news20091002gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
India challenges US over 'measly' climate change efforts
Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, says the US must move more forcefully to reduce emissions
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 October 2009 18.48 BST Article history

India demanded today that America step up its "measly" efforts to combat global warming – or risk jeopardising an international deal to avoid catastrophic climate change.

The challenge from Delhi's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, and recent moves from China, mark a deliberate ratcheting up of the pressure on Barack Obama to move more forcefully to reduce America's greenhouse gas emissions.

It comes barely 24 hours after Democratic leaders introduced a climate change bill in the Senate which – they hoped – would convince the international community that America was prepared for to take strong action.

But Ramesh dismissed the bill, which proposes to cut US greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, compared to 2005 levels. He said it was too little to persuade India to make serious commitments of its own at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen that aims to seal a global treaty.

India – like other major developing countries – has been demanding that rich, industrialised countries pledge cuts of 25% to 40% in Copenhagen in December.

"The bill that was with the Senate yesterday talks about a 20% cut on 2005 levels, which is really only a measly 5% reduction on 1990 levels," Ramesh told a US-Indian energy conference in Washington, put on by Yale University and The Energy and Resources Institute in Delhi.

He added that America and other developed countries had to commit to deep emissions cuts in the next decade – not by 2050 – if they wanted to see India and China take serious action to contain the rise in their future emissions, as their surging economies expand.

"If we are serious about climate change we should stop talking about 2050. I laugh when countries put up numbers for 2050," Ramesh said.

However, he was almost immediately rebuffed by Obama's climate change envoy, Todd Stern, who said that such a narrow focus on 2020 actions could wreck the prospects of reaching a deal at Copenhagen. "We can talk about that all the way to Copenhagen and for the next two or three years and get nothing done," Stern said. "We have to be practical."

Ramesh's comments were the most forceful expression of a new diplomatic push by India to avoid being cast as the spoiler of the Copenhagen process. Ramesh insisted, however, that India was well aware of the threat posed to its own people by the change in rainfall patterns and rising sea levels brought by climate change. This summer saw the worst monsoon since 1972, a major setback for a country which remains heavily dependent on rain-fed agriculture.

India sees its economic growth as non-negotiable, given the large number of citizens it wants to lift out of poverty. In the past fortnight, India has offered to undertake a series of measures that would see it embarking on a less polluting course of future growth – but these are firmly tied to action from America.

Ramesh spelled out some of those commitments in an interview with the Guardian last week. They include: legislation on fuel efficiency for cars by 2011 and new building efficiency by 2012, getting 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020; and expanding forest cover. India also plans to get 15% of its electricity from nuclear power by 2020.

But Ramesh ruled out any possibility that India would agree to an absolute cap on emissions in the future. "N-O, No," he said. The position was endorsed by RK Pachauri, who heads the IPCC. "Obviously you are not going to ask a country that has 400 million people without a lightbulb in their homes to do the same as a country that has splurge of energy," he told the conference."


[Environment > Wildlife]

Australia rejects proposal for crocodile safaris to prevent attacks on humans
Minister allows harvesting of eggs and culling of crocodiles for meat, skins, teeth and skulls to curb growing populations
Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 October 2009 10.46 BST Article history

Australia's environment minister rejected a proposal for crocodile safari hunting today, but increased the number of eggs and animals that can be harvested to cull their population and make the country's north safer for people.

Environment minister Peter Garrett said the five-year management plan would allow Australia's Northern Territory to continue exporting crocodile products "on an ecologically sustainable basis".

Both saltwater and freshwater crocodiles were hunted to near extinction but have become plentiful in the tropical north since they became protected by federal law in 1971.

In March, after a spate of crocodile attacks killed four people, the Northern Territory government submitted a draft management plan that included crocodile safaris for paying clients, with quotas on the number of the reptiles that could be killed by tourists or trophy hunters.

Garrett said he gave the idea careful consideration but could not approve it.

"I am of the view that safari hunting is not a suitable approach for the responsible management of crocodiles," he said in a statement.

The approved management plan allows an initial maximum harvest of 50,000 eggs — up from 35,000 in the previous plan — and 400 juveniles, 500 hatchlings and 500 adults for farming, food and export. The egg quota could increase if the population supports it, Garrett said. The plan also allows for the removal of crocodiles that are a threat to people or livestock.

"I am satisfied that the harvest of crocodiles and eggs proposed in this management plan will ensure the population remains at a sustainable level, and includes adequate measures to prevent any long-term drop in population," Garrett said.

The Northern Territory is estimated to have 80,000 saltwater crocodiles, the highest number in any region in Australia. Saltwater crocodiles, the world's largest reptile, grow up to 23 feet (seven metres) long. They are more likely to attack humans than the smaller freshwater crocodiles that also inhabit the area.

Northern Territory minister for parks and wildlife Karl Hampton welcomed the new management plan but said in a statement that safaris would have helped the indigenous community, and his territorial government would "continue working toward approval for safaris in the future."

The management plan is revised every five years.

Currently, collected eggs and captured crocodiles are harvested for meat, skin, teeth and skulls. The Northern Territory has exported an average of about 6,000 saltwater crocodile skins to other parts of Australia and the world each year for the last six years.


[Environment > Copenhagen climate change conference 2009]
Lily Allen and Duran Duran launch celebrity climate campaign track
The first global music petition, a re-recording of Midnight Oil's Beds are Burning, is aimed at pressuring world leaders at Copenhagen
Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 October 2009 17.07 BST Article history

Over 60 musicians, including Duran Duran, Lily Allen and Bob Geldof, today launched the world's first digital musical petition: a re-recording of the Midnight Oil song, Beds are Burning, aimed at pressuring world leaders to make a hard-hitting deal over climate change at December's Copenhagen summit.

Described by Kofi Annan as "the Band Aid for the internet generation", the song is the first time such a long list of world celebrities has recorded a campaign track in protest of global warming and climate change. It is also the first ever global music petition: the track is available free online and downloading it automatically adds the listener to the campaign petition: "Tck Tck Tck, Time for Climate Justice".

The music and film stars – ranging from Fergie, Mark Ronson and the Scorpions to Youssou n'Dour and the French Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard – see the song as part of a global movement to force world leaders to strike a better deal than that made at Kyoto. Already 1.3 million people have signed the petition for a binding deal at Copenhagen. The song hopes to add millions to that list. Each individual who downloads the track and video, will become a "climate ally" alongside supporters such as the archbishop Desmond Tutu. The song was conceived as a post-Live Aid approach to digitally reach as many listeners as possible in the shortest time.

The Australian band Midnight Oil specially rewrote their 1987 hit Beds Are Burning with lyrics warning against the impending climate change disaster. The band waived their rights, enabling the song and its video to be downloaded for free. The track was recorded in studios in Paris, London and New York and cut together in less than a few months.

Annan, the former UN secretary general who now heads Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, which backs the campaign, said the theory was that the celebrity music initiative could "create such a noise our leaders won't be able to ignore it".

Already politicians have rushed to endorse the petition, including Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband and Peter Mandelson, who called for British business to come on board.

Annan said the drive would be successful if the critical mass of global listeners adding their name to the petition forced world leaders to act fast for an urgent post-Kyoto agreement.

news20091002gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Business > US economy]
US unemployment at 26-year high
> September total sharply higher than economists' forecasts
> Jobless rate approaching 10% after 21st consecutive monthly drop
Andrew Clark in New York
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 October 2009 15.40 BST Article history

American employers cut 263,000 jobs last month, pushing the US unemployment rate up to a 26-year high of 9.8%, in a worse-than-expected set of figures which fuelled anxiety that stimulus efforts are failing to strengthen the ailing labour market.

The number of job losses sharply exceeded a consensus forecast among economists of around 187,000 for September, and the figure was significantly worse than a revised figure of 201,000 losses in August.

It was the 21st consecutive monthly drop in jobs, providing a stark reminder that the economic crisis is far from over. The unemployment rate ticked up by a tenth of a percentage point from August's figure of 9.7%.

"The number came in weaker than expected," Kevin Caron, a market strategist at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co, said. "We saw a lot of artificial involvement by the government to prop up the markets, and now that that is starting to end, the private sector isn't yet showing signs of life."

Among the weakest sectors were construction, hit by plunging property prices, where 64,000 jobs disappeared. Employers cut 51,000 manufacturing jobs and 39,000 retail positions. Among the few areas showing an increase in employment was healthcare, where 19,000 jobs were added.

Since the economic downturn began at the end of 2007, the number of jobless people in the US has risen by 7.6 million to 15.1 million. Rapidly approaching double digits, the rate of unemployment is at its highest since June 1983, when it reached 10.1%.

The gloomy numbers took their toll on Wall Street, where traders are already in poor spirits following a slump in stocks yesterday. The Dow Jones industrial average was down 41 points in early trading at 9467. It dropped yesterday by 203 points to 9509, its worst session since early July.

In London, the FTSE 100 index extended its early falls after the data was released, and was down by 55 points, or 1.1%, at 4992 by 3pm.

With President Barack Obama's $787bn (£500bn) economic stimulus effort well under way, there have been hopes in recent months that the US economy has reached a turning point. The Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke remarked two weeks ago that the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s was "very likely over" from a technical perspective, although he warned that it would take time for an increase in activity to feed through to the jobs market.

Mike Fitzpatrick, vice-president of MF Global in New York, said the monthly figures were "disappointing" but hardly shocking: "While there has been an improvement in the employment picture, compared to previous recessions the pace of the current recovery can only be characterised as glacial."


[News > World news > Indonesia]
3,000 could be buried after Indonesia quake, say officials
Medical teams and emergency supplies arrive on Sumatra as government pleads for international aid
Ben Doherty in Padang, Helen Pidd and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 October 2009 09.10 BST Article history

As many as 3,000 people could be buried under the rubble of thousands of buildings in Sumatra, Indonesian officials said today, as the search and rescue operation intensified in the wake of this week's earthquake.

Foreign aid teams flew in tents, water, medicine, food and hundreds of emergency workers after the authorities admitted they were struggling to cope with the aftermath of the 7.6-magnitude quake, which has left hundreds dead.

One woman was rescued from the ruins of a school in Padang, the city close to the epicentre, more than 40 hours after it was destroyed in the earthquake. But there were reports of at least three schoolgirls buried under rubble in the school. The Times reported that faint voices of the three could be heard from under the wreckage of the school, but that rescuers feared that any effort to remove the debris could prompt a catastrophic cave-in.

Official figures put the number of people killed at 715, but one UN estimate said the figure was 1,100. Officials said they expected the death toll to increase as the scale of the devastation became clearer.

Rustam Pakaya, the crisis centre chief at the health ministry, said more than 2,000 people had been injured and thousands were missing.

Priyadi Kardono, a spokesman for the disaster management agency, said more than 20,000 buildings and houses had been seriously damaged or destroyed. A Guardian reporter who reached the town of Pariaman further up the coast found that almost every building had been damaged and that people were sitting under makeshift tents, waiting for further help.

In Padang, the 21-year-old student rescued from the STBA Prayoga language school was pulled out after rescuers dug a tunnel through debris. Onlookers applauded as the woman, called Sari, was carried to an ambulance on a stretcher. Her eyes were closed, but one rescuer said she was able to talk. Her uncle said he was overjoyed that she had been saved. "She said, 'I'm hungry, thirsty,' and they gave her some milk," he added.

Other families were anxiously waiting for news. Tommy Erwinsyah, 29, said his wife, Suci, had been lying next to Sari.

"Her leg is trapped under the concrete floor that fell on her. They can't lift or break it so now they will try to use an air compressor to lift it," he said. "Last night, I spoke to her. Her voice is very clear. I hope she can get out today. I went into the tunnel and I could hear her voice. I could see her hand."

The government admitted it was struggling to cope, and the health minister, Siti Fadilah Supari, appealed for foreign aid. "We need help from foreign countries for evacuation efforts," she said in remarks carried by AFP and the BBC. "We need them to provide skilled rescuers with equipment. Our main problem is that there are a lot of victims still trapped in the rubble. We are struggling to pull them out."

South Korea, Switzerland and Singapore are among the countries to have sent civil emergency teams. British search and rescue experts are also on their way to the disaster scene.

The US president, Barack Obama, who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, pledged to support the recovery effort, and the European commission said it would provide €3m (£2.7m) to meet initial humanitarian needs.

Witnesses said that almost one-third of buildings in the centre of Padang had been destroyed. "So many buildings are collapsed," said Enda Balina, of World Vision, one of the first international aid organisations to reach the city.

"The city's infrastructure has collapsed. We went around the city this morning. In the downtown area, three out of every five buildings has been affected, some heavily damaged. The government is trying to get people out of the rubble."

It has emerged that Fauzi Bahar, the mayor of Padang, last year asked for extra money to prepare for evacuating the town in the event of an earthquake. The request was turned down by the government.

Unconfirmed reports from aid workers suggested that Pariaman, a town of 80,000 people near Padang, may have been largely destroyed by the quake.

Early reports from Pariaman described a 1km fracture in the town's main road and the dome of the town's largest mosque lying on the ground.

news20091002nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 1 October 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.969
News
Future of HIV vaccine unclear
Puzzling hints of success require explanation before trials can move forward.
By Erika Check Hayden

As the dust settles from last week's surprising announcement that an HIV vaccine combination may protect some people from the virus, scientists are talking about what else the vaccine trial might tell them.

On 24 September, leaders of a US$119-million study of 16,000 people in Thailand reported that the combination of two shots had reduced the risk of HIV infection by one-third (see 'Vaccine protects against HIV virus'). Now, the vaccine's fate will depend on whether scientists can figure out its 'correlate of protection' — in other words, what caused it to partially protect some people from HIV. The key does not seem to be anything scientists had predicted, which has led to much head-scratching — and some unease.

{{The vaccine contained two components, and it will be impossible to untangle which of the two triggered a partial protective effect against HIV.}
PUNCHSTOCK}}

"It's a humbling thing, because for the first time we got a positive signal and it doesn't jump out at us as being related to any classical parameters you would expect from a successful vaccine," says Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland, which supported the trial. "That tells us maybe we were not measuring the right thing."

Scientists are scheduled to present more data from the study at the AIDS Vaccine 2009 meeting in Paris from 19 to 22 October. The trial's backers will also talk there about what types of experiments could be done, using blood specimens taken during the trial, to determine the vaccine's correlate of protection.

In the meantime, scientists who were sceptical about the trial have urged caution until all of the data have been released. "Nobody should draw any conclusion from what was in the press release until the peer-review process has been completed and there's been time for more sophisticated analysis of the data," says John Moore, an AIDS researcher at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.

The history of this particular vaccine study is somewhat controversial, and the news last week unleashed a flurry of plaudits and "I told you so's". The San Francisco Chronicle rushed to assign credit for its success to a local hero, reporting that the trial's findings were "the result of decades of work by Bay Area scientist Donald Francis", who has championed the development of AIDSVAX, one of the two components used in the vaccine. And in a scathing opinion piece in the UK newspaper The Independent, one commentator singled out the group of 22 scientists, including Moore, who opposed the trial in 2004. The piece said that "thankfully", the opposition "has been proved wrong", and compared the scientists and backers involved in the trial to Nobel laureates such as James Watson, Francis Crick and Barbara McClintock.

Francis himself, however, has refrained from gloating: "I don't know if I feel vindicated," he says. "Any time you can make a vaccine for HIV that seems to work, it's a huge step forward." But figuring out the correlate of protection is "not going to be easy", he says.

That will be difficult because of the way the Thai trial was designed, which makes it impossible to tell which of the two vaccine components — AIDSVAX or the second component, ALVAC — triggered the partial protective effect seen in the trial.

Same data, different interpretations

And even groups that have supported the HIV vaccine quest for years have been measured in their response to the latest news, perhaps wary of major disappointment should the trial's results not hold up, as has happened in the past with other HIV vaccines.

For instance, Francis's former company, VaxGen, based in South San Francisco, California, angered many scientists and HIV activists in 2003 when it used thin statistical evidence to claim that some ethnic subgroups may have been protected in large clinical trials of AIDSVAX — even though those trials found AIDSVAX ineffective overall, and there was little scientific reason to suggest that people of different races would respond differently to the vaccine.

More recently, in 2007 researchers halted a separate trial, known as the STEP trial, after the vaccine it tested seemed to increase the risk of HIV infection. Since then, however, that interpretation has changed with time and after further analysis (see 'Mystery of HIV vaccine failure deepens').

"When people are saying we've just made history, those are some pretty grand statements, and it would be horrible if these results unravelled based on further statistical analyses," says Richard Jefferys, a vaccine-project coordinator at the non-profit Treatment Action Group in New York.

Many scientists have also noted that, out of 16,000 participants, the difference between the number infected in the placebo and vaccine groups was only a handful of individuals.

Francis, however, predicts that such concerns will dissipate as more of the data are released. "I'm sure there's some defensive stance, but people haven't seen all the data yet, and it's pretty clear — it's not a subtle finding," he says. "People will say 'Yes, indeed, there's protection', and then they'll start to ask why."

In fact, Francis is already anticipating the need to manufacture more doses of vaccine for further clinical trials. ALVAC is made by Sanofi-Pasteur of Lyon, France — a company with a long history of vaccine manufacturing. The commercial history of AIDSVAX, by contrast, is more complex.

Francis and other scientists began developing AIDSVAX in the 1980s at biotech firm Genentech, based in South San Francisco, California, and formed VaxGen as a spin-off from Genentech in 1995. Francis then created Global Solutions for Infectious Disease, a non-profit organization also based in South San Francisco, to carry AIDSVAX forward after VaxGen's large clinical trials of it failed in 2003.

As a result, Global Solutions now owns the rights to the vaccine in developing nations, whereas VaxGen and Genentech both have options to sell the vaccine in developed countries. Yet VaxGen barely still exists as a company; it has been running out of money since the US government cancelled an anthrax vaccine contract with the firm in 2006. And Genentech is now owned by the Swiss drug-maker Roche, which does not make vaccines. "The question is who would take on the rights to the vaccine in the industrialized world?" Francis asks.

Fauci says that new doses of the vaccines will probably be necessary for follow-up studies to find out the scientific basis for the vaccines' success, and so that more effective ones can be developed. "I don't think that there necessarily has to be major production from a company" for the follow-up studies, he says.

And whether there will be any need for the vaccine beyond those studies is still unclear.

news20091002nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 1 October 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.968
News: Briefing
US Senate gears up for climate debate
Cap-and-trade bill largely mirrors legislation passed in the House of Representatives.
By Jeff Tollefson

After months of back-door talks with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, Democrats in the US Senate released a cap-and-trade climate bill on Wednesday. The legislation is by no means complete and as such represents little more than a starting point in the Senate debate, which is expected to continue at least through December and probably into next year. Nature takes a closer look.

What's in the bill?

Based in large part on the version passed by the House of Representatives in June, the bill would establish a cap-and-trade system to reduce covered greenhouse-gas emissions by 20% by 2020 and 83% by 2050, compared with 2005 levels. House lawmakers started out with similar emissions targets but ultimately relaxed their version to require only a 17% reduction by 2020; the same thing could happen in the Senate as lawmakers search for votes. The Senate bill has a few new components, including incentives for natural gas and nuclear power, but leaves many of the biggest issues — including how to structure the initial allocation of emissions permits, and how to regulate carbon trading — largely unanswered.

Who is running the show? And where do we go from here?

California Democrat Barbara Boxer has primary jurisdiction over the issue as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which is expected to vote on the bill next month. That said, Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry has taken the lead in drafting the bill. Kerry chairs the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which is likely to hold its own vote on provisions that have international implications, such as adaptation and forestry provisions.

{{The US Senate has drafted its version of a climate bill, which includes legislation for a cap-and-trade system to reduce emissions.}
Alamy}}

But by some estimates the bill covers roughly 75% of the economy, and that opens the door to legislation by numerous other committees. The energy and natural resources committee, for instance, has already passed energy legislation that will be wrapped into the bill, and other committees could do the same. It will then fall to Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada to pull everything together for a vote before the full Senate.

Given the ongoing debate about health care and other competing priorities, could the bill make it through the Senate before the United Nations climate summit in December?

Conventional wisdom suggests that it won't, but nobody really knows. Clearly, Democratic leaders understand the frustration of the international community and are pushing to get a bill out the door before then. Asked on Tuesday whether he plans to seek a vote on climate before Copenhagen, Reid responded with one word: "Yup."

But the Senate has never been known for speed. Timelines aside, Democrats will continue brokering deals until they have the support of at least 60 of the 100 senators, which is how many they need to overcome cumbersome legislative procedures in the Senate.

Although always difficult and slow, major environmental legislation in the past has tended to end up with bipartisan support on final passage. Could this be the case with climate?

Probably not. Leaders are currently fighting for the support of more conservative Democrats from states with strong industrial bases and energy production, and perhaps a handful of Republicans. Although Democrats claim the bill will create 2 million new clean-energy jobs, lawmakers from mining states fear job losses as the US economy shifts away from cheap coal. And many fear that higher energy prices could affect heavy industries, pushing jobs overseas if countries such as China and India are not held to similar standards. Summing up the feeling on Wednesday, Frank Lautenberg, a Democratic Senator from New Jersey, kindly asked supporters to reserve a few of those new jobs for "those of us who vote for this bill".

What about industry?

The business community is split on the issue. The US Chamber of Commerce continues to oppose the current legislation, but several high-profile utilities have withdrawn from the chamber in recent weeks over the issue. Coal-fired power companies are pushing for as much protection as possible, but the nuclear industry, and to a lesser extent the natural-gas industry, see opportunities in the push toward low-carbon energy. Similarly, major companies such as The Dow Chemical Company and General Electric are pushing for legislation as part of the US Climate Action Partnership.

Could President Barack Obama still act through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)?

Yes, and he has already opened the door to direct regulation under the Clean Air Act. That began earlier this year with a proposed finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health and the environment, and the administration formally proposed the first greenhouse-gas regulations for vehicles earlier this month. And that opens the door to regulation of industrial polluters.

Speaking at the Governors' Global Climate Summit in Los Angeles on Wednesday, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson announced a new proposal to require all major industrial facilities to obtain permits and use the "best available control technologies" to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The agency limited the rule to new facilities that produce more than 25,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases a year; existing facilities would be affected if they propose major modifications. And these are just initial steps: the administration has repeatedly said it wants to see Congress enact a bill, but it could also roll out its own regulatory programme to reduce greenhouse gases if lawmakers fail to act.

Assuming the Senate does pass a bill, what happens next?

The House and Senate would appoint members to a conference committee to negotiate a compromise between the two chambers. That bill must then go back to both chambers for a final vote before landing on Obama's desk.

news20091002bbc1

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 13:03 GMT, Friday, 2 October 2009 14:03 UK
Indonesia awaits world quake aid
International rescue teams are heading to Indonesia in a last-ditch effort to free trapped earthquake survivors.

Experts from the UK, Australia and South Korea were en route to Sumatra, hit by a 7.6-magnitude quake two days ago. Others pledged emergency cash.

More than 1,000 people are already known to have died, the UN says, with thousands thought to remain trapped.

But one survivor was found on Friday: a young woman pulled, barely conscious, from within a collapsed school.

{{ AT THE SCENE}
Rachel Harvey, BBC News, Padang
Heavy diggers move across piles of rubble, slowly shifting the debris. Piledrivers are being used to break up slabs of concrete, and alongside the machinery men pick their way carefully, looking and listening for any sign of life.
They've not yet given up hope here, but the chances of finding anyone else alive must now be fading. Many hundreds of bodies are known to be trapped beneath collapsed buildings, including up to 60 children who were taking part in after school lessons when the earthquake struck.
In the grounds of the main hospital some of the injured are being treated in tents because the wards are full. One surgeon told me there was a desperate need for clean water to maintain levels of hygiene.}}

The rescue of Ratna Kurnia Sari was a boost to emergency workers in Padang, who were enduring tough conditions as they scrambled to reach survivors.

At least one other young woman was reported to remain trapped close to where the first rescue took place.

But as rescue efforts focused on Padang, aid workers and reporters said that in rural areas thousands more buildings had been destroyed and whole villages flattened.

"From the aerial assessments carried out yesterday, the feedback is, yes Padang city and environs are bad, but once you go outside into the surrounding rural areas, the situation is very seriously grave," said International Red Cross coordinator Christine South, quoted by AFP news agency.

There was still no information for some areas including Mentawai Island, 57km from the coast, she added.

An AP reporter said parts of Pariaman district, to the north of Padang, had virtually no buildings left standing and had received no outside help.

Collapsed school

As many as 3,000 people were still thought to be trapped under rubble in Padang and several other areas, Indonesia's disaster management agency told the Associated Press.

Overnight, workers rigged up floodlights and brought in a giant excavator as they tried to find students trapped beneath the collapsed three-storey school.

The Jakarta Post reported that 60 children were in the school when it collapsed.

One rescue team leader, known as Suria, said hope was fading for many of those still buried.

"We have pulled out 38 children since the quake. Some of them, on the first day, were still alive, but the last few have all been dead," she told the Reuters news agency.

Part of Padang's main hospital collapsed in the quake and a makeshift open air morgue has been set up to take the growing number of yellow body bags.

Operations were being performed in nearby white tents, doctors said.

"We have done hundreds of operations since the earthquake," said Dr Nofli Ichlas.

"Some broken bones, some with limbs completely cut off. Fractured skulls, abdominal trauma too."

International 'lifeline'

As the rescue efforts continued, Indonesian Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari appealed for foreign aid to help the rescue effort.

There were calls in particular for skilled rescuers with specialised equipment to penetrate the unstable rubble.

"We need urgently electric cutters and medium-sized excavators to remove the debris," Red Cross official Febi Dwirahmadi, at the school, told AFP.

Elsewhere, teams worked at the site of the Ambacang Hotel, where as many as 100 people were thought to be trapped.

{{MAJOR INDONESIAN QUAKES}
> 26 Dec 2004: Asian tsunami kills 170,000 in Indonesia alone
> 28 March 2005: About 1,300 killed after a magnitude 8.7 quake hits the coast of Sumatra
> 27 May 2006: Quake hits ancient city of Yogyakarta, killing 5,000
> 17 July 2006: A tsunami after a 7.7 magnitude quake in West Java province kills 550 people
> 30 Sept 2009: 7.6 magnitude quake near Sumatran city of Padang, thousands feared dead
> 1 Oct 2009: Second of two quakes near Padang, magnitude 6.8 - no damage or casualties reported}}

"We heard some voices of people under the rubble, but as you can see the damage is making it very difficult to extricate them," rescue spokesman Gagah Prakosa told AP.

British firefighters heading to Padang were delayed by technical problems overnight but were poised to fly from London on Friday morning.

UK International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said the 60-strong team would provide a "lifeline" once they arrived in Padang.

In Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said a plane carrying engineering and health teams was on its way to Indonesia, with a 44-strong rescue team due to head to Sumatra later on Friday.

Other nations have also pledged aid to Indonesia, among them China ($500,000; £315,000), South Korea (43-strong rescue team and $500,000), and Germany ($1.5m).

The quake struck on Wednesday close to Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province, bringing scores of buildings crashing to the ground.

The main earthquake struck at 1716 local time (1016 GMT), some 85km (55 miles) under the sea, north-west of Padang, the US Geological Survey said.

A second quake of 6.8 struck close to Padang at 0852 local time (0152 GMT) on Thursday causing panic but no reports of casualties or damage.

Sumatra lies close to the geological fault line that triggered the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed more than 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

Geologists have long warned that Padang - a city of 900,000 people - could one day be completely destroyed by an earthquake because of its location.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 10:45 GMT, Friday, 2 October 2009 11:45 UK
Samoa's tsunami death toll rises
Search teams on Samoa are continuing to find bodies of victims of Tuesday's tsunami, which is confirmed to have killed at least 129 people there.

Another 31 people on neighbouring American Samoa and nine on Tonga were also killed as waves triggered by an earthquake hit villages and resorts.

Officials said they had given up hope of finding survivors and were focusing on the aid and recovery operation.

The government on Samoa is discussing plans for a mass funeral.

The US, New Zealand and Australia have sent in planes carrying soldiers and relief supplies for the tens of thousands of people whose homes were swamped by waves as high as 5m (16ft).

State of shock

Samoa's police commissioner Lilo Maiava told AP news agency that 129 people were now confirmed dead.

The toll was 19 higher than the previous official figure.

However, Lilo Maiava said that more bodies were being found floating out to sea or buried in the sand and debris.

Some grieving families have already buried their relatives as bodies have begun to quickly decompose in the heat of the South Pacific.

A refrigerated freight container was being used to hold bodies outside a Samoan hospital.

Government minister Fiana Naomi has discussed plans for a mass funeral next week with relatives of victims.

Samoan Prime Minister Tuila'epe Sailele Malielegaoi expressed his grief as he called on his country to rebuild.

"The winds have uttered their strength, earth has spoken its grief and the wave has scattered its strength," he said.

The 8.3-magnitude quake struck at 1748 GMT on Tuesday at a depth of 33km (20 miles), some 190km (120 miles) from Apia on Samoa.

Amateur video footage showed villages destroyed, homes flattened and cars lodged in treetops.

Residents and tourists fled to higher ground as boats were swept inland and cars and people sucked out to sea.

Small tsunamis reached areas as far away as New Zealand, Hawaii and Japan.

Some Samoans have begun rebuilding their homes, but others have remained on high ground, afraid to return to the coast.

"People are staying away from devastated villages today," said Oxfam Australia aid worker Janna Hamilton.

"They're still in shock and a lot are not ready to start work again," she told Reuters news agency.

The Red Cross has set up camps for those who have lost their homes, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

US President Barack Obama quickly declared a major disaster in American Samoa, pledging a "swift and aggressive" government response.

The European Union released an initial amount of 150,000 euros (£137,000; $220,000) in aid for the victims, and Australia and New Zealand also pledged assistance.

news20091002bbc2

[One-Minute World News] from [BBC NEWS]

[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 07:20 GMT, Friday, 2 October 2009 08:20 UK
Philippines braces for new storm
{People are still dealing with flooding from Typhoon Ketsana}
The Philippines has ordered the evacuation of thousands of people from areas in the path of a second powerful typhoon to hit the country in a week.

Typhoon Parma is expected to hit the main island of Luzon north of the capital Manila early on Saturday.

Officials fear a second disaster after Typhoon Ketsana caused the worst floods in the Philippines in decades.

Ketsana caused nearly 300 deaths in the Philippines, as well as more than 100 in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Parts of the Philippines near Manila remain flooded after Ketsana dropped a month's worth of rain in 12 hours last Saturday.

'Strongest typhoon'

President Gloria Arroyo appeared on national television to order the evacuation of low-lying coastal areas threatened by the new typhoon.

"We need that preventative evacuation," she said.

The military and police have been put on alert and civilian agencies have been ordered to stockpile food, water and medicine.

The Philippine weather bureau said Parma, with winds of up to 230km/h (140mph)(64m/s), would be the strongest typhoon to hit the country since 2006.

Nathaniel Cruz, the head weather forecaster in the Philippines, said Parma could yet change direction and miss the country, adding that it was carrying less rain than Ketsana.

But he said its strong winds could be highly destructive.

"We are dealing with a very strong typhoon [and] there is a big possibility that this typhoon will gather more strength," Mr Cruz said.

There are also fears that more heavy rain could worsen flooding left from the earlier typhoon.

"We're concerned about the effects of more rain on the relief work in flooded areas because the water level could rise again," said Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro.

Thousands homeless

Ketsana, with winds of up to 100km/h (60mph), hit the Philippines early last Saturday, crossing the main northern island of Luzon before heading out toward the South China Sea.

Almost two million people were affected by the flooding in Manila, the worst to hit the city in 40 years. At one point, 80% of the city was submerged.

Tens of thousands of people were left homeless.

Ketsana went on to hit the mainland of South-East Asia where it is now confirmed to have killed 99 people in Vietnam, 16 in Laos and 14 in Cambodia.

Most of the people have died in flooding or landslides caused by the sudden, heavy rain.

Authorities in Vietnam have been delivering food and water by speed boat and helicopter to isolated communities affected by Ketsana.

Some villages in Vietnam and Cambodia remained cut off by mudslides and flooding.


[Asia-Pacific]
Page last updated at 05:04 GMT, Friday, 2 October 2009 06:04 UK
Suu Kyi detention appeal rejected
A Burmese court has rejected an appeal by pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi against her extended detention, officials say.

Ms Suu Kyi was found guilty in August of violating the terms of her house arrest after a US man swam uninvited to her lakeside home.

She was sentenced to 18 months' further house arrest, which will keep her out of elections scheduled for next year.

Ms Suu Kyi has already spent 14 of the past 20 years in detention.

"The appeal was rejected but we will take it to the high court," her lawyer, Nyan Win, said after the hearing.

Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won the country's last elections in 1990 but was never allowed to take power.

Observers believe Burma's military authorities want to keep the pro-democracy leader in detention until after polls scheduled for next year.

The court ruling comes days after the US said it would pursue greater engagement with Burma's generals in a bid to advance democratic reform there.

news20091002reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Climate talks stall on targets, finance
Fri Oct 2, 2009 8:52am EDT
By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Efforts to convince rich nations to toughen emissions cuts have failed to make much headway at climate talks in the Thai capital, the U.N. said on Friday.

Delegates from about 180 nations are meeting in Bangkok to try to narrow differences on ways to broaden and deepen the fight against climate change.

The September 28-October 9 talks are the last major negotiating session before environment ministers meet in Copenhagen to try to seal a tougher global pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

"Progress toward high industrialized world emissions cuts remains disappointing during these talks. We're not seeing real advances there," Yvo de Boer, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told reporters.

"Movement on the ways and means and institutions to raise, manage and deploy financing support for the developing world climate action also remains slow."

The U.N. climate panel says rich nations should cut emissions between 25-40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid dangerous climate change. But the aggregate cuts pledged by industrialized states remains well below this level.

Many developing nations say rich countries should commit to 40 percent cuts by 2020, blaming them for most of the planet-warming greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels over the past two centuries.

Poorer nations also demand cash and clean-energy technology to help them curb the growth of their own emissions.

CLEARER PICTURE

Negotiators in Bangkok are trying to trim a complex 180-page main draft text that will form the basis of the new climate pact from 2013. The U.N. hopes Bangkok will lead to a clearer picture of what a Copenhagen agreement might look like.

Scientists say a tougher deal is crucial to avoid the worst of more intense droughts, floods, melting glaciers and rising seas.

The Copenhagen agreement could also give a major push to greening the global economy, boosting investment in renewable energy, expansion of carbon markets and more efficient transport.

De Boer said the United States was a key reason why rich nations' 2020 emissions targets have not been finalized.

The United States never ratified Kyoto and is not among the 37 industrialized nations committed to emissions targets during Kyoto's 2008-12 first commitment period. Washington remains outside formal discussions on tougher post-2012 commitments.

"Not knowing what the United States is going to be able to bring to Copenhagen really makes it very difficult for other countries in that Kyoto discussion to increase the level of ambition of their numbers," he said.

John Ashe, a senior diplomat who chairs a key U.N. group negotiating expanded Kyoto commitments, told Reuters in an interview it was unlikely pledged cuts by rich nations would change in Bangkok.

He also said developing nations had not changed any of their demands for tough cuts by rich countries.

He said it was still unclear what limits would be agreed on carbon offsetting by rich nations, such as investing in forest preservation projects in the developing world.

"There will be a cap on offsets. There must be a cap."

"No one is contemplating a situation where targets are met through just pure offsets," he said.

(Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)


[Green Business]
Climate change to cost poor states $100 billion a year
Fri Oct 2, 2009 8:25am EDT
By Thin Lei Win

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Developing countries will need to spend as much as $100 billion annually for the next 40 years to adapt to more extreme and severe weather changes, according to a World Bank study issued on Wednesday.

The report said poorer countries would need to invest in large-scale infrastructure projects to cope with floods, drought, heatwaves and more frequent and intense rainfall if the Earth's temperature rose by 2 degrees Celsius by 2050.

"Faced with the prospect of huge additional infrastructure costs, as well as drought, disease and dramatic reductions in agricultural productivity, developing countries need to be prepared for the potential consequences of unchecked climate change," said Katherine Sierra, World Bank vice president for sustainable development.

Previous estimates of adaptation costs by other groups ranged from $9 billion to $104 billion, but the World Bank said the latest projection of costs are the most in-depth analysis to date of the impact of climate change.

The report gave a costs range of $75 billion to $100 billion based on two different scenarios, the first a drier world that would require less investment than wetter conditions, which would need measures such as building sea walls or deeper drainage canals.

HARDEST HIT

East Asia and the Pacific, home to some of the world's fastest-growing economies, would be the hardest hit financially, accounting for at least a quarter of total costs, mostly due to increased urbanization, especially in coastal areas, said Warren Evans, director of the Bank's environment department.

According to the study, the cost of adapting to a warmer world is on the same scale as the amount of aid developing countries currently receive. Aid agencies say it is essential that aid money is not cut to fund climate change initiatives.

"Any financing that comes in must be additional money," Oxfam's senior climate policy advisor, Antonio Hill, told Reuters. "If it's not, then it's just robbing Peter to pay Paul."

Conservation group WWF voiced concern that the World Bank's estimate was based on the assumption that the world would work together to restrict the temperature rise to two degrees.

"The commitments from developed countries in the present negotiations don't come anywhere near this level of ambition," WWF said in a statement, referring to global climate change talks taking place in Bangkok.

"This underlines the need for much stronger commitments on the table from developed countries, both in terms of emissions reductions and in terms of financing for climate action in developing countries." (Editing by Martin Petty and Alex Richardson)


[Green Business]
Biggest California forest owner enters carbon trade
Fri Oct 2, 2009 8:14am EDT
By Peter Henderson

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The largest private forest owner in California, Sierra Pacific Industries, is entering carbon markets with a deal to preserve redwoods and other trees and sell credits for soaking up greenhouse gases to power companies and investors, the company said on Wednesday.

The move is a sign that commercial forest owners who have hesitated to embrace carbon markets now see financial potential in the developing system of creating 'offsets' to industrial pollution that can be sold to factories and energy companies.

International climate change talks in December will include discussion of similar schemes to stop destruction of global forests, which account for about a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Sierra Pacific and the Eco Products Fund, a joint venture between environmental markets companies Equator LLC and New Forests Inc, will develop a 60,000 acre project to sequester 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide, roughly equivalent to 200,000 to 300,000 cars' pollution in one year.

Trees which otherwise would be cut down will be allowed to keep growing, increasing the storage of carbon dioxide. It is one of the first deals under updated California rules that incorporate forest management into the most populous U.S. state's plan to cut global-warming-causing gases.

California plans to cap emissions in the state and allow power companies to trade pollution credits, a system known as cap-and-trade that will begin in 2012 -- unless a federal plan being considered by the U.S. Congress preempts it.

The project creators expect the Sierra forest credits will qualify in federal or state plans, and that when trading actually begins there will be a big demand for projects, which take some time to start.

Sierra Chief Financial Officer Mark Emmerson said the carbon, which will have to be kept intact for a hundred years to qualify for the California program was a new commodity. "It fits really well with industrial forestry," he said.

Forest management projects generally allow selective cutting of trees, and credit is built if the remaining forest is larger than would be available if cut at traditional rates.

(Reporting by Peter Henderson in Los Angeles)

news20091002reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Climate change threatens Brazil's rich agriculture
Thu Oct 1, 2009 8:22pm EDT
By Raymond Colitt

VARGINHA, Brazil (Reuters) - A freak tornado and floods last month may be a harbinger of a troubled future for Brazilian farmers, who worry that climate change could severely disrupt production in one of the world's breadbaskets.

Rising temperatures, a shift in seasons, and extreme weather in coming decades are likely to cut output in some areas and wipe out crops entirely in others, experts say.

"Brazil is vulnerable. If we don't do anything, food production is at risk," says Eduardo Assad, an agronomist at the government's agriculture research institute, Embrapa.

At stake is a $250 billion farm industry, food for millions of poor and supplies to world markets of Brazil's major export crops such as soybeans and coffee.

Brazil is seeking a leadership role in global climate talks and says it will adopt targets on greenhouse gas emissions, after agreeing last year to slash Amazon deforestation in half. But it has been slow to research climate change, its impact and how Brazilian agriculture can adapt to the changes.

In the poor northeast region, sparse rains will diminish further and temperatures will rise by 3-4 degrees Celsius (5.4-7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050, compared to a 2 degree Celsius national and global average rise, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Studies (INPE).

Higher temperatures threaten to wipe out staple foods, such as cassava, for millions of people in the region.

"The northeast will lose one-third of its economy if we do nothing," Environment Minister Carlos Minc told Reuters.

Big export crops are also likely to suffer, according to a study by Assad and Hilton Silveira Pinto, an agronomist at the University of Campinas in Sao Paulo state.

The report, completed in May, says by 2020 soy output will fall by 20 percent and coffee by 10 percent.

Brazil is the leading exporter of coffee, beef, soybeans, orange juice, and other farm products. Only one cash crop stands to gain: warmer temperatures will double the area suitable for sugar cane as early as 2020, Pinto and Assad say.

SIGNS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

There are signs their predictions may be coming true, with last month's unusual tornado becoming the latest example of bad weather to destroy crops and houses in the country's south.

"We're seeing the beginning of climate change. The frequency and intensity of rains changed measurably and will continue to do so," says Jose Marengo, an INPE climate expert.

In Varginha, in central Minas Gerais state, Ivo Bueno Paiva points to his infested and depleted coffee trees. In five of the past 10 years, rainfall was well below the historic average, shriveling leaves and drying out flower buds.

Thousands of small coffee farmers, already struggling with rising costs and low prices, lost money and racked up debt.

"The more the rains change, the more my debt rises," says 76-year old Paiva, who was dressed in soiled trousers and a tattered shirt.

This hilly region accounts for half Brazil's coffee but by the second half of the century may produce no more. "The chances for coffee to survive in southeastern Brazil are slim," the Assad-Pinto study says.

Even slight changes in temperature or precipitation can be devastating for the flowering, growth and harvest of crops.

Excessive spring rains in Brazil's temperate south in recent years have damaged barley and wheat, part of which was processed into animal fodder instead of malt for beer.

As a result, the Cotrijal cooperative in southern Rio Grande do Sul state lost around 1.5 million reais ($830,000) in 2008 and disease from dampness is also damaging wheat production this year. Cotrijal has set up weather stations and asked agronomists at the state university for guidance.

"We can't change our planting calendar or the rains. How can I minimize my risks? We hope science will provide some answers," says Gelson Lima, production director at Cotrijal.

Rising temperatures could eventually cause wheat and barley to be entirely displaced, forcing up imports.

"We may have to replace wheat with cow pastures or tree plantations," says Jose Mauricio, head of wheat research at Embrapa in Rio Grande do Sul.

SOLUTIONS?

Technology can help farmers partially adapt to climate change, but results from experiments have been mixed.

At an experimental farm in Varginha, researchers seeking to mitigate droughts plant coffee trees in forests, where it is cooler and more moist. But less light reduces output and the inability to use machines increases labor costs, tests show.

Irrigation is expensive and water sources are scarce.

Government scientist Carlos Henrique Carvalho is working on more heat-resistant coffee varieties with longer roots. But developing new varieties takes over a decade, he says.

Seed company Monsanto will launch drought-resistant corn and soy by 2014 in the U.S. market but only five years later in Brazil. Even these will be only a partial fix.

"They can minimize the impact but won't solve the problem," says Rodrigo Santos, head of strategies and product management at the Brazilian subsidiary of Monsanto.

Even genetically modified plants will have difficulty adapting to temperature increases beyond 2 degrees Celsius, says Assad. Other scientists are more optimistic.

"I'm confident that science can provide 90 percent of the answers to climate change," said Edson Silva, director at the Parana state research company Epagri, which has exported a drought-resistant apple variety to France, Germany and elsewhere.

But research in most farm sectors has only just begun and spending is inadequate. Farmers need capital to migrate crops as well as proper infrastructure for processing and transport.

Developing a new crop costs 12 million reais ($6.7 million) per year over a decade and Brazil spends only a fraction of what it should, says Assad.

"Brazil was slow to believe in climate change, now we need to catch up by spending more -- much more," he says.

(Editing by Stuart Grudgings and Chris Wilson)


[Green Business]
CORRECTED: Biggest California forest owner enters carbon trade
Thu Oct 1, 2009 7:50pm EDT
(Clarifies ownership and management of Eco Products Fund in fourth paragraph)
By Peter Henderson

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The largest private forest owner in California, Sierra Pacific Industries, is entering carbon markets with a deal to preserve redwoods and other trees and sell credits for soaking up greenhouse gases to power companies and investors, the company said on Wednesday.

The move is a sign that commercial forest owners who have hesitated to embrace carbon markets now see financial potential in the developing system of creating 'offsets' to industrial pollution that can be sold to factories and energy companies.

International climate change talks in December will include discussion of similar schemes to stop destruction of global forests, which account for about a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Sierra Pacific and the Eco Products Fund, a joint venture between environmental markets companies Equator LLC and New Forests Inc, will develop a 60,000 acre project to sequester 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide, roughly equivalent to 200,000 to 300,000 cars' pollution in one year.

Trees which otherwise would be cut down will be allowed to keep growing, increasing the storage of carbon dioxide. It is one of the first deals under updated California rules that incorporate forest management into the most populous U.S. state's plan to cut global-warming-causing gases.

California plans to cap emissions in the state and allow power companies to trade pollution credits, a system known as cap-and-trade that will begin in 2012 -- unless a federal plan being considered by the U.S. Congress preempts it.

The project creators expect the Sierra forest credits will qualify in federal or state plans, and that when trading actually begins there will be a big demand for projects, which take some time to start.

Sierra Chief Financial Officer Mark Emmerson said the carbon, which will have to be kept intact for a hundred years to qualify for the California program was a new commodity. "It fits really well with industrial forestry," he said.

Forest management projects generally allow selective cutting of trees, and credit is built if the remaining forest is larger than would be available if cut at traditional rates.

(Reporting by Peter Henderson in Los Angeles)

news20091002reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
U.S. solar industry to challenge tariff ruling
Thu Oct 1, 2009 7:12pm EDT
By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. solar energy industry hopes to persuade Customs officials to reverse a decision to impose a 2.5 percent tariff on solar panel imports after more than two decades of duty-free trade in the product, an industry official said on Thursday.

"We're taking it very seriously and we will be responding. ... The industry is in the process of preparing a challenge," said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, whose members include both U.S. and foreign solar energy companies.

In the worst case scenario, U.S. importers of solar panels could face some $70 million in tariffs and penalties for product already imported this year.

The tariff comes at a time when concern about global climate change has prompted the United States and the European Union to push for deal with other leading developed countries and China to eliminate duties on environmental goods.

As the New York Times reported on Wednesday, the U.S. Custom service ruled in January a panel made by Trina Solar of China was a generator because it contains a diode that allows electric current to pass around shaded areas of the panel.

That ruling was a surprise because "all solar panels contain bypass diodes and have forever. It's a safety issue not to have them," one industry official said.

Although the ruling only applies to the Trina panel, it has implications for other manufacturers, he said.

The industry hopes it can persuade officials at U.S. Customs and Border Protection headquarters in Washington to overturn the ruling made by the New York office.

If that fails, the case could go to the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York.

Mike Wessel, a commissioner on the U.S.-China Economic and

Security Review Commission, a congressionally appointed watchdog group, said the duty should stay in place to offset Chinese government subsidies to its domestic producers.

"Customs' decision is the right approach to ensure that the domestic industry we have does not get run further into the ground by China's efforts to dominate this industry," he said.

INCREASINGLY GLOBAL INDUSTRY

The solar power sector is increasingly a global industry, with most panels today being sold into the European market and China expected to grow as a customer for clean energy.

While U.S.-based SunPower Corp assembles panels at factories in China, the Philippines and Mexico, China's Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd is planning to lease or buy a facility to produce its solar panels in the United States and companies like Yingli Green Energy Holding Co Ltd are setting up distribution lines in the United States.

The tariff could prompt more Chinese companies to set up some sort of U.S. operations. But it also could backfire on the United State if it encourages other countries to hike duties on climate-friendly goods.

"It's unclear that the U.S. would want to enforce this policy long term ... If you move toward a protectionist stance, you also limit what your domestic companies can do abroad," said Christine Hersey, analyst at Wedbush Morgan.

J.P. Morgan analyst Christopher Blansett said the tariffs could be good for First Solar Inc, Energy Conversion Devices Inc and Evergreen Solar Inc, since the companies produce some products in the United States.

But the tariffs should not have a large impact, since the benefits that foreign governments give to companies to set up manufacturing in their country -- such as lower corporate tax rates and low-cost financing -- "far outweigh the penalty of a 2.5 percent tariff," Blansett said.

(Additional reporting by Laura Isensee in Los Angeles, editing by Cynthia Osterman)


[Green Business]
New technologies may grab carbon right out of air
Thu Oct 1, 2009 5:30pm EDT
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As the world wrestles with how to cut greenhouse gas emissions, new technologies are gearing up to grab climate-warming carbon right out of the air.

This is different from trapping carbon dioxide as it comes out of pollution sources like factories and power plants. This so-called air capture technology could be set up anywhere and suck carbon directly from the atmosphere.

The devices to do this are varied in appearance. Some look a bit like telescopes, others involve vast, thin wall-like structures to capture the carbon. But all aim for a net reduction in atmospheric carbon, instead of just slowing down the increase of greenhouse emissions.

Because air capture need not be near carbon-belching factories, it could help the world's poorest countries, which at this point cannot benefit from the global carbon market, in which companies in developed countries get credits for investing in carbon-limiting projects in poor countries.

Chemicals giant BASF and glass and ceramics firm Corning are working with a team at Columbia University in New York on a company called Global Thermostat that is investigating this technology. Global Research Technologies in Tucson, Arizona, and David Keith at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada are also looking into it.

To Peter Eisenberger of Columbia University, a physicist and earth scientist who formerly worked for Exxon Mobil, air capture is a logical way to manage the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

"You put crap into the atmosphere, you take it out," Eisenberger said in a telephone interview. So far, he said, humans have done little to "clean up our mess ... which of course is why (carbon) concentration in the atmosphere is increasing."

As global greenhouse gas emissions increase, carbon gets more concentrated in the atmosphere, the planet gets warmer overall and the most dangerous effects of climate change -- floods, droughts, rising seas -- get more likely.

Right now, there are about 390 carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere for every million molecules of air. Many environmental activists and experts, including former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and the head of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, figure that to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the number should not exceed 350 parts per million.

'WE PROCRASTINATED TOO LONG'

That kind of reduction could happen if air capture technology becomes widespread, said Columbia University economist Graciela Chichilnisky, who is working with Eisenberger, financier Edgar Bronfman, BASF and Corning.

Chichilnisky defines negative carbon as any technological process that decreases the net carbon concentration in the atmosphere. She said negative carbon technology, such as air capture, is essential "because we procrastinated too long -- carbon by physical properties remains in the atmosphere once emitted for ... at least 100 years."

Excess carbon has been entering the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels and other causes. Even if new power plants and factories are carbon neutral -- not adding any carbon to the air -- existing plants continue to spew gigatons of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, she said.

An advantage of air capture of carbon is that it would let less-developed countries in Africa and Latin America get into the carbon market as set up under the Kyoto Protocol, Chichilnisky said.

The primary carbon market lets industrialized countries invest in U.N.-approved emissions-cutting projects in developing countries instead of more expensive emissions reductions at home.

Fast-developing countries like China and India have the advantage in this system. The more emissions they have to clean up, the more investment they can attract. But countries with low emissions, like many in Africa and Latin America, have little to sell on this market.

However, Chichilnisky said, if these less-developed countries got air capture technology, powered by renewable energy such as solar or wind, they could help bring about a net decrease in the concentration of atmospheric carbon.

(Editing by Will Dunham)

news20091002reut4

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
First Solar to join S&P 500, shares jump 5.7 percent
Thu Oct 1, 2009 7:31pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Standard & Poor's said on Thursday that First Solar Inc will join its flagship S&P 500 stock index, sending the shares of the solar power company up 5.7 percent in after-hours trading.

First Solar, which is based in Tempe, Arizona, will replace drugmaker Wyeth in the index on a date to be announced. Wyeth is being acquired by rival Pfizer Inc.

The addition of First Solar marks the first pure-play solar company to join the index, said Stuart Bush, managing director at RBC Capital Markets, who rates the company as "sector perform" with a price target of $150 per share.

"It's an important indication that solar has arrived as a mainstream industry in America," Bush said.

Joining the index "could only help the company in serving to broaden its investor base."

S&P also said Rupert Murdoch's news and media company News Corp will replace Wyeth in the S&P 100 index of the largest blue-chip companies, also on a date to be announced.

The shares of companies joining the S&P 500 often rise because many portfolio managers try to track the index and must buy shares of the companies that become part of it.

First Solar shares rose $8.24, or 5.7 percent, to $152 within minutes of S&P's announcement after U.S. markets closed. The shares had fallen $9.10, or 6 percent, to $143.76 in regular trading on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel and Laura Isensee in Los Angeles; editing Bernard Orr and Andre Grenon)


[Green Business]
APS, Starwood end Arizona solar power purchase deal
Thu Oct 1, 2009 3:56pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Arizona Public Service said late Wednesday Starwood Energy Group Global LLC terminated a long-term power purchase agreement on Starwood's proposed 290-megawatt concentrating solar power plant in Arizona.

Starwood and APS, a subsidiary of Pinnacle West Capital Corp, signed the deal in May 2009.

Starwood was to build the solar plant in the Harquahala Valley about 75 miles west of Phoenix. It would have provided power for some 73,000 Arizona homes.

Lockheed Martin Corp was the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm for the Starwood project. APS said Lockheed Martin decided not to go forward with the project due to the size and the final risk profile of the EPC contract, among other factors.

APS did not disclose the cost of the project in the release. According to industry estimates, a solar thermal plant would cost about $5,000 per kilowatt or $1.45 billion for a 290 MW facility.

The facility would have occupied about 1,900 acres and include 3,500 parabolic mirrors that focus solar thermal energy onto a heat transfer fluid. The hot fluid would convert water into steam used to turn the plant's turbines to create electricity, much like a traditional power plant.

In addition, the plant would have used molten salt to store solar energy and continue producing electricity for up to six hours after the sun goes down.

Starwood's solar plant was the second large-scale solar project APS announced in the last 19 months.

APS said the first, Solana, continued to move forward. The financing for the 280-megawatt concentrating solar plant would likely be announced in the first half of 2010, APS said.

Abengoa Solar, a unit of Spanish multinational company Abengoa SA, would build the Solana solar plant 70 miles southwest of Phoenix near Gila Bend, Arizona.

To help meet its state imposed renewable energy mandate, APS said it was seeking to replace the energy from the Starwood Solar contract. APS planned to announce before the end of the year the results of two solicitations for renewable energy - one for small-scale generation projects and one for distributed generation.

Starwood Energy, an affiliate of Starwood Capital Group, is a private equity firm focused on energy and infrastructure investments.

Pinnacle West, of Phoenix, owns and operates about 10,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity to about 1.1 million customers in Arizona.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by David Gregorio)


[Green Business]
San Antonio nears key vote on nuclear expansion
Thu Oct 1, 2009 3:22pm EDT
By Eileen O'Grady

HOUSTON (Reuters) - San Antonio's municipal utility will make a key decision next week on whether to invest billions of dollars to expand Texas' largest nuclear power station, with the city's mayor raising cost concerns.

Municipal utility CPS Energy is an equal partner with a joint venture formed by NRG Energy and Toshiba in a plan to add two 1,350-megawatt reactors at the existing South Texas Project nuclear station, located about 200 miles southeast of the city.

But the city's new mayor, Julian Castro, elected earlier this year, has raised additional questions about the project and the city-owned utility's level of investment.

On Monday, the CPS board, which includes the mayor, will vote on whether to pursue the STP expansion and decide how big a stake the utility should own.

Castro said he is concerned about the project's cost -- estimated at $10 billion to $13 billion -- and whether the utility should stick to its primary role of supplying power to customers in Texas' second-largest city. San Antonio is the seventh-biggest U.S. city.

"Adherence to the fundamental mission (of the utility) is more important, particularly given the risk of the development phase and the capital risk of a nuclear project," Castro said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

NRG, based in Princeton, New Jersey, already Texas' No. 2 power producer, expects to name a third partner to own 20 percent of the STP expansion by year end. That would leave the NRG/Toshiba joint venture and CPS with 40-percent each.

CPS currently gets one-third of its power from the existing STP units in which it holds a 40-percent stake and the CPS staff favors the additional investment, calling it the least-cost option for baseload power San Antonio will need by 2020, said CPS spokesman Bob McCullough.

But CPS won't need all the new power when the reactors are expected to come online in 2016 and 2017. CPS has said it would sell any excess power into the wholesale market.

Castro has suggested that CPS limit its stake to 20 percent, more in line with its future power forecast.

San Antonio's appetite for electricity continues to grow despite the recession, McCullough said. CPS is building a new coal plant and investing in energy efficiency programs and renewable power, but wants to retire some inefficient natural gas-fired power plants.

"Around 2020, we will need new baseload generation," McCullough said.

Monday's vote by the CPS board caps three months of public debate. "We heard quite a diversity of opinion," Castro said, ranging from support, to those "vehemently opposed to it and others who are comfortable with nuclear, but cautious."

Meanwhile, NRG is watching from the sideline.

"We very much value CPS as a partner," said NRG spokesman David Knox. "We want them be a partner, but the level of ownership is something that needs to be decided by San Antonio,"

CPS has spent about $276 million on the project which is a finalist for an Energy Department loan guarantee and other incentives designed to revive U.S. nuclear construction.

If the CPS board votes to go forward, it will ask the city council for the ability to issue $400 million in revenue bonds later in the month to advance the project.


[Green Business]
U.S. ethanol from corn could double by 2030: group
Thu Oct 1, 2009 11:50am EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. farmers could grow enough corn to produce 25 billion gallons of ethanol in 2030, twice as much as this year's target of 12 billion gallons, said the leader of a U.S. corn group on Thursday.

U.S. yields could double in 20 years, said Darrin Ihnen, president of the National Corn Growers Association.

Potentially, there would be enough corn in 2030 to produce 25 billion gallons of ethanol, he said.

A 2007 law set a ceiling of 15 billion gallons a year of corn-based ethanol to be blended into fuel in 2015 and a goal of 21 billion gallons of "advanced biofuels," such as ethanol from cellulose found in woody plants, grass and crop debris.

"If we don't get past the higher-blend issue, then even 15 billion (gallons) is moot," said Ihnen, referring to a proposal pending at the Environmental Protection Agency to allow up to 15 percent ethanol in gasoline.

The blend rate for years has been 10 percent. Ethanol backers say at that level, they will saturate the gasoline market before reaching the 15 billion-gallon level.

(Reporting by Charles Abbott; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

news20091002reut5

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Wind, solar execs eye U.S., China for growth
Thu Oct 1, 2009 11:32am EDT
By Gerard Wynn and Victoria Bryan

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. and China markets are driving recovery in the global clean energy industry, after a sharp fall in investment this year, but uncertainty over government support is clouding the 2010 outlook.

"There are many uncertainties for 2010 but prices seem to be stabilizing in this half," Aleo Solar Chief Financial Officer Uwe Boegershausen told a Jefferies cleantech conference in London.

He sees opportunities for the United States and China but acknowledges that the German election could mean cuts to solar electricity price support -- called feed-in tariffs -- in the world's biggest solar market.

"The new government is definitely more supportive of nuclear and there are clear signals they will adjust the feed-in tariff," he said.

Analysts said the main risk for the solar industry was a price war, sparked by Chinese producers such as Yingli Green Energy, obliterating the margins of higher-cost German producers.

"The optimistic part is that European pricing is holding up," said Jefferies analyst Michael McNamara, adding that some European producers were comfortably selling out through 2009 at 2 euros ($2.91) per watt peak or more, compared with some Chinese company plans for a year-end price of 1.3 euros.

"The cautious part is that there is no price visibility for 2010," he added.

The United States and China also offer opportunities for wind energy, the most mature market of the renewables sector.

Iberdrola Renovables, the world's biggest operator of wind power assets, said it will spend more than half all its capital expenditure through 2012 developing its U.S. business.

China will be the world's biggest wind market this year, with 10 gigawatts (GW) new installed power, followed by Europe and the United States, said Bernard Schaeferbarthold, chief financial officer of turbine manufacturer Nordex AG.

The emerging British offshore wind market will also be a big opportunity from 2013 -- "We want to be there, it will be the next phase in developing wind energy, Iberdrola Renovables Chief Financial Officer Jose Angel Marra told Reuters.

McNamara said threats to the sector generally centered on long-term incentives, such as a possible "paralysis" of a U.S. bill which aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels.

"In the United States we're seeing lots of signs things are picking up but not big turbine orders yet," he added.

(Editing by David Cowell)

($1=.6863 Euro)


[Business & Finance > Industry Summits]
U.S. restructuring wave to come over 18 months: GE
Thu Oct 1, 2009 5:24pm EDT
By Tom Hals

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An "avalanche" of large U.S. businesses will need to be restructured over the next 12 to18 months, said Rob McMahon, head of General Electric Corp's (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Restructuring Finance Group.

McMahon told the Reuters Restructuring Summit in New York on Thursday that the recent slowdown in bankruptcies and restructurings was partly due to the easy terms of loans extended prior to the credit crisis.

"The only thing keeping more companies from filing right now is all the convenant-lite deals," said McMahon, whose unit is one of the leading providers of debtor-in-possession or DIP loans to bankrupt companies, "We're still heading for an avalanche of deals over the next 12 to 18 months that will keep the restructuring world quite busy."

Some restructuring professionals have blamed the lack of DIP loans for out-of-court restructurings, liquidations and quick sales in bankruptcy court. McMahon said that explanation misses the larger issue of companies that have used all their assets to secure existing debt, leaving nothing to provide as security for a DIP loan.

"There is not a scarcity of money available for DIP lending. There is a scarcity of companies with adequate collateral."

McMahon the complexity of corporate balance sheets and ownership structures has changed the focus of his lending toward providing money to bring companies out of Chapter 11.

"I think we will wind up finishing 2009 having done more exits than DIPs," said. "I think we will wind up continuing to look at more prepack(aged) deals as well."

He said the current rate of bankruptcy filings for companies with assets of $100 million were running at about 20 per month, up from three per month two years ago. He said he expected a rate of about 15 to 20 per month next year.

(Reporting by Tom Hals; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)


[News > U.S.]
"Super typhoon" bears down on flood-ravaged Philippines
Fri Oct 2, 2009 5:18am EDT

MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines declared a nationwide state of calamity on Friday as a "super typhoon" bore down days after flash floods killed nearly 300 people in and around Manila.

Typhoon Parma, 180 km (110 miles) northeast of the island of Catanduanes in the central Philippines, was gaining strength as it churned west-northwest toward the Luzon mainland, bringing heavy rain.

It was expected to make landfall near the northeastern province of Isabela on Saturday. The area is mountainous and not heavily populated, but Parma was likely to lash Luzon with rain over the next two days, making life worse in flood-hit regions.

"We're concerned about the effects of more rain on the relief work in flooded areas because the water level could rise again," Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said in a briefing aired live on national television.

The Asia-Pacific region has been hit by a series of natural disasters in recent days, including Typhoon Ketsana which killed more than 400 in the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia.

Two powerful earthquakes rocked the Indonesian island of Sumatra, with the death toll likely to be in the thousands, and a tsunami battered American and Western Samoa, killing nearly 150.

In Taiwan, authorities identified 12 villages for mandatory evacuation ahead of Parma and another storm in the Pacific, Typhoon Melor.

The Taiwan government came in for heavy criticism after a deadly typhoon in August killed as many as 770 people.

In the Philippines, harsh criticism of the slow response to last week's floods could affect the chances of Teodoro at next May's presidential election, where he is seeking to replace President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Teodoro, who is also the head of the National Disaster Coordinating Council, has placed the military and police on alert and ordered civilian agencies to stockpile food, water, medicine, fuel and other relief supplies.

Arroyo declared a state of calamity across the country, which will allow local governments access to emergency funds for relief work.

She also ordered provincial governments to evacuate people living in low-lying areas in the path of Parma, by force if necessary.

The weather bureau said Parma, with gusts of up to 230 kph (143 mph) at the center, will be the strongest typhoon to hit the country since 2006.

"It's still very much possible that we will raise signal number 4 as it closes in on northern Luzon," Prisco Nilo, head of the weather bureau, told reporters.

At signal number 4, residential and commercial buildings may be severely damaged, large trees uprooted, and power and communication lines may be cut.

Last week's storm, Ketsana, left tens of thousands homeless in and around Manila and areas around a lake near the capital remain submerged under 2-3 meter floodwaters. It also damaged or destroyed more than $108 million in crops, infrastructure and property.

The Philippines is hit by frequent typhoons in the summer which often continue on their track to hit Vietnam, China and Taiwan before weakening over land.

(Additional reporting by Ho Binh Minh in Hanoi, Ralph Jennings in Taipei and Manny Mogato)

(Reporting by Rosemarie Francisco; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)