte researchers Kenneth Bost, Ph.D., and Kenneth Piller, Ph.D., the company has been working toward a therapeutically and commercially useful application of its technology. The work involves manipulating the genetics of lab-grown soybeans to create proteins to treat, prevent, cure, and diagnose disease.
Piller, president of the company, said the current award will support SoyMeds research to determine whether its technology can be used to produce a protein in transgenic soybean milk that can be useful as a therapeutic against the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis (MG). MG results in long-term muscle weakness, most commonly affecting muscles of the head and face. In some people, it causes problems with walking and swallowing.
One of the attractions of the SoyMeds platform, said Piller, is that MG primarily involves a problem with a single protein, allowing the company to streamline its research target. It also helps that there is a well-defined rodent model for myasthenia gravis disease that can enable functional testing of the soy-based product candidate, he added.
SoyMeds intends to study these rodents by providing control groups with “wild” soy milk and the other test groups with the company’s enhanced soy milk. Piller said the company believes it can deliver therapeutic quantities of its milk to the guts of the study animals.
“This grant will enable us to start looking at the stability of our lead transgenic soybean, and to look at capsulation for oral administration,” said Piller. “That’s kind of getting us on a pathway for possible safety trials.
“Successful completion of these studies will address some of the most important regulatory hurdles for approval of soy-based concentrates containing this novel fusion protein. The company is especially excited about the potential of this project as the technology has implication for other autoimmune diseases.”
SoyMeds employs five people at the lab it leases from the Charlotte Research Institute. ..........."
www.ncbiotech.org/article/soymeds-gets-additional-1m-nih-gra…
"Charlotte-area biopharmaceutical company SoyMeds has been awarded a $1.05 million two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health to help advance its unique system for “growing” a medicine in transgenic soybeans.
The grant is the latest round of NIH funding to support the work of the Davidson spin-out from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. The company was awarded about $550,000 in NIH funding in 2013.
Since its founding in 2005 by UNC Charlotte researchers Kenneth Bost, Ph.D., and Kenneth Piller, Ph.D., the company has been working toward a therapeutically and commercially useful application of its technology. The work involves manipulating the genetics of lab-grown soybeans to create proteins to treat, prevent, cure, and diagnose disease.
Piller, president of the company, said the current award will support SoyMeds research to determine whether its technology can be used to produce a protein in transgenic soybean milk that can be useful as a therapeutic against the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis (MG). MG results in long-term muscle weakness, most commonly affecting muscles of the head and face. In some people, it causes problems with walking and swallowing.
One of the attractions of the SoyMeds platform, said Piller, is that MG primarily involves a problem with a single protein, allowing the company to streamline its research target. It also helps that there is a well-defined rodent model for myasthenia gravis disease that can enable functional testing of the soy-based product candidate, he added.
SoyMeds intends to study these rodents by providing control groups with “wild” soy milk and the other test groups with the company’s enhanced soy milk. Piller said the company believes it can deliver therapeutic quantities of its milk to the guts of the study animals.
“This grant will enable us to start looking at the stability of our lead transgenic soybean, and to look at capsulation for oral administration,” said Piller. “That’s kind of getting us on a pathway for possible safety trials.
“Successful completion of these studies will address some of the most important regulatory hurdles for approval of soy-based concentrates containing this novel fusion protein. The company is especially excited about the potential of this project as the technology has implication for other autoimmune diseases.”
SoyMeds employs five people at the lab it leases from the Charlotte Research Institute. ..........."
Dieses Bild ist nicht mehr verfügbar: [url]http://www.mimeticsbiosci.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/nsf1.jpg
[/url]www.mimeticsbiosci.com/mimetics-awarded-sbir-grant-nsf/
GlassPoint showcases solar powered oil production in Dubai
http://omanobserver.om/glasspoint-solar-showcases-potential-…
http://omanobserver.om/glasspoint-solar-showcases-potential-…
>90% of world breathing bad air: WHO
http://omanobserver.om/90-world-breathing-bad-air/
"Nine out of 10 people globally are breathing poor quality air, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, calling for dramatic action against pollution that is blamed for more than six million deaths a year.
New data in a report from the UN’s global health body “is enough to make all of us extremely concerned,” Maria Neira, the head of the WHO’s department of public health and environment, told reporters.
The problem is most acute in cities, but air in rural areas is worse than many think, WHO experts said.
Poorer countries have much dirtier air than the developed world, according to the report, but pollution “affects practically all countries in the world and all parts of society”, Neira said in a statement.
“It is a public health emergency,” she said.
“Fast action to tackle air pollution can’t come soon enough,” she added, urging governments to cut the number of vehicles on the road, improve waste management and promote clean cooking fuel.
Tuesday’s report was based on data collected from more than 3,000 sites across the globe. It found that “92 percent of the world’s population lives in places where air quality levels exceed WHO limits”.
The data focuses on dangerous particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres, or PM2.5.
PM2.5 includes toxins like sulfate and black carbon, which can penetrate deep into the lungs or cardiovascular system. Air with more than 10 microgrammes per cubic metre of PM2.5 on an annual average basis is considered substandard.
In some regions satellite data has been complemented by ground-level PM2.5 measurements, but in much of the developing world ground readings remain unavailable, forcing the WHO to rely on cruder estimates.
Despite these data gaps, Neira said the UN agency now had more information than ever about pollutants in the planet’s air. Using both satellite and ground measurements “is a big step forward towards even more confident estimates of the huge global burden”, of dirty air, she added.
SIX MILLION DEATHS, A YEAR
The WHO has estimated that more than six million deaths per year are linked to exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution.
Data is more solid for outdoor pollution, which is blamed for more than three million fatalities annually.
But indoor pollution can be equally as harmful, especially in poorer developing world homes where cooking often involves burning charcoal.
Nearly 90-percent of air pollution-related deaths occur in low and middle-income countries, the WHO said.
Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region — including China, Malaysia and Vietnam — are the hardest hit, the data showed.
Carlos Dora, coordinator at the WHO’s public health and environment department, said that some of the strategies adopted to safeguard against polluted air have limited effectiveness.
For example, daily air quality warnings —like those sometimes issued in Beijing— likely do little to help the average person, since the real threat is exposure to sub-par air over extended periods.
Staying indoors on a day when the air is particularly bad accomplishes little, Dora said.
Additionally, the WHO has seen no conclusive evidence that face masks do much to filter dirty air, Dora added.
Using a different data set, the WHO reported in May that 80 percent of the world’s city dwellers breathe poor quality air, a figure that rose to 98 percent in poorer countries. — AFP"
http://omanobserver.om/90-world-breathing-bad-air/
"Nine out of 10 people globally are breathing poor quality air, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, calling for dramatic action against pollution that is blamed for more than six million deaths a year.
New data in a report from the UN’s global health body “is enough to make all of us extremely concerned,” Maria Neira, the head of the WHO’s department of public health and environment, told reporters.
The problem is most acute in cities, but air in rural areas is worse than many think, WHO experts said.
Poorer countries have much dirtier air than the developed world, according to the report, but pollution “affects practically all countries in the world and all parts of society”, Neira said in a statement.
“It is a public health emergency,” she said.
“Fast action to tackle air pollution can’t come soon enough,” she added, urging governments to cut the number of vehicles on the road, improve waste management and promote clean cooking fuel.
Tuesday’s report was based on data collected from more than 3,000 sites across the globe. It found that “92 percent of the world’s population lives in places where air quality levels exceed WHO limits”.
The data focuses on dangerous particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres, or PM2.5.
PM2.5 includes toxins like sulfate and black carbon, which can penetrate deep into the lungs or cardiovascular system. Air with more than 10 microgrammes per cubic metre of PM2.5 on an annual average basis is considered substandard.
In some regions satellite data has been complemented by ground-level PM2.5 measurements, but in much of the developing world ground readings remain unavailable, forcing the WHO to rely on cruder estimates.
Despite these data gaps, Neira said the UN agency now had more information than ever about pollutants in the planet’s air. Using both satellite and ground measurements “is a big step forward towards even more confident estimates of the huge global burden”, of dirty air, she added.
SIX MILLION DEATHS, A YEAR
The WHO has estimated that more than six million deaths per year are linked to exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution.
Data is more solid for outdoor pollution, which is blamed for more than three million fatalities annually.
But indoor pollution can be equally as harmful, especially in poorer developing world homes where cooking often involves burning charcoal.
Nearly 90-percent of air pollution-related deaths occur in low and middle-income countries, the WHO said.
Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region — including China, Malaysia and Vietnam — are the hardest hit, the data showed.
Carlos Dora, coordinator at the WHO’s public health and environment department, said that some of the strategies adopted to safeguard against polluted air have limited effectiveness.
For example, daily air quality warnings —like those sometimes issued in Beijing— likely do little to help the average person, since the real threat is exposure to sub-par air over extended periods.
Staying indoors on a day when the air is particularly bad accomplishes little, Dora said.
Additionally, the WHO has seen no conclusive evidence that face masks do much to filter dirty air, Dora added.
Using a different data set, the WHO reported in May that 80 percent of the world’s city dwellers breathe poor quality air, a figure that rose to 98 percent in poorer countries. — AFP"
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.352.906 von Popeye82 am 27.09.16 03:48:14
- Antimicrobial resistance is the topic of one of three World Health +SocialGood shows being broadcast live on 24-26 May 2016. The shows are produced by WHO in collaboration with the UN Foundation during the World Health Assembly in Geneva.
For more information on World Health +Social Good http://www.who.int/mediacentre/events...
For more information on antimicrobial resistance: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsh... -
- Antimicrobial resistance is the topic of one of three World Health +SocialGood shows being broadcast live on 24-26 May 2016. The shows are produced by WHO in collaboration with the UN Foundation during the World Health Assembly in Geneva.
For more information on World Health +Social Good http://www.who.int/mediacentre/events...
For more information on antimicrobial resistance: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsh... -
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.361.885 von Popeye82 am 28.09.16 04:20:33
- Hot spot: Video shows spectacular activity at the lake of lava atop Hawaii's Kilauea volcano. It's the first time the lava lake has been visible since May 2015, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says. http://abcn.ws/2coLD6f
SUBSCRIBE to ABC NEWS: https://www.youtube.com/ABCNews/
Watch More on http://abcnews.go.com/
LIKE ABC News on FACEBOOK
https://www.facebook.com/abcnews
FOLLOW ABC News on TWITTER:
https://twitter.com/abc
GOOD MORNING AMERICA'S HOMEPAGE:
https://gma.yahoo.com/ -
- Hot spot: Video shows spectacular activity at the lake of lava atop Hawaii's Kilauea volcano. It's the first time the lava lake has been visible since May 2015, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says. http://abcn.ws/2coLD6f
SUBSCRIBE to ABC NEWS: https://www.youtube.com/ABCNews/
Watch More on http://abcnews.go.com/
LIKE ABC News on FACEBOOK
https://www.facebook.com/abcnews
FOLLOW ABC News on TWITTER:
https://twitter.com/abc
GOOD MORNING AMERICA'S HOMEPAGE:
https://gma.yahoo.com/ -
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.361.888 von Popeye82 am 28.09.16 04:26:01
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.361.903 von Popeye82 am 28.09.16 04:33:00
- This video was made to show at the Pahoa Transfer Station for schoolchildren visiting to see the new lava flows. It gives a brief history of what happened up though November 2014. -
- This video was made to show at the Pahoa Transfer Station for schoolchildren visiting to see the new lava flows. It gives a brief history of what happened up though November 2014. -
VIELLEICHT ungewöhnlichste Kneipe Japans
Dieses Bild ist nicht SSL-verschlüsselt: [url]http://www.ingenieur.de/var/storage/images/media/ingenieur.de/bilder/kamikatz-public-house/4387050-1-ger-DE/Kamikatz-Public-House_image_width_560.jpg
[/url]www.ingenieur.de/Fachbereiche/Umwelt-Recyclingtechnik/Null-V…
Schlauchsystem soll die Ozeane vom Plastikmüll befreien
www.ingenieur.de/Fachbereiche/Umwelt-Recyclingtechnik/Schlau…
Dieses Bild ist nicht SSL-verschlüsselt: [url]http://www.ingenieur.de/var/storage/images/media/ingenieur.de/bilder/the-ocean-cleanup-im-meer/4358546-1-ger-DE/The-Ocean-Cleanup-im-Meer_image_width_560_crop_560_315.jpg
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[/url]www.ingenieur.de/Fachbereiche/Umwelt-Recyclingtechnik/Schlau…
Freezing airline emissions; With emissions from international flights projected to triple by 2050, negotiations now underway in Montreal could cap them, @2020 levels, by allowing airlines to offset future emission increases, with reductions in other sectors
www.c2es.org/international/icao?utm_source=Center+for+Climat…
www.c2es.org/international/icao?utm_source=Center+for+Climat…
Phasing down powerful pollutants; Nations will try to forge a global agreement, next month, to phase down the use of heat-trapping hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. >100 countries +500 companies announced their support, last week, for strong action under the Montreal Protocol
www.c2es.org/blog/seidels/critical-opportunity-build-paris-a…
"International negotiators will gather in Kigali, Rwanda, next month with the goal of phasing down one of the most potent and rapidly expanding greenhouse gases affecting the climate. Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are a family of industrial chemicals used worldwide in air conditioners, refrigeration, foam products, and aerosols.
Momentum for taking action is building. On the sidelines of the recent U.N. General Assembly, more than 100 nations signed a declaration calling for an amendment to the Montreal Protocol to ambitiously deal with HFCs, with an early freeze date for developing countries and an early first reduction step for developed countries.
To jump start the transition away from HFCs, 16 donor nations have offered $27 million in new and additional money for use by developing countries in limiting HFC use in 2017. Donor countries are also committing to support the longer-term phase-down costs under the Montreal Protocol’s Multilateral Fund.
In an unprecedented move, a group of philanthropists (19 foundations and private individuals including Bill Gates and Tom Steyer) have offered an additional $53 million to developing countries to support efforts to move from HFCs to more energy-efficient alternatives.
The business community also added its voice to that of governments and philanthropic organizations with more than 500 companies and organizations issuing a call to action in support of an ambitious agreement on an HFC phasedown in October.
Action on HFCs is the single most significant step nations can take this year to advance the goal established in the Paris Agreement of limiting global temperature increases to well below 2 degrees Celsius. Estimates are that an ambitious HFC amendment would reduce global warming by as much as 0.5 degrees by the end of the century.
While momentum for an ambitious agreement this year is strong and building, it is by no means assured. Even with more than 100 nations on board, reaching an international consensus in Kigali will not be easy.
A large number of developed and developing countries have supported a developing country freeze in HFC use beginning around 2021, but India has supported a 2030 freeze date and Gulf Cooperation Council countries proposed a 2028 freeze.
Issues under discussion include the costs and availability of alternatives, the role and timing of patent protections, the rules governing support of projects under the Multilateral Fund, and the need for updated standards for the safe handling and use of more flammable refrigerant alternatives. While there is general support for incorporating enhanced energy efficiency into the transition away from HFCs, there are questions about the ways to achieve this objective.
Solutions are on the table for all of these issues. Given progress to date and the financial resources now available to developing countries to support an ambitious HFC amendment, agreement in Kigali is well within reach. The costs of acting to reduce HFCs are small compared to the very real and present costs of inaction to limit changes to our climate. "
www.c2es.org/blog/seidels/critical-opportunity-build-paris-a…
"International negotiators will gather in Kigali, Rwanda, next month with the goal of phasing down one of the most potent and rapidly expanding greenhouse gases affecting the climate. Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are a family of industrial chemicals used worldwide in air conditioners, refrigeration, foam products, and aerosols.
Momentum for taking action is building. On the sidelines of the recent U.N. General Assembly, more than 100 nations signed a declaration calling for an amendment to the Montreal Protocol to ambitiously deal with HFCs, with an early freeze date for developing countries and an early first reduction step for developed countries.
To jump start the transition away from HFCs, 16 donor nations have offered $27 million in new and additional money for use by developing countries in limiting HFC use in 2017. Donor countries are also committing to support the longer-term phase-down costs under the Montreal Protocol’s Multilateral Fund.
In an unprecedented move, a group of philanthropists (19 foundations and private individuals including Bill Gates and Tom Steyer) have offered an additional $53 million to developing countries to support efforts to move from HFCs to more energy-efficient alternatives.
The business community also added its voice to that of governments and philanthropic organizations with more than 500 companies and organizations issuing a call to action in support of an ambitious agreement on an HFC phasedown in October.
Action on HFCs is the single most significant step nations can take this year to advance the goal established in the Paris Agreement of limiting global temperature increases to well below 2 degrees Celsius. Estimates are that an ambitious HFC amendment would reduce global warming by as much as 0.5 degrees by the end of the century.
While momentum for an ambitious agreement this year is strong and building, it is by no means assured. Even with more than 100 nations on board, reaching an international consensus in Kigali will not be easy.
A large number of developed and developing countries have supported a developing country freeze in HFC use beginning around 2021, but India has supported a 2030 freeze date and Gulf Cooperation Council countries proposed a 2028 freeze.
Issues under discussion include the costs and availability of alternatives, the role and timing of patent protections, the rules governing support of projects under the Multilateral Fund, and the need for updated standards for the safe handling and use of more flammable refrigerant alternatives. While there is general support for incorporating enhanced energy efficiency into the transition away from HFCs, there are questions about the ways to achieve this objective.
Solutions are on the table for all of these issues. Given progress to date and the financial resources now available to developing countries to support an ambitious HFC amendment, agreement in Kigali is well within reach. The costs of acting to reduce HFCs are small compared to the very real and present costs of inaction to limit changes to our climate. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.372.466 von Popeye82 am 29.09.16 10:17:28
+Milliardär Jason Dyson will die Weltmeere mit einem riesigen Staubsauger säubern
www.ingenieur.de/Fachbereiche/Umwelt-Recyclingtechnik/Millia…
+Milliardär Jason Dyson will die Weltmeere mit einem riesigen Staubsauger säubern
Dieses Bild ist nicht SSL-verschlüsselt: [url]http://www.ingenieur.de/var/storage/images/media/images/skizze-dyson-ocean-cleaners/2992223-1-ger-DE/Skizze-des-Dyson-Ocean-Cleaners_image_width_560.jpg
[/url]www.ingenieur.de/Fachbereiche/Umwelt-Recyclingtechnik/Millia…
Carbon capture, in context; Wind +solar energy are soaring, thanks to federal incentives for research, development, +deployment of new technology. Fatima Ahmad outlines, how carbon capture technology could be next
www.c2es.org/blog/ahmadf/putting-carbon-capture-technology-c…
"Wind and solar power were once considered expensive and were not widely deployed. Today, skeptics say the same about technology to capture, use and store carbon dioxide emissions (CCUS or carbon capture).
So what lessons can we draw from the experience of the wind and solar industries as they’ve become more mainstream to facilitate a faster and broader deployment of carbon capture technology?
Wind Energy
The cost of wind energy has declined by more than 60 percent since 2009 and average nameplate capacity increased 180 percent between 1998-99 to 2015. These improvements have led to an installed wind capacity of 74,821 MW in the United States, enough electricity to power nearly 20 million average U.S. homes every year.
These wind energy milestones in cost reduction, performance improvements, and scale of deployment were supported by the Production Tax Credit (PTC), a federal deployment incentive. It’s reasonable to assume that the PTC would have been even more successful if it had been maintained consistently instead of experiencing periods of uncertainty regarding its fate, leading to boom-and-bust wind power development cycles.
Ongoing federal research and development (R&D) also spurred improved wind industry technology. For example, in 2007, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory initiated the Gearbox Reliability Collaborative in response to industry-wide technology challenges. That research led to improved gearbox designs, reducing the overall cost of wind energy and showing how collaborative industry efforts and federal support for R&D can resolve performance challenges.
Solar Energy
Solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies experienced similar dramatic cost declines due to economies of scale and improved manufacturing and performance. The cost of utility-scale solar has fallen more than 54 percent since 2011. The efficiency of all PV cells steadily improved between 1975 and 2010, supported by multi-decade R&D programs like the Department of Energy’s Thin Film PV Partnership.
These cost declines and performance improvements were facilitated by the Investment Tax Credit, another federal deployment-focused incentive, and the Section 1603 Treasury program, a federal loan guarantee mechanism to support project financing. Strong state policies like the California Renewables Portfolio Standard enabled developers to enter into above-market power purchase agreements. The experience of utility-scale solar PV demonstrates that overlapping policies are essential to achieve financing for first-of-a-kind projects.
Lessons, for carbon capture
We can draw three key conclusions from wind and solar energy’s experience:
- Stable, long-term deployment incentives that build on previous public and private investments in technology research, development and demonstration (RD&D) are essential to facilitate a large volume of projects;
- As more projects are deployed, costs are reduced through economies of scale, learning from experience, and technological innovation;
- Ongoing government support for RD&D can deliver cost reductions by supporting innovation and overcoming performance challenges.
In contrast to wind and solar, the U.S. lacks an effective federal incentive for commercial deployment of CCUS—despite being a world leader in public and private RD&D for early stage technology demonstration. Fifteen commercial-scale CCUS projects are operating globally; eight of those are in the United States. But that’s not nearly enough to meet our mid-century climate goals.
Carbon capture can be used at coal- or natural gas-fired power plants, which are baseload generation resources. It’s also the only way to reduce carbon emissions from some industrial plants, such as facilities producing chemicals, steel, and cement. Also, over the long-term, we’ll need to integrate biomass energy systems with carbon capture (BECCS). Combining the capture of photosynthetic carbon from biomass with CCUS can enable negative emissions.
While first-of-a-kind, commercial-scale CCUS projects are expensive, we know that as more projects come online, they will become cheaper. SaskPower estimates it could cut costs by up to 30 percent on the next unit to be retrofitted following its current experience operating the world’s first commercial-scale, coal-fired power plant carbon capture project. Developers are exploring novel approaches, including the Exxon and Fuel Cell Energy partnership and the Exelon-supported NET Power project, that have the potential to reduce costs still further.
It’s essential to extend and expand tax incentives for carbon capture, update state laws to include CCUS technology in clean energy standards, and fund continued carbon capture RD&D, among other things, if we are going to reach our emissions-cutting goals. "
www.c2es.org/blog/ahmadf/putting-carbon-capture-technology-c…
"Wind and solar power were once considered expensive and were not widely deployed. Today, skeptics say the same about technology to capture, use and store carbon dioxide emissions (CCUS or carbon capture).
So what lessons can we draw from the experience of the wind and solar industries as they’ve become more mainstream to facilitate a faster and broader deployment of carbon capture technology?
Wind Energy
The cost of wind energy has declined by more than 60 percent since 2009 and average nameplate capacity increased 180 percent between 1998-99 to 2015. These improvements have led to an installed wind capacity of 74,821 MW in the United States, enough electricity to power nearly 20 million average U.S. homes every year.
These wind energy milestones in cost reduction, performance improvements, and scale of deployment were supported by the Production Tax Credit (PTC), a federal deployment incentive. It’s reasonable to assume that the PTC would have been even more successful if it had been maintained consistently instead of experiencing periods of uncertainty regarding its fate, leading to boom-and-bust wind power development cycles.
Ongoing federal research and development (R&D) also spurred improved wind industry technology. For example, in 2007, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory initiated the Gearbox Reliability Collaborative in response to industry-wide technology challenges. That research led to improved gearbox designs, reducing the overall cost of wind energy and showing how collaborative industry efforts and federal support for R&D can resolve performance challenges.
Solar Energy
Solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies experienced similar dramatic cost declines due to economies of scale and improved manufacturing and performance. The cost of utility-scale solar has fallen more than 54 percent since 2011. The efficiency of all PV cells steadily improved between 1975 and 2010, supported by multi-decade R&D programs like the Department of Energy’s Thin Film PV Partnership.
These cost declines and performance improvements were facilitated by the Investment Tax Credit, another federal deployment-focused incentive, and the Section 1603 Treasury program, a federal loan guarantee mechanism to support project financing. Strong state policies like the California Renewables Portfolio Standard enabled developers to enter into above-market power purchase agreements. The experience of utility-scale solar PV demonstrates that overlapping policies are essential to achieve financing for first-of-a-kind projects.
Lessons, for carbon capture
We can draw three key conclusions from wind and solar energy’s experience:
- Stable, long-term deployment incentives that build on previous public and private investments in technology research, development and demonstration (RD&D) are essential to facilitate a large volume of projects;
- As more projects are deployed, costs are reduced through economies of scale, learning from experience, and technological innovation;
- Ongoing government support for RD&D can deliver cost reductions by supporting innovation and overcoming performance challenges.
In contrast to wind and solar, the U.S. lacks an effective federal incentive for commercial deployment of CCUS—despite being a world leader in public and private RD&D for early stage technology demonstration. Fifteen commercial-scale CCUS projects are operating globally; eight of those are in the United States. But that’s not nearly enough to meet our mid-century climate goals.
Carbon capture can be used at coal- or natural gas-fired power plants, which are baseload generation resources. It’s also the only way to reduce carbon emissions from some industrial plants, such as facilities producing chemicals, steel, and cement. Also, over the long-term, we’ll need to integrate biomass energy systems with carbon capture (BECCS). Combining the capture of photosynthetic carbon from biomass with CCUS can enable negative emissions.
While first-of-a-kind, commercial-scale CCUS projects are expensive, we know that as more projects come online, they will become cheaper. SaskPower estimates it could cut costs by up to 30 percent on the next unit to be retrofitted following its current experience operating the world’s first commercial-scale, coal-fired power plant carbon capture project. Developers are exploring novel approaches, including the Exxon and Fuel Cell Energy partnership and the Exelon-supported NET Power project, that have the potential to reduce costs still further.
It’s essential to extend and expand tax incentives for carbon capture, update state laws to include CCUS technology in clean energy standards, and fund continued carbon capture RD&D, among other things, if we are going to reach our emissions-cutting goals. "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.386.815 von Popeye82 am 30.09.16 19:58:22
www.washington.edu/news/2012/05/14/nearly-one-tenth-of-hemis…
Extinction
www.washington.edu/news/2012/05/14/nearly-one-tenth-of-hemis…
stluser, tsniaga LANOITNEVNOC gnikniht
www.royalholloway.ac.uk/aboutus/newsandevents/news/2016-arti…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.387.277 von Algol am 30.09.16 21:05:41
Hmmmmm, "komisch"
Ich wollte als (mögl)Erklärung ab ungefähr Das gleiche anführe, was Sieda(nn) später auch als evt Erklärungsansatz(Permafrost/Gase)bringen.
Ich würd sagen das ist ja gar nicht sooooo verschieden, wie wenn Du z.B. "feuchtes Holz" hast, und Das dann mal einen Winter draussen lässt.
(un davon gibt es ja noch div Andere Beispiele(z.B. Beton))
( ------> "sprengt halt auseinander")
Wenn ich mich richtig erinnere war Dieser Uralkali Unfall, der so Wellen geschlagen hatte, in Ihren Minen, ja ähnlichen Ursprungs,
(ergo, will ein bisschen sagen das ist für derartige Regionen(Klima/Fauna) würde ich mal mutmassen gar nicht sooo uneinleuchtendes Ereignis.
Ggf viel auch mal zu dem Uralkali Vorfall ein bisschen lesen
Hmmmmm, "komisch"
Ich wollte als (mögl)Erklärung ab ungefähr Das gleiche anführe, was Sieda(nn) später auch als evt Erklärungsansatz(Permafrost/Gase)bringen.
Ich würd sagen das ist ja gar nicht sooooo verschieden, wie wenn Du z.B. "feuchtes Holz" hast, und Das dann mal einen Winter draussen lässt.
(un davon gibt es ja noch div Andere Beispiele(z.B. Beton))
( ------> "sprengt halt auseinander")
Wenn ich mich richtig erinnere war Dieser Uralkali Unfall, der so Wellen geschlagen hatte, in Ihren Minen, ja ähnlichen Ursprungs,
(ergo, will ein bisschen sagen
das ist für derartige Regionen(Klima/Fauna) würde ich mal mutmassen gar nicht sooo uneinleuchtendes Ereignis.Ggf viel auch mal zu dem Uralkali Vorfall ein bisschen lesen
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.375.985 von Popeye82 am 29.09.16 17:09:22
JetBlue Announces One of the Largest Renewable Jet Fuel Purchase Agreements, in Aviation History
http://news.bio-based.eu/jetblue-announces-one-of-the-larges…
JetBlue Announces One of the Largest Renewable Jet Fuel Purchase Agreements, in Aviation History
http://news.bio-based.eu/jetblue-announces-one-of-the-larges…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.387.655 von Popeye82 am 30.09.16 22:18:20Die Mehrheit genießt ihren (derzeit noch) steigenden Lebensstandard, diejenigen, die einen Hauch der Gesamtproblematik verstanden haben, sind gewiss, dass sich alles ohne Schwierigkeiten in den Griff bekommen ließe.
Die Wahrheit ist (voraussichtlich) jedoch eine gänzlich andere:
Die Menschheit dreht durch ihre schiere Anzahl und steigenden Lebensstandard (Umweltveränderungen) an zahllosen Stellschrauben gleichzeitig, ohne im Mindesten die Langfristfolgen zu erfassen, geschweige denn zu beherrschen.
So auch beim Methan.
Wir haben es hier mit einer sich selbst verstärkenden Rückkoppelung zu tun, Methan ist ein hochwirksames Klimagas, je höher die Temperatur, desto mehr Methan wird freigesetzt, erhöht die Temperatur, was noch mehr Methan freisetzt usw. :
https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/umwelt/article13745150/Taue…
Übrigens auch am Meeresboden:
http://www.focus.de/wissen/klima/tid-12364/klimawandel-metha…
Diese gigantischen Methanmengen im Boden sind eigentlich gefrorene "Fürze" zahlloser Bakterien, das wäre ein durchaus passender Abgang für Homo "sapiens", ein gigantischer Pups pustet uns quasi vom Planeten ( es bleibt Galgenhumor)
Die Wahrheit ist (voraussichtlich) jedoch eine gänzlich andere:
Die Menschheit dreht durch ihre schiere Anzahl und steigenden Lebensstandard (Umweltveränderungen) an zahllosen Stellschrauben gleichzeitig, ohne im Mindesten die Langfristfolgen zu erfassen, geschweige denn zu beherrschen.
So auch beim Methan.
Wir haben es hier mit einer sich selbst verstärkenden Rückkoppelung zu tun, Methan ist ein hochwirksames Klimagas, je höher die Temperatur, desto mehr Methan wird freigesetzt, erhöht die Temperatur, was noch mehr Methan freisetzt usw. :
https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/umwelt/article13745150/Taue…
Übrigens auch am Meeresboden:
http://www.focus.de/wissen/klima/tid-12364/klimawandel-metha…
Diese gigantischen Methanmengen im Boden sind eigentlich gefrorene "Fürze" zahlloser Bakterien, das wäre ein durchaus passender Abgang für Homo "sapiens", ein gigantischer Pups pustet uns quasi vom Planeten (
es bleibt Galgenhumor)
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.388.834 von Algol am 01.10.16 10:47:11
Verdient hätten "wir" es denke ich.
Zitat von Algol: Diese gigantischen Methanmengen im Boden sind eigentlich gefrorene "Fürze" zahlloser Bakterien, das wäre ein durchaus passender Abgang für Homo "sapiens", ein gigantischer Pups pustet uns quasi vom Planeten (
Verdient hätten "wir" es denke ich.
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.388.729 von Popeye82 am 01.10.16 10:19:02
world's largest Airline Hires Ocean Park, to Assist with Renewable Jet Fuel Evaluation
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2016/10/02/american-airlines-…
"In Texas, American Airlines has retained Ocean Park to assist with evaluating alternative jet fuels and identifying the most promising companies and technologies.
American recognizes the need to make jet fuel – the most important component of its supply chain – more sustainable. The airline is encouraged by the pace of developments within the renewable jet fuel industry and is seeking opportunities to make binding commitments to reliably source fuel that meets specifications and is priced at or near market prices for traditional jet fuel. American’s engagement with
Ocean Park will engage with key entities in the advanced biofuels and renewable jet fuel sectors to assist American in further developing its renewable jet fuel strategy and identifying specific opportunities. A key focus of Ocean Park’s effort will be commercialization timelines for alternative pathways to the production of renewable jet fuel. Ocean Park’s efforts will help accelerate American’s desire to positively impact the overall renewable jet fuel industry’s growth and development.
“As the world’s largest airline and the largest global user of jet fuel, we are committed to sustainability and reducing our carbon footprint,” said Michael Baer, Managing Director of Fuel and Energy Management at American Airlines. “This is the right time to undertake a comprehensive review of the renewable jet fuel sector. We look forward to working with Ocean Park to leverage its industry relationships and understanding of this emerging industry.”
“We are pleased to assist American in this important initiative,” said Bruce Comer, Managing Director at Ocean Park. “For almost 30 years, Ocean Park’s principals have played a role in developing the biofuels industry. We look forward to contributing to the growth of the renewable jet fuel industry and helping to build a winning strategy for American.”"
world's largest Airline Hires Ocean Park, to Assist with Renewable Jet Fuel Evaluation
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2016/10/02/american-airlines-…
"In Texas, American Airlines has retained Ocean Park to assist with evaluating alternative jet fuels and identifying the most promising companies and technologies.
American recognizes the need to make jet fuel – the most important component of its supply chain – more sustainable. The airline is encouraged by the pace of developments within the renewable jet fuel industry and is seeking opportunities to make binding commitments to reliably source fuel that meets specifications and is priced at or near market prices for traditional jet fuel. American’s engagement with
Ocean Park will engage with key entities in the advanced biofuels and renewable jet fuel sectors to assist American in further developing its renewable jet fuel strategy and identifying specific opportunities. A key focus of Ocean Park’s effort will be commercialization timelines for alternative pathways to the production of renewable jet fuel. Ocean Park’s efforts will help accelerate American’s desire to positively impact the overall renewable jet fuel industry’s growth and development.
“As the world’s largest airline and the largest global user of jet fuel, we are committed to sustainability and reducing our carbon footprint,” said Michael Baer, Managing Director of Fuel and Energy Management at American Airlines. “This is the right time to undertake a comprehensive review of the renewable jet fuel sector. We look forward to working with Ocean Park to leverage its industry relationships and understanding of this emerging industry.”
“We are pleased to assist American in this important initiative,” said Bruce Comer, Managing Director at Ocean Park. “For almost 30 years, Ocean Park’s principals have played a role in developing the biofuels industry. We look forward to contributing to the growth of the renewable jet fuel industry and helping to build a winning strategy for American.”"
China May Fast-Track Planned EV Mandate; Electric vehicle advocates applauded China's recent announcement, that it would enact a California-style zero-emissions vehicle standard, but assumed it would take years to roll out. In fact, one analyst hinted the policy may be just around the corner
http://cleanenergycanada.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1…
http://cleanenergycanada.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=1…
U.S. Renewables Boom Going Gangbusters; Revolution Now, a new Energy Department report, puts fresh numbers behind what we already know: Clean energy technology is dirt cheap, +utilities +homeowners are scooping it up, like it's on sale @Costco . Utility Dive walks us through, the top line
- An annual report from the U.S. Department of Energy highlights not just the rapidly declining cost of clean energy technology, but also the speed at which deployment is accelerating.
- Since 2008, the cost of land-based wind power has fallen 41% according to the "Revolution Now" report, while distributed and utility-scale solar resource costs have declined 54% and 64%, respectively.
- Wind and solar accounted for more than 66% of new capacity installed last year, and installations of LED bulbs have more than doubled from last year. Cumulative EV sales are about to pass the half-million mark, DOE reported..........
www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-plummeting-clean-energy-costs-a…
------> www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/09/f33/Revolutiona%CC%8…
. Utility Dive walks us through, the top line- An annual report from the U.S. Department of Energy highlights not just the rapidly declining cost of clean energy technology, but also the speed at which deployment is accelerating.
- Since 2008, the cost of land-based wind power has fallen 41% according to the "Revolution Now" report, while distributed and utility-scale solar resource costs have declined 54% and 64%, respectively.
- Wind and solar accounted for more than 66% of new capacity installed last year, and installations of LED bulbs have more than doubled from last year. Cumulative EV sales are about to pass the half-million mark, DOE reported..........
www.utilitydive.com/news/doe-plummeting-clean-energy-costs-a…
------> www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2016/09/f33/Revolutiona%CC%8…
Green Banks: tahW uoy deen ot wonk
www.corporateknights.com/channels/clean-technology/different…
Dieses Bild ist nicht mehr verfügbar: [url]http://www.corporateknights.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/greenbanks2.jpg
[/url]www.corporateknights.com/channels/clean-technology/different…
The Carbon Clean 200
www.corporateknights.com/channels/responsible-investing/carb…
------> www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Unburnable-…
www.carbontracker.org/report/carbon-bubble/
"Over the past five years, and growing dramatically leading up to and post-Paris COP 21, a movement of institutional and individual investors representing more than $3.4tn in assets under management have divested a portion of their fossil fuel investments and committed to divesting the balance in the next five years. The corollary of divesting fossil fuels is re-investing in the clean energy future. As an invitation to a larger discussion of how we can invest in a clean energy future, we created the Carbon Clean 200 (Clean200TM) – a list of the 200 largest companies worldwide ranked by their total clean energy revenues.
The Clean200 is intended as the clean energy inverse of the Carbon Underground 200TM. Where the Carbon Underground 200TM (which evolved from the seminal Carbon Tracker Initiative report, Unburnable Carbon: Are the World’s Financial Markets Carrying a Carbon Bubble?), ranks the largest publicly listed companies by the carbon intensity of their coal, oil, and gas reserves; the Clean200 ranks the largest publicly listed companies by their total clean energy revenues, with a few additional screens to help ensure the companies are indeed building the infrastructure and services needed for what Lester Brown and many others have called “The Great Energy Transition” in a just and equitable way.
The moral case for divesting fuels has been well argued, but for many, the economic case is less clear. However, as clean energy growth rates take off and demand growth for fossil fuels flatlines, it is probable that divesting fossil fuels in favour of a clean energy future does not have to come at a sacrifice to long-term investment returns.
On the risk side, divesting is about not getting stuck holding stranded fossil fuel assets that cannot be burnt if the world is to adhere to a given carbon budget, a topic on which Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, has expressed concerns in a landmark speech to global insurer Lloyd’s of London. On the opportunity side, investing in the transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy represents “the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century” according to John Doerr a major venture capitalist at Kleiner-Perkins in Silicon valley.
It might seem counter-intuitive for an investor to sell their fossil fuel stocks when most people are still driving internal combustion cars and burning fossil fuels every day. However, the point and the power dynamic of investing is that, as an investor, you have the power to bet on and capitalize the creation of the world that you want to see.
If you are wrong, you will lose money. If you are right, you will profit from and add momentum to the change you believe in. While many mission-driven investors believe that the arc of history bends towards justice – that companies which create positive rather than negative externalities will prevail – in the case of climate friendly investing, it may actually be true. Many investors have found this out the hard way. Indeed, in a world of limited capital every investment has opportunity cost. When people vote with their investment dollars in favour of clean energy over dirty it sends a message as powerful as any ballot box that the time has come to stop using the atmosphere as a free dumping ground.
Take coal, which accounts for over 40 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The industry is declining rapidly in value, especially in the United States, Peabody Energy, the largest private-sector coal company in the world, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this April, following Arch and Alpha. The Dow Jones Coal Index dropped 93 per cent over the past five years. Oil companies are facing similar problems. Fifty-two have filed for bankruptcy since 2015, and over a third of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies have crushing debt loads (over $150 billion) and cash flows depressed by low oil prices, according to the Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions and a recent study by As You Sow. Major investment indices are now only half as exposed to the fossil fuel sector (1.5 per cent to coal, 7 per cent to oil and gas) as they were five years ago. This is not due to any active decision to divest, but rather because fossil fuel stocks have lagged while other sectors have produced healthy returns.
While fossil fuel stock performance stagnates, clean energy is taking off. The world is currently adding twice as much clean power capacity as coal, oil, and gas combined, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Wind’s market share of power generation has doubled four times in the past 15 years, and solar has doubled seven times. It’s also getting cheaper to make power from wind and solar, thanks to technology, better financing and economies of scale. Increased demand for a technology generally reduces prices, whereas increased demand for a commodity increases prices. This basic calculus has driven the price of a renewable kilowatt of energy ever downward, making the choice of energy an economic one. Companies which make a significant amount of their revenue from environmental solutions now make up 5% of global investment indices; the Clean200 list of companies have a collective value over $1 trillion.
In the next 10 years, McKinsey expects oil demand growth to flatten due to growing fuel efficiencies and competitive technologies such as the electric car. Battery prices fell 35 per cent last year, and electric car sales rose by 60 per cent. By 2022, BNEF estimates electric vehicles will cost the same as their internal combustion counterparts, and if growth continues at the current pace, oil displacement by electric cars will reach 2 million barrels per day by 2023 – the size of the current oil glut and enough to drive global oil prices to record lows. Factoring in autonomous cars and ride-sharing services, electric cars could reach 50 per cent of new car sales by 2040, according to BNEF, 50 times higher than what OPEC is projecting.
None of this portends an imminent conclusion to our fossil fuel age, but it does suggest an end to fossil fuels as a long-term growth market and the beginning of a long run expansion of clean energy demand. This sentiment has been ratified, sanctified, and tallied by the political, moral, and financial bellwethers of our time, from the Paris climate talks (195 countries committed to phase out fossil fuels this century) to the vatican (Pope Francis has made moral invocations to drastically reduce use of fossil fuels in the encyclical Laudato Si’) to the Bank of England (the bank’s governor Mark Carney has warned not to get stuck holding a bag of stranded fossil fuel assets).
Some big investors are already adapting:
- PFZW, the $183 billion Dutch pension fund, has pledged to halve its carbon footprint by 2020 while increasing its investments in climate solutions fourfold.
- CalSTRS recently committed $2.5 billion to a Low-Carbon Index as part of a multifaceted approach to align its portfolio with the market realities emerging from climate change.
- ABP introduced an internal carbon budget for its asset managers in 2015, designed to reduce the CO2 footprint of its portfolio equity holdings by 25 per cent, as well as doubling its €29bn equity holdings in equities providing environmental and social solutions over the next five years.
- AXA divested from all coal holdings (mining companies and electric utilities deriving over 50 per cent of their turnover from coal) in 2015 and committed to triple its green investments by 2020.
Corporate Knights and As You Sow are committed to updating this list on a quarterly basis and ensuring that it remains in the Creative Commons as a public good. We invite anyone to make it better and share any new ideas to improve the methodology for the next quarter. It can be downloaded at www.clean200.org."
Dieses Bild ist nicht SSL-verschlüsselt: [url]http://www.corporateknights.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/cleantech200_1.jpg
[/url]www.corporateknights.com/channels/responsible-investing/carb…
------> www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Unburnable-…
www.carbontracker.org/report/carbon-bubble/
"Over the past five years, and growing dramatically leading up to and post-Paris COP 21, a movement of institutional and individual investors representing more than $3.4tn in assets under management have divested a portion of their fossil fuel investments and committed to divesting the balance in the next five years. The corollary of divesting fossil fuels is re-investing in the clean energy future. As an invitation to a larger discussion of how we can invest in a clean energy future, we created the Carbon Clean 200 (Clean200TM) – a list of the 200 largest companies worldwide ranked by their total clean energy revenues.
The Clean200 is intended as the clean energy inverse of the Carbon Underground 200TM. Where the Carbon Underground 200TM (which evolved from the seminal Carbon Tracker Initiative report, Unburnable Carbon: Are the World’s Financial Markets Carrying a Carbon Bubble?), ranks the largest publicly listed companies by the carbon intensity of their coal, oil, and gas reserves; the Clean200 ranks the largest publicly listed companies by their total clean energy revenues, with a few additional screens to help ensure the companies are indeed building the infrastructure and services needed for what Lester Brown and many others have called “The Great Energy Transition” in a just and equitable way.
The moral case for divesting fuels has been well argued, but for many, the economic case is less clear. However, as clean energy growth rates take off and demand growth for fossil fuels flatlines, it is probable that divesting fossil fuels in favour of a clean energy future does not have to come at a sacrifice to long-term investment returns.
On the risk side, divesting is about not getting stuck holding stranded fossil fuel assets that cannot be burnt if the world is to adhere to a given carbon budget, a topic on which Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, has expressed concerns in a landmark speech to global insurer Lloyd’s of London. On the opportunity side, investing in the transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy represents “the largest economic opportunity of the 21st century” according to John Doerr a major venture capitalist at Kleiner-Perkins in Silicon valley.
It might seem counter-intuitive for an investor to sell their fossil fuel stocks when most people are still driving internal combustion cars and burning fossil fuels every day. However, the point and the power dynamic of investing is that, as an investor, you have the power to bet on and capitalize the creation of the world that you want to see.
If you are wrong, you will lose money. If you are right, you will profit from and add momentum to the change you believe in. While many mission-driven investors believe that the arc of history bends towards justice – that companies which create positive rather than negative externalities will prevail – in the case of climate friendly investing, it may actually be true. Many investors have found this out the hard way. Indeed, in a world of limited capital every investment has opportunity cost. When people vote with their investment dollars in favour of clean energy over dirty it sends a message as powerful as any ballot box that the time has come to stop using the atmosphere as a free dumping ground.
Take coal, which accounts for over 40 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The industry is declining rapidly in value, especially in the United States, Peabody Energy, the largest private-sector coal company in the world, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this April, following Arch and Alpha. The Dow Jones Coal Index dropped 93 per cent over the past five years. Oil companies are facing similar problems. Fifty-two have filed for bankruptcy since 2015, and over a third of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies have crushing debt loads (over $150 billion) and cash flows depressed by low oil prices, according to the Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions and a recent study by As You Sow. Major investment indices are now only half as exposed to the fossil fuel sector (1.5 per cent to coal, 7 per cent to oil and gas) as they were five years ago. This is not due to any active decision to divest, but rather because fossil fuel stocks have lagged while other sectors have produced healthy returns.
While fossil fuel stock performance stagnates, clean energy is taking off. The world is currently adding twice as much clean power capacity as coal, oil, and gas combined, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). Wind’s market share of power generation has doubled four times in the past 15 years, and solar has doubled seven times. It’s also getting cheaper to make power from wind and solar, thanks to technology, better financing and economies of scale. Increased demand for a technology generally reduces prices, whereas increased demand for a commodity increases prices. This basic calculus has driven the price of a renewable kilowatt of energy ever downward, making the choice of energy an economic one. Companies which make a significant amount of their revenue from environmental solutions now make up 5% of global investment indices; the Clean200 list of companies have a collective value over $1 trillion.
In the next 10 years, McKinsey expects oil demand growth to flatten due to growing fuel efficiencies and competitive technologies such as the electric car. Battery prices fell 35 per cent last year, and electric car sales rose by 60 per cent. By 2022, BNEF estimates electric vehicles will cost the same as their internal combustion counterparts, and if growth continues at the current pace, oil displacement by electric cars will reach 2 million barrels per day by 2023 – the size of the current oil glut and enough to drive global oil prices to record lows. Factoring in autonomous cars and ride-sharing services, electric cars could reach 50 per cent of new car sales by 2040, according to BNEF, 50 times higher than what OPEC is projecting.
None of this portends an imminent conclusion to our fossil fuel age, but it does suggest an end to fossil fuels as a long-term growth market and the beginning of a long run expansion of clean energy demand. This sentiment has been ratified, sanctified, and tallied by the political, moral, and financial bellwethers of our time, from the Paris climate talks (195 countries committed to phase out fossil fuels this century) to the vatican (Pope Francis has made moral invocations to drastically reduce use of fossil fuels in the encyclical Laudato Si’) to the Bank of England (the bank’s governor Mark Carney has warned not to get stuck holding a bag of stranded fossil fuel assets).
Some big investors are already adapting:
- PFZW, the $183 billion Dutch pension fund, has pledged to halve its carbon footprint by 2020 while increasing its investments in climate solutions fourfold.
- CalSTRS recently committed $2.5 billion to a Low-Carbon Index as part of a multifaceted approach to align its portfolio with the market realities emerging from climate change.
- ABP introduced an internal carbon budget for its asset managers in 2015, designed to reduce the CO2 footprint of its portfolio equity holdings by 25 per cent, as well as doubling its €29bn equity holdings in equities providing environmental and social solutions over the next five years.
- AXA divested from all coal holdings (mining companies and electric utilities deriving over 50 per cent of their turnover from coal) in 2015 and committed to triple its green investments by 2020.
Corporate Knights and As You Sow are committed to updating this list on a quarterly basis and ensuring that it remains in the Creative Commons as a public good. We invite anyone to make it better and share any new ideas to improve the methodology for the next quarter. It can be downloaded at www.clean200.org."
Dieses Bild ist nicht SSL-verschlüsselt: [url]http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Zsuzsa-Mayer-Photo-254x300.png
[/url]www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2016/10/02/understanding-biof…
I. Ozone is 51% more powerful on bacterial cell walls than chlorine.
II. Ozone kills bacteria 3100 times faster than chlorine.
III. Ozone is the most powerful broad-spectrum microbiological control agent.
IV. Ozone DOES NOT REQUIRE the use of hot water and conventional sanitizers.
V. Ozone virtually eliminates all toxic chemical usage.
VI. Ozone is toxic-chemical free; it produces no toxic by-products.
VII. Ozone has full FDA-approval for direct-food contact application.
VIII. Ozone is clean and environment-friendly; its only by-product is oxygen.
IX. Ozone is extremely effective as a disinfectant at relatively low concentrations.
X. Ozone is very inexpensive to produce and has an unlimited supply.
XI. Ozone is much safer for employees than conventional chemicals.
XII. Ozone extends the shelf life of food products.
XIII. Ozone is generated on the site eliminating the transportation, storing and handling of hazardous materials.
XIV. Ozone permits recycling of wastewater.
XV. Ozone reduces Biological Demand.
www.ecosafeusa.com/benefits.php
II. Ozone kills bacteria 3100 times faster than chlorine.
III. Ozone is the most powerful broad-spectrum microbiological control agent.
IV. Ozone DOES NOT REQUIRE the use of hot water and conventional sanitizers.
V. Ozone virtually eliminates all toxic chemical usage.
VI. Ozone is toxic-chemical free; it produces no toxic by-products.
VII. Ozone has full FDA-approval for direct-food contact application.
VIII. Ozone is clean and environment-friendly; its only by-product is oxygen.
IX. Ozone is extremely effective as a disinfectant at relatively low concentrations.
X. Ozone is very inexpensive to produce and has an unlimited supply.
XI. Ozone is much safer for employees than conventional chemicals.
XII. Ozone extends the shelf life of food products.
XIII. Ozone is generated on the site eliminating the transportation, storing and handling of hazardous materials.
XIV. Ozone permits recycling of wastewater.
XV. Ozone reduces Biological Demand.
www.ecosafeusa.com/benefits.php
Biobased hits $4,220,000,000, in US revenues: report
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2016/10/04/us-biobased-indust…
------> www.biopreferred.gov/BPResources/files/BiobasedProductsEcono…
www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2016/10/04/us-biobased-indust…
------> www.biopreferred.gov/BPResources/files/BiobasedProductsEcono…
Netherlands: 100% bio-based PET container for cosmetics; a consortium of Dutch SME‘s +universities has developed a unique new way to produce a high-performance PET from biomass, resulting in a 100% biobased product. This BioPET100 can be used for high-performance applications, including 3D printing +cosmetic packaging. During the 2nd Biobased Business Event, @the Emmtec Industry & Businesspark, in Emmen, on Sep 22nd '16, several so-called cosmetic containers were presented, with the hoods made from BioPET100; this BioPET100 showcase marks a ground breaking development, in biobased plastics. Never before was a 2ndary biomass feedstock converted in a polyester endproduct. This joint effort SHOWS THAT IT IS POSSIBLE TO COMPLETELY DECOUPLE THE PRODUCTION OF ALL PLASTICS FROM FOSSIL FUEL RESOURCES. The technology is fully scalable, +the partners are working together to make this a reality
http://dufor.nl/biobased-verpakking-voor-cosmetica/
http://dufor.nl/biobased-verpakking-voor-cosmetica/
Stoffliche Nutzung von Kohlendioxid: CO2 wird neuer Baustein für Schmierstoffe, Fünf Projektpartner aus Industrie +Akademie wagen sich mit Unterstützung des Bundesministeriums für Bildung +Forschung auf technologisches Neuland, um das klimaschädliche CO2 in nachhaltige Schmierstoffe umzuwandeln
www.ibbnetzwerk-gmbh.com/de/nachrichten/nachricht/datum/2016…
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[/url]www.ibbnetzwerk-gmbh.com/de/nachrichten/nachricht/datum/2016…
We DID it
" Dear XXX,
Today is an historic day – the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change crossed the threshold required to enter into force!
The Paris Agreement is a crystal-clear market signal that the transition to a low-carbon global economy is underway and accelerating. We applaud the governments that have formally joined the agreement, and all those in the Ceres network that supported the Paris Agreement’s ratification. The process to formally ratify the agreement was one of the fastest in history and highlights the urgency with which the global community is now working to tackle climate change.
Ceres has been working to mobilize investors and businesses to tackle climate change for decades. But we can’t let up now. We must now call on all sectors to act boldly to implement the Paris Agreement with ambitious policies and strategies. There is an urgent need for scale and speed.
The world must ratchet up global investment in clean energy by an additional $1 trillion a year to achieve the Paris Agreement goals. Global investment in clean energy is currently tracking at about $300 to $350 billion a year, which is far short of the Clean Trillion target we need to hit every year to avoid catastrophic climate warming.
We have much more to do to navigate the transition to a sustainable economy, but today represents a major step forward. We wanted to celebrate this moment with you and say thank you for your support in making the Paris Agreement a reality.
None of this would have been possible without you. Now, let’s get to work on translating the Paris Agreement’s commitments into action!
Onward,
Brooke Barton Sized BrookeSignature
Mindy S. Lubber
President, Ceres "
" Dear XXX,
Today is an historic day – the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change crossed the threshold required to enter into force!
The Paris Agreement is a crystal-clear market signal that the transition to a low-carbon global economy is underway and accelerating. We applaud the governments that have formally joined the agreement, and all those in the Ceres network that supported the Paris Agreement’s ratification. The process to formally ratify the agreement was one of the fastest in history and highlights the urgency with which the global community is now working to tackle climate change.
Ceres has been working to mobilize investors and businesses to tackle climate change for decades. But we can’t let up now. We must now call on all sectors to act boldly to implement the Paris Agreement with ambitious policies and strategies. There is an urgent need for scale and speed.
The world must ratchet up global investment in clean energy by an additional $1 trillion a year to achieve the Paris Agreement goals. Global investment in clean energy is currently tracking at about $300 to $350 billion a year, which is far short of the Clean Trillion target we need to hit every year to avoid catastrophic climate warming.
We have much more to do to navigate the transition to a sustainable economy, but today represents a major step forward. We wanted to celebrate this moment with you and say thank you for your support in making the Paris Agreement a reality.
None of this would have been possible without you. Now, let’s get to work on translating the Paris Agreement’s commitments into action!
Onward,
Brooke Barton Sized BrookeSignature
Mindy S. Lubber
President, Ceres "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.417.592 von Popeye82 am 06.10.16 01:02:08
New study shows industrial biotech set to drive jobs and growth creation in the EU, 'Where the EU is seeking technologies, industrial biotech is delivering on all levels'; Industrial Biotech contributes >€30,000,000,000 to the EU economy, +around 500 000 jobs. These are the findings of a new study, launched today in the European Parliament by EuropaBio, as part of a series of activities across Europe celebrating European Biotech Week
www.europabio.org/industrial-biotech/publications/new-study-…
------> www.europabio.org/sites/default/files/Full%20report%20for%20…
New study shows industrial biotech set to drive jobs and growth creation in the EU, 'Where the EU is seeking technologies, industrial biotech is delivering on all levels'; Industrial Biotech contributes >€30,000,000,000 to the EU economy, +around 500 000 jobs. These are the findings of a new study, launched today in the European Parliament by EuropaBio, as part of a series of activities across Europe celebrating European Biotech Week
www.europabio.org/industrial-biotech/publications/new-study-…
------> www.europabio.org/sites/default/files/Full%20report%20for%20…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.417.592 von Popeye82 am 06.10.16 01:02:08
bin glaub ich nicht ganz zufällig drin engagiert
IFIB 2016: Sustainability is the SINGLE LARGEST BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY OF THIS GENERATION
http://news.bio-based.eu/ifib-2016-sustainability-is-the-sin…
https://ilbioeconomista.com/2016/09/24/ifib-2016-sustainabil…
"The use of biological resources by the chemical industry does not simply depend on economic reasons
The bioeconomy is alive and is set to grow. This is the strong message coming from Vicenza, Italy, where last Thursday and Friday was held the sixth edition of IFIB, the Italian Forum on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioeconomy.
About 300 participants. Among them some of the big global companies active in the bioeconomy: Braskem, Dow, Novamont, NatureWorks, Mossi Ghisolfi, Clariant, GFBiochemicals and Carlsberg. Innovative start-ups, universities and research centers, as well as clusters such as Clib2021 (Germany), IAR Pole (France) and Bio-based Delta (Netherlands). And again: OECD, European Investment Bank, German Bioeconomy Council.
“Sustainability – Rafael Cayuela, Chief Economist at Dow Chemical, stated – is a huge technological challenge but also the single largest business opportunity of this generation”.
According to Cayuela, who is the author of The Future of the Chemical Industry by 2050, a book published in 2013 by Wiley about the future of the world’s chemical industry, “The need to make energy use more efficient and to reduce CO2 will entail a considerable cost for the industry, but more importantly a huge business opportunity. In a world ready to live with barely 4,000 grams of CO2 per capita a day by 2050, from 28,000 of 2010, the chemical industry, technology and innovation are to play an extraordinary role. The need to reduce emissions and energy use will represent the single biggest business opportunity in human history, up to $80,000 billion by 2050”.
The use of biological resources by the chemical industry does not simply depend on economic reasons, but on the need to deal with climate change and to develop a sustainable economy. “What we want – said Henri Colens, Head of Public Affairs at Braskem Europe – is a level playing field”. The bioeconomy today is a phenomenon that is growing worldwide. Europe has competitors that can boast many strengths, such as Canada and Brazil. But also China, which – as mentioned by Jim Philp, OECD – “is investing $100 million to establish a national innovation system for industrial biotechnology to promote eco-friendly development of the economy”.
“Brazil – said Bernardo Silva, president of ABBI, Brazilian Association of Industrial Biotechnology – can expand biofuel production by 50% without adding one single hectare of sugarcane plantation”. The South American country “can potentially produce more than 5 billion of second generation ethanol per year by 2025”.
IFIB was also an opportunity for two important announcements. Giulia Gregori, Novamont, said that Novamont’s bio-based butanediol (BDO) plant in Bottrighe di Adria (Veneto, North-eastern Italy), established as a joint venture (Mater Biotech) with San Diego-based Genomatica and now entirely controlled by the company headquartered in Novara, will come on stream on 30 September. It is a big step forward for the Italian bioeconomy, which is confirmed in its leading role in Europe.
Chris Patermann said that the European Commission will announce next October the establishment of an International Bioeconomy Forum. A further recognition that the bioeconomy is an international phenomenon, which requires international collaborations.
The next edition of IFIB will take place on 5-6 October 2017 in Rome.
In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet...................................................."
bin glaub ich nicht ganz zufällig drin engagiert
IFIB 2016: Sustainability is the SINGLE LARGEST BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY OF THIS GENERATION
http://news.bio-based.eu/ifib-2016-sustainability-is-the-sin…
https://ilbioeconomista.com/2016/09/24/ifib-2016-sustainabil…
"The use of biological resources by the chemical industry does not simply depend on economic reasons
The bioeconomy is alive and is set to grow. This is the strong message coming from Vicenza, Italy, where last Thursday and Friday was held the sixth edition of IFIB, the Italian Forum on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioeconomy.
About 300 participants. Among them some of the big global companies active in the bioeconomy: Braskem, Dow, Novamont, NatureWorks, Mossi Ghisolfi, Clariant, GFBiochemicals and Carlsberg. Innovative start-ups, universities and research centers, as well as clusters such as Clib2021 (Germany), IAR Pole (France) and Bio-based Delta (Netherlands). And again: OECD, European Investment Bank, German Bioeconomy Council.
“Sustainability – Rafael Cayuela, Chief Economist at Dow Chemical, stated – is a huge technological challenge but also the single largest business opportunity of this generation”.
According to Cayuela, who is the author of The Future of the Chemical Industry by 2050, a book published in 2013 by Wiley about the future of the world’s chemical industry, “The need to make energy use more efficient and to reduce CO2 will entail a considerable cost for the industry, but more importantly a huge business opportunity. In a world ready to live with barely 4,000 grams of CO2 per capita a day by 2050, from 28,000 of 2010, the chemical industry, technology and innovation are to play an extraordinary role. The need to reduce emissions and energy use will represent the single biggest business opportunity in human history, up to $80,000 billion by 2050”.
The use of biological resources by the chemical industry does not simply depend on economic reasons, but on the need to deal with climate change and to develop a sustainable economy. “What we want – said Henri Colens, Head of Public Affairs at Braskem Europe – is a level playing field”. The bioeconomy today is a phenomenon that is growing worldwide. Europe has competitors that can boast many strengths, such as Canada and Brazil. But also China, which – as mentioned by Jim Philp, OECD – “is investing $100 million to establish a national innovation system for industrial biotechnology to promote eco-friendly development of the economy”.
“Brazil – said Bernardo Silva, president of ABBI, Brazilian Association of Industrial Biotechnology – can expand biofuel production by 50% without adding one single hectare of sugarcane plantation”. The South American country “can potentially produce more than 5 billion of second generation ethanol per year by 2025”.
IFIB was also an opportunity for two important announcements. Giulia Gregori, Novamont, said that Novamont’s bio-based butanediol (BDO) plant in Bottrighe di Adria (Veneto, North-eastern Italy), established as a joint venture (Mater Biotech) with San Diego-based Genomatica and now entirely controlled by the company headquartered in Novara, will come on stream on 30 September. It is a big step forward for the Italian bioeconomy, which is confirmed in its leading role in Europe.
Chris Patermann said that the European Commission will announce next October the establishment of an International Bioeconomy Forum. A further recognition that the bioeconomy is an international phenomenon, which requires international collaborations.
The next edition of IFIB will take place on 5-6 October 2017 in Rome.
In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet...................................................."
Liberal government votes NO to animal protection
www.stockhouse.com/news/press-releases/2016/10/06/liberal-go…
www.stockhouse.com/news/press-releases/2016/10/06/liberal-go…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.388.834 von Algol am 01.10.16 10:47:11
Keines der Beiden ist eine Kaufempfehlung,
aber im Themenzusammenhang kannst Du Dir die 2 Firmen ansehen
www.hazergroup.com.au
www.hazergroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/439cpjdsh3s…
http://ener-core.com/
http://content.stockpr.com/enercore/db/184/455/pdf/Ener-Core…
http://ener-core.com/technology
Ich habe nix von,
eine künftige Aktivität noch ist nicht ausschliessbar
Zitat von Algol: Die Menschheit dreht durch ihre schiere Anzahl und steigenden Lebensstandard (Umweltveränderungen) an zahllosen Stellschrauben gleichzeitig, ohne im Mindesten die Langfristfolgen zu erfassen, geschweige denn zu beherrschen.
So auch beim Methan.
Wir haben es hier mit einer sich selbst verstärkenden Rückkoppelung zu tun, Methan ist ein hochwirksames Klimagas, je höher die Temperatur, desto mehr Methan wird freigesetzt, erhöht die Temperatur, was noch mehr Methan freisetzt usw. :
https://www.welt.de/wissenschaft/umwelt/article13745150/Taue…
Übrigens auch am Meeresboden:
http://www.focus.de/wissen/klima/tid-12364/klimawandel-metha…
Keines der Beiden ist eine Kaufempfehlung,
aber im Themenzusammenhang kannst Du Dir die 2 Firmen ansehen
www.hazergroup.com.au
www.hazergroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/439cpjdsh3s…
http://ener-core.com/
http://content.stockpr.com/enercore/db/184/455/pdf/Ener-Core…
http://ener-core.com/technology
Ich habe nix von,
eine künftige Aktivität noch ist nicht ausschliessbar
Dieses Bild ist nicht SSL-verschlüsselt: [url]http://eae3e26d6cce6d2421f2-d0bf394c81120104918c3f1bbeb3098c.r12.cf1.rackcdn.com/landingPages/home/img_getInvolved.jpg
[/url]www.ducks.org
Bundesländer wollen ab 2030 Benzin- +Dieselautos verbieten
www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/bundeslaender-wollen-benzin-und-…
"Die Bundesländer wollen nach SPIEGEL-Informationen ab 2030 keine Benzin- und Dieselautos mehr neu zulassen. Das geht aus einem Beschluss hervor, den der Bundesrat in seiner jüngsten Sitzung gefasst hat. Damit befürworten sowohl SPD- als auch unionsregierte Länder ein entsprechendes Verbot. (Diese Meldung stammt aus dem SPIEGEL. Den neuen SPIEGEL finden Sie hier.)
In dem Beschluss wird die EU-Kommission aufgefordert, "die bisherigen Steuer- und Abgabenpraktiken der Mitgliedstaaten auf ihre Wirksamkeit hinsichtlich der Förderung emissionsfreier Mobilität auszuwerten..., damit spätestens ab dem Jahr 2030 unionsweit nur noch emissionsfreie Pkw zugelassen werden".
Die Grünen begrüßen die Entscheidung, wundern sich allerdings auch. "Wenn wir das Pariser Klimaabkommen ernst nehmen, dürfen nach 2030 keine Verbrennungsmotoren mehr neu auf die Straße", sagt Oliver Krischer, Fraktionsvize im Bundestag. "Das hat der Bundesrat parteiübergreifend so beschlossen, und es ist richtig. Da erstaunt es schon, wenn Union und SPD sich kurz darauf darüber echauffieren,wenn Grüne die Umsetzung einfordern."
Um das Klimaabkommen zu erfüllen, sollen die deutschen CO2-Emissionen bis 2050 um bis zu 95 Prozent gesenkt werden. Eine Maßnahme ist dabei die Förderung der Elektromobilität - allerdings bislang mit bescheidenem Erfolg. Auch eine Kaufprämie hat noch nicht den gewünschten Anschub gebracht. "
www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/bundeslaender-wollen-benzin-und-…
"Die Bundesländer wollen nach SPIEGEL-Informationen ab 2030 keine Benzin- und Dieselautos mehr neu zulassen. Das geht aus einem Beschluss hervor, den der Bundesrat in seiner jüngsten Sitzung gefasst hat. Damit befürworten sowohl SPD- als auch unionsregierte Länder ein entsprechendes Verbot. (Diese Meldung stammt aus dem SPIEGEL. Den neuen SPIEGEL finden Sie hier.)
In dem Beschluss wird die EU-Kommission aufgefordert, "die bisherigen Steuer- und Abgabenpraktiken der Mitgliedstaaten auf ihre Wirksamkeit hinsichtlich der Förderung emissionsfreier Mobilität auszuwerten..., damit spätestens ab dem Jahr 2030 unionsweit nur noch emissionsfreie Pkw zugelassen werden".
Die Grünen begrüßen die Entscheidung, wundern sich allerdings auch. "Wenn wir das Pariser Klimaabkommen ernst nehmen, dürfen nach 2030 keine Verbrennungsmotoren mehr neu auf die Straße", sagt Oliver Krischer, Fraktionsvize im Bundestag. "Das hat der Bundesrat parteiübergreifend so beschlossen, und es ist richtig. Da erstaunt es schon, wenn Union und SPD sich kurz darauf darüber echauffieren,wenn Grüne die Umsetzung einfordern."
Um das Klimaabkommen zu erfüllen, sollen die deutschen CO2-Emissionen bis 2050 um bis zu 95 Prozent gesenkt werden. Eine Maßnahme ist dabei die Förderung der Elektromobilität - allerdings bislang mit bescheidenem Erfolg. Auch eine Kaufprämie hat noch nicht den gewünschten Anschub gebracht. "
Bees Are Declared Endangered for the First Time in the U.S.
www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/09/30/2016-23112/enda…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/50042
www.care2.com/causes/bees-are-declared-endangered-for-the-fi…
"For the first time in history, a group of bees in the U.S. will be protected under the Endangered Species Act, following a recent announcement from wildlife officials.
The group of bees, who are commonly known as yellow-faced bees because of the markings on their faces, are endemic only to the Hawaiian islands. While there are dozens of species, scientists identified several of them who are at risk of extinction and have been calling for their protection for years.
In 2009, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to protect seven of the most at risk species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and now it’s celebrating a win for these bees.
Love This? Never Miss Another Story.
Exciting news – The US Fish and Wildlife Service has just agreed to grant Endangered Species Act protection for seven…
Posted by The Xerces Society on Friday, September 30, 2016
The listing protects seven species, including Hylaeus anthracinus, Hylaeus longiceps, Hylaeus assimulans, Hylaeus hilaris, Hylaeus kuakea and Hylaeus mana.
The listing unfortunately doesn’t come with a designation of critical habitat, but hopefully that will change after the FWS analyzes more sites. Gregory Koob, conservation and restoration team manager for the FWS in Honolulu, told the AP that for now the listing will allow for recovery programs, more funding and will limit their harm from outside sources.
These bees face a host of threats ranging from habitat loss and fragmentation due to development, pollution, wildfires, invasive plants and animals and climate change. It’s hoped that by helping these bees survive, the native plants they rely on – some of which are also endangered – will also survive with them, and in turn provide food for other wildlife.
“The USFWS decision is excellent news for these bees, but there is much work that needs to be done to ensure that Hawaii’s bees thrive,” wrote Matthew Shepherd, Communications Director for the Xerces Society.................."
www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/09/30/2016-23112/enda…
www.enn.com/top_stories/article/50042
www.care2.com/causes/bees-are-declared-endangered-for-the-fi…
"For the first time in history, a group of bees in the U.S. will be protected under the Endangered Species Act, following a recent announcement from wildlife officials.
The group of bees, who are commonly known as yellow-faced bees because of the markings on their faces, are endemic only to the Hawaiian islands. While there are dozens of species, scientists identified several of them who are at risk of extinction and have been calling for their protection for years.
In 2009, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to protect seven of the most at risk species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act, and now it’s celebrating a win for these bees.
Love This? Never Miss Another Story.
Exciting news – The US Fish and Wildlife Service has just agreed to grant Endangered Species Act protection for seven…
Posted by The Xerces Society on Friday, September 30, 2016
The listing protects seven species, including Hylaeus anthracinus, Hylaeus longiceps, Hylaeus assimulans, Hylaeus hilaris, Hylaeus kuakea and Hylaeus mana.
The listing unfortunately doesn’t come with a designation of critical habitat, but hopefully that will change after the FWS analyzes more sites. Gregory Koob, conservation and restoration team manager for the FWS in Honolulu, told the AP that for now the listing will allow for recovery programs, more funding and will limit their harm from outside sources.
These bees face a host of threats ranging from habitat loss and fragmentation due to development, pollution, wildfires, invasive plants and animals and climate change. It’s hoped that by helping these bees survive, the native plants they rely on – some of which are also endangered – will also survive with them, and in turn provide food for other wildlife.
“The USFWS decision is excellent news for these bees, but there is much work that needs to be done to ensure that Hawaii’s bees thrive,” wrote Matthew Shepherd, Communications Director for the Xerces Society.................."
‘Toughie,’ the Last Frog of its Species, Passes Away
www.care2.com/causes/toughie-the-last-frog-of-its-species-pa…
www.care2.com/causes/toughie-the-last-frog-of-its-species-pa…
Marokko reformiert, sich mit Solarenergie +Landwirtschaf
www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/reformbereitschaft-marokko-se…
www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/reformbereitschaft-marokko-se…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.300.952 von Popeye82 am 19.09.16 00:43:50
Bayer will nach Mega-Übernahme von Monsanto Europa kein Gen-Saatgut aufzwingen
www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/8986329-bayer-mega-uebern…
Bayer will nach Mega-Übernahme von Monsanto Europa kein Gen-Saatgut aufzwingen
www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/8986329-bayer-mega-uebern…
UL Introduces SPOT™ Online Database -The Largest Credible Product Sustainability Information Tool
www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ul-introduces-spot-online-d…
------> ul.com/spot
www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ul-introduces-spot-online-d…
------> ul.com/spot
New Aluminum In Green Building Guidelines To Debut, @Greenbuild 2016
www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-aluminum-in-green-build…
------> http://aluminum.org/sustainability/aluminum-green-buildings
www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-aluminum-in-green-build…
------> http://aluminum.org/sustainability/aluminum-green-buildings
Europäische Städte zeigen sich wegweisend für den Umgang mit dem Klimawandel
www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/europaische-stadte-zeigen-s…
"Von Athen bis Abuja, von Stockholm bis São Paulo, Städte auf der ganzen Welt berichten über die Non-Profit-Organisation CDP, dass das Aufkommen der kohlenstoffarmen Wirtschaft eine erhebliche wirtschaftliche Chance darstellt, mit Unternehmen zusammenzuarbeiten, neue Industriezweige zu entwickeln und Anpassungsfähigkeit auszubauen.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151103/283429LOGO )
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160930/414000 )
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160930/414001 )
Dieses Jahr veröffentlichten 533 Städte ihre klimabezogenen Daten bei CDP, vormals bekannt als Carbon Disclosure Project, darunter 126 Städte aus 32 Ländern in Europa. Die große Mehrheit der Städte berichtet von mehr als 1.000 wirtschaftlichen Möglichkeiten, die mit dem Klimawandel in Verbindung stehen. 299 Städte entwickeln neue Industriezweige, wie Cleantech (dt. saubere Technologien).
London,Vereinigtes Königreich, berichtet, dass der kohlenstoffarme Markt mehr als 33 Milliarden US-Dollar zu der Wirtschaft der Stadt beitragen könnte, und ist eine der Städte, die danach streben, diese neuen Wirtschaftszweige auszubauen. Auch Cardiff, Kopenhagen, Dublin, Hamburg, Madrid, Mailand, Nizza, Paris, Rotterdam, Stockholm und Venedig gaben bekannt, dass sie den grünen Wachstum durch die Entwicklung neuer klimawandelbezogener Branchen ins Auge gefasst haben.
Die Erkenntnisse erscheinen inIt takes a city: The case for collaborative climate action (dt. Es braucht eine Stadt: Ein Fall für gemeinschaftliches Handeln für das Klima), ein neu veröffentlichter Bericht von CDP und AECOM mit finanzieller Unterstützung von Bloomberg Philanthropies. Der Bericht untersucht die unternehmerischen Möglichkeiten für Städte, die mit dem Privatsektor zusammenarbeiten, um den Klimawandel anzugehen.
Stockholms Bürgermeisterin Karin Wanngård,, deren Stadt das Ziel verfolgt, bis 2040 komplett unabhängig von fossilen Brennstoffen zu werden, kommentierte:"Stockholm wird diese Ziele nicht alleine erreichen können und Zusammenarbeit steht im Zentrum unserer Strategie gegen den Klimawandel."
Die diesjährigen Angaben der europäischen Städte sind richtungsweisend, wenn es um die Minderung des Einflusses durch den Klimawandel geht: 57 % der europäischen Städte teilten ein Emissionsminderungsziel mit. Damit machen sie den höchsten Anteil weltweit aus und befinden sich weit über dem globalen Durchschnitt von 35 %. Darüber hinaus haben viele europäische Städte ihre Verpflichtungen über den Konvent der Bürgermeister für Klima und Energie , dem größten weltweiten Zusammenschluss von Städten zu Klimaangelegenheiten, mitgeteilt.
Andererseits zeigt der Bericht auch, dass Städte in anderen Regionen, insbesondere in Nordamerika, weitaus häufiger mit Unternehmen an der Entwicklung neuer Branchen zusammenarbeiteten und sich mehr um Partnerschaften mit dem Privatsektor bemühten als europäische Städte.
Maia Kutner, Leiterin der Städte bei CDP, kommentierte: "Unser Bericht zeigt, dass Städte bei der Bekämpfung des Klimawandels nicht alleine dastehen. Sie erkennen, dass man zusammen stark ist, weshalb so viele zusammengekommen sind, um den Konvent der Bürgermeister für Klima und Energie im Juni dieses Jahres zu gründen.
Durch die Partnerschaft mit dem Privatsektor können Städte nicht nur Wachstum in neuen Märkten vorantreiben, sondern auch eine viel größere Emissionsreduktion erreichen. Die Bekämpfung des Klimawandels ist eine enorme Geschäftschance. Es wird Zeit, dass die Städte sie ergreifen."
Zu CDP
CDP, früher Carbon Disclosure Project, ist eine internationale Non-Profit-Organisation, die die einzige globale Plattform für Unternehmen, Städte, Staaten und Regionen bietet, um wichtige Umweltinformationen zu messen, offenzulegen, zu verwalten und zu teilen.
Seit 2008 hat CDP mit Städten zusammengearbeitet, um eine jährliche Berichterstattung von investitionswürdigen Klimawandeldaten zu ermöglichen. Hunderte Städte bedienen sich mittlerweile jährlich der CDP-Plattform, um über ihr Handeln zur Minderung des und Anpassung an den Klimawandel zu berichten und ihre Klimawandelstrategien besser zu verwalten. CDP dient als offizieller Partner der C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group und als offizielle Berichtplattform des von der UN unterstützten Compact of Mayors, das als Konvent der Bürgermeister für Klima und Energie am 22.Juni 2016 wieder ins Leben gerufen wurde. Die Arbeit der CDP an den Städteberichten wird von Bloomberg Philanthropies unterstützt. Bitte besuchen Sie http://www.cdp.net oder folgen Sie uns auf @CDP , um mehr zu erfahren
Pressekontakt: kharunya.paramaguru@cdp.net , +44(0)7983613577
SOURCE CDP "
www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/europaische-stadte-zeigen-s…
"Von Athen bis Abuja, von Stockholm bis São Paulo, Städte auf der ganzen Welt berichten über die Non-Profit-Organisation CDP, dass das Aufkommen der kohlenstoffarmen Wirtschaft eine erhebliche wirtschaftliche Chance darstellt, mit Unternehmen zusammenzuarbeiten, neue Industriezweige zu entwickeln und Anpassungsfähigkeit auszubauen.
(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151103/283429LOGO )
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160930/414000 )
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160930/414001 )
Dieses Jahr veröffentlichten 533 Städte ihre klimabezogenen Daten bei CDP, vormals bekannt als Carbon Disclosure Project, darunter 126 Städte aus 32 Ländern in Europa. Die große Mehrheit der Städte berichtet von mehr als 1.000 wirtschaftlichen Möglichkeiten, die mit dem Klimawandel in Verbindung stehen. 299 Städte entwickeln neue Industriezweige, wie Cleantech (dt. saubere Technologien).
London,Vereinigtes Königreich, berichtet, dass der kohlenstoffarme Markt mehr als 33 Milliarden US-Dollar zu der Wirtschaft der Stadt beitragen könnte, und ist eine der Städte, die danach streben, diese neuen Wirtschaftszweige auszubauen. Auch Cardiff, Kopenhagen, Dublin, Hamburg, Madrid, Mailand, Nizza, Paris, Rotterdam, Stockholm und Venedig gaben bekannt, dass sie den grünen Wachstum durch die Entwicklung neuer klimawandelbezogener Branchen ins Auge gefasst haben.
Die Erkenntnisse erscheinen inIt takes a city: The case for collaborative climate action (dt. Es braucht eine Stadt: Ein Fall für gemeinschaftliches Handeln für das Klima), ein neu veröffentlichter Bericht von CDP und AECOM mit finanzieller Unterstützung von Bloomberg Philanthropies. Der Bericht untersucht die unternehmerischen Möglichkeiten für Städte, die mit dem Privatsektor zusammenarbeiten, um den Klimawandel anzugehen.
Stockholms Bürgermeisterin Karin Wanngård,, deren Stadt das Ziel verfolgt, bis 2040 komplett unabhängig von fossilen Brennstoffen zu werden, kommentierte:"Stockholm wird diese Ziele nicht alleine erreichen können und Zusammenarbeit steht im Zentrum unserer Strategie gegen den Klimawandel."
Die diesjährigen Angaben der europäischen Städte sind richtungsweisend, wenn es um die Minderung des Einflusses durch den Klimawandel geht: 57 % der europäischen Städte teilten ein Emissionsminderungsziel mit. Damit machen sie den höchsten Anteil weltweit aus und befinden sich weit über dem globalen Durchschnitt von 35 %. Darüber hinaus haben viele europäische Städte ihre Verpflichtungen über den Konvent der Bürgermeister für Klima und Energie , dem größten weltweiten Zusammenschluss von Städten zu Klimaangelegenheiten, mitgeteilt.
Andererseits zeigt der Bericht auch, dass Städte in anderen Regionen, insbesondere in Nordamerika, weitaus häufiger mit Unternehmen an der Entwicklung neuer Branchen zusammenarbeiteten und sich mehr um Partnerschaften mit dem Privatsektor bemühten als europäische Städte.
Maia Kutner, Leiterin der Städte bei CDP, kommentierte: "Unser Bericht zeigt, dass Städte bei der Bekämpfung des Klimawandels nicht alleine dastehen. Sie erkennen, dass man zusammen stark ist, weshalb so viele zusammengekommen sind, um den Konvent der Bürgermeister für Klima und Energie im Juni dieses Jahres zu gründen.
Durch die Partnerschaft mit dem Privatsektor können Städte nicht nur Wachstum in neuen Märkten vorantreiben, sondern auch eine viel größere Emissionsreduktion erreichen. Die Bekämpfung des Klimawandels ist eine enorme Geschäftschance. Es wird Zeit, dass die Städte sie ergreifen."
Zu CDP
CDP, früher Carbon Disclosure Project, ist eine internationale Non-Profit-Organisation, die die einzige globale Plattform für Unternehmen, Städte, Staaten und Regionen bietet, um wichtige Umweltinformationen zu messen, offenzulegen, zu verwalten und zu teilen.
Seit 2008 hat CDP mit Städten zusammengearbeitet, um eine jährliche Berichterstattung von investitionswürdigen Klimawandeldaten zu ermöglichen. Hunderte Städte bedienen sich mittlerweile jährlich der CDP-Plattform, um über ihr Handeln zur Minderung des und Anpassung an den Klimawandel zu berichten und ihre Klimawandelstrategien besser zu verwalten. CDP dient als offizieller Partner der C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group und als offizielle Berichtplattform des von der UN unterstützten Compact of Mayors, das als Konvent der Bürgermeister für Klima und Energie am 22.Juni 2016 wieder ins Leben gerufen wurde. Die Arbeit der CDP an den Städteberichten wird von Bloomberg Philanthropies unterstützt. Bitte besuchen Sie http://www.cdp.net oder folgen Sie uns auf @CDP , um mehr zu erfahren
Pressekontakt: kharunya.paramaguru@cdp.net , +44(0)7983613577
SOURCE CDP "
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.447.457 von Popeye82 am 10.10.16 20:51:33
It takes a city: The case for collaborative climate action
------> https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1…
It takes a city: The case for collaborative climate action
------> https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.447.544 von Popeye82 am 10.10.16 21:01:59
www.bbhub.io/dotorg/sites/20/2016/04/Bloomberg_Philanthropie…
www.bbhub.io/dotorg/sites/20/2016/04/Bloomberg_Philanthropie…
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.447.457 von Popeye82 am 10.10.16 20:51:33
www.konventderbuergermeister.eu
www.konventderbuergermeister.eu
Vattenfall verklagt Deutschland, Fünf Milliarden für Atomausstieg?
www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/vattenfall-milliardenklage-schi…
www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/vattenfall-milliardenklage-schi…
Climate change deal to cut greenhouse gas HFCs signed in Rwanda by 197 countries, DANGEROUS HFC gases are to be cut from refrigerators and air conditioners in a “monumental” deal signed by nearly 200 countries in Rwanda
www.express.co.uk/news/world/721451/climate-change-deal-HFCs…
www.express.co.uk/news/world/721451/climate-change-deal-HFCs…
Gevo Produces First Cellulosic Renewable Jet Fuel Specified for Use on Commercial Airline Flights, Gevo, Inc.(NASDAQ:GEVO), announced today that it has completed production of the world’s first cellulosic renewable jet fuel that is specified for commercial flights; Flight with Alaska Airlines Expected to be Made in the Next Few Months
http://ir.gevo.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=238618&p=RssLanding&cat=n…
"Gevo, Inc. (NASDAQ:GEVO), announced today that it has completed production of the world’s first cellulosic renewable jet fuel that is specified for commercial flights. Gevo successfully adapted its patented technologies to convert cellulosic sugars derived from wood waste into renewable isobutanol, which was then further converted into Gevo’s Alcohol-to-Jet fuel (ATJ) fuel. This ATJ meets the ASTM D7566 specification allowing it to be used for commercial flights. The revisions to the ASTM D7566 specification, which occurred earlier this year, includes ATJ derived from renewable isobutanol, regardless of the carbohydrate feedstock (i.e. cellulosics, corn, sugar cane, molasses, etc.).
Gevo produced over 1,000 gallons of the cellulosic ATJ. Alaska Airlines is expected to fly the first commercial flight using this cellulosic jet fuel in the next few months. Gevo believes that this would be the first ever commercial flight flown with a cellulosic renewable jet fuel. This follows on the back of the two commercial flights that were flown by Alaska Airlines on Gevo’s ATJ in June of this year. The ATJ for the June flights was derived from isobutanol produced at Gevo’s Luverne, MN, production facility using sustainable corn as the sugar feedstock.
The cellulosic ATJ was produced in conjunction with the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance (NARA). NARA supplied the sugars that were derived from forest residuals in the Pacific Northwest. Gevo produced the cellulosic renewable isobutanol at its demonstration facility in St. Joseph, MO, that it jointly operates with ICM Inc. The cellulosic renewable isobutanol was then transported to Gevo’s biorefinery facility in Silsbee, TX, that Gevo operates with South Hampton Resources where the cellulosic renewable isobutanol was converted into ATJ.
“I have long championed the development of commercial jet fuel made from renewable sources. It was what we first envisioned when the Virgin Green Fund invested in Gevo with the aim of developing fuel from cellulosic materials such as wood waste. I am very pleased the first commercial flight using Gevo’s cellulosic jet fuel is to be flown soon by Alaska Airlines, as we look to move the aviation industry towards a renewable future,” said Sir Richard Branson.
“Gevo’s production of this cellulosic ATJ removes all doubt that cellulosic sugars can be successfully converted into isobutanol using Gevo’s technology. Gevo’s ATJ technology then reliably converts isobutanol into renewable jet fuel, regardless of the sugar source. I’m looking forward to seeing this fuel power an Alaska Airlines flight in the near future. I wish to congratulate our team at Gevo, all the other NARA members, and thank the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, who funded the work,” said Dr. Patrick Gruber, Gevo’s Chief Executive Officer.
Gevo is a member of the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance (NARA) and is providing the organization with technology to enable the commercial scale processing of cellulosic sugars from wood waste into valuable products. NARA is a five-year project supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and is comprised of 33 member organizations from industry, academia and government laboratories. Its mission is to facilitate development of biojet and bioproduct industries in the Pacific Northwest using forest residuals that would otherwise become waste products.
About Gevo
Gevo is a leading renewable technology, chemical products, and next generation biofuels company. Gevo has developed proprietary technology that uses a combination of synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, chemistry and chemical engineering to focus primarily on the production of isobutanol, as well as related products from renewable feedstocks. Gevo’s strategy is to commercialize biobased alternatives to petroleum-based products to allow for the optimization of fermentation facilities’ assets, with the ultimate goal of maximizing cash flows from the operation of those assets. Gevo produces isobutanol, ethanol and high-value animal feed at its fermentation plant in Luverne, Minnesota. Gevo has also developed technology to produce hydrocarbon products from renewable alcohols. Gevo currently operates a biorefinery in Silsbee, Texas, in collaboration with South Hampton Resources Inc., to produce renewable jet fuel, octane, and ingredients for plastics like polyester. Gevo has a marquee list of partners including The Coca-Cola Company, Toray Industries Inc. and Total SA, among others. Gevo is committed to a sustainable bio-based economy that meets society’s needs for plentiful food and clean air and water."
http://ir.gevo.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=238618&p=RssLanding&cat=n…
"Gevo, Inc. (NASDAQ:GEVO), announced today that it has completed production of the world’s first cellulosic renewable jet fuel that is specified for commercial flights. Gevo successfully adapted its patented technologies to convert cellulosic sugars derived from wood waste into renewable isobutanol, which was then further converted into Gevo’s Alcohol-to-Jet fuel (ATJ) fuel. This ATJ meets the ASTM D7566 specification allowing it to be used for commercial flights. The revisions to the ASTM D7566 specification, which occurred earlier this year, includes ATJ derived from renewable isobutanol, regardless of the carbohydrate feedstock (i.e. cellulosics, corn, sugar cane, molasses, etc.).
Gevo produced over 1,000 gallons of the cellulosic ATJ. Alaska Airlines is expected to fly the first commercial flight using this cellulosic jet fuel in the next few months. Gevo believes that this would be the first ever commercial flight flown with a cellulosic renewable jet fuel. This follows on the back of the two commercial flights that were flown by Alaska Airlines on Gevo’s ATJ in June of this year. The ATJ for the June flights was derived from isobutanol produced at Gevo’s Luverne, MN, production facility using sustainable corn as the sugar feedstock.
The cellulosic ATJ was produced in conjunction with the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance (NARA). NARA supplied the sugars that were derived from forest residuals in the Pacific Northwest. Gevo produced the cellulosic renewable isobutanol at its demonstration facility in St. Joseph, MO, that it jointly operates with ICM Inc. The cellulosic renewable isobutanol was then transported to Gevo’s biorefinery facility in Silsbee, TX, that Gevo operates with South Hampton Resources where the cellulosic renewable isobutanol was converted into ATJ.
“I have long championed the development of commercial jet fuel made from renewable sources. It was what we first envisioned when the Virgin Green Fund invested in Gevo with the aim of developing fuel from cellulosic materials such as wood waste. I am very pleased the first commercial flight using Gevo’s cellulosic jet fuel is to be flown soon by Alaska Airlines, as we look to move the aviation industry towards a renewable future,” said Sir Richard Branson.
“Gevo’s production of this cellulosic ATJ removes all doubt that cellulosic sugars can be successfully converted into isobutanol using Gevo’s technology. Gevo’s ATJ technology then reliably converts isobutanol into renewable jet fuel, regardless of the sugar source. I’m looking forward to seeing this fuel power an Alaska Airlines flight in the near future. I wish to congratulate our team at Gevo, all the other NARA members, and thank the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, who funded the work,” said Dr. Patrick Gruber, Gevo’s Chief Executive Officer.
Gevo is a member of the Northwest Advanced Renewables Alliance (NARA) and is providing the organization with technology to enable the commercial scale processing of cellulosic sugars from wood waste into valuable products. NARA is a five-year project supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and is comprised of 33 member organizations from industry, academia and government laboratories. Its mission is to facilitate development of biojet and bioproduct industries in the Pacific Northwest using forest residuals that would otherwise become waste products.
About Gevo
Gevo is a leading renewable technology, chemical products, and next generation biofuels company. Gevo has developed proprietary technology that uses a combination of synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, chemistry and chemical engineering to focus primarily on the production of isobutanol, as well as related products from renewable feedstocks. Gevo’s strategy is to commercialize biobased alternatives to petroleum-based products to allow for the optimization of fermentation facilities’ assets, with the ultimate goal of maximizing cash flows from the operation of those assets. Gevo produces isobutanol, ethanol and high-value animal feed at its fermentation plant in Luverne, Minnesota. Gevo has also developed technology to produce hydrocarbon products from renewable alcohols. Gevo currently operates a biorefinery in Silsbee, Texas, in collaboration with South Hampton Resources Inc., to produce renewable jet fuel, octane, and ingredients for plastics like polyester. Gevo has a marquee list of partners including The Coca-Cola Company, Toray Industries Inc. and Total SA, among others. Gevo is committed to a sustainable bio-based economy that meets society’s needs for plentiful food and clean air and water."
Grüne wollen Bauen mit nachwachsenden Rohstoffen stärken
- Ökologischer geht’s kaum: Holzhaus mit Gründach, Außenwand aus unbehandeltem Lärchenholz in Ständerbauweise. Wärmedämmung aus eingeblasener Hobelspäne, Innenwände aus Lehmputz auf Schilfrohrplatten. Heizung und Warmwasser durch Grundofen und Sonnenkollektoren. (Foto: Wikimedia.commons / Von Superikonoskop, CC BY-SA 3.0) -
www.energiezukunft.eu/bauen-wohnen/bauoekologie/gruene-wolle…
------> http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/18/098/1809803.pdf
"Mit der Verwendung von Holz und weiteren Baustoffen aus nachwachsenden Rohstoffen statt Beton und petrochemischen Produkten im Gebäudebau könnte der CO₂-Ausstoß erheblich verringert werden. Grüne Politiker fordern ein Umdenken und Fördermaßnahmen.
14.10.2016 – In einem aktuellen Antrag fordert die Fraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen „eine nationale Holzbaustrategie für Hochbau und Ingenieurbau“, um „den Einsatz ökologischer Baustoffe im Neubau und bei der energetischen Sanierung zu fördern.“ Petrochemische und alle CO₂-intensiven Baustoffe sollen dagegen NICHT mehr subventioniert werden.
Für solche Maßnahmen spricht auch das neue Entsorgungsproblem von auf Erdöl basierter Polystyrol-Dämmung, die seit vielen Jahren bei der energetischen Sanierung von Gebäuden eingesetzt und von staatlicher Seite subventioniert wurde. Da Polystyrol preisgünstiger ist als etwa Mineralwolle oder Dämmung aus nachwachsenden Rohstoffen und in der Energieeinspar-Berechnung höhere Dämmwerte aufweist, ist bei der Mehrheit der Bauherren Polystyrol die erste Wahl. Von politischer Seite wurde das unterstützt.
Von der EU zum Sondermüll erklärt
Seit Ende September werden nun aber mit HBCD behandelte Dämmstoffe als Sondermüll eingestuft, wenn der Gehalt an persistenten organischen Schadstoffen gleich oder größer der im Anhang IV der EU-P OP-Verordnung gelisteten Grenzwerte ist. Bei Sanierungs- und Abbrucharbeiten auf Baustellen müssen diese nun getrennt gesammelt, dokumentiert und von Entsorgungsfirmen gesondert abtransportiert werden.
Damit steht Deutschland vor einem massiven Entsorgungsproblem mit ökonomischen und ökologischen Folgen für Eigenheimbesitzer und die Wohnungswirtschaft. Das betrifft zwar nicht das aktuell hergestellte Polystyrol ohne HBCD doch bleibt abzuwarten, ob die momentan genutzten Flammschutzmittel in den Dämmstoffen aus Polystyrol wirklich besser sind, oder ob diese in einigen Jahren ebenfalls zum Sondermüll erklärt werden. „Mit Blick auf diese Millionen Kubikmeter Sondermüll ist es unverständlich, dass die Bau - und Immobilienwirtschaft, aber auch die Bundesregierung keine Lehren daraus zieht und die Hemmnisse für nachwachsende Rohstoffe im Baubereich abzubauen“, so die Grünen. Derzeit werden allein in Deutschland täglich mehrere 10.000 Kubikmeter zukünftiger Sondermüll produziert.
Als weiteres Problem stellt sich nun heraus, dass vielen Verbrennungsanlagen die Genehmigungen oder grundsätzlich technischen Vorrausetzungen fehlen, um die Wärmedämmplatten fachgerecht zu entsorgen. „Die Entsorgungsunternehmen holen dieses Material erst gar nicht mehr von den Baustellen ab“ wies der Hauptgeschäftsführer des Hauptverbandes der Deutschen Bauindustrie RA Michael Knipper im September auf das Problem hin, damit drohe die gesamte Baustellenlogistik zusammenzubrechen – und das „in einer Zeit, in der dringend Wohnungen saniert werden müssen“, mahnt Knipper.
Keine Lobby für Natur-Dämmstoffe
Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen bescheinigen dem modernen Holzbau eine lange Lebensdauer und hohe Wertbeständigkeit. Und anhand von Projekten bspw. in Berlin ist längst der Nachweis erbracht, dass das brandschutztechnische Sicherheitsniveau bei mehrgeschossigen Holzbauten in moderner Bauweise erreicht wird. Während Holz also die gesetzlichen Vorschriften erfüllt ist das bei Dämmstoffen aus nachwachsenden Rohstoffen immer noch schwierig bis unmöglich, auch wenn mittlerweile einzelne Bauvorhaben die technisch-faktische Machbarkeit – was bislang auf der Grundlage individueller Brandschutzkonzepte beruht– verdeutlichen.
Grau ist alle Energie – das muss in die Bewertung mit einfließen
Obwohl das alles bekannt ist stellt die Bundesregierung also alternative, ökologische Baustoffe in der Fördersystematik bislang nicht besser. Diese sind in den KfW -Gebäudesanierungsprogrammen mit Dämmstoffen auf petrochemischer Basis gleichgestellt, ohne aber die benötigte Produktionsenergie widerzuspiegeln. Nachhaltiges Bauen im Wesentlichen auf das Energiesparen in der Nutzungsphase zu reduzieren halten viele Energieexperten für irreführend.
Auch Beton auf Basis des energieintensiven Zementes ist nach wie vor der Baustoff der Wahl. Unternehmen der Zementindustrie sind als energieintensive Unternehmen bislang in erheblichem Umfang von Energiesteuern und CO2-Kosten befreit und haben daher wenig Anreiz zur Umstellung ihrer Produktion auf ökologischere Alternativen.
Forderungen für einen wirklich nachhaltigen Gebäudebestand
Gründe Abgeordnete im Deutschen Bundestag fordern daher die Bundesregierung auf, eine nationale Holzbaustrategie für Hochbau und Ingenieurbau beispielweise nach schwedischem Vorbild aufzulegen, um den Einsatz ökologischer Baustoffe im Neubau und bei energetischer Sanierung zu fördern, beispielsweise in Form eines Standards „Effizienzhaus Nature+“ der KfW Bankengruppe; zudem sollten Standards für den Energiebedarf zur Herstellung von Baustoffen eingeführt werden, die den gesamten Lebenszyklus der Baustoffe inkl. Herstellung und Entsorgung, berücksichtigen.
Bei Energieausweisen für Gebäude sollte über die Angabe des Energiebedarfs hinaus eine Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung im Rahmen der Lebenszyklusbetrachtung der Gebäude eingeführt werden. Wichtig wäre es in diesem Zusammenhang, endlich eine einheitliche Zertifizierung von ökologischen Baustoffen zu unterstützen – dazu gehöre die Förderung der weiteren Erforschung ökologischer Baumaterialien, indem die Aspekte Wohngesundheit und Schadstoffemissionen im Wohnbereich im Rahmen der Ressortforschung stärker berücksichtigt werden und verstärkt Maßnahmen zur Reduktion von Schadstoffemissionen im Wohnbereich entwickelt werden. Bei der nächsten Novellierung der Energieeinspar-Verordnung (EnEV) sollten auch die Umweltauswirkungen zur Bereitstellung der sog. Grauen Energie bei der Herstellung von Bau- und Dämmstoff berücksichtigt werden. na"
Dieses Bild ist nicht SSL-verschlüsselt: [url]http://www.energiezukunft.eu/typo3temp/pics/bauen_bauoekologie_Haus_aus_Naturbaustoffen_e8e178e9d8.jpg
[/url]- Ökologischer geht’s kaum: Holzhaus mit Gründach, Außenwand aus unbehandeltem Lärchenholz in Ständerbauweise. Wärmedämmung aus eingeblasener Hobelspäne, Innenwände aus Lehmputz auf Schilfrohrplatten. Heizung und Warmwasser durch Grundofen und Sonnenkollektoren. (Foto: Wikimedia.commons / Von Superikonoskop, CC BY-SA 3.0) -
www.energiezukunft.eu/bauen-wohnen/bauoekologie/gruene-wolle…
------> http://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/18/098/1809803.pdf
"Mit der Verwendung von Holz und weiteren Baustoffen aus nachwachsenden Rohstoffen statt Beton und petrochemischen Produkten im Gebäudebau könnte der CO₂-Ausstoß erheblich verringert werden. Grüne Politiker fordern ein Umdenken und Fördermaßnahmen.
14.10.2016 – In einem aktuellen Antrag fordert die Fraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen „eine nationale Holzbaustrategie für Hochbau und Ingenieurbau“, um „den Einsatz ökologischer Baustoffe im Neubau und bei der energetischen Sanierung zu fördern.“ Petrochemische und alle CO₂-intensiven Baustoffe sollen dagegen NICHT mehr subventioniert werden.
Für solche Maßnahmen spricht auch das neue Entsorgungsproblem von auf Erdöl basierter Polystyrol-Dämmung, die seit vielen Jahren bei der energetischen Sanierung von Gebäuden eingesetzt und von staatlicher Seite subventioniert wurde. Da Polystyrol preisgünstiger ist als etwa Mineralwolle oder Dämmung aus nachwachsenden Rohstoffen und in der Energieeinspar-Berechnung höhere Dämmwerte aufweist, ist bei der Mehrheit der Bauherren Polystyrol die erste Wahl. Von politischer Seite wurde das unterstützt.
Von der EU zum Sondermüll erklärt
Seit Ende September werden nun aber mit HBCD behandelte Dämmstoffe als Sondermüll eingestuft, wenn der Gehalt an persistenten organischen Schadstoffen gleich oder größer der im Anhang IV der EU-P OP-Verordnung gelisteten Grenzwerte ist. Bei Sanierungs- und Abbrucharbeiten auf Baustellen müssen diese nun getrennt gesammelt, dokumentiert und von Entsorgungsfirmen gesondert abtransportiert werden.
Damit steht Deutschland vor einem massiven Entsorgungsproblem mit ökonomischen und ökologischen Folgen für Eigenheimbesitzer und die Wohnungswirtschaft. Das betrifft zwar nicht das aktuell hergestellte Polystyrol ohne HBCD doch bleibt abzuwarten, ob die momentan genutzten Flammschutzmittel in den Dämmstoffen aus Polystyrol wirklich besser sind, oder ob diese in einigen Jahren ebenfalls zum Sondermüll erklärt werden. „Mit Blick auf diese Millionen Kubikmeter Sondermüll ist es unverständlich, dass die Bau - und Immobilienwirtschaft, aber auch die Bundesregierung keine Lehren daraus zieht und die Hemmnisse für nachwachsende Rohstoffe im Baubereich abzubauen“, so die Grünen. Derzeit werden allein in Deutschland täglich mehrere 10.000 Kubikmeter zukünftiger Sondermüll produziert.
Als weiteres Problem stellt sich nun heraus, dass vielen Verbrennungsanlagen die Genehmigungen oder grundsätzlich technischen Vorrausetzungen fehlen, um die Wärmedämmplatten fachgerecht zu entsorgen. „Die Entsorgungsunternehmen holen dieses Material erst gar nicht mehr von den Baustellen ab“ wies der Hauptgeschäftsführer des Hauptverbandes der Deutschen Bauindustrie RA Michael Knipper im September auf das Problem hin, damit drohe die gesamte Baustellenlogistik zusammenzubrechen – und das „in einer Zeit, in der dringend Wohnungen saniert werden müssen“, mahnt Knipper.
Keine Lobby für Natur-Dämmstoffe
Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen bescheinigen dem modernen Holzbau eine lange Lebensdauer und hohe Wertbeständigkeit. Und anhand von Projekten bspw. in Berlin ist längst der Nachweis erbracht, dass das brandschutztechnische Sicherheitsniveau bei mehrgeschossigen Holzbauten in moderner Bauweise erreicht wird. Während Holz also die gesetzlichen Vorschriften erfüllt ist das bei Dämmstoffen aus nachwachsenden Rohstoffen immer noch schwierig bis unmöglich, auch wenn mittlerweile einzelne Bauvorhaben die technisch-faktische Machbarkeit – was bislang auf der Grundlage individueller Brandschutzkonzepte beruht– verdeutlichen.
Grau ist alle Energie – das muss in die Bewertung mit einfließen
Obwohl das alles bekannt ist stellt die Bundesregierung also alternative, ökologische Baustoffe in der Fördersystematik bislang nicht besser. Diese sind in den KfW -Gebäudesanierungsprogrammen mit Dämmstoffen auf petrochemischer Basis gleichgestellt, ohne aber die benötigte Produktionsenergie widerzuspiegeln. Nachhaltiges Bauen im Wesentlichen auf das Energiesparen in der Nutzungsphase zu reduzieren halten viele Energieexperten für irreführend.
Auch Beton auf Basis des energieintensiven Zementes ist nach wie vor der Baustoff der Wahl. Unternehmen der Zementindustrie sind als energieintensive Unternehmen bislang in erheblichem Umfang von Energiesteuern und CO2-Kosten befreit und haben daher wenig Anreiz zur Umstellung ihrer Produktion auf ökologischere Alternativen.
Forderungen für einen wirklich nachhaltigen Gebäudebestand
Gründe Abgeordnete im Deutschen Bundestag fordern daher die Bundesregierung auf, eine nationale Holzbaustrategie für Hochbau und Ingenieurbau beispielweise nach schwedischem Vorbild aufzulegen, um den Einsatz ökologischer Baustoffe im Neubau und bei energetischer Sanierung zu fördern, beispielsweise in Form eines Standards „Effizienzhaus Nature+“ der KfW Bankengruppe; zudem sollten Standards für den Energiebedarf zur Herstellung von Baustoffen eingeführt werden, die den gesamten Lebenszyklus der Baustoffe inkl. Herstellung und Entsorgung, berücksichtigen.
Bei Energieausweisen für Gebäude sollte über die Angabe des Energiebedarfs hinaus eine Nachhaltigkeitsbewertung im Rahmen der Lebenszyklusbetrachtung der Gebäude eingeführt werden. Wichtig wäre es in diesem Zusammenhang, endlich eine einheitliche Zertifizierung von ökologischen Baustoffen zu unterstützen – dazu gehöre die Förderung der weiteren Erforschung ökologischer Baumaterialien, indem die Aspekte Wohngesundheit und Schadstoffemissionen im Wohnbereich im Rahmen der Ressortforschung stärker berücksichtigt werden und verstärkt Maßnahmen zur Reduktion von Schadstoffemissionen im Wohnbereich entwickelt werden. Bei der nächsten Novellierung der Energieeinspar-Verordnung (EnEV) sollten auch die Umweltauswirkungen zur Bereitstellung der sog. Grauen Energie bei der Herstellung von Bau- und Dämmstoff berücksichtigt werden. na"
Sustainable materials need certification, +lobbies; NOT yet enough commercial people in biobased with an attitude of “let’s FIX this, we’re going to make money, +we’re going to make lots of it!
http://news.bio-based.eu/sustainable-materials-need-certific…
http://news.bio-based.eu/sustainable-materials-need-certific…
Forscher wollen Formaldehyd aus CO2 herstellen, Bundesministerium für Bildung +Forschung fördert Verbundprojekt mit Beteiligung von Wissenschaftlern der Universität Heidelberg
www.uni-heidelberg.de/presse/meldungen/2016/m20160929_forsch…
www.uni-heidelberg.de/presse/meldungen/2016/m20160929_forsch…
Hochdurchsatz von Zucker, für die mikrobielle Umsetzung in Biosyntheseprodukte; Neu entwickeltes Verfahren mit Escherichia-coli-Stämmen bewirkt Produktivitätssteigerung, um das zwei- bis dreifache
www.technologieallianz.de/angebote.php?sort=sag&id=04709&lan…
------> www.technologieallianz.de/webtemp/16_013_Kurzinfo_Biof0f1e8d…
www.technologieallianz.de/angebote.php?sort=sag&id=04709&lan…
------> www.technologieallianz.de/webtemp/16_013_Kurzinfo_Biof0f1e8d…
Mercurius Biorefining +University of California, Davis to Develop Technology for Low-Cost FDCA Production, First-of-its-kind technology operating from raw biomass
------> www.mercuriusbiofuels.com/Mercurius-UCDavis%20FDCA.pdf
"Mercurius Biorefining has furthered its partnership with UC Davis to develop first-of-its-kind technology for production of furan-2,5- dicarboxylic acid (FDCA). While current approaches to the commercialization of FDCA use fructose as a feedstock, the Mercurius-UC Davis process operates from raw biomass. This new technology does not compete with food sources, and estimates show that it will be lower in cost than competing processes.
The FDCA molecule is a key component of PEF (polyethylene furanoate), a recyclable polymer with a wide range of applications including fibers and plastic containers. PEF is a promising replacement for PET (polyethylene terephthalate), a widely used polymer for consumer products signified by the plastics recycling code “1”.
Karl Seck, President of Mercurius Biorefining, said, “We are thrilled to work with UC Davis to develop this technology, further supporting production of biomaterials and realization of the circular carbon economy.”
Mark Mascal, Professor of Chemistry at UC Davis, commented, “We look very much forward to partnering with Mercurius Biorefining on the commercialization of this process, which will provide a value stream to support the development of the REACH biofuel technology.”
Mercurius Biorefining continues to develop the proprietary REACH technology at its pilot facility in Maine, converting cellulosic waste feedstock (e.g. organic portion of MSW, agriculture and forestry wastes) into a wide range of products such as drop-in, renewable diesel and aviation fuel. With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Mercurius’ current project partners include the University of Maine and the Purdue University.
About Mercurius Biorefining
Mercurius Biorefining (formerly Biofuels) was founded in 2009, with the mission to produce bio-chemicals and drop-in fuels through novel applications of existing technologies. Mercurius has patented the Renewable Acid Hydrolysis Condensation Hydrotreating (REACH) technology, which allows for divergent product streams using non-food biomass feedstock.
About University of California, Davis
UC Davis is one of the 10 campuses of the University of California and occupies a 5,300- acre campus about 75 miles from San Francisco. With over 35,000 students and 1800 faculty, UC Davis is ranked 11th among public universities in the US.
Contact
Prof. Mark Mascal
Department of Chemistry University of California Davis
USA Phone: +1 (530) 754-5373
E-Mail: mjmascal@ucdavis.edu "
------> www.mercuriusbiofuels.com/Mercurius-UCDavis%20FDCA.pdf
"Mercurius Biorefining has furthered its partnership with UC Davis to develop first-of-its-kind technology for production of furan-2,5- dicarboxylic acid (FDCA). While current approaches to the commercialization of FDCA use fructose as a feedstock, the Mercurius-UC Davis process operates from raw biomass. This new technology does not compete with food sources, and estimates show that it will be lower in cost than competing processes.
The FDCA molecule is a key component of PEF (polyethylene furanoate), a recyclable polymer with a wide range of applications including fibers and plastic containers. PEF is a promising replacement for PET (polyethylene terephthalate), a widely used polymer for consumer products signified by the plastics recycling code “1”.
Karl Seck, President of Mercurius Biorefining, said, “We are thrilled to work with UC Davis to develop this technology, further supporting production of biomaterials and realization of the circular carbon economy.”
Mark Mascal, Professor of Chemistry at UC Davis, commented, “We look very much forward to partnering with Mercurius Biorefining on the commercialization of this process, which will provide a value stream to support the development of the REACH biofuel technology.”
Mercurius Biorefining continues to develop the proprietary REACH technology at its pilot facility in Maine, converting cellulosic waste feedstock (e.g. organic portion of MSW, agriculture and forestry wastes) into a wide range of products such as drop-in, renewable diesel and aviation fuel. With funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, Mercurius’ current project partners include the University of Maine and the Purdue University.
About Mercurius Biorefining
Mercurius Biorefining (formerly Biofuels) was founded in 2009, with the mission to produce bio-chemicals and drop-in fuels through novel applications of existing technologies. Mercurius has patented the Renewable Acid Hydrolysis Condensation Hydrotreating (REACH) technology, which allows for divergent product streams using non-food biomass feedstock.
About University of California, Davis
UC Davis is one of the 10 campuses of the University of California and occupies a 5,300- acre campus about 75 miles from San Francisco. With over 35,000 students and 1800 faculty, UC Davis is ranked 11th among public universities in the US.
Contact
Prof. Mark Mascal
Department of Chemistry University of California Davis
USA Phone: +1 (530) 754-5373
E-Mail: mjmascal@ucdavis.edu "
Quickstep +Futuris Automotive seat back structure development to reduce weight by up to 50%
http://clients2.weblink.com.au/news/pdf_2%5C01792700.pdf
http://clients2.weblink.com.au/news/pdf_2%5C01792700.pdf
Iceland is drilling into volcanoes; Iceland finds powerful energy source in volcanoes, Iceland is drilling into volcanoes to tap the energy created by magma, which could act as an innovative new form of renewable energy
www.australianmining.com.au/news/iceland-finds-powerful-ener…
www.newscientist.com/article/2109872-iceland-drills-hottest-…
"Iceland is drilling into volcanoes to tap the energy created by magma, which could act as an innovative new form of renewable energy.
The Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) is currently drilling five kilometres below Reykjanes in south-western Iceland, along a tectonic fault line. At this depth, magma that moves underground through volcanic activity mixes with and heats seawater that has penetrated beneath the ocean bed. These are the conditions needed for “supercritical steam”, an energy-rich product between gas and liquid.
A well that can successfully tap into this steam could have an energy capacity of 50MW, powering approximately 50,000 homes, Albert Albertsson, assistant director of geothermal energy company HS Orka told New Scientist. A typical geothermal well can produce 5MW of energy, powering approximately 5000 homes.
“People have drilled into hard rock at this depth, but never before into a fluid system like this,” said Albertsson.
According to Albertsson, the team could even find the landward equivalent of “black smokers”, hot underwater springs saturated with minerals such as gold, silver and lithium.
The IDDP previously drilled 2km down in Krafla in 2009, also striking magma. This was used as a test to determine how much energy could be generated and whether the method would actually work. This well turned out to be the most powerful geothermal well ever drilled, generating 30MW. However, it suffered from corrosion and was shut down.
The IDDP intends for the current well to be applied to the country’s grid and used as a long-term source of energy. There is also potential for any excess energy to be sold to the rest of Europe, as Iceland already relies on 100 per cent renewable energy.
Scientists have pointed out that this technique could be used around the world in areas with potential for supercritical steam. These include areas with young volcanoes, according to New Scientist."
www.australianmining.com.au/news/iceland-finds-powerful-ener…
www.newscientist.com/article/2109872-iceland-drills-hottest-…
"Iceland is drilling into volcanoes to tap the energy created by magma, which could act as an innovative new form of renewable energy.
The Iceland Deep Drilling Project (IDDP) is currently drilling five kilometres below Reykjanes in south-western Iceland, along a tectonic fault line. At this depth, magma that moves underground through volcanic activity mixes with and heats seawater that has penetrated beneath the ocean bed. These are the conditions needed for “supercritical steam”, an energy-rich product between gas and liquid.
A well that can successfully tap into this steam could have an energy capacity of 50MW, powering approximately 50,000 homes, Albert Albertsson, assistant director of geothermal energy company HS Orka told New Scientist. A typical geothermal well can produce 5MW of energy, powering approximately 5000 homes.
“People have drilled into hard rock at this depth, but never before into a fluid system like this,” said Albertsson.
According to Albertsson, the team could even find the landward equivalent of “black smokers”, hot underwater springs saturated with minerals such as gold, silver and lithium.
The IDDP previously drilled 2km down in Krafla in 2009, also striking magma. This was used as a test to determine how much energy could be generated and whether the method would actually work. This well turned out to be the most powerful geothermal well ever drilled, generating 30MW. However, it suffered from corrosion and was shut down.
The IDDP intends for the current well to be applied to the country’s grid and used as a long-term source of energy. There is also potential for any excess energy to be sold to the rest of Europe, as Iceland already relies on 100 per cent renewable energy.
Scientists have pointed out that this technique could be used around the world in areas with potential for supercritical steam. These include areas with young volcanoes, according to New Scientist."
Elon Musk Wants To Amp Up Solar Adoption, With Tesla-SolarCity Roof Tiles
www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2016/10/28/elon-musk-wants-…
"Showing an ever greater flare for showmanship, Tesla CEO Elon Musk used a Los Angeles film studio backlot as the setting to debut solar roof tiles the electric car company developed with SolarCity Corp. as the billionaire tech industrialist campaigns for shareholder backing of his plan to merge with the power company.
Using the set from “Desperate Housewives” Musk showed four different looks for the new power product, including slate, Tuscan, textured and smooth glass tiles that he said should last longer than the homes they covered. Rather than working with a homebuilder or contractor, the combined Tesla-SolarCity plans to do direct installation of the roof.
Musk declined to provide specific pricing details, but said factoring in the cost of installation, energy savings and the durability of a Tesla-SolarCity roof it would better than for the conventional, non-solar variety.
“We want it to look better, last longer and cost less, all things considered,” he told the audience of Los Angeles-area Tesla owners at the event. Shipments begin in the summer of 2017. That’s if the merger goes through, of course.
If shareholders don’t approve that deal on Nov. 17, which is likely to cost $2.7 billion, it might prove to difficult to move forward with the roof plan, he said.
“It’s very unwieldy if we’re not a combined company,” Musk told reporters at a briefing. If Tesla and SolarCity remain separate, approval for the project grows more complex, requiring approval by board of both companies, he said. “This merger is about eliminating conflicts of interest” for such projects.
He declined to comment on concerns about the merger being too costly that have been raised by some investors and shareholders. “This is not about balance sheet questions,” he told a reporter.
Instead, he focused on the enormous market opportunities for the combined company, given future demand for clean vehicles, clean power and power storage. By Musk’s estimate, the market for combined solar panels and storage will eventually account for 60% to 70% of the energy market.
“I hope it’s pretty obvious. Solar and batteries go together like peanut butter and jelly.”
Peter Rive, SolarCity’s chief technology officer and Musk’s cousin, said the combined company was targeting 5% of the roofing market with its new product.
The goal is to begin producing the glass tiles, developed in part with assistance from industrial conglomerate 3M, in about six months, with volume production within eight to nine months, Musk said. Panasonic, Tesla’s partner in lithium-ion battery cells, wasn’t involved in creating the roof tiles.
Sales would likely start in California, as it’s the biggest market for solar in the country, he said.
Tesla also revealed an updated more powerful version of its Powerwall stationary battery storage unit at the Universal Studios event. That product, priced at $5,500 consists, of a 14 kWh lithium-ion battery pack and provide sufficient to temporarily power a four-bedroom home, its lights, electrical outlets and the refrigerator, Musk said.
Shipments of Powerwall 2 late this year, Tesla Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel said.
The roof event comes just two days after Tesla shocked investors by posting a surprise $22 million profit for the third quarter, just the second quarterly profit in its history as a public company. In a call with analysts on Oct. 26, Musk said the company also had a shot at being profitable in the fourth quarter of 2016.
The company is to provide updated financial information for a combined Tesla-SolarCity on Nov. 1, ahead of the Nov. 17 results of a shareholder vote on the merger.
In keeping with the setting for the Friday evening event, Musk conceded that the solar roof tiles adorning three faux houses on the fictional Wisteria Lane were props themselves.
“We are actually on a Hollywood set. These are not functional, but they could be.” "
www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2016/10/28/elon-musk-wants-…
"Showing an ever greater flare for showmanship, Tesla CEO Elon Musk used a Los Angeles film studio backlot as the setting to debut solar roof tiles the electric car company developed with SolarCity Corp. as the billionaire tech industrialist campaigns for shareholder backing of his plan to merge with the power company.
Using the set from “Desperate Housewives” Musk showed four different looks for the new power product, including slate, Tuscan, textured and smooth glass tiles that he said should last longer than the homes they covered. Rather than working with a homebuilder or contractor, the combined Tesla-SolarCity plans to do direct installation of the roof.
Musk declined to provide specific pricing details, but said factoring in the cost of installation, energy savings and the durability of a Tesla-SolarCity roof it would better than for the conventional, non-solar variety.
“We want it to look better, last longer and cost less, all things considered,” he told the audience of Los Angeles-area Tesla owners at the event. Shipments begin in the summer of 2017. That’s if the merger goes through, of course.
If shareholders don’t approve that deal on Nov. 17, which is likely to cost $2.7 billion, it might prove to difficult to move forward with the roof plan, he said.
“It’s very unwieldy if we’re not a combined company,” Musk told reporters at a briefing. If Tesla and SolarCity remain separate, approval for the project grows more complex, requiring approval by board of both companies, he said. “This merger is about eliminating conflicts of interest” for such projects.
He declined to comment on concerns about the merger being too costly that have been raised by some investors and shareholders. “This is not about balance sheet questions,” he told a reporter.
Instead, he focused on the enormous market opportunities for the combined company, given future demand for clean vehicles, clean power and power storage. By Musk’s estimate, the market for combined solar panels and storage will eventually account for 60% to 70% of the energy market.
“I hope it’s pretty obvious. Solar and batteries go together like peanut butter and jelly.”
Peter Rive, SolarCity’s chief technology officer and Musk’s cousin, said the combined company was targeting 5% of the roofing market with its new product.
The goal is to begin producing the glass tiles, developed in part with assistance from industrial conglomerate 3M, in about six months, with volume production within eight to nine months, Musk said. Panasonic, Tesla’s partner in lithium-ion battery cells, wasn’t involved in creating the roof tiles.
Sales would likely start in California, as it’s the biggest market for solar in the country, he said.
Tesla also revealed an updated more powerful version of its Powerwall stationary battery storage unit at the Universal Studios event. That product, priced at $5,500 consists, of a 14 kWh lithium-ion battery pack and provide sufficient to temporarily power a four-bedroom home, its lights, electrical outlets and the refrigerator, Musk said.
Shipments of Powerwall 2 late this year, Tesla Chief Technology Officer JB Straubel said.
The roof event comes just two days after Tesla shocked investors by posting a surprise $22 million profit for the third quarter, just the second quarterly profit in its history as a public company. In a call with analysts on Oct. 26, Musk said the company also had a shot at being profitable in the fourth quarter of 2016.
The company is to provide updated financial information for a combined Tesla-SolarCity on Nov. 1, ahead of the Nov. 17 results of a shareholder vote on the merger.
In keeping with the setting for the Friday evening event, Musk conceded that the solar roof tiles adorning three faux houses on the fictional Wisteria Lane were props themselves.
“We are actually on a Hollywood set. These are not functional, but they could be.” "
Historic deal establishes world's largest marine protected area in Antarctica, equal in size to an area >the UK, France, Germany +Italy, combined
www.yahoo.com/news/m/7a0d770f-628e-3901-a8d3-768162df708f/ss…
www.yahoo.com/news/m/7a0d770f-628e-3901-a8d3-768162df708f/ss…
Renewables beat coal, as largest source of power capacity; While coal continues to crank out electricity for millions of people in developing nations, renewable energy is rapidly catching up and last year, overtook coal as the world's largest source of installed power capacity
www.mining.com/renewables-beat-coal-largest-source-power-cap…
www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2016/october/iea-raises-its-five-y…
www.iea.org/bookshop/734-Medium-Term_Renewable_Energy_Market…
"While coal continues to crank out electricity for millions of people in developing nations, renewable energy is rapidly catching up and last year, overtook coal as the world's largest source of installed power capacity.
About half a million solar panels were installed every day last year and two wind turbines went up ever hour in 2015 – which may be seen as a turning point for renewables, led by solar power and wind. The astonishing figures come via the International Energy Agency (IEA), which in a recent report, raised its renewable growth forecast.
In 2015 over half of new power capacity came from renewable energy – reaching 153 gigawatts, or 15% more than last year. The amount of solar and wind added in 2015 were both record-setting; PV additions reached 49 GW and wind achieved 66 GW.
"About half a million solar panels were installed every day last year and two wind turbines went up ever hour in 2015"
"There are many factors behind this remarkable achievement: more competition, enhanced policy support in key markets, and technology improvements. While climate change mitigation is a powerful driver for renewables, it is not the only one. In many countries, cutting deadly air pollution and diversifying energy supplies to improve energy security play an equally strong role in growing low-carbon energy sources, especially in emerging Asia," states the latest edition of the IEA’s Medium-Term Renewable Market Report.
The 153 GW of installed green energy was more than the total power capacity of Canada and greater than the amount of conventional fossil fuel or nuclear power added in 2015. While renewables surpassed coal in their cumulative share of power capacity, they have not yet knocked fossil fuels from the top of the heap when it comes to electricity generation. That's because renewables, due to their intermittency, cannot produce power at the same constant level as coal or nuclear.
According to the IEA in 2015 coal power plants produced close to 39% of the world's power while renewables, including hydroelectric dams, accounted for 23%. However the IEA expects that number to climb to 28% by 2021, when renewables will supply the equivalent of all the power produced currently in the US and the EU combined.
The IEA now sees renewables growing 13% more between 2015 and 2021 than it did in last year’s forecast, due mostly to "stronger policy backing in the United States, China, India and Mexico." The costs of installing solar and wind have dropped, and expected to drop considerably – 25% less for PV solar and a decrease of 15% for onshore wind, for the forecasted period, according to the agency."
- The largest model-scale wave energy testing of its kind is being performed by Sandia National Laboratories, @the Navy’s Maneuvering +Sea Keeping facility, @the Carderock Division in Bethesda, Maryland. (Photo courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories) -
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=44832.php
New method developed for producing some metals; the MIT researchers were trying to develop a new battery, but it didn’t work out that way. Instead, thanks to an unexpected finding in their lab tests, what they discovered was a whole new way of producing the metal antimony — +potentially a new way of smelting other metals, as well ; the discovery could lead to metal-production systems that are much less expensive, +that virtually eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with most traditional metal smelting. Although antimony itself is not a widely used metal, the same principles may also be applied to producing much more abundant, +economically important, metals, such as copper +nickel, the researchers say
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=44324.php
; the discovery could lead to metal-production systems that are much less expensive, +that virtually eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions associated with most traditional metal smelting. Although antimony itself is not a widely used metal, the same principles may also be applied to producing much more abundant, +economically important, metals, such as copper +nickel, the researchers saywww.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=44324.php
New "solar cell is more efficient, costs less than its counterparts"; a team of researchers, from the Masdar Institute +the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT), may have found a way around the seemingly inseparable high-efficiency +high-cost linkage, through an innovative multi-junction solar cell, that leverages a unique “step-cell” design approach, +low cost silicon. The new step-cell combines two different layers of sunlight-absorbing material, to harvest a broader range of the sun’s energy, while using a novel, low-cost manufacturing process; the team’s step-cell concept can reach theoretical efficiencies >40% +estimated practical efficiencies of 35%, prompting the team’s principal investigators –Masdar Institute’s Dr. Ammar Nayfeh, Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering +Computer Science, +MIT’s Dr. Eugene Fitzgerald, the Merton C. Flemings - SMA Professor of Materials Science +Engineering – to plan a start-up company to commercialize the promising solar cell
- A silicon solar cell with silicon-germanium filter using a step-cell design(large) +a gallium arsenide phosphide layer on silicon step-cell proof-of-concept solar cell(small). (Image: Tahra Al Hammadi, Masdar Institute) -
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=44353.php
- A silicon solar cell with silicon-germanium filter using a step-cell design(large) +a gallium arsenide phosphide layer on silicon step-cell proof-of-concept solar cell(small). (Image: Tahra Al Hammadi, Masdar Institute) -
www.nanowerk.com/news2/green/newsid=44353.php
Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 53.592.126 von Popeye82 am 31.10.16 22:31:02
www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/9058896-tesla-plaene-chef…
Dieses Bild ist nicht SSL-verschlüsselt: [url]http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/crashed-model-s.jpg
[/url]Dieses Bild ist nicht SSL-verschlüsselt: [url]http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/crashed-model-s.jpg
[/url]www.wallstreet-online.de/nachricht/9058896-tesla-plaene-chef…
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