news20100128gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Barack Obama commits to climate change bill
President Obama pledges to help pass 'comprehensive' climate change law, but also backed nuclear power and drilling
Suzanne Goldenberg
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 January 2010 05.50 GMT Article history

Barack Obama put himself firmly behind the effort to get a climate change bill through Congress last night – but said it must include a new generation of nuclear power.

The brief passage on energy and climate in Obama's state of the union address did deliver the signal Congress and much of the world had been seeking that the White House is ready to throw itself into the effort to pass legislation.

"This year, I am eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate," he said.

But Obama made it clear that he supported a "bipartisan" effort which would incorporate energy policies that are popular among Republicans – and fiercely opposed by the liberal wing of his own party.

"That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies," Obama said.

The endorsement for nuclear power and especially offshore drilling will be difficult for some Democratic voters to swallow.

Most of the instant reaction to the speech from environmental groups was positive – though few commented directly on Obama's support for nuclear power or drilling.

However, the Centre for Biological Diversity was scathing. "A clean energy economy does not include continued reliance on dirty coal and further risky drilling for oil in fragile offshore areas," the centre's director, Kieran Suckling said in a statement.

"The president failed tonight, as he failed over the past twelve months, to use his bully pulpit to advocate a bright line goal for greenhouse gas reductions. "

Obama's endorsement of a nuclear renaissance – 30 years since the last new nuclear plant – was calculated to help the efforts of Democratic Senator John Kerry and Republican Lindsey Graham craft a compromise bill that could get broad support in the Senate.

The house narrowly passed a climate change bill last June, but the effort has bogged down in the Senate.

The two Senators told reporters earlier Wednesday that they were closely focused on pulling in Republican support, and damping down fears among Democratic senators from oil, coal and heavy manufacturing states that energy reform would hurt local economies.

Obama hewed closely to the same strategy, peppering his speech with references to new "clean energy" jobs and the "profitable kind of energy". He uttered the words "climate change" precisely once, referring to America assuming a leadership role in the negotiations to get a global deal to halt warming.

But the president did voice support for a "comprehensive" Senate bill – code in Washington for a broad set of proposals that would also include establishment of a cap and trade programme.

The nod for a "comprehensive" bill could help head off attempts to get the Senate to scale back its ambitions, and pass a narrowly focused energy bill that would not attempt to establish a carbon market.

And he said he wanted a bill through the Senate in 2010 – timing that is seen as crucial both for the prospects of energy reform in America and for getting a global change deal.

Obama also took a shot at climate change deniers, which brought some mutterings from Republicans.

"I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change," he said. "But even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future."



[Environment > Feed-in tarriffs]
Public supports ambitious scheme for micro-scale renewable energy: poll
Campaigners urge government to seize opportunity to turn homes into 'green power stations' with feed-in tariffs
Ashley Seager
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 January 2010 16.51 GMT Article history

The public overwhelmingly support a much more ambitious scheme to push renewable energy for homes and communities, a new poll shows today ahead of a key government announcement next week.

Government officials are putting the finishing touches to plans to boost the take-up of renewable energy in Britain - which is the lowest in Europe - through a system known as the "clean energy cashback", or feed-in tariff.

In July last year the government unveiled the scheme which has been used successfully for years in other European countries and pays above-market rates for green electricity produced by consumers.

But the proposed tariff levels for power produced by small wind turbines, solar panels and micro hydro schemes were criticised by green campaigners as not being high enough to encourage businesses, households and communities to invest.

A YouGov survey of more than 2,000 people carried out for Friends of the Earth (FoE), the Renewable Energy Association (REA) and the Cooperative Group shows two-thirds of people think that the government's plans are not ambitious enough, while 71% of homeowners said they would consider installing green energy systems if they were paid enough cash. The Department of Energy and Climate Change is expected to announce the tariff levels next week.

Shadow climate change minister Greg Barker said: "This poll confirms what we have been saying for some time, that Labour massively underestimate the appetite for decentralised energy among the public.

"Labour is failing to grasp the ambition that is out there in respect of this exciting technology."

Alan Simpson MP, the government's special adviser on renewable energy, was critical of the current plans: "If Britain wants to be part of a renewable energy future, we have to go into it at a run rather than a waddle.

"As things stand, the government could turn a brilliant idea into a pitiful failure. What the public are looking for is real vision and ambition, not a towering lack of it.

"If Labour wants to be re-elected, it has to push aside the vested interests if big energy and myopia within the Treasury. If you want the public's vote, catch up with the public mood. It's as simple as that."

FoE, the REA and the Co-op group say that the scheme as it currently stands, which has an overall ambition to supply just 2% of UK electricity from small-scale renewable energy sources (up to 5MW) by 2020. They argue it should offer higher payments than those proposed and aim to deliver far more clean electricity — up to one-third of the country's total needs.

The poll also shows that 70% of respondents said that they would be prepared to pay an extra 10p on their electricity bills each month (£1.20 annually), on top of the already proposed annual increase of £1.17, until 2013 when the scheme is due to be reviewed.

Andy Atkins, the executive director of the FoE, said: "The public overwhelmingly wants the government to think big when it comes to small-scale renewable energy.

"Our homes, businesses and communities could become green power stations - but bigger government incentives are needed to make this a reality. This will help tackle climate change, create new jobs and businesses and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels."

Jeremy Leggett, the executive chairman of solar energy group Solarcentury, said that the new government scheme could yet deliver hundreds of thousands of jobs in solar photovoltaics and other small-scale renewables. "It could also cut significantly our country's increasing dependence on imported fossil fuels," he added.

news20100128gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Activism]
Activists halt operations at Scottish coal terminal
Protesters hold up 11 coal trucks and a freight train in the latest action against opencast mining in South Lanarkshire
Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 January 2010 13.33 GMT Article history

Climate protesters claim they have closed down one of Scotland's main coal terminals, halting 11 coal trucks and a freight train, as activists extended their campaign against opencast mining in South Lanarkshire.

Lucy, a camp spokesperson (she would not give her full name), said today's action at Ravenstruther led to 11 coal trucks queuing at the terminal's gate and prevented a coal train being loaded.

She said today's action at Ravenstruther involved a male protester locking himself to a digging machine used to load a conveyor that services trucks and coal trains, forcing loading operations there to stop. She said this led to 11 coal trucks queuing at the terminal's gate and prevented a coal train being loaded this morning.

The protester was arrested by British Transport police, and a spokesman for Scottish Coal, which operates the rail terminal, said there was "minimal disruption to the supply chain."

Barry, a press spokesman for the campaigners who would not give his full name, said: "We do know that his lock-on managed to shut down the entirety of the site. We do know that much."

It is the third time Ravenstruther has been targeted by protesters in the past 14 months, with a small blockade and an occupation.

The protest at Ravenstruther terminal this morning follows court appearances late yesterday for 19 activists arrested on Monday at Mainshill wood, a planned opencast site about 10 miles away which has been occupied by climate campaigners since June last year.

All 19 pled not guilty to charges of aggravated trespass and breach of the peace, for allegedly locking themselves to hand-built tree-houses, tunnels and temporary buildings at Mainshill, near the small village of Douglas.

More than 40 campaigners had occupied a series of platforms, tree-houses, scaffolding towers and tunnels dug beneath barricaded huts on the heavily forested site after being tipped-off that the landowner, the Earl of Home, planned to evict them this week.

Home, the chairman of Coutts bank, has sold rights to mine 1.7m tonnes of coal to Scottish Coal at Mainshill, the fourth opencast site in the immediate area, despite objections from Douglas community council and 650 residents furious at the intensity of open cast mining in the district.

He has hired the "national eviction team", a civilian Swansea-based company now routinely used instead of police to end occupations by environmental campaigners, which apprehends activists using specialist climbers and tunnelling experts.

A further seven campaigners were arrested yesterday, including a wheelchair-bound camp supporter who was detained for breach of the peace beyond the site boundary, and later released on police bail. They are due to appear at Lanark sheriff court today.

Beth, a Mainshill campaigner who has been perched on a platform up in a sycamore with two other activists for three days, said this morning the eviction team had begun using a mechanical digger to clear trees and undergrowth around her tree.

"It's a bit scary at the moment," she said. "They've just brought a JCB in. I think they're making a road so that they can come in and get us from the back. We had police and climbers along this morning to check us out. I think they're just clearing a track, it might be to drive us out. I'm not sure yet."

Beth, 23 and from Teeside, said she had been sleeping in her shelter routinely for three months, with some days off over Christmas, using layers of sleeping bags and insulated blankets against the intense cold. During the most intense weather, when temperatures hit –20C, she slept at the camp.

"It's cold when you can't move around too much and I'm missing the fire, but we've plenty of blankets and insulation. We're doing alright."

There were six trees close by being occupied by protesters and a second cluster of trees in the distance, she said. "We could see other people across from here, being evicted in the distance, but there are plenty of us to come out. It has been amazing."

"I can tell you exactly why I'm here: I'm sitting in these trees and when they take these trees down, they're going to rip open the ground underneath, and burn the fossil fuels which are there. It's just a tiny proportion of fossil fuel but it's one of the only things you can do [to stop it].

"The community is being ignored; that happens every day all over the place. Democracy isn't working."

The 19 activists in court yesterday, many of whom gave a campaigners' base in the nearby village of Coalburn as their address, were: James Wright, from Chesterfield, Kevin McCormack, from Whitburn, Paul Whitlock, from Coalburn, Mark Leach, from Edinburgh, Kate Sharkey, from Coalburn, Iona Murray, from Coalburn, Daniel Townhead, from Bradford, James Wood, from Faslane peace camp, Josie Canton, from Coalburn, Alexandra Hervas, from Coalburn, David Whitecross, from Edinburgh, Gary Glass, from Faslane peace camp, Andrew Whitlock, from Faslane peace camp, Benjamin Hartley, from Coalburn, Julia Osterlanger, from Coalburn, Carol Weaver, from Coalburn, Kayne Coy, from Coalburn, Stephen Cox, no fixed abode, and Andrew Paul, address not available.


[Environment > Wildlife]
Asian nations urged to shut private tiger farms
Privately run tiger farms are inhumane and fuel demand for the endangered big cat's bones and skin, World Bank warns 13-nation tiger summit
Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 January 2010 11.57 GMT Article history

China and other Asian nations should shut privately run tiger farms as they are inhumane and fuel demand for the endangered big cat's bones and skin, the World Bank said today.

The call came as governments from 13 countries where tigers exist in the wild met in Thailand to discuss their conservation and how to boost tiger numbers.

Tiger farms are found principally in China, as well as Laos, Vietnam and Thailand. Owners claim rearing the cats in captivity will help reduce the illegal trade in tiger parts which are used in traditional medicine, but environmentalists say it stimulates further smuggling.

"Our position is that tiger farms as an animal practice are cruel. They fan the potential use of tiger parts. That is extremely dangerous because that would continue to spur demand," said the World Bank's Keshav Varma, who is the programme director for the Global Tiger Initiative, a coalition formed in 2008 with the Smithsonian Institute and nearly 40 conservation groups. It aims to double tiger numbers by 2022.

"The Global Tiger Initiative as well as the World Bank are in favour of shutting down these farms," he said.

Wild tiger numbers have plummeted because of human encroachment, the loss of more than nine-tenths of their habitat and poaching. From an estimated 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century, the number today is less than 3,600.

China alone is believed to be home to 5,000 domestic tigers, and farms thrive despite the government banning the trade in tiger parts in 1993. It has imposed stiff sentences on offenders and ordered pharmacies to empty their shelves of tiger medications purported to cure ailments from convulsions to skin disease and to increase sexual potency.

The first tiger farms started before the ban, but others sprang up afterward because speculators thought the ban would be temporary. The government says the farms have been developed to attract tourists but critics say they are used to harvest tiger parts.

Despite lobbying from influential businessmen for the ban to be lifted, China last month announced it would take stronger law enforcement action on the trade in tiger parts and products. It also promised stricter regulation of captive breeding.

The conservation group Traffic welcomed the new measures but continue to call for tiger farms to be shut down. They say allowing trade in tiger parts would fuel poaching because it is cheaper to kill a wild animal than to raise a tiger on a farm. Varma said tiger farms had yet to be discussed at the three-day ministerial meeting that began Wednesday, attended by Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.

news20100128gdn3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[News > Society]
Eyesore rubbish vies for importance with BNP on local politics agenda
Front gardens strewn with junk have become almost as big a political issue in Dagenham as the rise of the BNP
Allegra Stratton
The Guardian, Wednesday 27 January 2010 Article history

On a freezing Friday morning, Dagenham MP Jon Cruddas, whose primary concern is fending off the BNP at the next general election in a seat where it is already the second largest party on the local council, has chosen to hang out with the bin men at Barking and Dagenham council's new project, Eyesore Gardens.

Cruddas, who has penned many words on the rise of the BNP and how Labour must reconnect with the white working class, has now taken up the dirtiest form of street-fighting because, in Dagenham, rubbish – and your stance on it – is the kind of issue that can get you noticed.

Standing in the fog, watching a concrete yard being cleared of junk, Cruddas is approached by the son of an 80-year-old constituent who lives in a house along the road. "You won't remember, but you got her her first wheelie bin," he tells Cruddas. "Hers was the first in the street and she was worried sick it was going to get nicked." Did she chain it up? "Nah, she kept it in the hall."

Cruddas's constituency has a problem because no matter how much people value their bins, Dagenham has got progressively more filthy. The houses on the estates built in the 1930s for workers at the Ford car plant were once "des res". Now, the houses are largely rented, through which short-term tenants flow in and out, chucking away the previous tenants' soft furnishings. The area is now remarkable for its inside-out properties: two or three mattresses, three-piece suites and rolls of carpets in front gardens, while wildlife takes over indoors – with rats, pigeons nesting in the eaves, and moss thriving on carpets. "If the mattresses outside aren't enough," says the leader of the local council, Liam Smith, "then look for the pigeons sitting on the roof. It means vermin living up there. Get your eye in watching that programme, A Life of Grime."

Two months ago, Smith decided to get involved, and his officers were given the task of scouring the statute books to make the clean-up possible.

"It used to be that if you were unhappy with a garden near you, you would ring up the council and say you thought the people next door had rats, because you knew you'd always get a reaction [to that]," says one of Smith's officers, who has worked for many councils around the country, trying but failing to get similar schemes off the ground.

"The pest control people will go out and see you've not got rats, so they go back and do the paperwork, but feel they should pass it on to the environmental health team. They then go out to the property and also see that it's not really their business, so they go back to the office and send it to the planning team, who say, 'Well, it's not really urgent, but we'll serve a notice.' So, four or five officers and three months later, it may or may not get solved."

Now Dagenham council uses three ­different pieces of existing legislation to enable its officers to go out and take ­control.

The footsoldiers on the new frontline are the eight members of the Eyesore Gardens team. Wearing fleeces with the project name on the back, they tour the estates, putting notices through the doors of houses with unsightly front gardens.

While posting one notice through the letter box of a property with building waste in its front garden, they are asked by a neighbour: "Can't you do anything about this one? It just looks so, well, they're just chucking everything out."

"The owner is recently deceased,"­­ ­a team member explains. But the neighbour counters: "No, no, no. That was in June. Not recent."

Get on with it, the neighbour is saying. Which is what the team will do. If no action is taken by the tenants within 28 days, Eyesore Gardens' members come along with a rubbish truck and oversee the clear-up of the garden. They bill the landlord for the cost of the work, and if it is not paid, they take matters to court. Owners can be fined up to £2,500, and have that amount, as well as the cost of the clear-up, plus interest, docked from the price of the property when it is eventually sold.

Over a four-week period, the team ­visited around 160 houses and removed a total of eight tonnes of rubbish from the gardens. "We're not after Kew Gardens," Smith says. "But, equally, we don't want Steptoe's front yard."

Like a bushfire

"It's the best thing the council has ever done," Cruddas says. "You open your door, you see your front garden, and if it gets cleaned up it is a signal about the whole neighbourhood. It's like a bushfire through the area and it re-establishes your responsibility to your local community. "

What has most pleased those involved in Eyesore Gardens is how rarely they have had to take legal action. "I promised the leader of the council that within three months there would be 30 prosecutions" says one of the environmental health officers in charge of the project. "But there's no way we'll meet that because people are complying."

The council helps people to do it themselves. For those more able but less equipped, there are visits by a "tool library", from which, on the presentation of a library membership card, residents can hire shovels, clippers or hoes to attack their front garden themselves.

"Some people might think that's your liberal right to drop all your stuff in your front yard," Cruddas says. "But [at what stage] does your liberal right collide with the community's right to have a clean and tidy environment?"

news20100128nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 27 January 2010 | Nature 463, 409 (2010) | doi:10.1038/463409a
News
Altered microbe makes biofuel
Bacterium could work directly on grass or crop waste.
Jeff Tollefson

{{Switch grass could be made into diesel cleanly and quickly.}
PVSTOCK.COM/ALAMY}

In a bid to overcome the drawbacks of existing biofuels, researchers have engineered a bacterium that can convert a form of raw plant biomass directly into clean, road-ready diesel.

So far, biofuels have largely been limited to ethanol, which is harder to transport than petrol and is made from crop plants such as maize (corn) and sugarcane, putting vehicles in competition with hungry mouths. In this week's Nature, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the biotech firm LS9 of South San Francisco, California, among others describe a potential solution: a modified Escherichia coli bacterium that can make biodiesel directly from sugars or hemicellulose, a component of plant fibre (see page 559). The method can be tailored to produce a host of high-value chemicals, including molecules that mimic standard petrol, and could be expanded to work on tougher cellulosic materials, the researchers say.

The work identifies a potentially cost-effective way of converting grass or crop waste directly into fuel, filling gas tanks without raising global food prices or increasing hunger and deforestation in far-flung locales. Moreover, the process is much more climate friendly than manufacturing ethanol from maize, and produces higher-energy fuels that are interchangeable with current petroleum products. The next step is to scale the process up and adapt it to cellulose, which makes up the bulk of plant material.

{“The process has a lot of promise for actually being commercialized.”}

"It's a nice milestone in the field of biofuels, and it has a lot of promise for actually being commercialized," says James Liao, a metabolic engineer and synthetic biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles.

LS9's calculations, performed with the help of the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, show that the biodiesel that it is preparing to market reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by 85% compared with standard diesel. That calculation is based on using Brazilian sugarcane, which is a much more efficient feedstock than maize; LS9 says that the shift from sugars to biomass as a feedstock would reduce greenhouse gases even further.

The company has been working to convert sugars into tailored molecules for several years, says co-author Stephen del Cardayre, LS9's vice-president for research and development. However, their university collaborators went two steps further, eliminating the need for additives and then folding in the ability to use hemicellulose as a feedstock. "This paper is a representation of the types of efforts that are going to move us to biomass," he says.

The researchers basically amplified and then short-circuited E. coli's internal machinery for producing large fatty-acid molecules, enabling them to convert precursor molecules directly into fuels and other chemicals. The team then inserted genes from other bacteria to produce enzymes able to break down hemicellulose. In all, the authors report more than a dozen genetic modifications.

The results could buoy LS9, says Mark Bünger, a research director at business consultancy Lux Research in San Francisco. Like its competitors, including Amyris of Emeryville, California, and South San Francisco-based Solazyme, LS9 struggled for funding in 2008 and early 2009 because of the drop in oil prices and the economic downturn, Bünger says.

But LS9 made it through, securing US$25 million in new funding from various sources, including a strategic partnership with oil giant Chevron last September. The company plans to open a commercial-scale demonstration plant later this year.


[naturenews]
Published online 27 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.36
News
A softer ride for barefoot runners
People who run long distances without shoes cushion the blow with their gait.
Lizzie Buchen

{{Barefoot runners may naturally cushion the impact of hitting the ground by landing on the balls of their feet.}
Rick Rycroft/AP Photo}

Barefoot endurance runners may have a more cushioned ride than most people who run in shoes, according to a biomechanical analysis.

Barefoot long-distance running has been a small but growing trend in the athletics community, driven in part by popular books and articles that maintain that runners might get fewer injuries if they ran the way humans evolved to — without supportive, cushioned running shoes. But although the idea is seductive, with running shoe companies recently marketing 'minimal' footwear, there has been little evidence to support the claims.

Now, evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has found crucial differences in the way that barefoot and shod runners land, with dramatic consequences for how the body takes the impact (see Nature's video).

"The first time we had a long-distance barefoot runner come to the lab and run across the force-plate, I was amazed," says Lieberman. Whereas most runners hit the ground with a sudden collision force as the body abruptly decelerates, says Lieberman, this barefoot runner made no such impact.

Hard impact

Lieberman found that long-distance runners who usually wear shoes, in both the United States and in Kenya, tend to land directly on their heels, abruptly bearing the full force of the impact. The force of the collision, even with a cushioned sole, was the equivalent to up to three times their bodyweight. The force could be linked to common running injuries such as stress fractures and plantar fasciitis, although this has yet to be demonstrated.

Americans and Kenyans accustomed to running barefoot, however, tend to strike the ground with the ball of their feet before touching down the heel — a fore-foot strike — allowing the tendons and muscles in the foot and lower leg to act as shock absorbers, bringing the impact force down to 60% of their bodyweight. The team's research is published in Nature¹.

"The ankle is a very compliant, springy joint, and barefoot runners use it a lot," says Lieberman. "It isn't available to you when you rear-foot strike. Then you're relying solely on the spring on the heel of the shoe."

By not taking advantage of the structure and function of the foot, says biologist Dennis Bramble at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, runners may be risking injury. "Ignoring how we evolved and what our bodies were made to do is risky business," he adds.

Together with Bramble, Lieberman has proposed that features of the human body such as longer legs, shorter toes and a highly arched foot are linked to long-distance running and enabled early hominins to chase and eventually exhaust prey².

But just because human ancestors landed on the balls of their feet when they ran, that doesn't mean it's ideal for today's runners who grew up with shoes. There's no evidence showing that running shoes prevent injuries. But nor is there much evidence that people who run barefoot get fewer injuries than those who run in shoes.

References
1. Lieberman, D. E. et al. Nature 463, 531-536 (2010). | Article
2. Bramble, D. M. & Lieberman, D. E. Nature 432, 345-352 (2004). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |

news20100128nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 27 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.39
News
Fossil feathers reveal dinosaurs' true colours
Pigment-storage sacs found in fossils give hints about hue.
Matt Kaplan

{{Sinosauropteryx may have had orange feathers and a stripey tail.}
Jim Robbins}

Pristine fossils of dinosaur feathers from China have yielded the first clues about their colour.

A team of palaeontologists led by Michael Benton of the University of Bristol, UK, and Zhonghe Zhou of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing, has discovered ancient colour-producing sacs in fossilized feathers from the Jehol site in northeastern China that are more than 100 million years old.

These pigment-packed organelles, called melanosomes, have only been found in fossilized bird feathers before now.

The team discovered the melanosomes in fossils of the suborder Theropoda, the branch of the dinosaur family tree to which the flesh-eating species Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus belong. However, it was not in these two iconic dinosaurs that the organelles were found, but in smaller species that ran around low to the ground with tiny feathers or bristles distributed across their bodies.

The team discovered two types of melanosome buried within the structure of the fossil feathers: sausage-shaped organelles called eumelanosomes that are seen today in the black stripes of zebras and the black masks of cardinal birds, and spherical organelles called phaeomelanosomes, which make and store the pigment that creates the rusty reds of red-tailed hawks and red human hair.

The team didn't find cell structures or machinery responsible for other colours, such as yellows, purples and blues. They suggest that dinosaur cells might have produced coloured pigments such as carotenoids and porphyrins, but that the proteins that make them degrade more rapidly than organelles, so do not leave a trace in fossils. Melanosomes, by contrast, are an integral part of a feather's tough protein structure so can survive for longer.

{{The team found pigment-storing eumelanosomes and phaeomelanosomes in the fossil feathers.}
University of Bristol}

."We always tell introductory palaeontology students that things like sound and colour are never going to be detected in the fossil record," says Benton. "Obviously that message needs to be reconsidered."

Fossils of one theropod dinosaur, Sinosauropteryx, reveal that it had light and dark feathered stripes along the length of its tail. The team found that feathers from the darker regions of the tail were packed with phaeomelanosomes, indicating they were russet-orange in colour. The lighter stripes could have been white, says Benton, but because some pigments degrade and don't leave a fossil signature, it is difficult to be sure.

Sinosauropteryx was not the only colourful feathered species. Another small theropod species, Sinornithosaurus, had feathery filaments that were dominated by either eumelanosomes or phaeomelanosomes, hinting that its individual feathers varied in colour between black and russet-orange.

Birds of a feather

A lot of questions have been raised about the structures that are found on the earliest of the feathered dinosaurs, such as Sinosauropteryx. Some palaeontologists argue that these bristle-like structures are actually fossilized connective tissue rather than early feathers.

However, says Benton, in modern birds — which evolved from the theropod dinosaurs — melanosomes are found only in the developing feathers and not in the connective tissue. The fact that the melanosomes in the dinosaur feathers are also found inside the bristles themselves resolves the debate, he says.

{{Samples were taken from a dark stripe near the base of Sinosauropteryx's tail.}
The Nanjing Institute}

"This paper puts the nails in the coffin of arguments countering the feather nature of these structures," agrees Luis Chiappe, a palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, California.

"It is deeply gratifying that this colour discovery is allowing us to finally agree that the structures on Sinosauropteryx were actually early feathers," says evolutionary ornithologist Richard Prum of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. "Now we can get on with studying their evolution."

In addition, the discovery of colour in the earliest feathers may also sway the biggest dinosaur debate of them all — what the feathers were actually being used for.

The tiny bristles on early feather-bearers could not have been used for flight, as some have suggested, because they would have provided no lift. But they could have served as insulation, or for display.

"It is looking increasingly likely to me that these dinosaurs were making a visual statement," says Benton. "What that statement was, we don't know, but you don't have a orange-and-white striped tail for nothing."

References
1. Zhang , F. et al. Nature advance online publication doi:10.1038/nature08740 (2010).

news20100128nn3

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 27 January 2010 | Nature 463, 408-409 (2010) | doi:10.1038/463408a
News
Icy hunt for old air
Antarctic drilling project aims for a definitive record of climate.
Chaz Firestone

WAIS DIVIDE CAMP, ANTARCTICA

"We're checking out history books made of ice," says Kendrick Taylor. A palaeoclimatologist at the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada, Taylor is the chief scientist of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) Divide drilling project, which is now three-quarters of the way towards pulling up the most temporally precise record of carbon dioxide for the past 100,000 years. The highly anticipated ice core promises to improve climatologists' understanding of the dynamic global climate system, and has already begun to illuminate how humans can affect it.

On 25 January, drillers finished the season at a depth of 2,561 metres, about a kilometre off the project's final goal. Relentless winds and poor visibility at the WAIS Divide camp, about 1,170 kilometres from the South Pole, had permitted only 35 days of drilling this year.

But bad weather is precisely why researchers chose this desolate stretch of ice. Snowfall accumulation here, about half a metre per year, is an order of magnitude greater than at the sites of other Antarctic cores covering the same time span. The heavy precipitation produces annual layers of ice 22 centimetres thick near the surface, allowing palaeoclimatologists to collect season-by-season data further back in time than any other Antarctic core.

{“This is the best spot on the planet to get the record we're looking for.”}

The drill site is perched atop an ice divide that sends ice flowing in opposite directions. There is little lateral flow on the divide itself, ensuring that ice sampled here has not travelled in from elsewhere on the ice sheet and scrambled the climate record. "This is simply the best spot on the planet to get the record we're looking for," says Taylor. "This is where the library is."

That record should yield annual data for the past 40,000 years. It will extend back another 60,000 years, but annual layers cannot be reliably identified for that period because the weight of overlying ice has compressed them, making them too thin.

Thirty-seven investigators lead 27 projects at the WAIS Divide, funded by the US National Science Foundation, studying everything from trace elements in the ice to the potential for life deep in the core. The bubbles in the ice are a special prize. Although temperatures at the camp are well below freezing, four refrigeration units in the drilling facility keep the cores below −20 °C, the temperature at which the bubbles can leak out. Their contents are precious: they trap air from the time of snowfall, offering snapshots of ancient atmospheric conditions.

Last November, for instance, palaeoclimatologist Richard Alley and his colleagues at Pennsylvania State University in University Park reported the isotopic composition of methane extracted from the top layers of the WAIS core, representing the past 1,000 years1. They found an increase in heavy methane — a by-product of biomass burning and other human activity — around the sixteenth century, which Alley attributes to Native Americans razing forests to expand their territory as the Americas experienced a population boom. This peak recedes as quickly as it rises, corresponding to widespread deaths as Europeans arrived with their diseases and weapons. The imprint shows up in the ice record because methane circulates around the globe in a matter of years.

Yet of all the gases within the WAIS ice, Alley sees the most promise in CO2. "We're going to get the highest-resolution, best-dated CO2 record ever," he says. "That's what gets me really excited."

High-resolution ice cores have been extracted before: Greenland's GRIP and GISP2 cores, drilled in the early 1990s, have the same season-by-season detail as those from the WAIS Divide, and have been the gold standard for palaeoclimatology in the Northern Hemisphere. But dust blown in from exposed land nearby interacted with acids in Greenland's ice to produce extra CO2, which has stymied attempts to establish a reliable CO2 record there.

Most of what is known about past CO2 levels thus comes from the dust-free Antarctic ice. "WAIS will combine the high time resolution we see in Greenland with a record only retrievable in Antarctica," Taylor says.

A question of timing

The gas record may help researchers to better understand the precise timing of past increases in CO2 and temperature. Palaeoclimatologists already know that these changes have taken place roughly in step in the past, but which rises first, the thermometer or the greenhouse gas? "All the analysis everyone has done suggests that CO2 lags temperature on timescales of several hundred years," says Ed Brook, a palaeoclimatologist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. The rising CO2 presumably acts as an amplifier to drive the temperature up further, but the margin of error in deep Antarctic cores is too large to nail down the timing of that relationship precisely. "The uncertainty is of the same order as the actual lag," says Brook. "WAIS Divide should help us solve that problem."

The CO2 record could also help to solve a recently discovered climate puzzle. Other cores have shown that past temperature changes in the Arctic are inversely coupled to changes in the Antarctic, such that hot and cold periods 'seesaw' between the poles2,3.

One driver is the oceanic 'Atlantic conveyor belt', in which cool, salty water sinks in the North Atlantic and flows southward. Abrupt changes in heat or salinity can disrupt the flow; warm periods in the Arctic, for example, are thought to have led icebergs to dump fresh water into the North Atlantic, decreasing the salinity and density of northern seawater and preventing it from sinking. The cold water stays in the Arctic, cooling it down, while Antarctica does not receive the cold water it normally would, shifting southern temperatures up.

That, at least, is the theory. But temperature can be exchanged between the poles through other channels, including the atmosphere, which moves heat faster than ocean currents do, says Bo Vinther, a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen, who has worked on coring projects in Greenland and Antarctica. If palaeoclimatologists see long lags between temperature changes at the poles when they stack the WAIS cores up against those from Greenland, that evidence would suggest a lead role for the ocean in the bipolar seesaw. But a shorter lag would suggest a more prominent role for the atmosphere.

The CO2 record will help to answer this question, too: CO2 from deep in the ocean, where large masses of organic matter have decomposed, has a different isotopic signature from terrestrial or atmospheric CO2. Heavier CO2 in the WAIS record would suggest that ocean circulation bringing up deep water was largely responsible for the bipolar seesaw.

With about a kilometre of ice left to pull up, Taylor is hopeful that the core will be complete by the end of the next drilling season. But the final metres can be the toughest to dig up because the drill's descent grows longer with each segment of extracted core.

"We can get it all done next season if everything goes perfectly," he says. "But this is Antarctica. Every day is a surprise."

news20100128reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Nina Chestney
LONDON
Wed Jan 27, 2010 8:12am EST
UK firms could cut energy bills up to 30 percent

LONDON (Reuters) - Small and medium-sized British businesses could cut their energy costs by up to 30 percent a year but are unaware of the true potential for savings, a survey by the Carbon Trust shows.

The Carbon Trust, which advises the UK government, polled 700 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) which spend between 50,000 pounds and 3 million pounds a year on energy.

It found that UK businesses could reduce their collective energy costs by more than 3 billion pounds by controlling the way employees use energy, controlling lighting and heating and investing in the building's equipment and infrastructure.

On Wednesday, the Trust kicked off a drive to cut the energy use, typically by 20 to 30 percent, of companies who spend 50,000 to 3 million pounds a year on energy bills, through free expert on-site advice, action plans, as well as interest-free loans.

"The SME community in the UK is huge. There are tens of thousands of companies with energy bills over 50k which would qualify for a survey but they aren't doing it," Hugh Jones, Carbon Trust's director of solutions, told Reuters.

The survey showed that 49 percent of respondents were worried about volatile energy costs in 2010. Sectors with the greatest concerns were construction, manufacturing and hospitality.

"Some of the smaller organizations, particularly in the service industry, still haven't understood the opportunity in (cutting energy use)," Jones said.

One in seven respondents in the survey said there was nobody in charge of the company's energy management, yet a third of companies with over 50 staff said improving their green credentials was a top priority for 2010.

"As we emerge from recession, companies with a good base of energy efficient behavior -- their customers will like it, employees will be more motivated and their bottom line will be helped," Jones said.

(Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by William Hardy)


[Green Business]
David Fogarty and Rob Taylor
Wed Jan 27, 2010 8:21am EST
Australia opposition eyeing voluntary CO2 cuts plan

SINGAPORE/CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's main opposition coalition, which has repeatedly blocked attempts to pass carbon trading laws, is eyeing a voluntary scheme based on buying up cheap offsets as a way to break the deadlock.

According to documents obtained by Reuters, the scheme, funded with public money, would buy carbon offsets from energy efficiency and forestry projects, among others.

The idea, crafted ahead of elections this year in which climate shift will be a big issue for voters, has sparked concern it will not drive deep emissions cuts by industry and risks putting too much pressure on the public purse as sole buyer.

The government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who made a 2007 election promise to push for emissions trading to fight climate change, plans to reintroduce its package of carbon trading laws into the Senate after parliament resumes next week.

The package was agreed with the coalition of conservatives before a change of its leadership in December which hardened opposition to Rudd's preferred emissions system.

"We believe it's necessary for the parliament to consider this integrated proposal that we agreed ... with more than half the coalition last year," Rudd told local radio Wednesday.

While his government has turned up the pressure on the opposition to deliver a viable alternative, the chances of Rudd's carbon pollution reduction scheme (CPRS) laws passing look slim after two rejections last year. The conservative opposition, Greens and two independents hold a majority in the Senate.

Analysts say much hinges on the content of a plan by new opposition leader Tony Abbott, to be announced before parliament resumes, and industry's reaction to gauge whether the government will win the bruising carbon trade debate.

"The real determinate as to what will happen to the CPRS policy comes down to how effective the government are in the next few months in their efforts to promote the CPRS," said Martijn Wilder, a leading climate change lawyer from Baker & McKenzie.

Also crucial was containing Abbott and his election-fighting mantra of "a great big new tax," he said.

The opposition says Rudd's mandatory trading scheme, which aims to put a price on every tonne of carbon emitted from 1,000 of Australia's top emitting companies and operations, is an unfair burden on industry and a costly tax for consumers.

The Greens, who control five key swing votes, say it won't lead to deep emissions cuts. They announced their own scheme last week based on a two-year fixed price of around A$20 a tonne of carbon from July 2010.

LIMITED ACCESS

The opposition has been testing a number of ideas and soliciting feedback, with the offset fund seemingly a key focus.

According to confidential correspondence to the office of Greg Hunt, the shadow minister for climate change, some organizations have called for clarity on how the carbon fund scheme could be ramped up to force greater industry efficiency.

Feedback to Hunt's office also lays out worries about limited access to the international carbon market, and how to set a stronger price signal if Australia decides to take on a tougher emissions reduction target for 2020 and beyond.

"Nothing...I repeat nothing has been determined and there were hundreds of ideas considered and submitted and numerous requests for comments on possible ideas," Hunt told Reuters in response to emailed questions.

Wilder said the idea seemed similar to the previous Howard government's A$400 million Greenhouse Gas Abatement Program, which was criticized as ineffective in a 2008 government report because it failed to create sufficient offset projects.

"Hunt is reported to have been advocating setting up a large fund backed by government money to in effect buy voluntary emissions reductions from business," said Wilder.

"The idea is that you would start off buying reductions from the least cost areas," he said, such as energy efficiency and forestry and predicted a carbon price of A$10 to A$14 a tonne.

"It sounds very much like central planning," said Connell Burke, head of power trading for Westpac, adding it would be a wider tax on the economy because the government would have to pay for it somehow.

"I think the only advantage this scheme has is that the wider electricity prices are not increased and therefore it isn't a tax on the pricing of all power generators," he said.

(Editing by David Fox)


[Green Business]
Nina Chestney
LONDON
Wed Jan 27, 2010 8:21am EST
Interest in voluntary carbon credits picks up

LONDON (Reuters) - Carbon offset retailers and brokers have seen increased interest in and demand for voluntary carbon credits this month, particularly from the United States.

"Since this year started we have seen a huge amount interest -- mostly from the U.S. -- in carbon credits and it won't be long before the voluntary market worldwide begins really to gain some momentum," said Matthew Sullivan, chief executive of carbon offset retailer the Carbon Advice Group.

The unregulated voluntary market operates outside mandatory emissions cut schemes such as the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism or the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme.

It relies on businesses to self-regulate their carbon emissions in the absence of a legally binding climate agreement and individuals' need to offset their carbon footprint.

Brokers MF Global saw an increase in demand for Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) and Gold Standard credits this month.

"Interest in pure-VCS credits, particularly from U.S. buyers, has increased markedly, " it said in a brokers' note.

Prices for Gold Standard spot voluntary emissions reductions were around 6.50 to 7.50 euros a tonne. Pure Voluntary Carbon Standard credits were $2-$2.50, while recent vintage pre-CDM voluntary carbon units were $3-$4.

news20100128reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
LONDON
Wed Jan 27, 2010 8:44am EST
EU carbon at one-week high

LONDON (Reuters) - European carbon emissions futures were at a one-week high on Wednesday, as rising British natural gas prices and prolonged cold weather supported prices, traders said.

EU Allowances for December delivery were 5 cents or 0.37 percent higher at 13.66 euros ($19.21) a tonne at 0917 GMT, after hitting an intra-day high of 13.78 euros in the first hour of trade. Prices last traded at these levels on January 20.

Traders said prolonged cold weather in Europe and higher natural gas prices compared to coal was fuelling demand for EUAs.

When natural gas prices rise, it is cheaper for utilities to burn carbon-heavy coal, fuelling demand for more carbon permits to cover the emissions.

"The lasting cold snap and deeper divergence between gas and coal is supporting prices," an emissions trader said.

Utilities are buying below 13.40 euros while financial institutions are selling around the 13.90 level, he added.

British natural gas prices have been on the rise as cold weather across Europe was forecast to stay for another two weeks, which stoked existing worries over dwindling fuel stocks.

European demand for coal remains muted but the cold weather snap has drawn down coal stockpiles and some utilities still short of a few prompt cargoes have been buying this week.

U.N.-backed certified emissions reductions were up 10 cents or 0.84 percent at 12.00 euros a tonne. The EUA-CER spread was at 1.66 euros.

Australia will stick to its 5 to 25 percent emissions cut range as part of a global commitment to fight climate chan

Australia will stick to its 5 to 25 percent emissions cut range as part of a global commitment to fight climate chan ge under thecontroversial "Copenhagen accord," the government said on Wednesday.

This depends on strong steps by India and China to reduce emissions, however.

Australia's main opposition coalition, which has repeatedly blocked attempts to pass carbon trading laws, is eyeing a voluntary scheme based on buying up cheap offsets as a way to break th 1696595969 deadlock.

According to documents obtained by Reuters, the scheme, funded with public money, would buy carbon offsets from energy efficiency and forestry projects, among others.


[Green Business]
Chisa Fujioka
TOKYO
Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:00am EST
Japan says still hopeful for global climate deal

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan said on Wednesday reaching a legally binding climate agreement in Mexico by the end of the year could be tough given uncertainties over the fate of U.S. legislation but it had not lost hope for a global deal.

Environment Minister Sakihito Ozawa also told Reuters in an interview he was still aiming to launch a domestic emissions trading market with compulsory volume caps next year, although more time may be needed to discuss its design with industry.

Japan, the world's fifth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has pledged to cut emissions by 25 percent by 2020 from 1990 levels on condition of an ambitious deal being agreed on by all major emitters.

But analysts say hopes for a strong deal this year have dimmed after the U.S. Democrats lost a key Senate seat last week to a Republican opposed to capping emissions, derailing any momentum President Barack Obama had for passing a climate bill.

"We are basically hearing that the U.S. will submit (to negotiations) what is being deliberated on in the Senate, so if that is not implemented, a deal will be tough," Ozawa said.

"It won't be easy but there is no need to give up now."

U.N. climate talks in Mexico in November will try to build on a weak "Copenhagen Accord" worked out last month in the Danish capital that sets a goal of limiting warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times.

The Mexico meeting, however, will be undermined if the United States, the top emitter behind China, has not set caps on carbon emissions.

Ozawa also said changes were needed with United Nations rules for negotiations to proceed more smoothly.

U.N. decisions need to be made unanimously, meaning developing countries at the Copenhagen talks insisted any text be reviewed in a plenary session of 193 nations. The meeting also merely "took note" of the accord because several countries had opposed it.

"There needs to be a reform of the U.N. consensus system, its system for proceedings," Ozawa said, adding that countries which opposed the accord had been against any deal from the start.

"There was no problem with the content, but it was a problem of procedure," he said.

CAP-AND-TRADE

Despite the weak accord, Ozawa said Japan would press ahead with domestic policies to cut emissions, with the government set to pass a climate bill in parliament during the current session running until mid-June.

The bill, to be submitted in March, is expected to include Japan's emissions reduction goal for 2020, along with its target to cut emissions by 80 percent by 2050.

The environment ministry has also proposed the bill include the launch of a cap-and-trade domestic emissions trading system, although it is not clear yet if the legislation would specify the year in which the market would start.

Ozawa hoped the trading system would start next year, when Japan is also considering the introduction of a carbon tax. But with details for the trading scheme still sketchy, the kick-off could be in 2012, he said.

Companies, which now trade based on voluntary targets, have resisted a mandatory scheme and have been slow to cooperate with the government on designing rules for the new system.

"It's been difficult because on the one hand, the system needs to accommodate companies for them to embrace it, but if the rules are too easy on them, it won't be effective," he said.


[Green Business]
BEIJING
Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:39am EST
China's Cabinet says pollution situation still serious

BEIJING (Reuters) - China still faces a serious threat from pollution despite recent government efforts to clean up, the Cabinet said on Wednesday, adding the country would step up investment in environmentally friendly industries.

While noting some progress at closing outdated factories, cleaning up dirty rivers and increasing access to clean drinking water, the State Council, or Cabinet, warned against any resting on laurels during a regular meeting.

"Though our country's environmental protection work has achieved positive results, generally the pollution of the environment has yet to be controlled," according to a statement posted on the government's website (www.gov.cn) about the meeting, chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao.

"Supervision and management abilities over the environment remain lagging, and the situation is still severe," it added.

We must "increase investment in and forcefully develop environmentally-friendly industries, as well as strengthen the ability to protect the environment," the statement said.

"Spare no effort in promoting efforts to fight pollution and cut emissions ... vigorously reduce air pollution and emissions from the thermal power generation, steel, nonferrous and cement industries," it added, without elaborating.

More than 30 years of breakneck economic growth have had an appalling affect on China's environment, with rivers blackened and blankets of smog smothering many cities.

The government has pledged to do more to tackle pollution -- a cause of violent protests in some parts of China -- by closing factories and mines and investing in green technology, but admits it faces a hard and long fight.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Jerry Norton)

news20100128reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]
[Green Business]
Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:55am EST
Is there an eco-angle to the Apple tablet?

Regardless of whether we see a gorgeous tablet from Apple on Wednesday, there is a clear trend toward using electronic devices to read what has traditionally been printed media. From an environmental point of view, that shift is a mixed bag, depending as much on user behavior as on technology.

According to reports, Apple will show off a tablet PC that can be used with a docking station or an electronic reader.

Displacing printing media with an electronic device like the Amazon Kindle can reduce the amount of energy associated with cutting down trees and making physical periodicals and books, according to some studies.

But without electronics recycling, the environmental footprint is not good. After all, tossing an old newspaper into the recycling bin is a lot easier and common than recycling electronics, for which the U.S. rate is estimated at about 10 percent.

As with many environmental questions, the more you ask, the more complicated it becomes. But here are some considerations:

Who makes the box? Apple has caught heat from watchdog groups in the past, but its current products are state of the art, when it comes to energy efficiency and materials. In its latest products, Apple has phased out the use of PVC plastic and hazardous brominated flame retardants, so it would be surprising if it didn't continue this policy with new hardware.

Presumably, people will be running their Apple tablets off the batteries more than a laptop or desktop PC. Batteries will, of course, degrade and need to be replaced after a few years. Apple says its laptop batteries last longer than others, and it offers a take-back program to replace batteries, so it gets high marks from environmental groups on that score.

On the other hand, after a few years, many people are likely to buy something new, rather than send in a device to upgrade the batteries, which ultimately creates more e-waste.

Pixels versus paper. Intuitively, it seems that reducing paper by using an electronic device will consume less energy than harvesting trees, processing pulp, printing newspaper, and delivering it to your doorstep. But making a blanket conclusion about energy use through electronic communication is not easy.

The Center for Sustainable Communications in Stockholm, Sweden, conducted a study concluding that reading a newspaper on a PC for 30 minutes results in about the same carbon dioxide emissions as a printed newspaper. (Click for PDF of study.) And as a device that's smaller than a PC, the rumored Apple tablet should consume less energy.

Paper company International Paper goes even further to point out that the paper-and-pulp industry uses resources (trees) that can be managed sustainably, and recycling rates are far higher in the paper industry than electronics.

Energy intensity The efficiency of any tablet or e-reader is certainly worth a comparison with laptops and similarly sized devices. Amazon's Kindle, for example, uses E Ink technology, which is significantly more power-efficient than an LCD screen, for example.

But looking at how much energy a device consumes when in the hands of the end user isn't the full story, notes Casey Harrell, a coordinator for Greenpeace's global electronics campaign. About half of the energy "embedded" in an electronics product comes from the supply chain of companies that supply Apple or other manufacturers, he said.

What's more, as more and more smartphones and tablets are released, the energy consumption shifts toward data centers to which those gadgets connect. "A tablet can certainly mark a decrease in the environmental footprint versus traditional printing, but the big question is, what energy is powering these data centers in the cloud?" Harrell said.

How the gadget is used. Apple may make an item worth keeping for five years--a long time in the frenzied pace of consumer electronics. But if the buyer replaces it within a year, then that also adds to the e-waste stream. The same is true if customers don't take advantage of recycling services.

Overall, an Apple tablet, or the host of electronic readers expected this year, can bring many benefits of digitized content and even change how we read, day to day. Whether it brings a net environmental benefit, though, has more to do with the owner than the device.


[Green Business]
Wed Jan 27, 2010 10:20am EST
How eco-friendly is Apple's tablet?

(CNET Green Tech) - Regardless of whether we see a gorgeous tablet from Apple on Wednesday, there is a clear trend toward using electronic devices to read what has traditionally been printed media. From an environmental point of view, that shift is a mixed bag, depending as much on user behavior as on technology.

According to reports, Apple will show off a tablet PC that can be used with a docking station or an electronic reader.

Displacing printing media with an electronic device like the Amazon Kindle can reduce the amount of energy associated with cutting down trees and making physical periodicals and books, according to some studies.

But without electronics recycling, the environmental footprint is not good. After all, tossing an old newspaper into the recycling bin is a lot easier and common than recycling electronics, for which the U.S. rate is estimated at about 10 percent.

As with many environmental questions, the more you ask, the more complicated it becomes. But here are some considerations:

Who makes the box? Apple has caught heat from watchdog groups in the past, but its current products are state of the art, when it comes to energy efficiency and materials. In its latest products, Apple has phased out the use of PVC plastic and hazardous brominated flame retardants, so it would be surprising if it didn't continue this policy with new hardware.

Presumably, people will be running their Apple tablets off the batteries more than a laptop or desktop PC. Batteries will, of course, degrade and need to be replaced after a few years. Apple says its laptop batteries last longer than others, and it offers a take-back program to replace batteries, so it gets high marks from environmental groups on that score.

On the other hand, after a few years, many people are likely to buy something new, rather than send in a device to upgrade the batteries, which ultimately creates more e-waste.

Pixels versus paper. Intuitively, it seems that reducing paper by using an electronic device will consume less energy than harvesting trees, processing pulp, printing newspaper, and delivering it to your doorstep. But making a blanket conclusion about energy use through electronic communication is not easy.

The Center for Sustainable Communications in Stockholm, Sweden, conducted a study concluding that reading a newspaper on a PC for 30 minutes results in about the same carbon dioxide emissions as a printed newspaper.

And as a device that's smaller than a PC, the rumored Apple tablet should consume less energy.

Paper company International Paper goes even further to point out that the paper-and-pulp industry uses resources (trees) that can be managed sustainably, and recycling rates are far higher in the paper industry than electronics.

Energy intensity The efficiency of any tablet or e-reader is certainly worth a comparison with laptops and similarly sized devices. Amazon's Kindle, for example, uses E Ink technology, which is significantly more power-efficient than an LCD screen, for example.

But looking at how much energy a device consumes when in the hands of the end user isn't the full story, notes Casey Harrell, a coordinator for Greenpeace's global electronics campaign. About half of the energy "embedded" in an electronics product comes from the supply chain of companies that supply Apple or other manufacturers, he said.

What's more, as more and more smartphones and tablets are released, the energy consumption shifts toward data centers to which those gadgets connect. "A tablet can certainly mark a decrease in the environmental footprint versus traditional printing, but the big question is, what energy is powering these data centers in the cloud?" Harrell said.

How the gadget is used. Apple may make an item worth keeping for five years--a long time in the frenzied pace of consumer electronics. But if the buyer replaces it within a year, then that also adds to the e-waste stream. The same is true if customers don't take advantage of recycling services.

Overall, an Apple tablet, or the host of electronic readers expected this year, can bring many benefits of digitized content and even change how we read, day to day. Whether it brings a net environmental benefit, though, has more to do with the owner than the device.

news20100128reut4

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
DAVOS, Switzerland
Wed Jan 27, 2010 10:36am EST
BlackRock clean fund targets Asian solar stocks

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - BlackRock's New Energy Fund is "cautiously" investing more in solar companies after a glut in solar panels and falling prices saw producers' margins squeezed over the past two years, its fund manager said.

The BlackRock New Energy Fund was launched in 2001 and had some $3.9 billion assets under management as of Dec 31.

The fund delivered returns of 21 percent in 2009. That compared with 27 percent returns to the wider MSCI index of global stocks

"We're now cautiously increasing our weightings in solar, it is cautious because we think it's a u-shaped recovery in demand," co-head of the fund Robin Batchelor told Reuters on Wednesday.

"Were focusing a bit more on the Asian producers which we think have a structural advantage over some of the European producers," he said in a telephone conversation from London.

"(Manufacturing in China) gets a big subsidy on power, cheap land, you've got cheap employment, it takes a bit quicker to get your permitting, all your environmental issues taken care of, these are things which all cost a lot in the western world."

"Power is a big component in manufacturing cost, that's putting a structural benefit toward some of the Asian producers."

The BlackRock New Energy Fund cut its exposure to solar from up to 30 percent "several years ago" to 5 percent, in advance of the solar panel over-supply developing, Batchelor said.

ABN AMRO's Solar Energy was down 3 percent last year, while the DJ-SAM (Dow Jones-Sustainable Asset Management) World Solar Index was down 2.4 percent.

More than half of BlackRock's New Energy Fund is invested in companies specialising in renewable energy, with the rest in stocks for example focused on "green" buildings, electric car batteries, emissions trading and carbon capture and storage -- a technology meant to remove carbon emissions from coal plants.

A 39-year-old Batchelor launched the fund in April 2001.

He said four factors were restraining growth in clean energy: the availability of bank finance following the financial crisis; slow government disbursement of stimulus cash destined for the "green" sector; a general weakness in power prices; and a loss of momentum in new green policies this year.


[Green Business]
Pete Harrison
BRUSSELS
Wed Jan 27, 2010 11:48am EST
EU agrees to make lowest climate offer to U.N

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union has decided to stick to its lowest offer for cutting carbon emissions under a U.N climate accord, but will maintain a conditional pledge to do more if others follow suit, EU diplomats said on Wednesday.

Their comments after EU ambassadors met in Brussels confirmed the 27-nation bloc's commitment to unilateral target carbon dioxide emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels over the next decade.

Some EU countries such as Poland, Italy, Cyprus and Malta had opposed making the more ambitious conditional offer because of concerns that it would be too costly for industry.

"Italy and Poland said at the meeting that they were concerned but they wouldn't stand in the way," an EU envoy said.

Before United Nations-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen in December, the EU offered to deepen its cuts to 30 percent of 1990 levels if other rich countries made similar efforts.

Ambassadors agreed the EU should sign up to the accord with the 20 percent cuts in a letter to be sent to the U.N. on Thursday, but that the 30 percent conditional offer should still be made, even if the conditions behind it are far from being met.

The meeting in the Danish capital ended without agreement on binding cuts to climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions, leaving countries until January 31 to submit their own plans.

Experts say the total cuts offered there by rich countries amount to no more than 18 percent and fall far short of the 25-40 percent that U.N. scientists outline as necessary to avert dangerous climate change.

The world is on track for temperatures to rise to 3.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century, which would bring catastrophic melting of ice sheets and rising seas, some scientists say.

Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands were among the countries that defended the 30 percent offer.

"The UK remains committed to the conditional offer of 30 percent to stay on the table to ensure that we do not lose the momentum that has been generated over the last few months," said an official from Britain's Department of Energy and Climate Change.

(Editing by Sue Thomas)


[Green Business]
Stuart McDill
LONDON
Wed Jan 27, 2010 12:16pm EST
"Stealth" wind turbine blade may end radar problem

LONDON (Reuters) - The development of a "stealth" turbine blade, based on military technology, may help overcome the problem of wind farms interfering with aviation radar systems, its developers said.

The issue of turbine blades confusing radar operators accounts for around half the objections to wind farm planning applications in Britain.

Now, Vestas Wind Systems is experimenting with stealth technology, developed to help warplanes escape notice, to reduce a turbine blade's radar signature -- the size of the blip it makes on an air traffic controller's radar screen.

"These tips of the blades travel at about -- the same speed as a light aircraft," said Ian Chatting, head of research in Britain for Vestas, the world's largest wind energy company.

"So you can see this blip and the radar operators don't know if it is a light aircraft...whether it is real, interference or a shadow from the wind turbines," he said.

The confusion is caused by radar bouncing off moving wind turbines, creating a cloud of reflected signals.

"As an aircraft flies into that cloud, you can then never tell whether it is the same aircraft that has come out or if it is a different one or if it has stopped or whether it is just a wind turbine blade that is coming over toward you," Chatting said.

Global wind power capacity is now more than 120 gigawatts (GW), according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), and Vestas say as much as 9 GW of potential wind power is on hold because of objections by civilian, military and marine radar operators.

In Britain alone the problem has led NATS, formerly the National Air Traffic Service, to object to more than 5GW worth of planning applications.

Brendan Kelly, NATS head of operational strategy, said it was working with industry to solve the problem.

"Whilst we do object to wind farms, our arguments on our objections to wind farms are always based on the operational or technical issues that actually the industry does understand," he said.

Three potential solutions are under consideration, including a software fix and efforts to 'factor out' whole wind farms.

The Vestas solution has to be carefully implemented to make sure aircraft will still be aware of turbine blades.

"It is exactly the same technology as a stealth bomber or a stealth fighter only it is specially tuned again, so that we don't completely disappear from the radar and if you are in an aircraft you can actually still see these things in your radar screen," said Chatting.

The 44 meter (144 ft) long blade incorporates two layers of glass cloth printed with a special ink that are embedded in the structure as part of the normal manufacturing process. The radar passes through the first layer, but bounces off the second and is effectively trapped between the two.

The British Wind Energy Association welcomed all development efforts but said a range of solutions are needed.

"I think the stealth blade has the potential to make a significant contribution. Projects would need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis to see if this would be, as I understand, appropriate mitigation," said BWEA aviation spokeswoman Nicola Vaughan.

"It is unlikely to work in every single case...but if we can address the aviation issue as a whole it will take away a significant barrier to wind energy projects both on and offshore," Vaughan said.

As GWEC estimates of the number of wind farms increasing on average by 30 percent per year, the problem of crowded skies is likely to make a solution to the problem ever more important.

(Reporting by Stuart McDill, editing by Anthony Barker)

news20100128reut5

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Wed Jan 27, 2010 10:34am EST
Canadian Solar inks 60 MW supply deal with Fire Energy

(Reuters) - Chinese solar-cell maker Canadian Solar Inc's said it had agreed to supply 60 megawatts of photovoltaic modules to Spain's Fire Energy Group in 2010.

Fire Energy, a system integrator, said it will promote Canadian Solar's PV products in Spain, Germany and Italy. Initial shipments started this month.

Wednesday's news comes a day after the Italian government said it will unveil a much-awaited plan for new incentives for its rapidly-growing solar energy sector on February 11.

However, concerns over a potential deep cut in feed-in tariffs (FIT) in Germany that could hit solar companies around the world has left investors jittery.

In November, Canadian Solar had said it expects to double shipments in 2010, with major markets, including Germany and Italy driving demand.

Shares of the company were up 2 percent at $23.39 Wednesday morning on Nasdaq.

The stock, off about 30 percent from a year-high it hit earlier this month, is still up eight-fold from a March 2009 year-low.

(Reporting by Adveith Nair in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)


[Green Business]
WASHINGTON
Wed Jan 27, 2010 12:37pm EST
SEC prods companies on climate change disclosure

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. securities regulators on Wednesday nudged companies toward disclosing risks associated with climate change in their annual reports.

For years, big investors have urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to issue guidance telling firms to disclose climate change risks because it could have an impact on their financial results.

In a 3-2 vote, a divided SEC heeded investors calls and suggested that companies have a responsibility to discuss the effects of the environment and pending rules on their business.

"Climate change and related governmental action can create risks and opportunities for companies," said SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar.

Under SEC rules, companies are required to disclose material information or information that an investor should possess in order to decide whether to buy a company's stock.

Many companies already disclose environmental risks, but investors, such as the largest public pension fund, Calpers, contend that the information is not consistently disclosed.

(Reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)


[Green Business]
Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent
WASHINGTON
Wed Jan 27, 2010 4:57pm EST
U.S. climate bill possible this year: Sen. Graham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two key U.S. senators on Wednesday renewed their commitment to passing a climate change law backed by President Barack Obama, saying they would continue to seek a compromise cap-and-trade bill this year.

"In this area, the opportunity exists this year, in a bipartisan fashion, to get something...," Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said of a bill to tackle climate-warming emissions.

But he said the measures now on Capitol Hill had no chance of earning the 60 votes needed for approval in the Senate.

"There will never be 60 votes for climate change legislation as it exists today," Graham told a forum on clean energy, jobs and security. "And it would be a shame if that is the end of the story."

Obama, who ran for office on a promise to control climate change, strongly supports a U.S. cap-and-trade law to curb greenhouse emissions and a global agreement to do the same.

Under cap-and-trade, utilities, oil refineries and factories would be required to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases over the next 40 years. Companies would have to obtain permits for each ton of carbon dioxide they emit and those permits would be traded on a regulated exchange.

The House of Representatives narrowly passed a cap-and-trade bill last year, but similar measures failed to pass in the Senate and the prospects dimmed after an electoral setback for Obama's Democratic Party.

Without U.S. legislation, the United States had a weak hand at international climate talks in Copenhagen in December, and no binding carbon-limiting targets were reached there.

GAS EMISSIONS

Graham is working with Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Senator Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, to write a bipartisan measure to lower U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Kerry, speaking to the same group as Graham, denied a report in The New York Times that advocates of a cap-and-trade bill were scaling back their efforts.

"Our goal remains exactly what it was before: to price carbon and to create a target for reduction of emissions that is real," Kerry said.

"So we have not scaled back our goals, they are the same," Kerry said. "We have not recalibrated some lesser approach that is only energy or only this or that ... We have to price carbon in order to get the marketplace moving properly."

Graham rejected earlier versions of a carbon-capping bill as not friendly enough to business and not able to create enough jobs. But he said doing nothing would allow China to own "the most exciting economic opportunity of the 21st century -- the green economy."

Key to crafting a bipartisan bill, Graham said, was inclusion of more nuclear power and responsible exploration for offshore oil and gas.

Prospects for a comprehensive cap-and-trade measure were hit by a surprise election loss by Democrats last week which robbed them of a critical majority in the U.S. Senate.

Scott Brown, who won the Massachusetts seat and eliminated the Democrats' ability to overcome opposition procedural blocks, opposed a federal cap-and-trade bill in his campaign.

(Editing by David Storey)


[Green Business]
DAVOS, Switzerland
Wed Jan 27, 2010 1:50pm EST
Cleantech "needs billions" to scale up: fund

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Emerging clean energy technologies are facing a funding shortfall in a race to roll out at a commercial scale, said Alan Salzman, chief executive of investors VantagePoint Venture Partners, on Wednesday.

VantagePoint manages over $4.5 billion of funds invested in growing companies in information technology, health and clean technology including solar power, low-carbon light bulbs and electric cars.

The venture capital firm holds a stake in Better Place, a company specializing in installing charging infrastructure for electric cars which raised a further $350 million on Monday.

"There is an issue as these new technologies come on, that to deploy them, whether it's Better Place deployment across countries, the solar thermal power plants around the world, our LED (light emitting diode) light bulbs and factories to make them, we need billions and billions of dollars to scale out," he told Reuters.

"I don't really have a good answer" to where that capital would come from, he said.

"VantagePoint is one of the largest in the world doing this stuff but we have $5 billion. I think Exxon generated more than that last weekend," he said, speaking on the sidelines of a business and policy summit in the Davos Swiss ski resort.

A funding gap meant companies were scouring the world for capital. "We need to make sure new industrial policies that will drive our economies this century are the right ones focused on future industries. Those societies that marshal their resources behind this best are going to benefit the most."

China was emerging as a leader in electric cars, he said. "China is being very aggressive, there's no question they're going into electric vehicles."

Cleantech is an emerging sector of technologies which contribute to a cleaner environment, for example supplying low carbon energy, boosting efficiency, recycling waste or cleaning water supplies.

Salzman was upbeat, however, about the future of the sector, saying electric cars and utility scale solar power plants using mirrors to generate power - called solar thermal - would be mainstream before 2020.

He said a number of items taken for granted today, like cell phones, had needed a long gestation period before really taking off once the infrastructure was in place: "I think we're going to see the same phenomenon."

news20100128reut6

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Larry Aragon and Peter Henderson
SAN FRANCISCO
Wed Jan 27, 2010 7:06pm EST
American VCs unfazed by China cleantech: Reuters survey

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Fears the United States will lose a battle with China to create clean technology for a climate-changing world don't fly with Silicon Valley venture capitalists.

The California financiers have an impressive track record, having funded small companies that eventually turned into Google, Yahoo and scores of other giants that shaped the internet revolution. After a sharp dropoff in the wake of the financial crisis, VCs expect to be more active this year and anticipate a much stronger flow of clean tech acquisitions or public offerings.

Perhaps not surprisingly, most also believe the United States remains overwhelmingly the best place to launch a clean tech business and market new goods and services -- and they are putting their money where their mouth is.

Those are some of the takeaways of a recent survey of 41 clean tech investors by Thomson Reuters.

Extrapolating from the survey responses of the venture capitalists, most of them in the United States, they plan to make up to 140 new investments in cleantech companies this year.

That would be a significant increase from last year, when the U.S. venture industry as a whole made 117 new clean tech investments, according to a venture capital database maintained by Thomson Reuters.

Pointing to the power of U.S. innovation and know-how, the respondents are optimistic the startups they finance will lead the way in creating technologies that reduce global warming even if material reductions in carbon dioxide emissions take time.

"It is likely that we will make significant technology, conservation and policy gains globally ... but material CO2 reductions will take an additional decade to register," Don Wood, a managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, wrote in one survey response.

Robert Nelsen, co-founder and managing director of Arch Venture Partners, noted that "the world has absolutely no hope of making any substantial impact on global warming without major scientific breakthroughs, almost all which will come from United States' innovation.

"China and Europe are doing well developing markets and applications, but we still own the fundamentals."

BEST MARKETS

More than three-fourths of survey respondents said the United States would be the best market for cleantech over the next five years, and 88 percent said America was the best place to base a cleantech business in the next five years.

China ranked as the second best market (with 16 percent of the total) and the second best place to locate a cleantech business (with about 13 percent).

The survey respondents clearly recognize the critical role that other countries will play if widespread adoption of clean technologies is to be successful.

Countries such as China, India and Brazil will adopt such technologies not just to combat climate change, but also because of the sheer energy demand their economies are generating, wrote Bilal Zuberi, a principal with General Catalyst Partners.

"Pressure from these countries will force the developed world to also adopt renewables and energy-efficient technologies at a faster pace," Zuberi noted.

One caveat: over the next decade, the progress will come from companies that have already moved beyond venture capital, with public share sales or by being bought out.

"VC-backed companies will definitely play a part, but considering it takes five years for one to mature, it is the companies that exist today that will have the biggest impact by 2020," wrote Todd Jaquez-Fissori, a managing director at Hercules Growth Capital.

MORE CLEANTECH IPOS

U.S. venture capitalists expect to see a substantial increase in the number of their portfolio companies that are acquired or go public this year. More than 51 percent of the respondents said they expected one to two of their companies to be acquired or go public this year -- which translates to anywhere from 21 to 42 companies.

That would be a significant increase from last year, when only one VC-backed cleantech company, lithium-ion battery maker A123 Systems, went public on a U.S. exchange and just seven VC-backed cleantech companies were acquired, according to Thomson Reuters.

Three VC-backed cleantech companies have already registered to go public this year:

* Codexis, which is working with Royal Dutch Shell on biofuel products, has registered for a $100 million IPO. Codexis has raised more than $125 million in VC from Bio*One Capital, Chevron Technology Ventures, CMEA, and the Malaysian Technology Development Corp., among others, according to Thomson Reuters.

* JinkoSolar Holding Co. Ltd., a China-based solar company, has filed for a $100 million IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. It previously raised $35 million in venture funding from CIVC Partners, Shenzhen Capital Group Co. and Pitango Venture Capital, according to Thomson Reuters.

* And Solyndra Inc., which builds thin-film solar tubes, filed for a $300 million IPO. It has raised more than $500 million in venture capital from Argonaut Private Equity, CMEA Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Rockport Capital Partners and U.S. Venture Partners.

The primary focus of cleantech investors is now energy conservation.

Some 65 percent of respondents surveyed said their top cleantech area for 2010 would be energy conservation-related companies, such as makers of LED lighting, energy-efficient building materials, or software that tracks and manages energy used in home and electric vehicles.

Asked for specific areas of investment, fewer than 18 percent said they would target companies focused on "clean" energy production, such as wind, solar, wave power and biofuels, to replace energy produced by coal and oil.

Some 31 percent focused on energy management and 31 percent more on energy storage, such as battery makers.

(Additional reporting by Clare Baldwin; Editing by Sara Ledwith and Jim Impoco)


[Green Business]
WASHINGTON
Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:58am EST
Obama eager to help advance climate bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he wants to advance a climate bill that has been stalled in the U.S. Senate, but he did not say it had to include a cap-and-trade market for emissions blamed for warming the planet.

Under cap-and-trade, utilities, oil refineries and factories would be required to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases over the next 40 years. Companies would have to obtain permits for each ton of carbon dioxide they emit and those permits would be traded on a regulated exchange.

Obama did not mention the words cap-and-trade in his annual State of the Union speech to Congress. The market mechanism to cut pollution blamed for warming the planet was included in the bill the House of Representatives passed in June.

Obama said he wanted to pass a comprehensive energy and climate bill in the Senate that included incentives for clean energy and nuclear and offshore oil drilling.

"This year, I am eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate," Obama said.

In an effort to win votes from Republicans, like Senator John McCain, he said the country must build a new generation of clean nuclear plants.

Senators John Kerry, a Democrat, Lindsey Graham, a Republican, and Joe Lieberman, an independent, are working on a compromise climate bill that would include more incentives for nuclear and offshore oil drilling.

Obama acknowledged that some believe caps on emissions would raise energy prices, while others doubt the science of global warming.

"But even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy," he said.

Obama said the country needs to make tough decisions on issues like climate and clean energy because countries like China and India are not waiting. "They are making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs."

He said investing in research on clean energy could create jobs.

"But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives," he said. "That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country."

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner and Jeff Mason)

news20100128reut7

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Gerard Wynn
DAVOS, Switzerland
Wed Jan 27, 2010 7:21pm EST
Is clean tech China's moon shot?

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - So far, wind turbines are not Sputnik. But one day they could be.

The global race to develop clean technology is not just about who can build the best solar parks or wind farms. It is also shaping up as a contest between Chinese-style capitalism and the more market-oriented approach fancied by the United States and Europe.

The question comes down to this: will China's highly capitalized command-and-control economy trump laissez-faire in a low-carbon shift that is widely portrayed as the next industrial revolution?

The failure in Copenhagen to agree to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a new global climate treaty when it expires in 2012 has thrown the focus on national measures. And by almost all accounts, the Chinese are coming on strong.

Beijing's top leaders have made clear their intention to have their nation dominate this new industry, up and down the value ladder. And in their quest for the prize, they are not burdened by concerns facing their Western counterparts -- such as the impact of wind turbines on landscapes, higher energy prices for consumers, or investor returns.

"Developed markets need to be aware that China is gaining in this space," said David Russell, co-head of responsible investment at the 28 billion pound ($45 billion) British universities pension fund, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).

The recession has made it tougher for Europe and America to effect meaningful climate policy change. And with most major nations piling on debt to stimulate flagging economies, politicians likely will find it harder to earmark additional voter money for clean technology.

Instead, recession-hit Western economies are hoping the private sector can plug an estimated worldwide $150 billion annual funding gap to avoid more extreme droughts and floods.

But investors almost always follow the returns, and if the performance is not there, they are not likely to risk their capital. For example, Britain's USS allocates about half a percent of its assets to low-carbon and renewable energy funds, not including its investment in conventional energy companies, which themselves will have some green tinges.

It's hard to imagine the West filling the clean tech funding gap if pension funds -- which are as influential as they are big -- don't pony up more.

Russell says he would like to do more, but like other fund managers he has an obligation to pension holders. He and other fund managers say they won't allocate more to green because their first duty is to guarantee payouts for their members, and while clean tech stocks can yield decent returns, they are often small and risky.

Since a trough in global equities last March, energy efficiency stocks have risen 126 percent and clean energy and technology by 88 percent, compared with wider global stocks' 70 percent, a Deutsche report found this month.

But there are limited opportunities for investors. Oil majors, for example, dwarf the asset value of green companies, and cleantech funds can't move the dial for the big funds whose participation is necessary to close the funding gap.

Advantage, China?

Fortunately for the West, it's not so simple.

WINDY PLAYING FIELD

The global wind industry highlights diverging tactics between China and the West in developing important new markets.

China is leapfrogging global wind power rankings with a combination of aggressive growth targets and domestic support. It has doubled its entire installed capacity each year since 2005, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC).

This month, the British government announced plans for 32 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2020 -- more than a third of its entire present electricity generating capacity now.

The plan also depends on 100 billion pounds of increasingly finicky private capital. And this is an election year.

"I think it will happen," said Benjamin Sykes, head of renewables technology at the UK government-funded Carbon Trust, which advises British companies on how to reduce their carbon footprint. "It's do-able."

Others are less sure. "I don't think it's achievable without a big redirection of investment focus," said investor Tom Murley, at private equity firm HgCapital.

Murley runs a 300-million euro infrastructure fund focused on renewable energy projects in western Europe, in wind power, biogas and solar. The fund has combined debt and equity assets worth over 1 billion euros.

"Will the capital flow to this sector? That's the big question mark. Offshore wind is still relatively new, as yet we don't really know how that equipment is going to perform in the long-run, whether that's really going to be a good investment," said Murley.

As he and other investors see it, British policymakers have to make a choice: either create bigger incentives for investors to underwrite offshore wind power or impose additional taxes on fossil fuels, which would make carbon-based energy less profitable.

CHINA INC.

Europe has the world's clearest, most ambitious renewable energy law, most analysts agree. A European Union directive requires that the 27-nation bloc get a fifth of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

Germany is leading the charge there. It has the world's biggest solar power market because of aggressive market incentives that even Beijing has sought to mimic.

But China has its own distinct advantages. First and foremost is a "cozy relationship" between state-owned utilities, grid companies and banks, said Steve Sawyer, secretary-general of the Global Wind Energy Council.

China is expected to announce a target soon for about 150 gigawatts of wind power by 2020, which it would hit if it simply maintained present annual capacity growth, said Sawyer. The country also has two turbine makers, Sinovel and Goldwind, in the world top 10, according to the International Energy Agency.

Tao Wang, a climate policy expert with WWF China, said the country would this year develop its next five-year development plan to run from the start of 2011: this is likely to contain new steps to boost alternative energy.

"The Chinese government is essentially using the state banks and state power companies to support and foster a turbine industry," said Jefferies Bank analyst Michael McNamara.

It's not as if Western governments aren't involved in promoting wind turbines. The United States and Germany are the top two countries by installed power, and China edged out Spain into third place last year, according to GWEC.

How fast wind power develops in the United States depends on a climate and energy bill. If the United States passed a bill with an ambitious renewable energy target then "all bets are off" on the pace of growth, said Jefferies' McNamara.

But China has been on a tear -- last year it installed more wind turbines than any other country, says GWEC.

Furthermore, Western businesses are worried China is freezing them out of this lucrative market, preferring to nurture its own nascent industries without subjecting them to competition.

"The state-owned energy company sets up its development arm and they then go to a state-owned bank to get the funding, and they go to a state-owned grid company to make sure they can get a grid connection, and then lo and behold! If there's a bidding process, the state-owned turbine manufacturers happen to win the contracts," said McNamara.

That process has annoyed some Western manufacturers. They say that despite being forced to build local factories in China, because of a "local content" rule for installed turbines, they were still passed over on major contracts.

CAN THE MARKETS PREVAIL?

Some Western analysts still believe a markets-oriented approach works best and will ultimately prevail.

They argue that subsidized inputs will result in a less efficient industry, more focused on volume than cost and quality. "The best solutions come out of a competitive environment," said the Carbon Trust's Sykes.

The focus on adding new capacity has also run ahead of grid connections, meaning many Chinese turbines may never actually produce electricity.

"They will look like wind farms, and they may spin like wind farms, but there's no guarantee that they will actually work like wind farms," said Michael Liebreich, chief executive of the research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Moreover, some in the West believe the United States still has an advantage in innovation. The owner of patents, not factories, will likely earn the biggest profits and win the technology race.

In a Reuters poll of 41 U.S. venture capital investors, more than three-quarters of respondents said the United States would be the best market for cleantech over the next five years, and 88 percent believed America was the best place to base this business in the same time period. China ranked as the second best market (with 16 percent of the total).

"The world has absolutely no hope of making any substantial impact on global warming without major scientific breakthroughs, almost all which will come from United States' innovation," said Robert Nelsen, co-founder and managing director of Arch Venture Partners.

An undeniable edge for China is its huge pile of foreign exchange reserves. The nation's clean energy industry has recently benefited from Beijing's aggressive economic stimulus, which included funds for energy-efficient buildings.

CONTINUED ON newsreut8

news20100128reut8

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Gerard Wynn
DAVOS, Switzerland
Wed Jan 27, 2010 7:21pm EST
Is clean tech China's moon shot?

CONTINUED FROM newsreut7

Signs of an overheating Chinese economy may turn that tap down for a spell. By contrast, Western economies are expected to spend much of their green recovery cash this year and next.

FUNDING GAP

In recession-battered Western nations, and in China, the prime motives for promoting clean technology are jobs, profits and energy security -- not climate change. That leaves no guarantee that there will be enough investment to fight global warming.

An estimated $150 billion invested globally last year was only about half what is required annually by 2015 to avoid dangerous climate change, the International Energy Agency estimates.

"There is a big funding gap. I would say we need at least a doubling by 2015," said Cecilia Tam, citing draft estimates the IEA published in June.

If over the next 20 years the world is to boost renewable power, build greener buildings and roll out more fuel-scrimping cars including hybrid and electric models, it must invest more than an additional $500 billion annually, according to Tam.

Many forms of renewable power are expected to be more expensive than their fossil fuel counterparts for at least another decade.

Given the incompatibility of communist-style targets with western democracies, how can free markets mobilize more green technology cash?

CHINESE LESSONS

Western nations could boost clean investor returns with a tax on fossil fuels or guaranteed higher prices for renewable power. And aside from market levers, governments could adopt standards to make clean tech more attractive -- requiring homes to install smart meters, for example -- but rapid deployment doesn't seem politically palatable at the moment.

"It's worthwhile learning from the Chinese that these big transformations do require some exercise of public power," said James Cameron, vice-chairman of green investors and advisers Climate Change Capital.

Dutch pension asset manager APG has about 2 billion euros allocated to green investments, by the "broadest definition", said Rob Lake, head of sustainability. That compares with total assets of 206 billion euros.

"The reality at the moment is that investment in oil and gas is still attractive," said Lake.

But pension funds and other institutional investors can do more. Even if they don't put more of their own money into clean tech, they can use their clout to encourage more conventional energy companies to clean up, said Marcel Jeucken, head of responsible investment at the Netherlands-based, 86 billion euro PGGM pension asset manager.

Jeucken said his fund is "in constant dialogue" with Royal Dutch Shell, the oil major with a major investment in Canadian oil sands -- where oil production entails more carbon emissions than conventional oil fields.

"We used our shareholder rights wherever possible," he added. "Climate is one of our focus areas, and within that we are working on oil sands. We initiated a trip to the oil and fields last year."

TRY URANIUM?

A discouraging sign for investors who were hoping environmental markets would soon take off is the cloudy future of cap-and-trade plans. Such schemes force coal plants and other polluters to buy carbon emissions permits. They add to the cost of electricity, and are proving a hard sell in the United States.

Opposition to cap-and-trade among U.S. Republicans and some Democrats could block the roll-out of a federal trading scheme which would limit the further growth of global carbon markets, valued at around $125 billion last year.

Furthermore, last month's U.N. summit in Copenhagen was expected to unveil an expansion of global trade in carbon offsets between rich and developing nations, but in the end they won no explicit mention in a weak, final declaration.

What all that means for traders is clear: "To tell you the truth I'm starting to look toward other commodities -- uranium," said Laurent Segalen, head of emissions trading at Nomura.

Does all this suggest China is destined to win the clean tech race? Hardly, though it does seem to have a little more forward momentum than do its rivals these days.

But it's still very early goings, and there's more at stake than business success.

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley in Beijing and Larry Aragon and Peter Henderson in San Francisco; Editing by Jim Impoco and Sara Ledwith)


[Green Business]
OSLO
Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:52am EST
Oslo reiterates pledge of at least 30 pct CO2 cut

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway reaffirmed on Thursday a unilateral pledge to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 30 percent by 2020 as part of international efforts to combat global warming.

Environment Minister Erik Solheim also restated a policy announced in October that Oslo was willing to deepen the cuts to 40 percent below 1990 levels if other nations showed more ambition as part of an international agreement.

"For now we will report in the 30 to 40 percent range," he told a news conference, referring to a letter to be sent to the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat before a January 31 deadline.

Even a pledge to cut by 30 percent would be among the most ambitious of any developed nation. Norway, which has a $450 billion fund built up from oil revenues, can afford to buy carbon emissions quotas to supplement cuts in domestic emissions.

Last month's Copenhagen Accord set a January 31 deadline for countries to say if they want to be associated with a deal, worked out by nations including the United States and China, and to outline their greenhouse gas curbs to 2020.

"We have to ensure that everything promised in Copenhagen is carried out," Solheim said. The accord set a goal of limiting warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and a target for aid to developing nations of $100 billion a year from 2020.

Other nations have also stuck to existing carbon promises without raising their ambitions since Copenhagen.

(Editing by Noah Barkin)

[Green Business]
Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO
Wed Jan 27, 2010 1:07pm EST
Global warming to trigger more warming

OSLO (Reuters) - Climate change caused by mankind will release extra heat-trapping gases stored in nature into the atmosphere in a small spur to global warming, a study showed.

But the knock-on effect of the additional carbon dioxide -- stored in soils, plants and the oceans -- on top of industrial emissions building up in the atmosphere will be less severe than suggested by some recent studies, they said.

"We are confirming that the feedback exists and is positive. That's bad news," lead author David Frank of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL said of the study in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.

"But if we compare our results with some recent estimates (showing a bigger feedback effect) then it's good news," Frank, an American citizen, told Reuters of the report with other experts in Switzerland and Germany.

The data, based on natural swings in temperatures from 1050-1800, indicated that a rise of one degree Celsius (1.6 degree Fahrenheit) would increase carbon dioxide concentrations by about 7.7 parts per million in the atmosphere.

That is far below recent estimates of 40 ppm that would be a much stronger boost to feared climate changes such as floods, desertification, wildfires, rising sea levels and more powerful storm, they said.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have already risen to about 390 ppm from about 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution. Only some models in the last major U.N. climate report, in 2007, included assessments of carbon cycle feedbacks.

Frank said the new study marks an advance by quantifying feedback over the past 1,000 years and will help refine computer models for predicting future temperatures.

SURPRISES

"In a warmer climate, we should not expect pleasant surprises in the form of more efficient uptake of carbon by oceans and land," Hugues Goosse of the Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, wrote in a comment in Nature.

The experts made 220,000 comparisons of carbon dioxide levels -- trapped in tiny bubbles in annual layers of Antarctic ice -- against temperatures inferred from natural sources such as tree rings or lake sediments over the years 1050-1800.

Goosse said the study refined a general view that rising temperatures amplify warming from nature even though some impacts are likely to suck carbon dioxide from the air.

Carbon might be freed to the air by a projected shift to drier conditions in some areas, for instance in the east Amazon rainforest. But that could be partly offset if temperatures rise in the Arctic, allowing more plants to grow.

Warmer soils might accelerate the respiration of tiny organisms, releasing extra carbon dioxide to the air. Wetlands or oceans may also release carbon if temperatures rise.

Frank said it was hard to say how the new findings might have altered estimates in a report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 that world temperatures could rise by between 1.1 and 6.4 Celsius by 2100.

"Of the models that did include the carbon cycle, our results suggests that those with slightly below average feedbacks might be more accurate," he said. "But we can't now say exactly what sort of temperature range that would imply."

news20100128reut9

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Michael Perry
SYDNEY
Wed Jan 27, 2010 10:48pm EST
Australia "faces worse bushfires without CO2 deal"

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia faces a possible 300 percent increase in extreme bushfires by 2050 unless world leaders can agree to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions, a new report said on Thursday.

The report, commissioned by Australia's firefighters and environmental group Greenpeace, said the failure of U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen to agree on a treaty to tackle climate change had left Australia facing future catastrophic bushfire seasons.

The "Future Risk: Battling Australia's Bushfires" report comes only days before the Copenhagen Accord Jan 31. deadline for nations to announce emissions reduction targets.

"Bushfire conditions are clearly changing and there is strong evidence that global warming is making Australia's climate more bushfire-prone," said Jim Casey, secretary of the Fire Brigade Employees Union in Australia's New South Wales state.

"Bushfire seasons are getting longer and fires are becoming more frequent and intense. We have the power to reverse this trend or we can shrug our shoulders, do nothing and play Russian roulette with our lives," Casey said in releasing the report.

Bushfires are a natural phenomenon in Australia, due to the hot, dry climate.

Australia's most deadly bushfires occurred in February 2009 and were blamed on a decade long drought and extreme heatwaves. The "Black Saturday" infernos killed 173 people and destroyed thousands of homes in the southern state of Victoria state.

This Australian summer has again seen extreme bushfires.

THREE SCENARIOS

The bushfire report, based on studies by Australia's peak scientific body the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), painted three scenarios:

* Under a global climate treaty based on current promises to cut greenhouse gases, Australia's mean temperature would rise by 2 degrees Celsius above 1990 levels by 2050.

This would double the number of severe bushfire days in Australia's most populated southeast corner by 2050. Severe bushfire days would occur once every six months in Sydney.

* Without a legally binding climate treaty the upper forecast temperature rise of 6.4 degrees Celsius globally, by the end of the century, would see Australia experience a 2.8 degree Celsius rise above 1990 levels by 2050.

This is the worst case scenario for Australia which could see up to a 300 percent rise in extreme bushfire days by 2050.

* Under a global treaty with dramatic greenhouse gas cuts, which could see Australia halve its greenhouse emissions by 2050, extreme bushfire danger days would rise by only 8-17 percent.

"Future bushfire danger in Australia will depend heavily on how fast and by how much we act to tackle global warming," said the report.

"The best chance of avoiding a high global warming scenario is through a fair, ambitious and legally binding international treaty to cut emissions," it said.

The firefighters and Greenpeace called on the Australian government to dramatically increase its greenhouse emissions target cuts, but Climate Change Minister Penny Wong on Wednesday announced Australia would stick to its 5 to 25 percent emissions cut range under the non-binding "Copenhagen Accord".

Wong said any decision to opt for a 15 or 25 percent target depended in part on strong steps by India and China to reduce the growth of their greenhouse gas emissions.

"This report shows that unless governments ramp up their targets for cutting greenhouse emissions, we'll be facing more frequent bushfire tragedies on an even greater scale," said Casey. (Reporting by Michael Perry; Editing by Alex Richardson)


[Green Business]
Michel Rose
SETE, France
Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:49am EST
French fishermen fear end of sushi bonanza

SETE, France (Reuters) - As the clock on Sete's city tower strikes 5 p.m., the clear blue sky of this Mediterranean seaport suddenly fills with seagulls, awaiting the return of fishing boats from their regulated time at sea.

"They will be disappointed today. Mackerel and sardines are just not there," says a fish trader at the Pecherie Cettoise, next to the Sete wholesale fish market. "It's the tuna, they eat the other fish and there are too many of them."

Environmentalists say the bluefin tuna -- much sought after in Japan -- must be saved from extinction, and want to ban international trade in it, but the local fishing industry wants France to stay out of any international agreement.

French cabinet ministers are divided and a government decision, delayed earlier this month, is expected shortly.

The giant, warm-blooded fish is now found mainly in the Mediterranean after stocks off the coasts of North America plummeted in recent years.

In November ICCAT, the intergovernmental body in charge of managing tuna, lowered the total allowable catch to 13,500 tonnes for 2010. France, Italy and Spain together account for about half of this and 80 percent is exported to Japan.

Monaco has proposed protecting bluefin tuna by listing the species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), but the EU did not support this as fishing nations worry about the social impact on coastal towns.

French Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo backs a strict CITES listing which means an outright ban on international trade. Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire said he favored a milder approach, increasing monitoring of the species.

For Sete the difference is crucial, as the town's fishing fleet has enjoyed a 15-year boom in tuna exports, fueled by Japanese demand for the fish whose red flesh is prized by sushi lovers and commands high prices in Asia.

Sete, whose name comes from the Latin word 'cetus' for whale, was once home to a mainly poor community of fishermen, often of Italian descent, who settled in the early 20th century.

JAPANESE BOOM

As business with Japan boomed in the mid-1980s, a few of them, helped by EU subsidies, invested in expensive vessels and hi-tech gear and saw their catches and profits soar.

"We are talking about a very small number of individuals who became extremely rich, who are now euro millionaires," says Francois Catzeflis, a biologist at Montpellier-II University and a member of Greenpeace. "As soon as military sonar equipment was available for civil use, they would buy it," he adds.

Among the success stories is Jean-Marie Avallone, who founded the fishing company Medi Peche in 1987. He has the largest tuna fleet in France with five 40-meter long boats worth some 4 million euros ($5.60 million) each.

He holds prominent positions in city institutions and objects to claims that the tuna population is near extinction.

"They are fanatics who want to stop any fishing! At first I could understand that they wanted to fight abuses, but CITES is for Tanzania's elephants!" Avallone told Reuters.

Like others, Avallone has avoided the cuts in European fishing quotas by setting up joint ventures with Libya and putting some boats under the Libyan flag, enabling them to tap into the more generous Libyan quota.

"The day they ban wild tuna fishing, we will be left with industrial tuna farming. And that's eating crap," he added.

The World Wild Fund for Nature (WWF) said recently that tuna could become extinct as soon as 2012 because of the size of the Mediterranean fleet and estimates of undeclared fishing. Scientists struggle to work out how big bluefin stocks are.

Italy said this week it would back a ban on bluefin fishing and the French decision could be decisive at the next CITES meeting in Qatar in March. The French government is wary of port blockades by angry fishermen as in Marseille last April.

About 1,500 jobs are at stake in Sete and the golden age of the "sushi boom" is already coming to an end.

"Before, we would work between three and six months a year and make about 30,000 euros," said Akabbar Im'hand, a fisherman in Sete for 32 years. "Now, with a 50-tone quota (per boat) you earn up to 5,000 euros. You can't live a whole year on that." (Reporting by Michel Rose, editing by Tim Pearce)