news20100121jt1

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010
Ozawa claims he had cash for land buy
DPJ grandee allows just one grilling; state also targets wife
Kyodo News

Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa plans to tell prosecutors he had at least ¥600 million in assets at the time his political fund management body made a controversial land purchase, enough to finance the transaction, sources said Wednesday.

Prosecutors, who plan to question Ozawa on a voluntary basis later in the week regarding the ¥352 million land deal in 2004, suspect secret political donations from construction companies made up part of the money used for the purchase.

Ozawa plans to explain that most of the \600 million — 300 million at his home and the remaining in deposits — were in his wife's name or those of their three children, the sources said.

Prosecutors have also requested that Ozawa's wife come in for voluntary questioning. Her family founded a midsize construction company in Niigata Prefecture.

Ozawa has informally told prosecutors he will submit only once to questioning, the sources said. The prosecutors are considering questioning him for about four hours, they said.

Ozawa's fund management body, Rikuzankai, is suspected of failing to report money used to buy the land in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward in October 2004, in violation of the Political Funds Control Law.

Ozawa's former secretary, Tomohiro Ishikawa, a DPJ Lower House member who was recently arrested on suspicion of violating the political funds law, said the land purchase was financed with \400 million borrowed from Ozawa.

Ozawa said some \300 million kept at his home was used for the land buy. But that is \50 million less than the price of the plot and inconsistent with Ishikawa's explanation.

Ozawa's link with contractors is the focus of the investigation, as the powerful politician is believed to have had a strong influence over the selection of companies for public works projects in areas around his constituency in Iwate Prefecture.

Ozawa, who is widely seen as the power behind the throne in the DPJ, was thought to have initially ignored prosecutors' request to appear for voluntary questioning.

But he has apparently changed his mind amid growing public calls for him to resign for failing to fully account for his role in the land deal.

At an annual DPJ convention Saturday, Ozawa reiterated no dubious money was involved in the land deal and, referring to the investigation by the prosecutors, said he will "fully confront such use of power."

Ozawa quit the DPJ presidency last spring after another former aide was charged in connection with alleged illegal donations to his fund body from Nishimatsu Construction Co.


[BUSINESS NEWS]
Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010
Asia routes real plum as rivals circle JAL
By HARRY WEBER
The Associated Press

ATLANTA — Japan Airlines isn't the real prize in the fight between Delta Air Lines and American Airlines over who gets to partner with the troubled carrier.

The U.S. carriers are after JAL's Asian routes and the premium passengers who come with them.

The winner gets a bigger revenue stream, more power to help shape overseas customer options and ticket prices and the potential to one day fly its own aircraft and passengers on JAL's routes.

That's why Delta and American will charge ahead in their pursuit of JAL despite its Tuesday bankruptcy filing, plans to shrink service and the tarnished image that has sent travelers to other carriers.

Growth in Asia won't cure everything that ails the major U.S. airlines but it would provide a much-needed boost. Airlines can get higher fares for seats to Asia because international business travelers tend to spend more than leisure fliers. Business travelers fly more and often at the last minute, which means paying higher walk-up fares.

Travel from North America to the mid-Pacific region, which includes Japan and South Korea, represented 5.8 percent of total premium international air traffic in November, but 12 percent of all the premium revenue, according to the latest International Air Transport Association data.

Overall passenger volume between North America and the Asia-Pacific region is expected to rise 3.8 percent in 2010 and 5.6 percent in 2011, according to a survey of airlines conducted by IATA. Between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, it is expected to rise 4.4 percent in 2010 and 6.1 percent in 2011.

"It's really where the money is these days," Charles River Associates aviation consultant Mark Kiefer said of Asia.

American and its oneworld alliance partners, including JAL, currently have about 35 percent of U.S.-Japan market share. That would drop to 6 percent if JAL leaves oneworld and dilute American's revenue from the region.

American, which transfers roughly 400,000 passengers annually to Japan Airlines at Narita airport, does not break out total revenue for Japan. But a spokesman says the Pacific region, which includes Japan, China and Australia, accounted for roughly 3.5 percent of its total passenger revenue for the 12 months through September.

The figure excludes the impact of cargo and other nonpassenger revenue. American reports its fourth-quarter and full-year 2009 results Wednesday.

American, its partners and a private equity firm have offered $1.4 billion to Japan Airlines to stay in the oneworld alliance. American, a unit of AMR Corp., is based in Fort Worth, Texas.

Delta Air Lines Inc., based in Atlanta, is part of the SkyTeam alliance, which includes Air France-KLM. SkyTeam currently controls 30 percent of U.S.-Japan market share, according to Delta. That would increase to 54 percent if JAL joins SkyTeam, Delta said. Delta, which absorbed Northwest Airlines, carries 3.7 million customers per year from the U.S. to Japan.

Delta and its partners have made a $1 billion offer to JAL. But perhaps more importantly to JAL, they offer access to their large global network of passengers and routes. Delta is the world's biggest airline


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010
Free land for shrine ruled unconstitutional
Kyodo News

It is unconstitutional for a municipal government to offer city-owned land without charge for the site of a Shinto shrine, the Supreme Court said Wednesday.

The ruling by the top court's Grand Bench upheld the contention of the plaintiffs, reportedly two local residents, that the municipal government of Sunagawa, Hokkaido, violated the Constitution's principle of separation of state and religion by granting the shrine city land free of charge.

"It is inevitable that the general public would believe the local government supports a specific religion if it provides specific benefits to it," the bench said.

It also said that determining whether a religious facility is operating in accordance with the principle of separation of state and religion should take "socially accepted ideas into account."

The top court sent the case back to the Sapporo High Court to seek a "rational and realistic solution" to address the issue of unconstitutionality involving the shrine, other than its removal.

The land on which the shrine sits was donated by a local resident to the municipal government in 1953, and the city assembly decided to allow the shrine to use the site for free.

In 1970, a neighborhood association constructed a meeting hall on the city-owned land and the shrine was moved inside the building.

While the local government argued in court sessions that the facility is free from any religious influence as it is a regional facility, the Sapporo District Court ruled the placement of the shrine was unconstitutional and its ruling was upheld by the Sapporo High Court.

The Supreme Court's latest decision is its second finding of unconstitutionality in cases related separation of state and religion, following one in 1997 in which it determined it was unconstitutional for the Ehime Prefectural Government to use taxpayer money for offerings to Shinto shrines, including Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.

Article 20 of the Constitution reads: "The state and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity."

news20100121jt2

[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[EDUCATION AND BILINGUAL]
Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010
SO, WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?
Landlocked 'lighthouse'
By ALICE GORDENKER

Dear Alice,
I'm very curious about a building I passed the other day on my way to Shinagawa Station. It's an old Western-style building, probably from before the war, and it has a tall, way-out-of-proportion tower on top. To be honest, it looks like a lighthouse. But what the heck would a lighthouse be doing in the middle of a landlocked city neighborhood?
Irina P., Tokyo

Dear Irina,

That building is the Nihonenoki Branch Fire Station, located in Takanawa 2-chome in Minato Ward, just around the corner from Meiji Gakuin University. It was built in 1933, and that skyward extension is not a todai (lighthouse) but a rodai (fire watchtower).

The station is a working firehouse but welcomes about 1,200 visitors a year, most of whom come out of an interest in architecture, according to Deputy Branch Chief Wajiro Takahashi. The attraction is partially that there aren't all that many buildings left in Tokyo from so early in the Showa Era (1926-1989), and also that, with its rounded lines, the old firehouse is a rare example of architecture in Japan influenced by the German Expressionist movement. For reference, probably the most famous extant example of Expressionist architecture is Erich Mendelsohn's Einstein tower in Potsdam, Germany, which was built in 1920-21.

The architect who designed the fire station was Misao Ochi, an employee of the Tokyo police department who has been otherwise forgotten by history, or at least lost to Google — I didn't get a single hit on him that wasn't related to the fire station. If you're wondering why a police architect was given the task of designing a firehouse, it's because firefighting was under the purview of the police until 1948, when an independent fire department was first established.

Actually, Ochi designed the Nihonenoki fire station together with a companion building, a police station that formerly stood right across the street. His rather unusual concept was that the two buildings together would represent the battleship Mikasa, something of a national icon at the time and now preserved as a floating museum at Yokosuka. The tower on the fire station was supposed to evoke one of the battleship's two funnels (that's ship-speak for "smokestack"), while the tower on the police station across the street represented the other.

Unfortunately, we can't see what the architect had in mind because the police station was torn down and replaced in 1977 with a modern building. The fire station was slated for demolition too, but local residents joined forces with the Architectural Institute of Japan to launch a successful preservation effort. I asked about a photograph of the two buildings together, but Takahashi said he and his colleagues at the fire station have never been able to locate one.

Standing in front of the building, a sharp-eyed observer might notice that the blue spike on top of the tower seems like a mismatch. In fact, it's a 1984 addition, stuck on by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government during a burst of enthusiasm for bunka dezain ("cultural design"). It replaced a rusted out radio-transmission antenna, and was intended to transform the building into a cultural symbol for the neighborhood.

To be honest, I was more interested in the round walkways at the top of the tower. Right into the 1970s, the station's firefighters kept a lookout there, around the clock and in all weathers, watching in one-hour shifts for signs of fire. The fire station is built on a hill 25 meters above sea level, and back in the days when Tokyo was a low-rise city it afforded a sweeping view for fire surveillance. In 1953, for example, nearly 12 percent of fires in Tokyo were discovered by fire watchers, but by 1963, as the city got taller and the spread of telephones made it possible for citizens to phone in reports of fire, that rate had dropped to 3.3 percent. By 1972, when boro kinmu (fire-watch duty) was abolished throughout Japan, such surveillance had become almost completely ineffective, accounting for only 0.26 percent of fires reported.

The "Nihonenoki" in the station's name comes from an old place name for the area, which in turn came from two enoki (Japanese hackberry) trees that used to grow nearby. The road in front of the firehouse was once a major road into Edo (present-day Tokyo), and the two trees were a well-known road marker until they were destroyed by fires, one in 1702 and the other in 1745.

As an aside, the Takanawa area wasn't always landlocked; it was right by the sea until major land reclamation began there during the Meiji Era (1868-1912). If you walk a few hundred meters down the hill from the Nihonenoki fire station, following the road that runs between the firehouse and the police station, you'll meet up with a major road called the Dai-ichi Keihin. At the corner, you can see a historical marker and stones preserved from the old Takanawa sea wall. If you then cross the Dai-ichi Kehin, you'll be at approximately the point where the bay began during the Edo Period (1603-1867). Now, after long years of land reclamation, you'd have to keeping walking for over a kilometer to get to the water's edge.

It's possible to visit the fire station, and even go up the tower, weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. If you make an appointment in advance, by phoning in Japanese to (03) 3473-0119, they can arrange for an English-speaking guide. Please understand that they cannot accept visitors when an emergency is in progress; the trucks go out on shutsujo (call) pretty much every day.

The Nihonenoki Branch Fire Station is located at Takanawa 2-16-17, Minato-ku, Tokyo, and is about a 9-minute walk from Takanawadai Station on the Asakusa Line or a 15-minute walk from any of the following stations: JR Shingawa Station, Shirogane-Takanawa on the Mita and Namboku subway lines or Sengokuji Station on the Asakusa and Keihin Kyuko lines.

Later this year, all residences in Japan will be required by law to have smoke detectors or similar residential fire alarms ( jyutaku-yo kasai keihoki ). The rule goes into effect on April 1 for most of Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture; some localities are earlier or later. For a map in Japanese with effective dates by locality, go to www.nohmi.co.jp/jukeiki/ guidance/regulation.html. For brief information in English on what sort of alarms meet the requirement, and where to place them, go to www.tfd.metro.tokyo.jp/eng/inf/ firealarm.html. Be sure to put the emergency number for fires by your phone — it's 119. Puzzled by something you've seen? Send a description, or better yet a photo, to whattheheckjt@yahoo.co.jp or A&E Dept., The Japan Times, 5-4, Shibaura 4-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8071.

news20100121gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Glaciers]
Claims Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 were false, says UN scientist
> IPCC report said ice would vanish 'perhaps sooner'
> Panel head apologises for unsubstantiated assertion
Fred Pearce
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 January 2010 22.44 GMT Article history

One paragraph, buried in 3,000 pages of reports and published almost three years ago, has humbled the head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Facing global outcry, Rajendra Pachauri backed down and apologised today for a disputed IPCC claim that there was a very high chance the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035.

The assertion, now discredited, was included in the most recent IPCC report assessing climate change science, ­published in 2007. Those reports are widely credited with convincing the world that human activity was causing global warming.

But Pachauri admitted in an IPCC statement (pdf) that in this case "the clear and well-established standards of evidence required by the IPCC procedures were not applied properly", and "poorly substantiated estimates" of the speed of glacier melting had made it into print.

He had stridently defended the report in recent months. Furthermore, the Guardian has discovered the claim was questioned by the Japanese government before publication, and by other scientists.

Pachauri's statement is a reprimand for some IPCC ­scientists involved. It is also bound to encourage critics of the panel to redouble efforts to undermine its scientific reputation. However, many scientists say evidence for man-made climate change remains compelling and note that the 2035 claim did not appear in the more widely read "summary for policymakers".

The offending paragraph, in the panel's fourth assessment report on the impacts of climate change, said: "Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high."

In IPCC terminology a "very high" likelihood has a specific meaning: more than a 90% chance of coming true.

The report's only quoted source for the claim was a 2005 campaigning report from the environment group WWF. In turn, the WWF report's only source was remarks made in 1999 by a leading Indian glaciologist, Syed Hasnain, then vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, to journalists at two magazines, New Scientist in London, and Down to Earth in New Delhi.

Hasnain had never submitted the suggestion of such an early demise to a scientific journal because, he said last week, it had always been "speculative". How this made it to the august pages of the IPCC report remains unclear. But the IPCC text is almost identical to that in the Down to Earth article in April 1999. WWF said today it regretted "any confusion caused" and would amend its report. The panel is yet to make a similar commitment.

Hasnain is currently employed as a senior fellow at an Indian research institute, the Tata Energy Research Institute, whose director is Pachauri.

Glaciologists who spoke to the Guardian say Himalayan glaciers contain so much ice it will be 300 years before it vanishes.

The affair raises serious questions about the rigour of the IPCC's process of sifting and assessing the thousands of research findings it includes in its reports. It also raises questions about the competence of Pachauri, who angrily defended the report's conclusions about Himalayan glaciers after they were called "alarmist" last autumn by India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh.

Pachauri accused Ramesh of relying on "voodoo science", called the minister "extremely arrogant" and said Ramesh's claims were "not peer reviewed". It is now clear that it was the panel's claims that were not reviewed. The author of the part of the panel's report, another Indian glaciologist, Murari Lal, last week defended inclusion of 2035, saying "the error if any lies with Dr Hasnain's assertion".

Pachauri's statement repudiates that position. He said he "regrets the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance". One person who has not spoken is the co-chairman of the impacts assessment report, Martin Parry, who was unavailable for comment. But his successor, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, said it was a powerful reminder of "carefully applying the well-established IPCC principles to every statement in every paragraph".

"Glaciergate" has brought into the open splits between authors of the four different IPCC reports, produced every five or so years. However, Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the LSE, said: "We should be cautious about making sweeping ­statements about the IPCC based on a single error."


[Environment > Climate change]
UN drops deadline for countries to state climate change targets
Copenhagen deal falters as just 20 countries of 192 sign up to declare their global warming strategies
John Vidal, environment editor
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 January 2010 18.14 GMT Article history

The UN has dropped the 31 January deadline by which time all countries were expected to officially state their emission reduction targets or list the actions they planned to take to counter climate change.

Yvo de Boer, UN climate change chief, today changed the original date set at last month's fractious Copenhagen climate summit, saying that it was now a "soft" deadline, which countries could sign up to when they chose. "I do not expect everyone to meet the deadline. Countries are not being asked if they want to adhere… but to indicate if they want to be associated [with the Copenhagen accord].

"I see the accord as a living document that tracks actions that countries want to take," he told journalists in Bonn.

"It's a soft deadline. Countries are not being asked to sign the accord to take on legally binding targets, only to indicate their intention," he said.

The deadline was intended to be the first test of the "Copenhagen accord", the weak, three-page document that emerged at the end of the summit, and which fell far short of original expectations. It seeks to bind all countries to a goal of limiting warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial times and proposes that $100bn a year be provided for poor countries to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change after 2020.

But with just 10 days to go, only 20 countries out of 192 have signed up, with many clearly unready or unwilling to put their name to the document. Countries which have signed so far include India, Russia, Mexico, Australia, France and Norway.

De Boer also endorsed the controversial idea of short-circuiting the traditional UN negotiating process of reaching agreement between all countries by consensus. Instead, he argued that a smaller group of countries could negotiate a climate agreement on behalf of the many.

"You cannot have 192 countries involved in discussing all the details. You cannot have all countries all of the time in one room. You do have to safeguard transparency by allowing countries to decide if they want to be represented by others, and that if a debate is advanced then the conclusion is brought back to the larger community", he said.

However, this more exclusive method of reaching agreement was criticised by some in Copenhagen after the host government, Denmark, convened a meeting of 26 world leaders in the last two days of the conference to try to reach agreement on behalf of everyone.

Critics argued that this was not only illegal, but undermined negotiations already taking place among the 192 countries and threatened the UN's multilateral and democratic process.

"The selected leaders were given a draft document that mainly represented the developed countries' positions, thereby marginalising the developing countries' views tabled at the two-year negotiations. The attempt by the Danish presidency to override the legitimate multilateral process was the reason why Copenhagen will be considered a disaster," said Martin Khor, director of the South Centre, an intergovernmental think tank for developing countries based in Geneva.

The US and Britain have argued since the conference that climate negotiations are best served by meetings of the world's largest polluters, such as China, the US, India, Brazil and South Africa. These countries, which emit more than 80% of global emissions, signed up to a deal in the final hours of the summit.

Brazil, India, China and South Africa, known as the "BASIC" group, meet next week in Delhi to agree a common position ahead of further UN climate talks.

news20100121gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Fate of US climate change bill in doubt after Scott Brown's Senate win
Democrats unlikely to touch climate legislation this year as party is robbed of filibuster-proof majority in the Senate
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 January 2010 19.25 GMT Article history

An ambitious climate change bill had been sliding down President Barack Obama's to-do list even before the Republican upset in Massachusetts that saw Scott Brown take Ted Kennedy's Senate seat.

Now it seems more likely than ever that Democrats in the US Senate will not touch global warming in 2010 unless they can be assured of sizeable Republican support. Brown's election has also led to international concern that any failure to act by the US - the world's biggest historical polluter - would undermine attempts to seal a global deal.

However, Senator John Kerry, who is leading the push on climate change in the Senate, said he remained confident of getting broad support for a bill.

"The political atmosphere doesn't reduce the urgency of dealing with pollution and energy, and the surest way to increase the anger at Washington is to duck the issues that matter in peoples' lives. There's overwhelming public support and this can be a bipartisan issue," he said today . "This is the single best opportunity to create jobs, reduce pollution, and stop sending billions overseas for foreign oil from countries that would do us harm. Sell those arguments and you've got a winning issue."

The House of Representatives narrowly passed a climate change bill last June. But Senate Democrats had long calculated that - with the divisive fight over healthcare causing internal splits - their only hope of passing their own version of a climate bill was to win Republican support.

Kerry has been leading a tripartisan effort with Republican Lindsey Graham and independent Joe Lieberman to craft a bill that would pull support from at least a few Republicans. The troika has yet to produce a draft proposal, but there is anticipation of an expanded role for nuclear power, perhaps with more cheap government loans or streamlined regulations to get projects approved. There is also talk of offshore oil and gas drilling.

Some Senators have proposed limiting the scope of the bill, regulating only the biggest power plants, or perhaps encouraging renewable energy without laying the foundations of a carbon trading market. Other Democrats - who were opposed to a climate change bill even before the vote in Massachusetts - say the Senate is unlikely to move in 2010 without those compromises.

"It is my assessment that we likely will not do a climate change bill this year, but we will do energy," Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat who opposes action on climate change told reporters in a conference call yesterday. "I think it is more likely for us to turn to something that is bipartisan and will address the country's energy interest and begin to address specific policies on climate change."

Brown's victory robs the Democrats of their filibuster-proof 60-40 majority in the Senate. But it is not entirely clear the Senate's newest member would be an automatic no. In the excitement of the campaign, Brown cast himself as a climate change sceptic. "I think the globe is always heating and cooling," the Boston Globe quoted Brown as saying. "It's a natural way of ebb and flow. The thing that concerns me lately is some of the information I've heard about potential tampering with some of the information."

But as a Massachusetts state senator in 2008, Brown voted for a regional cap-and-trade regime, which is similar in concept to what the climate bill is proposing on a nationwide scale.

Outside the US, reaction to Brown's win suggested it made a global pact to fight global warming harder. Nick Mabey, head of the E3G climate thinktank in London, said without US action there were risks talks would stall. "We can't afford climate to be a dysfunctional regime like trade," like the inconclusive Doha round on freer world trade launched in 2001, he said.

"On the international front, China is constantly looking to the US on climate bills. This is definitely bad news. It doesn't bring new confidence to international negotiations," said Ailun Yang of Greenpeace in Beijing.

Shirish Sinha of WWF India said US action was essential but that "irrespective of what happens in US...it is on our self-interest to do something for climate change."


[]Business]
Moorlands and hills targeted to grow crops for biomass and biofuels
Countryside protection groups warn of damage to wildlife
Tim Webb
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 January 2010 18.44 GMT Article history

One tenth of Britain, including moorlands and hillsides, could be used to grow crops for biomass and biofuels. Countryside protection groups warned that this would turn large swaths of the countryside into monocultural landscapes and pose a threat to wildlife.

The Energy Technologies Institute (ETI), a £1bn public-private investment body, said it was launching a project to map all the "under-utilised" land in Britain to find out how much could be turned over to growing bioenergy crops.

Research funded by the Natural Environment Research Council estimates that in England alone almost five million hectares could be used. David Clarke, chief executive of the ETI, said that the body had made the conservative estimate that 2.4m hectares could be used in Britain to grow bioenergy crops, used as substitutes for fossil fuels such as petrol and coal to reduce carbon emissions.

The 12- to 18-month project will find out what this land, which also includes semi-industrial sites and is unsuitable for growing food crops, is specifically used for, who owns it and the suitability of the soil for growing the bioenergy crops that include willow trees. Pilot projects could follow.

Energy companies are planning to build at least four new biomass plants in Britain, mostly using wood pellets. The carbon released from burning the biomass can be re-absorbed by planting more crops, neutralising the emissions. The government has started to pay subsidies to growers of such bioenergy crops.

But Abi Bunker, agriculture policy officer at the RSPB, said planting hundreds of thousands of acres would damage biodiversity and also degrade water quality, particularly in upland areas. "We're fully supportive of the UK's commitment to boosting renewable energy, including bioenergy from sustainable UK sources, but we're concerned biodiversity is getting forgotten," she said. "Local environmental considerations should be integrated if you want a truly sustainable solution."

Ian Woodhurst, of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, added: "Large bioenergy crop monocultures will damage landscape character and cause problems for wildlife, for example by obstructing the movement of some species around the countryside. In the 70s hundreds of conifer forests were planted and now we are spending a lot of money getting rid of them. We don't want to go back to that."

Clarke admitted the plans could prove controversial. "The question we are trying to answer is whether you could use that number, from a cost and land point of view. We have to recognise that issues around land-use and biodiversity are critical."

The ETI also said that it was launching a project this year to study the feasibility of filling rock formations on the east coast with water to store waste heat that would otherwise be vented into the atmosphere by power stations or industrial installations such as refineries. This hot water would then be pumped through pipes to heat homes and businesses during the winter.

news20100121gdn3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News > World news > Russia]
Anger at Putin decision to allow Lake Baikal paper mill to reopen
Russian prime minister rules that mill can resume production 15 months after being closed down on ecological grounds
Luke Harding in Moscow
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 January 2010 16.46 GMT Article history

Environmentalists today rounded on Vladimir Putin after he amended legislation to allow the pollution of Russia's Lake Baikal, home to one-fifth of the world's supply of fresh water and unique plants and animals.

Putin ruled that a pulp and paper mill on the shores of the Siberian lake could resume production 15 months after being closed down on ecological grounds.

His decree appeared to be a favour to Oleg Deripaska, the plant's billionaire owner and the Russian prime minister's favourite oligarch.

For decades, environmental groups have attacked the Baikalsk pulp and paper mill, which bleaches paper with chlorine and discharges its waste water into the lake.

Putin allowed the factory to reopen after a visit to Baikal last summer, when he went to the bottom of the lake in a submersible mini-submarine.

Today, Greenpeace said it was deeply concerned by Putin's decree, adding that it had written to the president, Dmitry Medvedev, to ask him to cancel it.

It described the Soviet-era paper mill as an "ecologically dangerous enterprise" and claimed Russia was flouting its international commitment to protect the lake, a Unesco world heritage site.

"The impact of the mill has been discussed many times not just by environmentalists but also by scientists," Roman Vazhenkov, Greenpeace Russia's Lake Baikal campaigner, told the Guardian.

"I think we can be sure it [the mill] will never kill Baikal, but it can significantly spoil the southern part of it.

"The area of impact is several dozens of square kilometres. It covers quite a big part of southern Baikal – not just the water, but the shore as well."

Vazhenkov said there had been a "huge die-off" of Baikal's indigenous seal or nerpa population – one of only three entirely freshwater seal species in the world – during the 1990s.

The lake also boasts its own fish, the omul, 1,085 species of plants and 1,550 animals.

Scientists found the seals had died of disease, but also discovered chlorine substances in the creatures' fatty tissues and weakened immune systems.

Sulphur compounds from the mill have damaged lakeside forests, Vazhenkov said.

The Russian media questioned why Putin had given preferential treatment to Deripaska, whose struggling aluminium and auto empire has already benefited from billions in state handouts.

"Judging by the number of presents Deripaska has got from the government over the past crisis year, it must be love," the opposition Novaya Gazeta paper said.

The Kremlin-supporting Moskovksy Komsomolets was also critical. "The fact that Putin has signed this legislation shows that the interests of oligarchs and Deripaska are far more important to him than the interests of nature in this country and Baikal," Aleksey Yablokov, an ecologist and Russian academy of science member, told the paper.

Opponents suspect a decision to allow the factory to restart was taken several months ago.

After returning from the lakebed last summer, Putin said he had found nothing untoward.

"As far as Baikal is concerned, it's in good condition," he said. "There is practically no pollution." He added that he had found "a lot of plankton and small creatures".

The Russian government has been trying to help the country's troubled monogorods, single-factory towns devastated by the economic crisis.

The Baikal mill employs 2,000 people, and is the main employer in Baikalsk, which has a population of 17,000. It also includes a heating complex that warms the town.

Critics said Putin's decision would damage Baikal's future as a tourist destination and scare off potential investors.

Many of those thrown out of work when the mill closed in October 2008 have already found new jobs, they added.

The factory, built in 1966, was earmarked for closure in 1987 but survived because of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The new legislation comes into effect on 25 January and also allows for the dumping of waste, including radioactive material, on the shores of Lake Baikal.

Putin previously reacted to public pressure in 2006 when, as president, he routed an oil pipeline away from the lake.

"This is a major national scandal. There is huge opposition in Siberia. It's also a PR disaster for Russia internationally,' Vazhenkov said.

Asked why Putin had signed the decree, his first legislative act of 2010, he said: "The factory is economically unprofitable. I simply don't know."

Oksana Gorlova, a spokeswoman for the paper plant, said it "doesn't represent, and hasn't represented, a threat to the lake or its ecology".

"The ecosystem hasn't changed over the past 45 years, and the environment ministry's annual reports confirm this," she added.

She said Deripaska had wanted to close the loss-making factory, but had agreed to reopen it to prevent a social crisis under state pressure. It was the only way of saving the town, she claimed.


[Environment > Waste]
Time Team-style scanner to uncover illegally buried waste
Environment Agency to use new technology to trace buried waste sites and prosecute polluters
Alok Jha, green technology correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 January 2010 00.05 GMT Article history

Illegally buried waste can now be discovered by a Time Team-style scanner without the need to dig up the ground, according to the UK's environment watchdog.

The Environment Agency said the technology would speed up and make easier the hunt for criminal polluters and getting them pay for proper cleanup of their waste.

The scanner, similar to that used on Channel 4's Time Team programme, uses electrical currents to create an underground map of an area. "If something has been buried in the ground and it's a significant volume of material, [then] if the site isn't licensed or hasn't had a licence in the past, then it's clearly not a legal landfill," said John Burns, a project manager in the national enforcement team at the Environment Agency.

The scanner has already led inspectors to a large area of buried waste in the New Forest National Park that they estimate could cost around £500,000 to clean up. That cost will now be passed on to the landowner who illegally dumped the waste there.

In the past two years, the agency has shut down around 1,500 illegal waste sites, with fines for polluters shooting up from £1.4m in 2003 to £3m last year. Inspectors believe, however, that around 800 illegal sites are still in operation.

"In the main it tends to be, in terms of landfilling, construction and demolition waste and some tyres," said Burns. "In terms of the illegal dumping or depositing, it's quite often scrap and other materials like that which aren't very cheap to dispose of by legitimate means."

Illegally dumped waste can have serious environmental consequences. "If someone decides they're going to deposit a load of oily waste or a load of waste containing paints or spirits or cleaning materials, it could cause ground or surface water pollution and that can be quite serious. If a pollutant gets into the groundwater, it can take a long time to get it out and it's a very expensive process."

The agency's scanners use a technique known as resistive tomography where electrodes are inserted into the ground at regular intervals and an electrical current is passed between them. Because different materials respond to the current in different ways, the scanner can build up a picture of whatever is underground. "You can plot out a relatively large area in a day or two. The advantage is that it's non-invasive – you don't have to bring machines on to a site and have to start digging it up," said Burns.

Paul Leinster, chief executive of the agency, said: "By dumping waste illegally, waste criminals avoid landfill charges and undercut legitimate waste businesses, but more importantly they put the environment and human health at risk. We are making sure that waste crime does not pay, and have set up specialist crime teams to catch criminals and confiscate the assets they've gained from crime."

The agency plans to use the scanners along with other forensic science techniques, including handwriting analysis and SmartWater tracking – a solution which invisibly marks items and also contaminates anyone who takes those items so that they can later be identified.

news20100121gdn4

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Business > Kraft]
Cadbury takeover raises doubts over Kraft's business ethics
> Fairtrade Dairy Milk chocolate bars were launched in July 2009
> Campaigners see Kraft as being hostile to fair trade movement
Severin Carrell
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 January 2010 18.55 GMT Article history

Kraft's proposed takeover of Cadbury has raised widespread fears that the US food group will abandon a landmark deal by the British confectioner to buy only Fairtrade cocoa beans for its Dairy Milk brand.

The Fairtrade Foundation has begun urgent talks with Cadbury's executives to see if the company's agreement to buy all its cocoa beans for Dairy Milk direct from the foundation's farmer-led co-operatives will continue after the takeover.

Jack McConnell, the former first minister of Scotland, tabled a motion in the Scottish parliament urging Kraft to honour the deal while at Westminster, the Labour MP Mark Lazarowicz put down a similar motion in the Commons.

Kraft is widely seen amongst development campaigners as being hostile to the Fairtrade Foundation in particular after it criticised the movement for only dealing with "an extremely small number" of companies, claiming it was too small scale for its needs.

Todd Stitzer, Cadbury's chief executive, appeared to bitterly criticise Kraft's business ethics at a fair trade retail conference last September when takeover hostilities were in their infancy. Without naming Kraft directly, he attacked the "unbridled" capitalism of large, heavily indebted firms, and urged shareholders to keep Cadbury's independent. He said "principled capitalism [was] woven into the very fabric" of his company. Without it "you risk destroying what makes Cadbury a great company," he said.

Lazarowicz, a long-standing fair trade campaigner and MP for Edinburgh North and Leith, said: "It was a major breakthrough when Cadbury agreed to work with Fairtrade, and it would be a tragedy if that breakthrough was now to be set at nought."

McConnell, who has close links with the development movement in Africa and was proposed in 2008 as high commissioner to Malawi, is to contact campaigners in the US to pressurise Kraft to honour the Cadbury deal and extend it to the US.

"There have been concerns expressed for many years that Kraft has never shown any enthusiasm for fair trade and therefore this must be under threat as a result of the takeover," he said. "I've seen with my own eyes the very positive impact that fair trade has on individuals and communities across Africa."

Cadbury's decision to rebrand all its Dairy Milk bars with the Fairtrade logo last year was seen at the time as the movement's biggest coup: it was the first mass market chocolate in the world to use Fairtrade cocoa, and brought the product into 30,000 UK stores.

The foundation has since brokered major deals of supply Starbucks with coffee and cocoa beans for Nestlé's Kit-Kat bars, and believed Cadbury was ready to expand its range of Fairtrade-branded sweets. Cadbury's planned to expand the sale of Fairtrade Dairy Milk to Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Kraft insists it supports the principle of sustainability after signing up with the Rainforest Alliance, which promotes conservation and fair business dealings with small growers, to supply some coffee beans for its Kenco and other brands.

But Oxfam has accused Kraft of undermining attempts to treat small farmers fairly, defending the fairtrade scheme as "the only system that guarantees farmers a price that allows them a good return [whilst] at the same time working towards a sustainable future."

A Fairtrade spokeswoman confirmed that the London-based foundation had made contact with Cadbury soon after Kraft's offer was accepted, to ensure that their contract would be honoured. "We've had a very productive relationship and this landmark switch has come about as a result of it; of course we would like it to continue, and at some point see further switches," she said.

Cadbury's deal tripled the amount of fairly traded, higher value cocoa sold by Ghana to 15,000 tonnes. The foundation said after Kraft's offer was accepted by Cadbury's board that it believed the success of the deal "presents a unique and compelling case for continuing to pursue the Cadbury commitment to their Cocoa Partnership and to Fairtrade, and taking it further in coming months and years."


[Environment > Conservation]
Thai ivory-smuggling ring broken up
Crackdown on ivory smugglers as conservationists warn that wealthy buyers in US and Asia are putting fresh pressure on African herds
Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 20 January 2010 16.57 GMT Article history

Thai police have broken up an ivory smuggling ring spanning three continents as conservationists warn that Asian and US affluence is putting new pressure on elephant herds in Africa.

A Thai national was charged with trafficking today after a 17-month investigation, involving the first collaboration between US and Thai law enforcement authorities. Earlier this week, Thailand's nature crime police also raided ivory shops, seized tusks and arrested two other dealers in the crackdown.

Conservation groups said Samart Chokechoyma was the first suspected trafficker to be arrested in south-east Asia, which has become a hub of the illegal trade that led to the seizure last year of 10 tonnes of African elephant ivory.

Far greater quantities of smuggled ivory go undetected. The contraband is poached from reserves in Kenya and Uganda, shipped out of Entebbe, taken to Thailand for processing and re-sale, then sold to buyers in the US, China, the Middle East and elsewhere.

Chokechoyma was arrested in Bangkok in November, and could now be prosecuted in two countries: in Thailand, he faces a maximum of four years in prison if convicted. In the US, the combined jail term for all his counts of smuggling could rise to 53 years.

The two other dealers who were arrested had been caught with six tusks, weighing a total of 32kg, from endangered African elephants. The value of the haul was estimated at US$30,222 (£18,560). Sources close to the operation said this was likely to be a fraction of the overall trade and the kingpins were still to be found.

Undercover customs investigators tracked the suspects by following the source of ivory products sold in the United States back to Asia with support from regional and independent conservation groups.

The first fruits of collaboration were hailed as an important step forward in international efforts to coordinate a crackdown on the trade, which is eating into elephant herds. The next step was to target the leaders of the smuggling chain.

Brad Coulter, the investigation operations officer of Freeland – one of the participating groups - said that, despite the arrests, the trade had now become so lucrative that elephant stocks were under attack. A kilogram of ivory now fetches US$700 in the markets of Thailand.

"Ivory smuggling is on the increase despite counter poaching operations and stiffer penalties," said Coulter. "This is not about trade bans. It's all about money."

news20100121gdn5

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Guardian Environment Network]
New Sierra Club chief brings confrontational style to the job
The new leader of the US's largest environmental group will come to the job with a record of 'environmental agitation' against big industrial polluters.
From Grist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 January 2010 10.59 GMT Article history

The Sierra Club's new leader will come to the job with a record of "environmental agitation" against big industrial polluters. The group announced on Wednesday that Michael Brune, 38, currently head of Rainforest Action Network (RAN), will replace Carl Pope as executive director as of March 15. Brunehoned RAN's strategy of negotiating politely with corporate heavyweights such as Bank of America, Citigroup, and General Motors—and then, if they don't clean up their acts, campaigning mercilessly against them. The two-pronged approach earned results that belie RAN's modest size—it helped convince Home Depot to stop selling wood from endangered forests, for example.

Brune spoke to me about his plans to bring similar ferocity to the comparatively mild Sierra Club, the nation's largest environmental group, which claims 1.3 million members. With its self-governing regional chapters, its way-outside-the-beltway headquarters in San Francisco, and a smaller D.C. policy shop than other Big Green groups, the Sierra Club has always relied more on grassroots advocacy than direct work with Congress. Brune offered thoughts about what's ahead for the Sierra Club and the environmental movement as a whole.

——-

Q. The so-called environmental problems we face now are closely integrated into our lives—our energy systems and buildings, our food and transportation. They're a different beast than traditional wilderness conservation. How does the Sierra Club adapt?

A. By not looking at these problems as obligations but as opportunities. With clean energy and climate legislation, there are enormous benefits like job creation, reduced health burden from the toxic pollution many communities are facing, and a whole series of opportunities that will result from deeper investments in clean-energy research, development, and deployment.

Q. What should we be calling this work in the 21st century, to get more people on board?

A. I don't focus so much on the name—I think environmentalism is a decent word. What is perhaps most important is to appeal to a wider set of values. In talking about climate change, we can discuss terms like parts per million or discuss how many votes we have in the Senate. But what's more inspiring is talk about the people who will be hurt by climate change, the people who will benefit from a clean energy transition, and also, as the Sierra Club has done for decades, talk about the wild places that need to be protected and restored in order to address climate disruption. If we look at health concerns, jobs, the impact on the economy that climate change will have, we'll do a much better job appealing to a wider section of the public.

Q. What habits and ways of thinking—perhaps acquired in the '60s—does the movement need to shed?

A. I'm reluctant to criticize folks on whose shoulders we're standing. The work that was done in the '60s and '70s might be a little outdated, perhaps, but the results have improved the lives of millions of people.

That said, there is important work to be done in the near term, such as isolating the corporations and public institutions that are most resistant to change, that are most aggressively fighting to maintain a failing status quo. Companies like Massey Energy and much of the coal and oil industries need to be challenged to either evolve or face dramatically decreasing public support.

Q. Where should the climate movement be focusing this year? The Senate looks like an even tougher place to work after the Massachusetts special election debacle.

A. The top priority is still passing strong climate and energy legislation. I certainly think that's something that can be done in the next year. And it will have a powerful impact on a whole range of issues progressives care about.

Q. I talked to Bill McKibben this morning, and he told me he doesn't see Congress acting until it perceives a much larger social movement demanding climate action. He thinks Congress members are pretty good at discerning whether there are people and pressure behind what they are being asked to do. There's a different argument that lasering in on specific senators or on the filibuster is the way to go. What do you think?

A. I definitely agree with Bill. A focus of this movement should be to push all elected officials to make a stand and not to narrow our focus on one particular bill or a handful of senators. We have much deeper work to do over the next several months and years.

Q. Was there a moment of discovery when it became clear you wanted this job?

A. Two and a half years ago I was working with Sierra Club Books on publishing my book Coming Clean. I started looking more closely at the work the Sierra Club has been doing and the grassroots base that the Sierra Club is a part of. I think anybody that has been paying attention to the environmental movement over the last several years has to be impressed with the record of the Sierra Club in stopping new coal-fired power plants and in promoting far-reaching and progressive policy initiatives.

Q. What happens to Rainforest Action Network now that you're departing?

A. RAN will continue doing its great work. We just launched a new campaign to change Chevron, to hopefully inspire California's largest corporation to become a 21st century energy company. Chevron needs to clean up its mess in Ecuador and RAN and others will be at their heels continuously to push them to do that. On RAN.org, you can see an action that we did just yesterday to push General Mills and Cargill to stop converting rainforests into palm oil plantations. RAN's probably going to have its best year ever. I'm just sorry I won't be around to take all the credit.

——

Also check out Jason Mark's analysis of what the leadership change means for the Sierra Club.

news20100121gdn6

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Murkowski to call on Congress to block federal greenhouse gas regulation
Alaskan senator seeking to invoke obscure measure that would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from curbing greenhouse gas emissions if Congress fails to act
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 January 2010 11.39 GMT Article history

A Republican senator from Alaska is expected to call on Congress today to strip the Obama administration - and any future US government - of its powers to curb global warming pollution.

Lisa Murkowski, an emerging leader on energy in Republican ranks, told a press conference on Wednesday she was thinking of invoking an obscure, rarely used measure that allows Congress to roll back government regulations.

"At this point in time, my inclination is to proceed with the resolution of disapproval," she said. "I think that is a more clear path forward."

If it passes, the resolution, brought under the Congressional Review Act, could remove the Obama administration's "plan B" for climate change - resorting to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to curb greenhouse gas emissions if Congress fails to act.

The measure - called the "nuclear option" by environmentalists - would also ban the administration from drafting any new regulation that would be substantially the same. That would make it even more difficult for any US government to regulate power plants and other big emitters.

Environmentalists say the proposal is unlikely to pass, but ensuring its defeat could require a new round of partisan warfare that could be damaging for Democrats and Obama's agenda.

Murkowski made her move just two days after a painful election defeat for the Democrats in a Massachusetts Senate seat. The loss further underlined the challenges to Obama's agenda, and the difficulties of getting an ambitious climate change programe through Congress.

Among Republicans, Murkowski has tried to cast herself as a moderate who would be prepared to act on climate change. But she has voted against legislation in the past, and has been much criticised this week by environmentalists for her links to the energy industry. According to the Centre for Responsive Politics, Murkowski, from the oil-rich state of Alaska, has received $244,000 (£151,205) in campaign funds from oil and gas companies since 2005, and consulted two energy industry lobbyists before launching today's proposal.

Even before the upset in Massachusetts, Democrats in the industrial heartland and from oil and coal states were wary - or in some cases flatly opposed - to action on climate change. Murkowski's resort to the so-called "nuclear option" could make Democrats even more nervous about embarking on a divisive battle over climate change ahead of the November 2010 mid-term elections.

On Wednesday, Mary Landrieu, a Democratic Senator from Louisiana who has repeatedly expressed concern for her state's oil refining business, told reporters she was working with Murkowski on blocking the EPA. Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, also told reporters this week he opposes using the EPA to regulate emissions.

The Alaskan's resolution would overturn the EPA's finding last month that greenhouse gas emissions were a public health threat. The so-called endangerment finding compelled the agency under the Clean Air Act to introduce regulations for the pollutant.

Murkowski's strategy hinges on using the Congressional Review Act - a law used for the first time in the early days of the George Bush era to throw out new ergonomic standards for workplaces passed under Bill Clinton.

"It would block the EPA from doing the endangerment finding and it would block it in the future," said Robert Dillon, a spokesman for Murkowski. "She believes that the EPA is the worst possible solution. She is willing to consider legislation that would reduce emissions but she believes EPA regulation should be removed from the table."

The measure would require only 51 votes for passage - and Dillon said the Senator was confident of signing up all 40 Republicans as well as some Democrats.

The White House, the EPA, and even the Democratic leadership in Congress have also said they would prefer climate change legislation rather than resorting to the agency's regulatory powers. But the prospect of EPA regulation had been seen as an important nudge to get the Senate to act.

The House of Representatives passed a climate change bill last June, but the Senate has stalled. An effort led by Democrat John Kerry to craft a bill that could pull in Republican support has yet to produce a draft proposal.


[Environment > Pollution]
Asian ozone raising levels of smog in western United States, study shows
Scientists discover link between atmospheric ozone over US and pollution from burning fossil fuels during Asian economic boom
Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 January 2010 11.44 GMT Article history

Ozone blowing over from Asia is raising background levels of a major ingredient of smog in the skies over western US states, according to a new study appearing in today's edition of the journal Nature.

The amounts are small and, so far, only found in a region of the atmosphere known as the free troposphere, at an altitude of two to five miles, but the development could complicate US efforts to control air pollution.

Though the levels are small, they have been steadily rising since 1995, and probably longer, said lead author Owen R Cooper, a research scientist at the University of Colorado attached to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado.

"The important aspect of this study for North America is that we have a strong indication that baseline ozone is increasing," said Cooper. "We still don't know how much is coming down to the surface. If the surface ozone is increasing along with the free tropospheric ozone, that could make it more difficult for the US to meet its ozone air quality standard."

The study is the first link between atmospheric ozone over the US and Asian pollution, said Dan Jaffe, a University of Washington-Bothell professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry.

He contributed data from his observatory on top of Mount Bachelor in Oregon to the study.

The US Environmental Protection Agency is considering lowering the current limit on ozone in the atmosphere by as much as 20%, and has been working with China to lower its emissions of the chemicals that turn into ozone.

Ozone is harmful to people's respiratory systems and plants. It is created when compounds produced by burning fossil fuels are hit by sunlight and break down. Ozone also contributes to the greenhouse effect, ranking behind carbon dioxide and methane in importance.

Ozone is only one of many pollutants from Asia that reach the United States. Instruments regularly detect mercury, soot, and cancer-causing PCBs.

Jaffe said it was logical to conclude that the increasing ozone was the result of burning more coal and oil as part of the Asia's booming economic growth.

The next step is to track the amounts of Asian ozone reaching ground levels on the west coast, said Cooper.

Work will start in May and end in June, when air currents produce the greatest amounts of Asian ozone detected in the US weather balloons and research aircraft will be launched daily to measure ozone closer to ground, where it affects the air people breathe, Cooper said.

The study to be published in Nature looked at thousands of air samples collected between 1995 and 2008 and found a 14% increase in the amount of background ozone at middle altitudes in spring. When data from 1984 were factored in, the rate of increase was similar, and the overall increase was 29.

When ozone from local sources was removed from the data, the trend became stronger, Cooper said. Using a computer model based on weather patterns, the ozone was traced back to south-eastern Asia, including the countries of India, China, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

The ozone increases were strongest when winds prevailed from south-eastern Asian, Cooper said.

In a commentary also published in Nature, atmospheric chemist Kathy Law of the Université de Paris in France said the study was "the most conclusive evidence so far" of increasing ozone over the western United States.

Law noted that natural sources of ozone could contribute to the increases, and there were limitations to the computer model used to trace the sources of the increases, but the study remained a "vital benchmark" that could be used to test climate change models, which have been unable to reproduce increases in ozone.

William Sprigg, a research professor at the University of Arizona who studies the global movement of airborne dust, said he agreed with Law's comments, adding that studies like this one make it possible to control air quality.

"Part of the solution to controlling emissions from abroad is to show the negative consequences and our own efforts to lower emissions," he wrote.

news20100121nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 20 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.21
News
Bacterial clocks chime in unison
Genetic circuit allows entire colonies to keep time.
Erika Check Hayden

{{A burst of light from a colony of bacteria with coupled genetic clocks}
.Tal Danino/Octavio Mondragon-Palamino/Lev Tsimring}

Scientists have made a microbial 'clock' consisting of many bacteria that count time together.

The feat is a step forward for synthetic biology, and could one day lead to the development of implantable drug dispensers that deliver regular doses of medicine inside the body. Previously, scientists had engineered only single cells to become oscillators — devices that could count time by performing a particular activity on a cyclical schedule.

"For the first time, it is possible to synchronize individual oscillators in different organisms of the same population," says Martin Fussenegger of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) in Basel, who was not involved with the latest research. "If it is implemented in mammalian cells, this could have a tremendous impact in the future."

The work, published in Nature¹, involved transferring genes that are part of a natural bacterial communication system, called quorum sensing, from two species of bacteria into the Escherichia coli genome. Scientists wired the genes into a circuit so that one of the genes produces a molecule called acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL) that diffuses to other cells, where it ramps up production of more AHL. But the circuit was set up so that AHL also simultaneously activates another gene that results in the breakdown of AHL.

These counteracting positive and negative feedback loops act like the pendulum on a grandfather clock to tune AHL production in the bacterial colony so that it rises and falls on a regular cycle, report the researchers. The team was led by Jeff Hasty, a molecular biologist and bioengineer at the University of California, San Diego. A fluorescent reporter protein encoded by a gene attached to the circuit glows brighter when more AHL is made, allowing the scientists to watch as the E. coli population ramps its production of the molecule up and down in synchronicity (see Nature's video).

Rhythm of life

In Hasty's system, the bacteria are lodged on a microfluidic device that contains tiny channels to allow nutrients to flow to the cells and waste products to flow away. The team reports that the timing and strength of the synchronized clock's oscillations depend on how quickly nutrients and waste are pumped through the channels of the device.

The researchers developed the device after many failed attempts at getting the experiment to work. Only after letting the experiment run overnight did they realize that it took the cells a certain time to grow to the exact density necessary to activate the quorum-sensing circuit they had built.

"We realized that we needed to build devices that accepted an overall number of cells within the range that would support oscillations and that would use flow to carry away this AHL molecule, because it doesn't degrade on its own," Hasty says.

He suggests that the development of synchronized bacterial clocks could enable bacteria to be used as biological sensors. It could also allow scientists to improve their understanding of the dynamics of biological rhythms, says Fussenegger, who points out that many activities in the human body, such as the coordinated firing of neurons to produce signals that lead to thought and action, are examples of natural synchronization among cells.

"Maybe we could in the future design brain pacemakers, or understand a little more how cells synchronize themselves with their neighbours, or maybe how being out of sync has some pathological consequences," Fussenegger says. "Synchronized oscillation is really very important in biology."

Indeed, Hasty says that his work already reveals one provocative lesson about such natural circuits: that they don't need to be complicated to produce complicated patterns of activity.

"We get all of this complexity from two genes, so it's a nice example of how you don't need a lot of genes to get complex behaviours," Hasty says.

References
1. Danino, T., Mondragón-Palomino, O., Tsimring, L. & Hasty, J. Nature 463, 326-330 (2010). | Article

[naturenews]
Published online 20 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.22
News
Brother sperm train together
Mouse sperm cells team up with their kin in the race to fertilize eggs.
John Whitfield

{{The sperm of some rodents form trains to speed their passage to the egg.}
Fisher & Hoekstra}

The sperm of a mouse can recognize and team up with sperm from the same male, US biologists have found.

The discovery is further evidence that, far from being simply shells loaded with DNA, sperm cells have evolved sophisticated social behaviours that aid them in the race to fertilize eggs.

The sperm of some rodent species form 'trains'. Up to several dozen cells attach to one another using hooks on their heads, and swim in concert. A sperm train can swim up to 50% faster than a lone cell.

Heidi Fisher and Hopi Hoekstra of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studied the train-making behaviour of sperm cells of the deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) and the oldfield deer mouse (P. polionotus). The mice live in different parts of North America, but they can interbreed successfully in the lab.

Each species' sperm can form trains. Fisher and Hoekstra used a dye to label the sperm of different males with different colours. When the two species' sperm was mixed in a Petri dish, three-quarters of all sperm teamed up with their own kind.

Oh Brother, where art thou?

To test whether the sperms' powers of recognition go beyond the ability to spot their own species, the researchers also mixed sperm from different males of the same species.

The oldfield deer mouse P. polionotus is largely monogamous, so the sperm from two males of this species are unlikely to find themselves in competition in the wild. In this species, mixed sperm leads to mixed sperm trains.

{{Sperm from different P. polionotus males stick together.}
Fisher & Hoekstra, Nature}

P. maniculatus, by contrast, has a hectic sex life; females have been seen mating with different males within the space of a minute, and the pups in a litter usually have several different fathers. Its sperm stand a good chance of finding themselves racing the sperm of another P. maniculatus male to fertilize an egg.

When the sperm of two P. maniculatus individuals is mixed, the sperm separate out to form trains with sperm from the same male, even if the sperm came from two siblings. "It's quite shocking that the level of discrimination between littermates is the same as that between species," says Fisher. The team's work is published online today in Nature¹.

"This study shows very elegantly that sperm have a fantastic ability to discriminate between kin and non-kin," says animal-behaviour expert Tim Birkhead of the University of Sheffield, UK. "When sperm were discovered in the 1600s, they were called 'animalcules' — it was thought they were independent little organisms. In a way, this work fulfils those original observations."

Recognition puzzle

The greater selectiveness of P. maniculatus sperm for who they cooperate with makes sense in the light of the two species' differing sex lives. Only one sperm can fertilize any single egg, so all but one of the cells in the train are, in fact, going nowhere fast.

What's more, many of the cells in the train prematurely trigger the reaction that is used to bore through the egg's wall. This speeds the train on its way, but amounts to suicide for the sperm that triggered the reaction. The more genetically similar the winning sperm is to its train-mates, the more evolutionarily worthwhile their self-sacrifice becomes.

The ability of sperm to recognize each other may well be common among sperm from promiscuous species, says evolutionary biologist Paula Stockley of the University of Liverpool, UK: "There's no reason not to expect this to be a general effect."

The next step, says Birkhead, is to work out how sperm recognize their brothers. It could be a chemical marker that promiscuous male mice add to the sperms' surface, he suggests, or it could be something that the sperm make themselves, depending on their genetic make-up.

For example, some unicellular yeast and slime moulds carry an extremely variable gene encoding a sticky protein that allows related cells to recognize and attach to one another. Fisher suspects that the deer mice could have something similar.

References
1. Fisher, H. S. & Hoekstra, H. E. Nature advance online publication doi:10.1038/nature08736 (2010).

news20100121nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 20 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.23
News
Lemurs' wet and wild past
Model shows how mammals could have 'rafted' to Madagascar.
Geoff Brumfiel

{{Lemurs rafted to Madagascar millions of years ago, a new model suggests.}
ChGR/ iStockphoto.com}

Castaways are probably behind the island of Madagascar's incredible biodiversity. A new model provides strong evidence that lemurs and other small mammals first arrived millions of years ago, travelling on African logs that had washed out to sea.

The model, published today in Nature¹, settles a long-running debate on how Madagascar's biodiversity came about. It may also provide clues about how prehistoric animals spread to other parts of the globe.

Madagascar is considered to be one of the world's most diverse — and imperiled — natural habitats. Its forests are home to more than 150 species of mammal alone — including ring-tailed lemurs, otter-like web-footed tenrecs, and giant jumping rats. But all of these mammals belong to just four orders.

Just why there are so many species and so few orders has been a mystery. Some researchers have proposed that there may have been a land bridge between Madagascar and the African mainland around 20-60 million years ago. But the geology of the region shows little evidence of such a link. Moreover, a land bridge would have allowed more orders of animal to reach the island.

An alternative hypothesis is that animals 'rafted' to the island. First mooted some 70 years ago by the American palaeontologist George Gaylord Simpson, the idea is that small mammals were inadvertently washed out to sea by storms and floated to Madagascar's shores. The survivors evolved over millions of years to fill numerous niches in the island's ecosystem.

A washed-up theory

The idea that animals could traverse hundreds of kilometres of open ocean by clinging to a log "sounds kind of dubious", admits Matthew Huber, a palaeoclimatologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, and an author on the Nature paper. "The key thing to remember is that it doesn't have to happen often." A few lucky lemurs over millions of years would have been all that was needed, he says.

But for that to happen even once in a million years would be impossible under today's conditions: the ocean currents that flow between Madagascar and the mainland flow away from the island, not towards it.

Palaeontologists were stumped by the troublesome current until Huber's co-author Jason Ali, a geologist at the University of Hong Kong in China, asked Huber to look at the problem. In less than a day, Huber had cracked the puzzle. Roughly 60 million years ago, both Madagascar and the African mainland were about 1,650 kilometres south of their current positions, and that, according to Huber's model, put them in a different ocean gyre. The gyre reversed the current, propelling castaway animals towards Madagascar. Not only were currents flowing in the right direction, they were much stronger than they are today, reducing the travel time of stranded animals to 30 days or perhaps less, especially if there were a strong tropical cyclone in the region.

"It's pretty straightforward actually," says Ian Tattersall, a palaeontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Many biologists already favoured the rafting theory because it could explain present-day biodiversity, he says. The new analysis solves the last outstanding puzzle.

"For me, the debate is settled," agrees Anne Yoder, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Yoder believes that many other types of animal and plant also arrived on the island through rafting.

Given the simplicity of the solution to the problem, it might seem amazing that nobody has solved it before. But palaeontologists and ecologists aren't equipped to model ancient ocean currents, Tattersall says. "It really requires expertise different from those of people who normally agonize over this."

Huber says that now he's helped biologists, they may be able to help him. By studying the fossil record and biodiversity today, he says, he might learn more about how ancient ocean currents once flowed.

References
1. Ali, J. R. & Huber, M. Nature doi:10.1038/nature08706 (2010).

news20100121nn3

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 20 January 2010 | Nature 463, 281 (2010) | doi:10.1038/463281a
News: Q&A
The scientific diplomat
AAAS president Peter Agre talks to Nature about his recent visits to Cuba and North Korea.
David Cyranoski

A physician and Nobel-prizewinning chemist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Peter Agre (pictured) has never shied away from politics. In 2007 he briefly considered running for the US Senate; in 2009 he became president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and, with the association's Center for Science Diplomacy, began to engage with some of his country's bitterest political enemies. Over a shaky mobile-phone line from rural Zambia, where he is assisting efforts to combat malaria, Agre spoke to Nature about his recent visits to Cuba and North Korea.

How do you pick the countries to visit?

We decide on countries where we think we could do better than our elected officials. We choose obvious nations, where we have everything to gain and nothing to lose, just to see how we can help them to develop peaceful science.

Where exactly did you go?

In Cuba, we visited the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the Finlay Institute for vaccine research and production, the University of Havana, the Latin American School of Medicine and the Cuban Academy of Sciences, all in Havana. North Korea granted visits to all the institutions that we asked to see, including the State Academy of Sciences' biology and biotechnology branches, Kim Chaek University of Technology in Pyongyang and Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. I have to be careful not to oversell. We met with officials, not with graduate students to watch them do experiments. The goal is to make it interesting so that we can continue the exchange. There was some scepticism on their part. They have watched US policy change, warm up and cool down over previous presidential terms.

How strong is science in Cuba and North Korea?

Both countries are trying hard to boost science, but the level is difficult to establish. Both had beautiful computing centres, as good as I see at most US universities. In Cuba, they had excellent English and were highly motivated. They seem to have had large success in raising vaccines to infectious diseases. They also seem to have excellent public-health networks, and disease prevention is a priority. I sense that the [US trade] embargo has strongly inhibited sophisticated science.

North Korea has tremendous intellectual horsepower and could develop fast. Stuart Thorson [who directs an information-technology collaboration between Syracuse University in New York and Kim Chaek University of Technology] says that undergraduate teams performed well in international undergraduate computer-programming competitions. The level of science is variable. They seem to have large success in computer-information systems; we toured some biological labs that were modest. Central heating was lacking. The DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] is a poor country, and capital investment in laboratories and basic amenities is needed. There was some talk of stem-cell and cloning research, but I'm not aware of whether they are achieving success. We would need to see more. It cannot help that they have such limited access to outside information.

Were you restricted? Could you discuss controversial topics, for example nuclear weapons?

We couldn't run the streets. And we avoided controversial topics. In both countries a few private opinions were shared, and their viewpoints seemed very reasonable.

In North Korea, four individuals from the State Academy of Sciences accompanied us everywhere outside the hotel. Some people ask if we felt safe in North Korea; I wish I could feel that safe in Baltimore. Exchanges were free, and there were discussions of family and personal interests. The fear of Americans could easily evaporate with more positive contacts. Their isolation is really extreme, and most of our science contacts admitted that they had never met Americans before.

In Cuba, a tour-group leader and interpreters travelled with us, but we were not restricted. Free exchanges and visits with shopkeepers and others in restaurants occurred. We stayed away from controversial issues.

What's the next step?

The next step with Cuba will be more visits — Cubans to the United States and Americans to Cuba. Increased interactions in Europe or other locations should also be expected. Until the US government changes its policy towards Cuba, we need to be careful that we remain focused on the science and do not delve into the policy arena without a portfolio for doing so. Areas of future exchanges may include public health, disaster preparations and agriculture. With regard to North Korea, the next step will occur when the State Academy of Sciences approves an agreement to pursue collaborations. More visits to North Korea and to the United States, and contacts during activities in other countries, are anticipated. We cannot rush North Korea any more than we can rush the US government. Areas of future exchanges may include pharmaceutical manufacture, digital-library access, information systems and agriculture.

What other countries are on the radar for the AAAS?

Syria, Rwanda and Myanmar. [David Baltimore, Agre's predecessor as AAAS president, made exploratory visits to Syria and Rwanda, and follow-up exchanges are under way. A mission to Myanmar is planned for 2010.]

What do you hope will come out of this?

I imagine it is like the situation 30 years ago when China was still isolated. Now it's hard to imagine life without China. And science could be the path to political peace. In the 1950s, it helped a lot to have scientists in the Soviet Union and the United States talking to each other.

news20100121reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Tue Jan 19, 2010 3:13pm EST
SolveClimate(www.solveclimate.com)
Congress to prioritize climate change

(SolveClimate) - Climate change activists say 2010 is starting out with an uphill battle.

In 2009, a new president moved into the White House, Congress inched toward passing a bill to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and the Copenhagen climate summit waited as a hopeful coda to a year of climate action.

It ended up being a year of mixed results, however, and the prospects for climate action this year appear equally mixed.

Congress gets back into full swing this week, and several senators have made assurances that climate change will be one of the first issues they discuss.

For Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), that means a new attempt to block greenhouse gas regulation by the EPA. Comprehensive climate change legislation, called for by President Obama called a year ago, may find itself just one more fish in a rather full legislative pond this year. Health care and financial reform are expected to be the main priorities for Congress this year, with issues like immigration policy and lowering greenhouse gas emissions fighting for the remaining attention.

"I think there is still definitely a shot for getting a climate measure this year," Manika Roy, vice president of federal government outreach at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, told SolveClimate.

"One essential ingredient is the president's commitment to this issue. If the president says an energy bill is one of his top two or three priorities this year, then there is a good chance," he said.

But the discussion on Capitol Hill will not just be about how best to fight climate change.

In December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared that greenhouse gases were a danger to public health and welfare.

To comply with a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, the agency said it would have to act to regulate them if Congress failed to take action. Murkowski decried the EPA's move as "backdoor climate regulation," and she is now proposing an amendment that would block the EPA's capacity to regulate greenhouse gases.

Proponents of climate action say the ones attempting backdoor regulation are the Alaska senator and her supporters with their effort to undermine the Clean Air Act and distract from legislative efforts to regulate greenhouse gases from Capitol Hill.

In recent days, proponents have also uncovered unsettling links between lobbyists and Murkowski's first try at an amendment to strip the EPA of any future greenhouse gas-regulating power, in September. One lobbyist and former EPA official in the Bush administration, Jeffery Holmstead, acknowledged to the Washington Post that he was involved in writing the amendment.

Holmstead has represented AMEREN Corp, Arch Coal, CSX Transportation, Duke Energy, Edison Electric Institute, Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, Energy Future Holdings, Mirant, Progress Energy, Salt River Project and Southern Company, according research by Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington. In all, Murkowski's campaign committee and political action committee have received at least $126,500 from Holmstead's firm, clients and clients' employees since 2004, the group finds. Southern Co., which has donated $38,000, owns the top three most-polluting power plants in the nation according to Environment America. Roy does not see anything too out of the ordinary about the lobbyist involvement.

"In fairness to Sen. Murkowski, I think every member of Congress reaches out to experts in writing legislation," he says. Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, which is exploring the issue, has a slightly different take.

"Generally speaking, there are plenty of instances where, to one degree or another, lobbyists help craft legislation that then goes before Congress as a whole. The question is, are special interests having too much influence," Levinthal told SolveClimate.

"What can be of concern is when special interests are influencing the legislation that could regulate their own actions. You have to ask the question, is that in the public interest?" There are also fears Murkowski's efforts could also have a Pandora's box effect in terms of unraveling some key federal regulations. If Congress voted no-confidence on the EPA's efforts to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, that could open the door to further limits on the EPA's ability to protect the environment, explains Earthjustice's Sarah Saylor.

"Taking away those tools sends the wrong message to the world and would definitely be moving us in the wrong direction," she said MoveOn.org's Clean Energy Campaign Director Steven Biel says the biggest effect of the amendment would be the "direct attack on the Clean Air Act on the part of opposition groups and polluting industries."

If allowed to succeed, he says, this attack could further depress the already disappointed progressive base of the president and Democratic policymakers. "At the very minimum, to keep progressive activists from rebelling, rolling back the Clean Air Act is off the table," he said, alluding not only to the Murkowski amendment but also to some Senate climate bill proposals that he sees as being too friendly to those who would like to weaken the act. Democrats "cannot make change in America with progressive activists sitting on their hands," he cautions. Prospects and Proposals

Murkowski's expected amendment is just one of many obstacles Republicans have laid or are planning on laying in the way of climate legislation. Despite a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress and a Democrat in the White House, the political conditions for passing a climate law may still not exist in Washington.

The prospects for such a bill "haven't changed one bit since election day 2008, regardless of who the president is and who is in congress," says Roy. "People who thought it would be otherwise were mistaken." Roy said he was impressed that the House got its version of a climate bill through as quickly as it did in June. The Senate also launched hearings on its version of a climate bill, but progress stalled on the bill put together by John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Toward the end of the year, Kerry formed a bipartisan coalition with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to craft a bill that would strike a firmer middle ground between those advocating for and against climate action.

This bill is expected to include concessions to climate action opponents, such as increased funding for nuclear power and expanded production of natural gas and offshore oil drilling.

Their proposal "seems to be built to get the most votes," Earthjustice's Saylor told SolveClimate, comparing the package to other proposals that are being offered. Among the other legislative options is the energy bill passed last summer by the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee. It would focus solely on energy, without including measures like an economy-wide cap and trade program. Proponents of climate action are less than enthused by this option.

"With health care, they threw out the public option and other aspects proponents wanted and still ended up with a partisan vote. I don't necessarily accept the premise that an energy-only bill would just slide through" without facing the same challenges, says Roy.

The committee's energy bill, intended to be incorporated into larger climate legislation, does not go far enough in terms of renewables, and it includes things like expanded oil drilling, which would take climate policy in the "wrong direction," Saylor says.

Even worse, she says, it "would take away the momentum" toward significant climate legislation. More likely to please climate advocates is a proposal from Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). Their "cap and dividend" approach would avoid concerns over offsets and speculation that some fear might arise from creating a carbon market in the U.S. Saylor says she hopes "it's an idea that is discussed in moving forward," but that even this version is far from ideal.

"From what I've seen, the near-term targets aren't strong enough to solve the problem," she says. "The bottom line," says Roy, "is does the measure reduce greenhouse gas emissions and create a price on emissions and, in so doing, provide incentives to investors and inventors?" The debate should start soon, but the year may be well under way before a bill is finalized.

And whether whatever does get passed meets Roy's criteria remains to be seen.

news20100121reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
OTTAWA
Tue Jan 19, 2010 4:30pm EST
New Canadian minister urges green/oil-sands balance

OTTAWA (Reuters) - New Canadian Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis said on Tuesday that Canada, the biggest energy exporter to the United States, must balance the environment and economic growth.

Paradis, who had been Public Works minister, replaces Lisa Raitt in the Natural Resources portfolio, which includes some oversight of the country's growing oil sands sector, the nuclear industry and energy exports.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has touted Canada as an emerging "energy superpower" as output from the country's oil sands, the largest crude reserves outside the Middle East, rises.

That has also made the country a focal point for environmental activists concerned about rising greenhouse gas emissions from oil sands projects and the destruction of large swathes of boreal forest in northern Alberta.

However Paradis, who has some experience in the portfolio after serving a year as parliamentary secretary to the Natural Resources minister in 2006, said the needs of the economy and the environment must be balanced, echoing a favorite line of Environment Minister Jim Prentice.

Asked by reporters whether production from the oil sands should be curbed to cut pollution, the new minister said: "The key point in that is to balance the economy and the environment ... I expect that the industry will share its burden to reach that goal".

While he is little known in the Canadian energy industry, Paradis's appointment was being cautiously welcomed.

"We're looking forward to working with him," said Greg Stringham, a vice-president at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, a lobby group representing the bulk of the country's big oil and gas firms. "He does bring a year's experience as (Natural Resources) parliamentary secretary, so he knows our issues well and comes from public works, which is fairly complex."

Paradis is a lawyer from Thetford Mines, Quebec, once the home of a thriving asbestos mining industry.

"We are fortunate to have a new minister with mining in his riding," Gavin Dirom, chief executive of the Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia, said in a statement. "Minister Paradis has a track record of standing up ... for the mining sector.

(Reporting by Randall Palmer and Scott Haggett; editing by Peter Galloway)


[Green Business]
FRANKFURT
Wed Jan 20, 2010 8:52am EST
FACTBOX: Sales exposure to Germany's solar market

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The German government said Wednesday it would propose to cut solar feed-in tariffs -- prices utilities have to pay generators of renewable energy -- by an additional 15 percent.

With Germany being the world's biggest solar market by installed capacity, this will put pressure on industry players around the world.

Following are key facts about some of the world's biggest solar companies and their sales exposure to Germany based on the latest available information:

* Q-Cells, one of the world biggest makers of solar cells, made 56 percent of its sales in the first nine months of 2009 in Germany.

* U.S. First Solar, set to become the world's largest maker of solar cells, said it made 60-70 percent of its sales in Germany last year.

* SolarWorld, Germany's biggest solar company by revenue, made 67 percent, or 428 million euros ($607.9 million), in Germany in the first nine months of 2009.

* Germany accounts for about half of China's Yingli Green Energy global panel sales, and more than half at Suntech Power.

* SMA Solar, the world's biggest maker of solar inverters, made more than 70 percent of nine-months sales in Germany.

* Solar module maker Solon generated about 50 percent of its nine-months revenue in Germany, while at wholesaler Phoenix Solar, the country accounted for 95 percent of sales during the same period.

(Compiled by Christoph Steitz in Frankfurt, Leonora Walet in Hong Kong and Laura Isensee in Los Angeles; Editing by Sharon Lindores) ($1=.7040 Euro)


[Green Business]
BRUSSELS
Wed Jan 20, 2010 8:53am EST
EU to launch new electric cars project: Zapatero

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is about to embark on a major new project to support the growth of electric cars, Spain's prime minister said on Wednesday in his role at the helm of the European Union.

"The other day I met together with a group of companies -- some of the most important in Europe -- and it was felt it was fundamental that there should be cooperation and integration of efforts in developing the electric vehicle," Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said.

The project will be launched at a meeting of EU industry ministers in the Spanish city of San Sebastian on February 8.

"If our markets don't have a regulatory framework to provide financial support, and if we don't have common standards on the technologies, then it will be difficult for Europe to take a leading role," Zapatero said.

"In the meantime, we see that China and Japan are developing fast on electric vehicles," he added. "They're working very hard on batteries."

European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso said his experts were already working on draft rules to support the project.

(Writing by Pete Harrison; editing by Sue Thomas)


[Green Business]
Tom Doggett
WASHINGTON
Wed Jan 20, 2010 9:52am EST
U.S. says wind could power 20 percent of eastern grid

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Wind energy could generate 20 percent of the electricity needed by households and businesses in the eastern half of the United States by 2024, but it would require up to $90 billion in investment, according to a government report released on Wednesday.

For the 20 percent wind scenario to work, billions must be spent on installing wind towers on land and sea and about 22,000 miles of new high-tech power lines to carry the electricity to cities, according to the study from the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

"Twenty percent wind is an ambitious goal," said David Corbus, the project manager for the study. "We can bring more wind power online, but if we don't have the proper infrastructure to move that power around, it's like buying a hybrid car and leaving it in the garage,"

The private sector cannot fund all the needed spending, so a big chunk would have to come from the federal government through programs such as loan guarantees, Corbus said.

The Obama administration is already dedicating billions of dollars to double the amount of electricity produced by wind and other renewables energy sources by January 2012.

The Interior Department will decide this spring whether to approve the Cape Wind project off Cape Cod, Massachusetts. That project, long delayed because of local opposition, would provide electricity to about 400,000 homes.

The amount of U.S. electricity generated by wind was up 29 percent during January-October of last year compared to the same period is 2008, according to the Energy Department.

Reaching the 20 percent threshold for wind by 2024 in the eastern electric grid would require 225,000 megawatts of wind generation capacity in the region, about a 10-fold increase from current levels, the study said.

One megawatt of electricity can provide power to about 1,000 homes.

Wind turbines would be scattered throughout the eastern grid, which extends from the Plains states to the Atlantic Coast and south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Most of the big wind farms would be concentrated off the Atlantic Coast in federal waters from Massachusetts to North Carolina and on land in Midwest states from North Dakota to Nebraska and into Kansas.

Many states already require utilities to produce a portion of their electricity from renewable energy sources, but a federal mandate covering all utilities nationwide would help create the 20 percent wind scenario, Corbus said.

Sen. Byron Dorgan said on Tuesday he thought the Senate would forgo dealing with climate change legislation this year after going through the contentious health care debate and instead focus on passing an energy bill that, in part, requires U.S. utilities to generate 15 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2021.

(Reporting by Tom Doggett; Editing by David Gregorio)

news20100121reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Stanley Carvalho
ABU DHABI
Wed Jan 20, 2010 9:54am EST
London Array near 1 billion sterling financing: shareholder

ABU DHABI (Reuters) - London Array, the world's largest offshore wind farm project, is close to securing 1 billion British pounds in financing from the European Investment Bank, the head of the farm's top shareholder said.

London Array is being developed by Denmark's DONG Energy, Germany's E.ON and Abu Dhabi green energy firm Masdar in the Thames Estuary near London.

"Financing will be only debt and we are discussing with the European Investment Bank. They are very supportive, we are hopeful of finalizing it shortly," Dong Chief Executive Anders Eldrup told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday.

"Financial markets have changed. Two years ago, they were not interested in wind energy," he said on the sidelines of a renewable energy conference.

The first phase of the project is expected to be commissioned in 2012 and will generate 630 megawatt (MW) of electricity.

"Phase one is progressing with all the big issues solved and several contracts awarded," Eldrup said.

Phase two is expected to generate 370 MW of power, he said, adding that details of the timeline and cost are yet to be finalized.

DONG expects its 2009 revenue to be impacted by the fall in power and gas prices last year, he said.

"2009 is not as good as 2008 because prices in power and gas was low in our area, that will impact our results," he said without elaborating.

DONG owns 50 percent of the project, E.ON 30 percent and Masdar the remaining 20 percent.

(Reporting by Stanley Carvalho; editing by Karen Foster)


[Green Business]
WASHINGTON
Wed Jan 20, 2010 11:09am EST
Climate bill could split in two, Hoyer says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cap-and-trade legislation pending in Congress may be split in two to ensure that parts that encourage the use of more alternative energy sources can pass the Senate now that Democrats control one less seat, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said on Wednesday.

Elements that limit carbon emissions may be handled separately now that Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat that was formerly held by a Democrat, Hoyer said.

"We ought not to let one be the victim to the other, if you will," he said. "I think we can move ahead on energy independence, I'm hopeful we can move ahead on the CO2 issue as well but I don't want to have one be the victim of saying we can't do one without the other."

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan, editing by Bill Trott)


[Green Business]
Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn
Wed Jan 20, 2010 12:26pm EST
U.N. insists to guide climate talks, despite setback

OSLO/LONDON (Reuters) - The United Nations insisted Wednesday that it should keep guiding talks on a new climate pact despite near-failure at a summit last month when a few countries agreed a low-ambition "Copenhagen Accord."

Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N.'s Climate Change Secretariat, said negotiations in 2010 would be based on U.N. talks launched in 2007 about how to extend the existing Kyoto Protocol and on involving all nations in action.

The three-page Copenhagen Accord, championed by big emitters including the United States and China, could however be a valuable spur toward agreement at the next U.N. meeting in Mexico in November, de Boer said.

"I suppose in theory you could have a parallel structure but that strikes me as an incredibly inefficient exercise," he told a news conference webcast from Bonn of the prospects of also negotiating on the Copenhagen Accord.

The Copenhagen Accord seeks to limit global warming to less than 2 Celsius above pre-industrial times and holds out the prospect of an annual $100 billion in aid from 2020 for developing nations.

But it omits setting cuts in greenhouse gas emissions needed by 2020 or 2050 to achieve the temperature goal.

De Boer left open, however, whether Mexico would result in a legally binding treaty as urged by many nations.

He spoke of "Mexico or later" for final texts meant to step up a drive to slow more heatwaves, floods, species extinctions, powerful storms and rising ocean levels.

MISSED DEADLINE

The failure of the U.N. negotiations to achieve a deal despite a deadline set for the end of 2009 after two years of talks launched in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 has cast doubt on the U.N.'s future role.

Big emitters such as China, the United States, Russia or India may simply prefer to negotiate in smaller groups such as the G20 or a "Major Economies Forum" of nations accounting for about 80 percent of world emissions.

Under U.N. rules a deal has to be adopted by unanimity. In Copenhagen, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Sudan blocked the conference from adopting the Copenhagen Accord.

"Copenhagen didn't produce the final cake but it left the countries with all the right ingredients to bake a new one in Mexico," de Boer said.

He said he had written to all nations asking them to say if they backed the Copenhagen Accord, and to give details of their plans for curbs on greenhouse emissions by 2020, by a January 31 deadline set in the accord. But he said that was flexible.

"I don't expect everyone to meet the deadline," he said. "You could describe it as a soft deadline, there's nothing deadly about it." Officials say few nations have so far submitted plans.

He also urged developed countries to start disbursing aid to developing nations under a plan to raise close to $30 billion from 2010-12, even though new mechanisms for guiding funds were not yet in place.

De Boer also played down worries that U.S. President Barack Obama would find it hard to persuade the Senate to pass climate capping laws after the Democrats lost a Senate seat to the Republicans, and with it a 60-40 majority that helps streamline decision-making.

"The change of one state from one party to another is not going to cause a landslide in the United States on the question of climate change," he said, saying that momentum for action had been building for years in the world's No. 2 emitter.

Analysts say failure by the United States to pass a climate bill this year may scupper U.N. negotiations to agree a new treaty to replace Kyoto from 2013.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)


[Green Business]
PARIS
Wed Jan 20, 2010 12:27pm EST
France to tax big polluters under revised scheme

PARIS (Reuters) - France plans to tax big polluters on their carbon dioxide emissions until 2013, when a separate EU-wide scheme will make such firms pay for emissions permits, Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said on Wednesday.

In a shock move, France's Constitutional Court rejected an original version of the government's carbon tax late last year on the grounds that it exempted too many big firms and ran counter to the spirit of equality in the French tax system.

Borloo told reporters the planned compromise would be to tax companies temporarily in an attempt to avoid double-charging them or worsening their position in the global marketplace.

The government also said in a statement it would introduce measures to protect the competitiveness of certain sectors, and consult companies and environmental groups on the implementation of the tax before its introduction.

The Constitutional Court ruling represented a blow to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had billed the new tax as an important weapon in the fight against climate change.

The ruling will also hit state coffers, with the economy ministry saying it will lose up to 1.5 billion euros ($2.13 billion) in projected tax revenues in 2010, putting pressure on Borloo to come up with a new version rapidly.

A bill is expected to be presented to parliament in the next few weeks, after the round of consultations. The government has said it wants the revised law to come into force on July 1.

"The principle is to include these companies in a system of reward and punishment," said government spokesman Luc Chatel. "The reward could be compensation through tax credits."

Carbon emissions permits for factories and power plants are free for now. However, under the EU's emissions trading scheme, power plants will pay for all carbon permits from 2013, and factories will also pay for some.

France is the first major economy to try to introduce a carbon tax, but the Constitutional Court said 93 percent of industrial carbon dioxide emissions would have been exempt under the old version of the law.

The proposed levy on oil, gas and coal use amounted to 17 euros per ton of carbon dioxide emissions, and this charge is expected to remain unchanged when the new law is unveiled.

news20100121reut4

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
NEW YORK
Wed Jan 20, 2010 6:02pm EST
JinkoSolar files for $100 million IPO

NEW YORK (Reuters) - China-based solar company JinkoSolar Holding Co Ltd on Wednesday filed for an initial public offering of up to $100 million.

The company, which makes silicon wafers, solar cells and solar modules, said it would use proceeds from the IPO to expand its manufacturing, for research and development, and for working capital, but did not give details in its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Solar companies struggled in 2009 against a global oversupply that forced them to cut prices and has pressured both revenue and margins.

But demand has improved and investors are looking for signs that the industry will recover its sharp growth.

Earlier this month China's Daqo New Energy Corp, which manufactures polysilicon for solar panel makers, filed for an IPO of up to $108 million. In December, California solar company Solyndra Inc filed for an IPO of up to $300 million -- but Chinese thin film panel maker Trony Solar Holdings in December postponed indefinitely its IPO due to poor market conditions.

JinkoSolar posted revenue of 880 million yuan ($128.9 million) in the nine months ended September 30, down 42.8 percent from the same period a year ago. It posted net income of 1.72 million yuan, compared with 179.2 million yuan a year ago.

JinkoSolar posted a 36.5 million yuan loss on the fair value of derivatives in the nine months ended September 30, compared with a 204,000 yuan gain in the year-ago period.

Major shareholders in the company include executives and funds affiliated with HSBC. The company did not disclose who would be selling shares.

Jinkosolar plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "JKS." Underwriters are being led by Goldman Sachs in Asia and Credit Suisse.

(Reporting by Clare Baldwin; Editing Bernard Orr)


[Green Business]
SAN FRANCISCO
Wed Jan 20, 2010 5:27pm EST
Sierra Club's new chief likes pressuring companies

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The venerable Sierra Club on Wednesday appointed a 38-year-old executive director with a history of getting big companies to sign onto environmental efforts and a focus on climate change.

California-based Sierra Club is one of the biggest U.S. environmental groups and has taken on global warming as a top issue, while its new executive director, Michael Brune, is from the edgier, more activist-oriented Rainforest Action Network.

In one Rainforest Action Network campaign to convince Home Depot to stop buying lumber from sensitive forests, Brune found codes for store public address systems and announced to shoppers that "wood ripped from the heart of the rainforest" was on offer, according to his biography.

Despite the U.S. Senate election of Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown, who takes a Democratic seat, Brune said he expected "strong federal climate and energy legislation will be passed some time this year."

In the interview, he said Massachusetts voters were strong environmentalists and would pressure Brown to be so as well.

Brune, who declined to predict what a federal law would look like, takes over at the 117-year-old Sierra Club from Carl Pope, who has been executive director since 1992 and will remain as executive chairman.

(Reporting by Peter Henderson; Editing by John O'Callaghan)


[Green Business]
PALM SPRINGS, Calif
Wed Jan 20, 2010 7:47pm EST
California's new standards to spur green design

PALM SPRINGS, Calif (Reuters) - The nation's first statewide mandatory green building code set by environmental trendsetter California will spur sustainable design, the chief executive of Autodesk Inc said on Wednesday.

"I think it's actually good that government agencies get into the policy or the habit of setting environmental policy. For years, there have been building codes related to fire and safety and everything else. That's how it gets enforced," Autodesk's chief executive Carl Bass said in a phone interview with Reuters.

Bass said that Autodesk also hopes to supply emerging clean technology companies with software to design and simulate their projects and has ramped up a program to grant free software to start-up clean tech firms. He declined to say how big that market could be for Autodesk.

California last week adopted a mandatory green building code -- dubbed "CalGreen" -- which sets out specific constraints for newly constructed buildings and is the first such state-wide green mandate in the United States.

Among its measures, it requires water consumption to be cut by 20 percent, half of construction waste diverted from landfills and installation of low-pollutant emitting materials.

The code's adoption sparked some controversy among parts of the building sector, which argued the new mandate would clash with the existing voluntary green building label called "LEED" and effectively create a confusing two-tier rating system.

The executive of Autodesk called LEED a good first step.

Autodesk makes the design software AutoCAD used by architects, engineers and other in the construction, manufacturing and engineering sectors to model two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphics.

"Building codes are mandatory and I think they can be more specific to local areas and I think it will force every building to actually do it," Bass said.

Building construction and operation account for some 47 percent of the United States' carbon footprint, nearly double that of the transportation industry.

California's new green code is estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3 million metric tons by 2020 and help it reach its environmental targest.

Autodesk's competitors include Adobe Systems Inc, and Parametric Technology Corp.

(Reporting by Laura Isensee; editing by Carol Bishopric)


[Green Business]
WASHINGTON
Wed Jan 20, 2010 2:42pm EST
Top Republican sees little cap and trade support

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said on Wednesday that there was barely any support in that chamber for passing cap and trade legislation that aims to control global warming.

"I would say there is minimal enthusiasm, and that's putting it mildly, for cap and trade," McConnell said when asked by a reporter whether the initiative was dead for this year.

Under cap and trade, which was passed by the House of Representatives last June, lower and lower limits would be put on industrial emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases over the next 40 years.

Companies would be required to hold permits for each ton of carbon they emit and those permits could be traded in a regulated market.

The House-passed legislation has hit stiff opposition in the Senate and the election of a Republican in Massachusetts on Tuesday to replace deceased Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy made prospects somewhat more difficult for cap and trade.

Senator Lisa Murkowski said she might not seek passage of an amendment on Wednesday that would stop the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon emissions for the first time.

Instead, the Alaska Republican said her "inclination" was to pursue a slightly different legislative route -- passage of a "joint resolution" in the Senate and House -- that would have the same impact but would face different procedural rules.

Murkowski did not say when she would go ahead with the joint resolution, if she settles on that route.

Murkowski argues that the EPA must be stopped from regulating carbon and that legislation instead should be crafted to address environmental concerns.

But many Democrats and environmental groups have said that Murkowski is trying to push a vote on EPA regulation in order to undermine progress on a climate change bill.

The Obama administration has been using the threat of EPA regulation to try to encourage some lawmakers to get behind legislation that would be more comprehensive and give industry more opportunity to have a say in environmental policy.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Editing by Howard Goller)