news20100129gdn1

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Obama sees the positives as US gives formal notice on greenhouse gases
State department climate change envoy Todd Stern writes to UN to formally promise to reduce emissions by 17% by 2020
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 January 2010 02.51 GMT Article history

America embraced the accord reached at the Copenhagen climate summit yesterday by formally giving notice to the United Nations that it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The announcement was the second piece of encouraging news from the US in 24 hourson the prospect of reaching a global deal on climate change.

In his state of the union address on Wednesday, Barack Obama promised to keep pushing on his energy and climate change agenda. The intervention could boost the slim prospects of getting Congress to act on climate change - which is widely seen as a precondition for a global deal.

In his letter to the UN, the state department climate change envoy, Todd Stern, said that America could cut carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020.

However, he said, the commitment was contingent on Congress passing climate change legislation.

The letter reaffirms the promise Obama made to the summit last month to cutUS emissions and work for a global climate deal. It says the 2020 commitment was a first step towards cutting America's global warming pollution by 42% in 2030, and by more than 80% by the middle of the century.

"The US submission reflects President Obama's continued commitment to meeting the climate change and clean energy challenge through robust domestic and international action that will strengthen our economy, enhance our national security and protect our environment," Stern wrote.

He said America was acting on the assumption that other countries which signed the accord would take similar action.

"The United States is committed to working with our partners around the world to make the accord operational and to continue the effort to build a strong, effective, science-based, global regime to combat the profound threat of climate change," Stern wrote.

Under the slight, 12-paragraph, accord reached at Copenhagen, industrialised countries and the rapidly emerging economies like India and China were expected to offer formal notification of their plans to act on emissions by January 31.

However, the UN has since indicated that deadline is somewhat elastic, and there are fears that the momentum in the run-up to Copenhagen has fizzled away.

Obama offered some sense of movement in his speech, refusing to back down on climate agenda despite running into opposition from Republicans, as well as Democrats from oil and coal states, and the industrial heartland.

He told Congress he would carry on. "I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy, and 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. "

Obama's new vision for an energy and climate bill, spelled out on Wednesday, do not necessarily align with those of environmental groups or the liberal wing of his own Democratic party. He called for opening up new areas for offshore drilling and building more nuclear power plants.

But his willingness to recommit his administration to the energy agenda could boost the slim prospects of getting a climate change bill out of the Senate this year.

Democrat John Kerry and Republican Lindsey Graham have been lobbying hard among Republicans and conservative Democrats - as well as business leaders - to try and craft a compromise bill.

Obama, in his support for nuclear power and offshore drilling, hit on some of the components Kerry and Graham have been discussing. But several Senators told reporters they still thought it unlikely the Senate would take up energy and climate before the end of 2010.


[Environment > Hacked climate science emails]
University in hacked climate change emails row broke FOI rules
> Too late to take action, says deputy commissioner
> University of East Anglia 'will act as appropriate'
James Randerson
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 January 2010 22.26 GMT Article history

The University of East Anglia flouted Freedom of Information regulations in its handling of requests for data from climate sceptics, according to the government body that administers the act.

In a statement, the deputy information commissioner Graham Smith said emails between scientists at the university's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) that were hacked and placed on the internet in November revealed that FOI requests were "not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation".

Some of the hacked emails reveal scientists encouraging their colleagues to delete emails, apparently to prevent them from being revealed to people making FOI requests. Such a breach of the act could carry an unlimited fine, but Smith said no action could be taken against the university because the specific request they had looked at happened in May 2008, well outside the six-month limit for such prosecutions under the act.

The hacked emails have created an international argument that has fuelled climate scepticism and led to questions about the operation of the UN's climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The circumstances surrounding the hacking and the actions of the scientists are the subject of an independent inquiry commissioned by the university and headed by Sir Muir Russell, formerly a civil servant and principal and vice chancellor of Glasgow University.

The pronouncement by the Information Commissioner's Office is likely to carry significant weight with the inquiry. The illegal hack is separately also being investigated by Norfolk police.

"I think that is an extremely serious charge," said Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs the parliamentary science and technology select committee, which is conducting its own inquiry. He said that Smith's statement would be investigated by both the select committee and Russell's inquiry. "I don't think you can have the inquiry unless you have all the issues relating to it out in the open."

Willis said it would be wrong if there could be no legal sanction had the FOI act been breached. "Given the seriousness of this issue, the fact that it has caused global consternation, and has given ammunition to the climate sceptics – to have such a serious breach and for there to be no recourse in law requires urgent attention by the government."

He urged the university to be open with the data that was being requested. "If there has been a breach in this situation then the most honourable thing for the university to do would be to honour the request in its totality with all speed," said Willis.

Smith's statement refers to an FOI request from a retired engineer and climate sceptic in Northampton called David Holland. The CRU had been bombarded with similar requests for data, and the hacked emails between scientists suggest they were extremely frustrated with having to deal with them.

In response to the request, Dr Caspar Ammann, a scientist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, wrote back to three scientists, including the CRU's director, Dr Phil Jones: "Oh MAN! Will this crap ever end??"

In his statement, Smith said that Holland's request was not dealt with correctly by the university. "The emails which are now public reveal that Mr Holland's requests under the Freedom of Information Act were not dealt with as they should have been under the legislation. Section 77 of the Freedom of Information Act makes it an offence for public authorities to act so as to prevent intentionally the disclosure of requested information."

But he added that it was now too late to take action because the legislation requires that sanctions are imposed within six months of the offence. "The ICO is gathering evidence from this and other time-barred cases to support the case for a change in the law. It is important to note that the ICO enforces the law as it stands – we do not make it."

He said he would be advising UEA on its legal obligations. "We will also be studying the investigation reports [by Sir Muir Russell and Norfolk police], and we will then consider what regulatory action, if any, should then be taken under the Data Protection Act."

Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham research institute on climate Change and the environment at the London School of Economics, said: "I think that anybody reading the emails that have been posted online will have concluded that some of those showed an intention to avoid complying with the FOI. I always thought that those emails were the most damning.

"I think this is quite damaging. It remains to be seen why these requests were not handled properly. I think regardless of any action by the information commissioner, the university should clearly take appropriate action in response to this."

A spokesperson for the University of East Anglia said that it was not aware of Smith's statement. "The way Freedom of Information requests have been handled is one of the main areas being explored by Sir Muir Russell's independent review. We have already made clear that the findings of the review will be made public and that we will act as appropriate on its recommendations," she said.

news20100129gdn2

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Business > Davos]
Davos: Funding switch threatens aid to developing world, campaigner warns
Larry Elliott in Davos
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 January 2010 15.58 GMT Article history

Rich countries are raiding their aid budgets to bankroll a new global fund to help poor countries adapt to climate change, one of the world's leading development campaign groups warned today.

Jamie Drummond, executive director of the One group co-founded by the rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof, said the west was being "dishonest" about the $30bn (£18bn) of fast-track finance proposed in Copenhagen last month to persuade developing countries to agree a deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Drummond said the proposal to spend $10bn a year over the next three years involved no additional money, but was instead being diverted from existing budgets.

The impact, he said, would be to divert funds from health and education spending in Africa to infrastructure projects in Asia and Latin America.

"Development promises are under threat. There is double counting going on. The $30bn is not new money and nor is the $100bn promised for 2020 to help poor countries cope with climate change."

Speaking in Davos, Drummond said One was lobbying world leaders to "come clean" about what they were doing. Similar concerns were expressed earlier this week by Bill Gates, who has used part of his personal fortune to fund health programmes in Africa.

Drummond admitted that it was hard for rich countries to stump up more money during a tough recession, but said the solution was to explore innovative ways of raising finance – including a transaction tax, a levy on aviation travel and selling part of the International Monetary Fund's gold reserve.

Poor countries, he added, would not be prepared to sign up to a climate change deal unless there was additional money for adaptation and mitigation.

Many countries, including Britain, have pledged to raise aid budgets to 0.7% of GDP, but Drummond said that "we may need to look at new goals and proposals like Sir Nicholas Stern's proposal for 1%, incorporating both development and climate finance".


[Money > Energy bills]
Boiler scrappage scheme hit by delays
Enthusiastic response has seen call centre staff battling with a backlog, and applicants waiting to receive their vouchers
Lisa Bachelor
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 January 2010 10.35 GMT Article history

Thousands of householders who have applied for the government's boiler scrappage scheme are facing long delays for the vouchers needed to give their installers the go ahead.

The scheme, which was launched about three weeks ago, is designed to cut carbon emissions and help people save money on energy bills by offering householders a £400 voucher to replace their old G-rated boiler with an A-rated one.

It has received such an enthusiastic response from consumers that the Energy Saving Trust, the organisation that administers the scheme, has admitted it is battling to clear a huge backlog of applications.

By the beginning of this week it had received 160,000 calls, and around 36,000 people had applied for one of the 125,000 available vouchers.

It has now doubled the number of staff in its call centre to cope with the demand.

"People applying now should expect to receive their vouchers within 10 days," a spokesman said. "People who called earlier have not been forgotten about. The call centres are working their way through logged calls in chronological order."

Fraser Winterbottom, chief operating officer at the Energy Savings Trust, this week told Radio 4's You and Yours programme that the system had been changed so that applicants would now automatically be sent an email telling them the trust would contact them.

He said the organisation was "three or four days behind" on applications, but that this would soon revert to a "normal period".

Applicants play waiting game
Ruth Thompson from Teddington, who contacted guardian.co.uk/money, is one of those still waiting for a response from the Energy Saving Trust.

"I spent three days trying to get through to them only to be greeted with a recorded message," she said. "I finally succeeded a week later and was told I would be contacted 'in 10 days'. That was more than 10 days ago and I am still waiting."

Thompson, who is over 60, said many of her friends found themselves in the same position, and people posting on the MoneySavingExpert website appear to be suffering similar delays.

A comment from shirlgirl2004 said: "I read that the voucher would take 10 days to arrive and then I had an email [from the Energy Saving Trust] that told me 10 working days – but the truth is 10 working days has been and gone and I'm still waiting."

Another poster known as "aah" claimed he had been told he would have his voucher in 20 working days. "They have not got a clue," he wrote. "I guess in two months time I will still be using the old boiler."

Thompson, meanwhile, also contacted Warm Front, a government scheme that operates a separate £300 boiler rebate scheme for those aged over 60. She did not qualify because her boiler was still working. A spokesman said the scheme currently has a six-month waiting list, and that it has seen an increase in calls since the boiler scrappage scheme was announced.

Thompson said: "It is very confusing that you have these different schemes running side by side and none of them seem to be operating properly.

"The general public has got very good intentions, but the companies are not prepared at the other end."

British Gas, which is offering money off boilers on top of the government rebate, said that in the first three weeks of the year it had four times the number of customers asking for a quote than the same period last year, and six times the number received in the three weeks before the scheme launched.

Householders who have successfully received their voucher, however, could be set for further delays as the Energy Savings Trust will need to deal with them again further into the process. Those accepted for the scheme only get their money back by returning the voucher with an attached invoice to the Energy Saving Trust once the work has been done. Payment is then meant to be be issued within 25 working days of receipt.

Not everyone has welcomed the idea of a scrappage scheme. Plumber to the stars, Charlie Mullins, told Guardian Money last week that the scheme could prove to be "financial madness" as it could involve ripping out an inefficient but functioning boiler.


[Environment >Heathrow third runway]
Greenpeace plans to build fortress on Heathrow runway site
Environmental group says the plan will create a legal headache for any government pushing ahead with airport's expansion
Matthew Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 January 2010 19.07 GMT Article history

Environmental activists have invited some of the UK's leading architects to design an "impenetrable fortress" to be built on land earmarked for the third runway at Heathrow.

Greenpeace plans to build the winning design at the centre of the site where airport operator BAA hopes to construct a £7bn runway and a sixth terminal.

The charity bought the parcel of land last year and then distributed ownership to more than 60,000 supporters around the world.

Organisers say the small individual plots will create a legal headache for any government trying to push ahead with the expansion plans.

news20100129gdn3

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Climate change]
Water vapour caused one-third of global warming in 1990s, study reveals
Experts say their research does not undermine the scientific consensus on man-made climate change, but call for 'closer examination' of the way computer models consider water vapour
David Adam, environment correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 29 January 2010 Article history

Scientists have underestimated the role that water vapour plays in determining global temperature changes, according to a new study that could fuel further attacks on the science of climate change.

The research, led by one of the world's top climate scientists, suggests that almost one-third of the global warming recorded during the 1990s was due to an increase in water vapour in the high atmosphere, not human emissions of greenhouse gases. A subsequent decline in water vapour after 2000 could explain a recent slowdown in global temperature rise, the scientists add.

The experts say their research does not undermine the scientific consensus that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activity drive global warming, but they call for "closer examination" of the way climate computer models consider water vapour.

The new research comes at a difficult time for climate scientists, who have been forced to defend their predictions in the face of an embarrassing mistake in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which included false claims that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035. There has also been heavy criticism over the way climate scientists at the University of East Anglia apparently tried to prevent the release of data requested under Freedom of Information laws.

The new research, led by Susan Solomon, at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who co-chaired the 2007 IPCC report on the science of global warming, is published today in the journal Science, one of the most respected in the world.

Solomon said the new finding does not challenge the conclusion that human activity drives climate change. "Not to my mind it doesn't," she said. "It shows that we shouldn't over-interpret the results from a few years one way or another."

She would not comment on the mistake in the IPCC report - which was published in a separate section on likely impacts - or on calls for Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, to step down.

"What I will say, is that this [new study] shows there are climate scientists round the world who are trying very hard to understand and to explain to people openly and honestly what has happened over the last decade."

The new study analysed water vapour in the stratosphere, about 10 miles up, where it acts as a potent greenhouse gas and traps heat at the Earth's surface.

Satellite measurements were used to show that water vapour levels in the stratosphere have dropped about 10% since 2000. When the scientists fed this change into a climate model, they found it could have reduced, by about 25% over the last decade, the amount of warming expected to be caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

They conclude: "The decline in stratospheric water vapour after 2000 should be expected to have significantly contributed to the flattening of the global warming trend in the last decade."

Solomon said: "We call this the 10, 10, 10 problem. A 10% drop in water vapour, 10 miles up has had an effect on global warming over the last 10 years." Until now, scientists have struggled to explain the temperature slowdown in the years since 2000, a problem climate sceptics have exploited.

The scientists also looked at the earlier period, from 1980 to 2000, though cautioned this was based on observations of the atmosphere made by a single weather balloon. They found likely increases in water vapour in the stratosphere, enough to enhance the rate of global warming by about 30% above what would have been expected.

"These findings show that stratospheric water vapour represents an important driver of decadal global surface climate change," the scientists say. They say it should lead to a "closer examination of the representation of stratospheric water vapour changes in climate models".

Solomon said it was not clear why the water vapour levels had swung up and down, but suggested it could be down to changes in sea surface temperature, which drives convection currents and can move air around in the high atmosphere.

She said it was not clear if the water vapour decrease after 2000 reflects a natural shift, or if it was a consequence of a warming world. If the latter is true, then more warming could see greater decreases in water vapour, acting as a negative feedback to apply the brakes on future temperature rise.


[naturenews]
Published online 29 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.44
News
Ten billion dollars pledged for 'decade of vaccines'
Gates Foundation cash could save nearly nine million children.
Heidi Ledford

{{The Gates Foundation hopes to boost vaccine development and distribution.}
Bananastock}

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today promised to put $10 billion towards a 10-year effort to boost vaccination against infectious disease in developing countries. It is the foundation's largest commitment yet to the discovery, development and distribution of vaccines.

The announcement, made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, comes as the GAVI alliance — another vaccine initiative supported in part by the Gates Foundation — celebrates its ten-year anniversary. GAVI has been credited with distributing vaccines to 257 million children and preventing 5 million deaths. The alliance has also been instrumental in bringing the world vaccination rate against hepatitis B up from about 15% in 1999 to nearly 70%, says Adel Mahmoud, a global health researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey. "This is very serious stuff," says Mahmoud. "GAVI's success with hepatitis B was tremendous."

According to a model developed at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, the new $10 billion commitment could save up to 7.6 million children by targeting viruses that cause diarrhoea and pneumonia. If the RTS,S vaccine against malaria, currently in clinical trials (see 'Malaria vaccine enters phase III clinical trials'), is introduced by 2014, 1.1 million other children could be saved.

The Gates Foundation has already dedicated $4.5 billion to vaccines but says that much more would be needed to immunize 90% of the world's children. "Part of this is a call to action," says Joe Cerrell, director of the foundation's Europe office in London. "We are trying to make sure that governments and others are doing all that they can to support more immunization coverage."

Improving vaccination against rotavirus — the leading cause of severe diarrhoea in infants and children — is one area that could benefit, notes Mahmoud. The rotavirus vaccine was shown to reduce disease by over 60% when introduced in South Africa and Malawiue¹. But the vaccines, first licensed in 2006, are still relatively new. "The general feeling is: who is going to champion their introduction in the developing world?" says Mahmoud. "To this date there is no clear-cut plan. So if the Gates Foundation comes up with something very robust in this area, it will really make a difference."

References
1. Madhi, S. A. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 362, 289– 298 (2010).

news20100129gdn4

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > Guardian Environment Network]
Copenhagen: what next?
It's coming up to six weeks since the end of the Copenhagen negotiations on climate change. Now that the dust has settled, there's time to stand back and take a more considered look. Here Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and Stefan Rahmstorf, professor of physics of the oceans at Potsdam University, Germany give their views on the outcome of the COP15 talks and the way forward
Liz Kalaugher of Environmentalresearchweb, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Friday 29 January 2010 12.55 GMT Article history

At a press conference last week, de Boer said that the outcome in Copenhagen made "the task to hand more urgent…the window of opportunity we have to come to grips with this issue is closing faster than it was before". But he claimed that the talks did raise climate-change issues to the highest level of government, helped to define temperature limits and financial contributions, and set 2015 as a date for reviewing whether global action needs to be more urgent.

The Copenhagen Accord, meanwhile, an agreement negotiated by China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US, and noted by the other nations at the conference, "reflects a political consensus on the long-term global response" that is needed to climate change, according to de Boer. "We are now in a cooling off period," he added. "This gives useful time for countries to resume discussions with each other."

Climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf thinks that the outcome of COP15 is depressing, but also tried to highlight some more upbeat aspects. "On the positive side: most of the actors in Copenhagen by far were quite willing to commit to a substantial effort to halt global warming – including many who were not willing to do this earlier, for example the US or Australia," he told environmentalresearchweb. "And some important developing countries have made very constructive pledges as well. We were closer than ever to major progress in fighting global warming."

Rahmstorf reckons that an agreement was not reached because "the consensus-based UN process with 192 countries is very cumbersome, and it was exceptionally badly managed at this conference", because China did not play a very constructive role and because the US was not able to offer enough. "The IPCC deemed 25–40% emissions reductions below 1990 values necessary by 2020 by developed nations to limit warming to 2 °C, and what the US offered amounted to only 4%," he explained. "This is largely a result of the lost years under previous administrations, during which the US emissions increased steeply – unlike those in Europe."

During his briefing, de Boer said that he never ceases to be amazed by the vision that some people have of the UN. "To me it is a collection of countries that have created a body to facilitate negotiation among each other," he added. "If those governments were to go and negotiate in a different setting with a different secretariat I don't know if that would fundamentally change their behaviour."

Keeping on the UN track

Both de Boer and Rahmstorf would like to see the UN process continue. "Everybody I have spoken to so far doesn't want the Accord to be a third track," said de Boer.

Rahmstorf agrees. "I hope that the multilateral UN track to a global climate agreement will not die, however cumbersome it is, because the alternatives are even worse," he said, "for example, the G20 with only the biggest emitters on the table deciding alone on climate policy, without those affected, like the small island nations, having a proper voice". In the meantime, Rahmstorf says that "while we wait for our world leaders to get their act together, there is nothing to stop us as world citizens to do all we can to reduce emissions bottom-up".

The next UNFCCC negotiating session is due to take place in late May in Bonn, with the next COP meeting set for Mexico in late November. According to de Boer, many countries feel that there is a need for an intensified negotiating schedule this year – he plans to convene the COP bureau to determine whether it's possible to slot in another set of negotiations before May.

The countries that negotiated the Copenhagen Accord – China, South Africa, India, Brazil and the US – account for around 80% of carbon emissions. "It's true to say there was not final agreement on the Accord, but an overwhelming majority supported it," said de Boer. "It was not formally adopted by COP – only noted – and we should be careful not to make it more than it is."

But de Boer believes the Accord is a political tool that has broad support at a high level and that can be usefully employed in negotiations. He says the Accord is clear on a long-term goal, on how it can be measured, on financial support and on a number of new institutions that need to be established. "It can be used by us to help speed up the negotiations," he said.

Countries have until 31 January to let the UN know if they wish to be associated with the Accord in the official report of the COP15 negotiations. Industrialized countries have the option of including details of the targets they intend to commit to, while developing nations can indicate the action that they plan to take. The deadline is for administrative reasons only; the list of countries associated with the Accord will be updated on the UNFCCC secretariat website as later details come in. "It's a soft deadline, there's nothing deadly about it," said de Boer.

The climate for science

But what does this mean for the day-to-day lives of researchers? Rahmstorf believes the outcome in Copenhagen has no direct or immediate effects on climate science. "The morale of many is shaken, though," he added. "We've got an important job: since the Copenhagen Accord calls for limiting global warming to a maximum of 2 °C, possibly even 1.5 °C (this option is left open at the end of the Accord), one of the major tasks of science will be to narrow down the range of future emissions that is compatible with these policy goals."

Rahmstorf reckons that climate scientists have communicated their work quite well, particularly through the IPCC. While 2010 is the UN year of biodiversity, the biodiversity community has "not yet managed to get as much high-level attention to the biodiversity crisis; it is only now calling to set up something like the IPCC for biodiversity". On the other hand, "climate science could still do a lot better if more climate scientists get involved, take an interest in public understanding of science and educate themselves more about how to effectively work with the media". Rahmstorf reckons that "too many scientists are still stuck in the ivory tower and – for example – shrug off and ignore wrong media reports about climate science, rather than recognizing that public perception matters and that they should not leave the public debate to people with a political agenda".

The last word goes to de Boer: while the Copenhagen negotiations "didn't produce the final cake", they did leave countries "with all the key ingredients to bake a new one". Although the proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating.

news20100129nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 28 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.38
News
Cascadia quake zone gets wired up
Seismometer array will monitor natural hazards.
Rex Dalton

One of the most under-appreciated earthquake hazard zones in the United States is getting extra attention.

{{Project scientists test a shield to protect the seismometers from ocean-bottom trawlers.}
Andrew Barclay}

Just off the Pacific Northwest coast, the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate dives beneath North America, shuddering and occasionally releasing the accumulated stress as a major earthquake. A magnitude-9 quake struck here in 1700, triggering a tsunami that hit Japan, and the chances of another quake of that size are 1 in 500 each year. Yet the Cascadia zone remains relatively sparsely studied.

Now geophysicists have taken advantage of grant money gleaned from last year's US economic stimulus bill to rig up the waters off the Cascadia coast with an unprecedented assembly of ocean-bottom seismometers. The US$10-million project is on a fast track to be fully set up by early next year. But the fact that the United States is only now putting such research resources into a long-known trouble zone shows how far even developed nations lag behind on earthquake studies.

"People haven't appreciated the level of hazard there for both an earthquake and a tsunami," says project member John Orcutt, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. "This study will over the long term provide a fundamental understanding of the Earth's structure and the hazard."

Cascadia already has a number of seismometers and other equipment on land to measure earthquake risk, including the Plate Boundary Observatory of geodetic equipment that stretches from California to Alaska. But the ocean-bottom component has been lacking; only with that, geophysicists say, can sea-floor movements along the edge of the Juan de Fuca plate be monitored effectively.

"This will be the most comprehensive study of a subduction zone conducted anywhere to date," says Richard Carlson, project manager for the Cascadia initiative at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia.

Peering deep

The initiative will beef up the land-based instruments already in place by adding seismometers and having geodetic data feed back in real time instead of after a delay. More significantly, it will also deploy 60 ocean-bottom seismometers off the coasts of Oregon and Washington, at depths of between about 300 metres and 1 kilometre.

The stations are being built by three venerable oceanographic institutions: the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and Scripps. Each of the new ocean-bottom stations costs about $70,000 and includes a seismometer, pressure gauge, data recorder and special clock to match data to shore-based equipment.

Some project scientists are questioning whether the correct type of seismometer is being purchased. Because the economic stimulus money had to be spent within a certain period of time, the decision on which seismometer to use had to be made within about three months last summer. Orcutt, for one, says that he would have preferred a '240' seismometer with a higher bandwidth than the '120' instruments the National Science Foundation has bought from Nanometrics Inc. in Kanata, Ontario. The '240' seismometers can capture more data and would be more useful for future deployments, Orcutt says.

Carlson, for his part, says that the agency is comfortable with the type of seismometer it has chosen.

Meanwhile, project leaders are starting work on how to deploy the complex package of delicate instruments. The equipment must be tough enough to withstand being dropped off the side of a ship, then exposed to sea-floor conditions for at least a year, and retrieved by popping a remote-control release and floating to the surface.

Sometimes deployments go flawlessly, as when researchers dropped and recovered nearly 70 devices off British Columbia last summer. But equipment can go awry. For instance, three stations malfunctioned after a deployment off Newport, Oregon, several years ago. The problem, which involved the cable connection, wasn't discovered until after they had been in the water for a year. In other cases, the glass balls that buoy the instrument package to the surface have imploded, destroying the stations.

For the Cascadia deployment, project leaders are also building protective cages to shield the instrument from heavy currents and from being snagged by fishing trawlers.

But researchers can't always predict what challenges await them in the field. Anne Tréhu, a geophysicist at Oregon State University in Corvallis who led the earlier deployment, says that the team hadn't expected to receive several local visitors on the sea floor.

"We found octopus were a problem, too," she says. They nestled against the instruments, messing up the measurements of current flows.


[naturenews]
Published online 29 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.44
News
Ten billion dollars pledged for 'decade of vaccines'
Gates Foundation cash could save nearly nine million children.
Heidi Ledford

{{The Gates Foundation hopes to boost vaccine development and distribution.}
Bananastock}

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today promised to put $10 billion towards a 10-year effort to boost vaccination against infectious disease in developing countries. It is the foundation's largest commitment yet to the discovery, development and distribution of vaccines.

The announcement, made at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, comes as the GAVI alliance — another vaccine initiative supported in part by the Gates Foundation — celebrates its ten-year anniversary. GAVI has been credited with distributing vaccines to 257 million children and preventing 5 million deaths. The alliance has also been instrumental in bringing the world vaccination rate against hepatitis B up from about 15% in 1999 to nearly 70%, says Adel Mahmoud, a global health researcher at Princeton University in New Jersey. "This is very serious stuff," says Mahmoud. "GAVI's success with hepatitis B was tremendous."

According to a model developed at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, the new $10 billion commitment could save up to 7.6 million children by targeting viruses that cause diarrhoea and pneumonia. If the RTS,S vaccine against malaria, currently in clinical trials (see 'Malaria vaccine enters phase III clinical trials'), is introduced by 2014, 1.1 million other children could be saved.

The Gates Foundation has already dedicated $4.5 billion to vaccines but says that much more would be needed to immunize 90% of the world's children. "Part of this is a call to action," says Joe Cerrell, director of the foundation's Europe office in London. "We are trying to make sure that governments and others are doing all that they can to support more immunization coverage."

Improving vaccination against rotavirus — the leading cause of severe diarrhoea in infants and children — is one area that could benefit, notes Mahmoud. The rotavirus vaccine was shown to reduce disease by over 60% when introduced in South Africa and Malawiue¹. But the vaccines, first licensed in 2006, are still relatively new. "The general feeling is: who is going to champion their introduction in the developing world?" says Mahmoud. "To this date there is no clear-cut plan. So if the Gates Foundation comes up with something very robust in this area, it will really make a difference."

References
1. Madhi, S. A. et al. N. Engl. J. Med. 362, 289– 298 (2010).

news20100129nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 28 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.42
News
Water vapour could be behind warming slowdown
Mysterious changes in the stratosphere may have offset greenhouse effect.
Jeff Tollefson

A loss of water vapour from the Earth's stratosphere may have been behind the last decade being cooler than expected.NASAA puzzling drop in the amount of water vapour high in the Earth's atmosphere is now on the list of possible culprits causing average global temperatures to flatten out over the past decade, despite ever-increasing greenhouse-gas emissions.

Although the decade spanning 2000 to 2009 ranks as the warmest on record, average temperatures largely levelled off following two decades of rapid increases. Researchers have previously eyed everything from the Sun and oceans to random variability in order to explain the pause, which sceptics have claimed shows that climate models are unreliable.

Now a team led by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado, report that a mysterious 10% drop in water vapour in the stratosphere — the atmospheric layer that sits 10–50 kilometres above Earth's surface — since 2000 could have offset the expected warming due to greenhouse gases by roughly 25%. Just as intriguingly, their model suggests that an increase in stratospheric water vapour might have boosted earlier warming by about 30% in the 1980s and 1990s. The team's work is published online by Science today¹.

The effect on temperature is dominated by water vapour in the lower part of the stratosphere, which absorbs and radiates heat in much the same way as water molecules and other greenhouse gases do in the lower atmosphere. The drop in water vapour doesn't explain the entire decrease in the rate of warming, but it could contribute to it, says Susan Solomon, first author of the study and a NOAA scientist who co-chaired the physical-science working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as part of its 2007 assessment.

"What we are trying to do here is explain not the overall multi-decadal trend, but the zigs and zags in that trend," Solomon says. "I think it's too early to know how they all play out."

In 1999, researchers at the University of Reading, UK, reported similar numbers to Solomon and her colleagues, suggesting that the increase in stratospheric water vapour could have boosted warming by 40% compared with carbon dioxide alone². Subsequent research challenged the magnitude of that effect as well as the data itself, but Solomon says that the current study "is basically pulling us back to the seminal work those guys did".

One of the Reading researchers, Keith Shine, says that Solomon's paper does a good job of documenting the effect for the current decade, based on more reliable satellite measurements. Unfortunately, he says, earlier data from a single series of balloon measurements conducted above Boulder remain a bit shaky. "We know the water vapour has definitely dropped post-2000, but we can't be certain about what happened before that," Shine says.

Into thin air

It remains unclear what is driving the changes in stratospheric water vapour. Average temperatures at the coldest point in the stratosphere — about 16 kilometres above the tropics — have fallen by about 1 °C in the past decade, says Bill Randel, who heads the atmospheric chemistry division at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. Colder temperatures freeze out water vapour that might otherwise have entered the stratosphere. But, Randel says, "We don't really understand why that 1-degree temperature change occurred."

Other researchers see different factors at play in the recent temperature trends. A study published last year³ hones in on the solar cycle and the El Niño Southern Oscillation, an upwelling of warm surface waters in the tropical Pacific. Both have been in their negative phases for most of the decade so temperatures may rise as they move into their positive phases.

"I think it's exciting that this [transition] is happening, because we are going to learn a lot," says Judith Lean, a solar physicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, who co-authored last year's study³ with David Rind, a climate modeller at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

With solar activity ramping up and an El Niño underway, Lean and Rind suggest that temperatures could rise over the coming years, followed by a slight plateau coinciding with the next solar minimum. Their paper³, based on a statistical analysis of past temperature trends, predicts rising temperatures until 2030, including scenarios for any unpredictable occurrences of El Niño and volcanic eruptions. A 2008 paper in Nature⁴ that investigated ocean currents and sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic came to the opposite conclusion, suggesting a pause in warming over the coming decade.

Jeff Knight, a climate modeller at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, UK, last year led an analysis of temperature trends from the year 2000 and found that current global climate models are able to reproduce such short-term events without a hitch. He says that the models produced an extended period of relatively flat temperatures in one out of every eight decades — although none of them produced a flat trend beyond 15 years.

"Too much focus on decadal trends is not healthy," he says, suggesting that the climate models can simulate these events and do not necessarily need to be able to simulate any particular decade.

References
1. Solomon, S. et al. Science advance online publication doi: 10.1126/science.1182488 (2010).
2. Forster, P. M. de F. & Shine, K. P. Geophys. Res. Lett. 26, 3309-3312 (1999). | Article | OpenURL
3. Lean, J. L. & Rind, D. H. Geophys. Res. Lett. 36, L15708 doi:10.1029/2009GL038932 (2009). | Article | OpenURL
4. Keenlyside, N. S., Latif, M., Jungclaus, J., Kornblueh, L. & Roeckner, E. Nature 453, 84-88 (2008). | Article | OpenURL | | ChemPort |

news20100129nn3

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 28 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.40
News
Light extinguishes dark-matter claims
Starlight accounts for anomalous electron signals.
Eric Hand

{{An excess of high-energy electrons detected by the HESS telescope array and other instruments may not be due to dark matter after all.}
HESS collaboration}

By invoking the effects of starlight, theorists have created a model of the behaviour of galactic electrons, casting doubt on a signal that some had hoped pointed to a detection of dark matter.

Within the past two years, several experiments — in space, on the ground, and in a balloon — have reported detecting more high-energy electrons than were expected to be whirling around the galaxy. Many theorists attributed the surplus electrons as either the effect of a nearby pulsars, or, more provocatively, dark matter — the elusive stuff thought to make up as much as 85% of the matter in the Universe (see 'Dark matter intrigue deepens').

A paper in the 10 February issue of the Astrophysical Journalue¹ says that both explanations are wrong. The high-energy electrons can be produced naturally when the starlight they pass through is accounted for more correctly, says one of the paper's authors — Vahé Petrosian, a theorist at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University in California. "We have to put dark matter on the shelf," he says.

Scattering effect

Galactic electrons are thought to originate in the explosion of supernovae, and conventional models predict that they lose energy as they pass through the Milky Way's magnetic field. The annihilation of proposed dark-matter particles would also create electrons, and some theorists had interpreted the recent experimental detections of surplus high-energy electrons as evidence for this process.

{{“I would say there's no compelling reason to invoke exotic explanations.”}
Werner Hofmann
High Energy Stereoscopic System}

But starlight also scatters the electrons. Petrosian says that starlight suppresses the energy of most electrons in a way that makes it seem as if there is an excess of certain high-energy electrons. The Stanford group's models show an excess that is similar to that reported by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope; the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS), a ground-based detector in Namibia; and the Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter (ATIC), a balloon-borne detector that flew over Antarctica.

HESS spokesperson Werner Hofmann says that the Stanford group's models are "quite possible" and would make it very difficult to make a strong case for dark matter in the high-energy electron signal. "I would say there's no compelling reason to invoke exotic explanations," says Hofmann, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.

Need for ideas

More challenging for the group was explaining a signal arising from an Italian satellite, PAMELA (Payload for Antimatter Matter Exploration and Light-nuclei Astrophysics), which measures the ratio of electrons to positrons, their antimatter partners. A rising fraction of high-energy positrons has also been interpreted as a possible dark-matter signal. (See 'Physicists await dark-matter confirmation')

But by tweaking parameters in their model, the Stanford group can also mimic the PAMELA results. Like the electrons, the positrons are also thought to originate near supernovae — although through secondary collisions of protons. By increasing the density of gas and the number of photons near these supernovae — both possible scenarios given that supernovae occur in gas-rich star-forming regions near lots of stars — the model predicts high-energy positrons similar to those reported by PAMELA. "It's a new possibility to consider and a new way to get 100 GeV [gigaelectronvolt] positrons to our Solar System," says Dan Hooper, a dark-matter theorist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. "We need all the ideas we can get."

Using the high-energy electrons as a proxy for dark matter is just one of many approaches in the hunt. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, may create dark matter as it smashes high-energy protons together. And experiments underground use quiet environments to watch for the rare recoils of atomic nuclei that dark-matter particles ought to cause occasionally. In December, an underground detection group reported that it had seen two events that may have been dark-matter collisions — enough to get attention, but not yet enough to claim a definitive detection (see 'Two direct hits in dark matter hunt').

References
1. Stawarz, Ł., Petrosian, V. & Blandford, R. D. Astrophys. J. 710, 236-247 (2010); advance online publication doi:10.1088/0004-637X/710/1/236 | Article | OpenURL


[naturenews]
Published online 28 January 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2010.43
News
Britain grants patent for iPS cells
The first issued outside Japan for reprogrammable stem cells credits different Japanese inventors.
Sabin Russell

A Californian biomedical company, iPierian, has been granted the first patent issued outside Japan for the genetic reprogramming technology used to create induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells.

{{Induced pluripotent stem cells have the ability to develop into any cell type in the body.}
James Thomson, University of Wisconsin-Madison}

The 12 January decision, by the UK Intellectual Property Office, does not involve the work of Kyoto University's Shinya Yamanaka, whom many consider to have invented the technology behind iPS cells. Instead it credits the invention to a competing group of Japanese researchers, led by Kazuhiro Sakurada, who worked in Kobe for an affiliate of Bayer Schering Pharma. iPierian, based in South San Francisco, acquired rights to the patent claims in 2008.

Like embryonic stem cells, iPS cells can develop into any cell type in the body, but they avoid the ethical controversies involved in using embryos. Although various international research groups have filed more than 75 patent claims involving iPS cells, the only patents awarded until now have been issued by Japan for Yamanaka's work.

Crucially, iPierian contends that Bayer had filed its key claims for the use of iPS technology in human cells months ahead of any rivals, including Yamanaka.

Akemi Nakamura, a spokesperson for Kyoto University, disagrees. "We believe we have an advantage over his claim, as the Yamanaka claim was filed prior to the Sakurada claim," Nakamura wrote in an e-mail.

First to file

Yamanaka filed his initial claim regarding iPS technology in December 2006. That application, granted in December 2008 by the Japan Patent Office, covered methods for generating both mouse and human iPS cells using four genes introduced by viral vectors. Sakurada's claim was filed in Japan in June 2007, but specifically excluded the use of c-Myc, an oncogene that research teams have been eager to eliminate from the roster of players needed to trigger reprogramming. Sakurada has yet to be issued a patent in Japan.

The relationship between Yamanaka, Sakurada and iPierian is complicated. Yamanaka was involved in the early founding of iPierian, which initially set up shop inside the Gladstone Institutes, an affiliate of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where Yamanaka works in a satellite laboratory once a month. Yamanaka has no direct stake in iPierian, but his Kyoto research laboratory collaborates with the company on efforts to refine methods of reprogramming cells — such as replacing the viral vectors used to ferry the genes that trigger the process that creates stem cells.

Sakurada briefly held the post of chief scientific officer of iZumi Bio, the company that became iPierian after it merged with Pierian — a start-up created by Harvard stem-cell researchers George Daley, Douglas Melton and Lee Rubin. Sakurada is no longer employed at iPierian, according to company spokeswoman Danielle Bertrand.

Pioneering spirit

Yamanaka could not be reached for comment about the British patent office decision. However, during a visit to the Gladstone Institutes in December, he spoke of his wish that intellectual property disputes would not slow down progress in the nascent field. "This kind of technology should not be confined to any region or country," he said.

Ken Taymor, executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy in California, says that patents are pertinent only in the countries where they are issued. The UK patent may have little impact on iPS patents pending in the United States. But he acknowledged that the British decision signals that at least one major patent office is taking the Sakurada claims seriously. "These are initial steps in defining the intellectual property landscape for this important technology," he says.

The stakes in intellectual property disputes about fundamental technologies are potentially enormous. Yamanaka is reminded of it every time he visits the Gladstone laboratory. Beyond his office window stands UCSF's Genentech Hall, built in part with $50 million wrested in an out-of-court settlement from the biotech giant, which was sued by the university for infringing its patents for human growth hormone, one of Genentech's first drugs.

news20100129reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Richard Cowan and Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON
Wed Jan 27, 2010 2:26pm EST
Climate change options for Congress in 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - When U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address on Wednesday, he is expected to promote alternative energy as a way of tackling global warming problems and creating more domestic jobs.

But climate change legislation is facing serious difficulties in Congress, where many politicians do not want to cast votes on legislation that some fear could eventually raise energy prices on the heels of a severe economic recession.

Also, with the November congressional elections coming into focus, lawmakers are keeping a close eye on public opinion polls, some of which show support is sinking for a climate bill this year.

Following are some possible scenarios for the legislation that aims to mandate industry reductions in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which are blamed for global warming:

CAP AND TRADE BILL WILL NOT PASS THIS YEAR

Some prominent Senate Democrats already have predicted that comprehensive climate control legislation, such as cap and trade, will not pass this year.

A new poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press says that only 28 percent of those surveyed now list global warming as a top priority this year. That's down from 38 percent in 2007.

Dealing with domestic energy problems was listed as a top domestic priority by 49 percent, down from 60 percent a year ago, according to the Pew poll.

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.

Failure to pass cap and trade would disappoint traders and banks looking to bring a $1 trillion financial mechanism to fighting climate change.

The House of Representatives narrowly passed a cap and trade bill in June, but it has stalled in the Senate.

With the election of Republican Scott Brown to the Senate, Democrats hold 59 of the 100 votes in the chamber, and Republicans have 41. The bill needs 60 votes to overcome procedural hurdles that could block passage.

Brown, who replaces the late pro-cap and trade Senator Edward Kennedy, campaigned against the plan.

Depending on how the November elections go and how the U.S. economy is performing next year, environmentalists could try to pass a climate bill in 2011.

CLIMATE BILL STILL ALIVE

Senator John Kerry is trying to write a compromise bill that would have cap and trade, or some other carbon-reduction mechanism, and couple it with expanded domestic oil and gas drilling and more federal aid to expand the nuclear power industry.

Kerry is working with independent Senator Joseph Lieberman and conservative Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to find a bill that could pass the Senate this year.

The legislation also might preempt the Environmental Protection Agency from developing complicated carbon emissions regulations.

The three senators met last week with officials of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which opposed the House-passed bill.

The business lobbying group particularly didn't like a provision allowing tariffs on some energy-intensive goods that are imported if foreign countries do not do their part on climate change. The chamber argues the provision would spark trade wars.

NARROWER BILL

If Kerry fails to find a compromise bill, Democrats might push a narrower bill requiring more use of alternative energy sources, such as solar and wind power, without mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.

Environmental groups would have a hard time supporting the expanded oil and gas drilling and more help for nuclear power without imposing mandatory caps on carbon.

EPA REGULATION

The Environmental Protection Agency is threatening to regulate carbon emissions if Congress won't.

Regulations could go forward as early as March. But a barrage of lawsuits is expected from opponents, which could delay action.

President Barack Obama would rather have Congress act on a bill that could provide more protections for industry while also accomplishing more comprehensive pollution control. He's using the threat of EPA regulation to encourage lawmakers.

Meanwhile, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski is threatening legislation to strip EPA of the power to regulate.

COPENHAGEN ACCORD SUFFERS

The political turmoil in Washington over passing a climate change bill is not expected to help international efforts to tackle global warming. In December, the Copenhagen Accord, barely hammered out under U.N. auspices, set a January 31 deadline for nations to submit new goals for reducing carbon emissions.

That becomes more dicey if confidence is shaken by the inability of the United States, the developed world's largest carbon emitter, to take concrete action.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)


[Green Business]
LOS ANGELES
Wed Jan 27, 2010 2:55pm EST
A-Power signs new contract, delivers turbines

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A-Power Energy Generation Systems Ltd has shipped turbines to two wind projects in China, marking its first renewable power equipment delivery, the Chinese company said on Wednesday.

A-Power also announced a $40 million contract from China Machine-Building International Corp to build a power plant for a cement factory in Vietnam, expanding its geographical reach.

A-Power is among a slew of Chinese renewable energy companies aggressively competing with bigger peers such as German solar cell producer Q-Cells and Spanish wind-farm operator Iberdrola in the emerging global clean power sector.

The company, which also makes equipment for power systems, said it delivered five turbines to a 49.5 MW wind farm in Inner Mongolia and another five turbines to a 19.5 MW project in the province of Shandong.

The start of turbine deliveries provides "a key milestone in the wind segment's commercialization," Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov said in a note to clients on Wednesday.

A-Power shares rose 3.4 percent to $12.32 on Nasdaq.

After entering the wind business in 2008, A-Power drew attention from investors when it secured a deal to supply turbines for a 600-megawatt wind power project in Texas that could cost $2 billion.

(Reporting by Laura Isensee; Editing by Braden Reddall and Maureen Bavdek)


[Green Business]
PHOENIX
Wed Jan 27, 2010 3:28pm EST
Suntech sets site for 30 MW plant in Arizona

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Chinese solar panel maker Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd has selected the city of Goodyear in the sprawling Phoenix, Arizona area for the site of its first U.S. manufacturing plant, the company said on Wednesday.

The news follows Suntech's announcement in November that it picked Arizona to open its U.S. panel assembly facility, which will use solar cells shipped from China.

The plant will begin production in September with an annual production capacity of 30 megawatts and 70 employees, and the potential to expand to 120 MW, "giving Suntech the ability to respond to the rapidly growing demand for solar throughout the United States," the company said.

Suntech's chief strategy officer, Steven Chan, said the initial investment was $10 million to $15 million and the number of jobs could grow to 250 employees.

The greater Phoenix area is already the home to industry bellwether First Solar Inc, which has its headquarters in Tempe.

Suntech's move mirrors similar plans by other Chinese solar companies, such as Yingli Green Energy, to establish U.S. manufacturing sites to gain market share in the country, which is expected to compete with Germany as the world's largest solar market in the coming years.

Shares of Suntech were down 4.6 percent at $13.32 in trading on Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Tim Gaynor in Phoenix; Writing by Laura Isensee in Los Angeles; Editing by Bernard Orr)

news20100129reut2

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Natsuko Waki - Analysis
DAVOS, Switzerland
Wed Jan 27, 2010 7:20pm EST
Clean tech: can sovereign wealth help?

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - It may seem like a perfect match. If sovereign wealth funds, which manage assets of $3 trillion, invested in clean tech, they could help plug the chronic shortage of funding to tackle climate change.

Since two-thirds of their wealth comes from oil and gas interests, the funds set up by nations from Norway to the Middle East and China would be burnishing their image by helping finance clean energy projects.

The world faces an annual funding gap of around $150 billion on projects to cut carbon dioxide emissions. A failure by world leaders to agree on a deadline for a new legally binding climate pact in Copenhagen in December gave no help in boosting the momentum.

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) may have a key role. With around $1.5 trillion in equity investments, SWFs -- which invest nations' windfall surpluses for future generations -- already hold about 4 percent of the world's listed companies, industry estimates show.

They are expected to see their assets more than double to $7 trillion in less than 10 years.

Already some funds, particularly Norway's $400 billion reserve, are raising their profile as socially responsible investors.

But for them to fund the clean-tech future is not so simple.

So far, as for other institutional investors, the main hurdle has been poor returns. In a young market largely dominated by venture funds and lacking depth of liquidity, there's been no convincing evidence that clean tech outperforms other asset classes. There's no single benchmark to measure industry performance.

"We're not going to do this as a subsidy," Jin Liqun, chairman of the board of supervisors at China Investment Corp, told Reuters last year. "We do this only when we see there is a profit to be made. We would exercise our social responsibility by making profits and give the money to our people."

INCREASING INTEREST

Nonetheless with so much cash to invest, evidence is mounting of increasing interest. Abu Dhabi's Future Energy Company has long supported small investments in the sector through its Masdar clean tech funds, and China's fund has recently moved into larger clean energy projects.

The $300 billion China Investment Corp last year alone invested an estimated $400 million in China Longyuan Power Group, Asia's largest wind power generator and the world's No.5. It also spent over $700 million to buy stakes in Chinese power plant operator GCL-Poly Energy: GCL-Poly and CIC aim to set up a joint venture on solar power development early this year.

Some sovereign funds are already active in promoting cleaner business across the range of their investments.

Norway's fund, which holds 8,000 companies, is the leading force in environmentally responsible investing: together with New Zealand's Superannuation fund, it is a founding signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment, a United Nations-led framework subscribed by nearly 600 institutional investors representing a total of $18 billion.

Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), which oversees the fund, has detailed its thinking on climate change management by any company whose stock it may hold.

It has said, for instance, that it expects companies to analyze the commercial effects of regulatory responses to climate change, measure quantified greenhouse gas emissions in relevant formats and set clear targets for emissions.

Beyond this, New Zealand's fund tallies the greenhouse emissions of its guardians using power bills, taxi receipts and travel data, and the waste at its Auckland office (90 percent of it is paper).

POLITICS

But when it comes to direct investment, the onus is on avoiding giving out what are effectively state subsidies.

The Norwegian government is in the process of establishing a new investment program for its fund, focusing on environmental investment such as climate-friendly energy, improving energy efficiency, carbon capture and storage, water technology, and the management of waste and pollution.

It has said it may invest some 20 billion Norwegian crowns ($3.45 billion) on green energy over a number of years.

But the Norwegian central bank, which runs the fund, has been skeptical, saying its hitherto clear mandate to pursue sustainable profits could be compromised if its role was effectively reduced to supplying state subsidies to green energy plans liked by the Norwegian government.

VIRTUE THAT PAYS

Clean tech or other socially responsible investment (SRI) projects could serve a multitude of purposes for the burgeoning sovereign wealth fund industry.

First, is the overall image boost in taking into account what it calls environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks. Being seen to invest responsibly can help the funds that have come under pressure from Western politicians who suspect they may be a threat to national security.

In 2008 French President Nicolas Sarkozy hit out at SWFs, saying France must protect its industries from foreign "predators" who would like to benefit from undervalued stocks.

"One of the defining factors in the influence of SWFs in the capital markets is their stance on ESG issues," said the Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC) Institute, a New York based organization which conducts environmental, social and corporate governance research, in a recent report.

There are also potential financial benefits.

Moving into more socially responsible areas is a way to diversify portfolios into alternative assets that can deliver returns uncorrelated to such traditional classes as stocks and bonds.

It also offers a "macro hedge," or a way to offset the risk of volatility in state finances stemming from any fall in the price of oil or other traditional energy.

"There is a case to be made that SWFs whose funding source is tied to natural resources have an opportunity to diversify ... through investments in alternative energy companies, thereby reducing their sponsor countries' risk due to a revenue stream linked to oil or gas production," the IRRC Institute said.

Whatever the objectives, the funds' impact on the clean sector could be huge.

An allocation of even 1 percent of capital from sovereign wealth funds would amount to $30 billion, or around a fifth of the present annual funding gap to cut emissions. And their participation would create a virtuous cycle for the industry: as more money flows in, the performance of the assets would improve, attracting more investors.

SWFs have been proven to have a positive impact on the stocks they invest in. A study led by Washington University showed that SWF acquisition announcements generate statistically important, positive abnormal returns averaging 1.5 percent. Divestments led to a loss of 1.4 percent.

(Additional reporting by Wojciech Moskwa; Editing by Sara Ledwith)


[Green Business]
WASHINGTON
Thu Jan 28, 2010 10:15am EST
Senate can agree on exports, energy: top Republican

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Senate should be able to reach agreement on proposals to increase exports and boost alternative energy, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday.

President Barack Obama outlined proposals to boost exports and support nuclear power and other alternative energy sources in his State of the Union address on Wednesday night.

(Editing by Alan Elsner)


[Green Business]
Thu Jan 28, 2010 10:17am EST
Energy Conversion to co-develop solar project in Canada

(Reuters) - U.S. solar power company Energy Conversion Devices said it will partner with Enfinity Corp to develop a 10 megawatt portfolio of rooftop solar installations in Ontario, Canada, under the province's new feed-in-tariff program.

Ontario launched North America's most comprehensive and generous set of feed-in tariffs in October, which guarantee sellers of electricity produced from the sun, wind, water and biomass fixed, above-market prices for 20 years.

Energy Conversion said Enfinity will lead the rooftop acquisition and will arrange construction debt and take-out equity financing for the projects.

The projects portfolio will be sold to the permanent equity owners on completion, the companies said in a joint statement.

Several firms have recently said they are considering production in the country, including South Korea's Samsung Group.

Shares of Enfinity were up 2 percent at $10.07 in trading before the bell. They closed at $9.87 Wednesday on Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Arundhati Ramanathan in Bangalore; Editing by Unnikrishnan Nair)

news20100129reut3

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Christoph Steitz
FRANKFURT
Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:14am EST
Green investors should go geothermal, says VCH

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Investors looking for fresh opportunities in the volatile renewable energy sector should look at stocks in the geothermal industry, a VCH Investment Group fund manager told Reuters on Thursday.

"Geothermal energy, albeit still a tiny market itself, is a young growth area but a strong one. You can see that already happening in the United States, where there is large geothermal activity," Olaf Koester said in an interview.

Geothermal power -- which, along with solar thermal power, is part of the second generation of renewable energy sources -- uses the earth's inner heat and turns it into electricity by using specially designed power plants.

Koester's fund -- which quadrupled its volume in 2009 and stands at 10 million euros ($14.04 million) -- solely invests in global renewable energy stocks, including more traditional fields such as photovoltaic, wind and water.

But Koester expects the geothermal market will grow to above 20 gigawatts (GW) by 2020, from about 10 GW in 2008, compared with expectations of more than 150 GW for solar and more than 1,000 GW for wind power.

Koester said that the U.S. will be one of the growth drivers in geothermal power and referred to large geological activity in Hawaii and the San Andreas fault.

"This is why the first question I asked Ormat was whether they could build earthquake-proof geothermal plants," he said, noting that Ormat does build such plants.

Ormat Technologies is one of the market leaders in the geothermal sector and, along with Germany's Daldrup and Waterfurnace Renewable Energy, held in Koester's fund, which gained about 12 percent in 2009 versus a 3 percent gain in the S&P Global Clean Energy Index.

"One reason why I like the sector is its stability. Unlike wind and solar power -- where you need the wind to blow and the sun to shine -- geothermal power is stable and sustainable. You can have energy creation 24/7 without any fluctuation."

(Editing by Sharon Lindores)

($1=.7122 Euro)


[Green Business]
DAVOS
Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:30am EST
Saudis say don't worry about peak oil

DAVOS (Reuters) - There is still plenty of oil in the ground and the world should put aside fears about "peak oil," the head of the Saudi state oil firm Saudi Aramco said on Thursday.

"The concern about peak oil is behind us," chief executive Khalid al-Falih told a session on energy supplies at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The peak oil theory that oil supply is at or near its peak gained currency when prices zoomed to a record of nearly $150 a barrel in 2008. The issue remains a concern for many in the industry.

Total's chief executive Thierry Desmarest said the world would struggle to surpass 95 million barrels per day (BPD) in the future -- 10 percent above present levels. "The problem of peak oil remains," he told the same panel.

His contention was swatted aside by Falih.

"Of the 4 trillion (barrels) of oil the planet is endowed with, only 1 has been produced," Falih said.

"Granted most of what remains is more difficult and complex (to exploit) ... there's no doubt we can do a lot more than the 95, 100 (million barrels) that are projected in the next few decades."

Saudi Arabia has a long list of projects in its portfolio that would more than offset declines, he said.

(Reporting by Gerard Wynn and Ben Hirschler; Editing by Jon Boyle)


[Green Business]
Gerard Wynn and Ben Hirschler
DAVOS, Switzerland
Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:32am EST
Shale gas is U.S. energy "game changer" says BP CEO

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - New technologies to extract gas from shale rock have altered the U.S. energy outlook for the next 100 years, Tony Hayward, chief executive of BP, said on Thursday.

Energy chiefs speaking at the World Economic Forum differed about the prospects for future oil supplies -- with Iraq placed to account for up to 10 percent of that -- but agreed new "unconventional gas" would be a huge fillip.

Unconventional gas includes natural gas extracted from shale and methane reserves in coal mines, which together are set to play a huge role in satisfying rising global energy demand.

"(It's) a complete game-changer in the U.S. It probably transforms the U.S. energy outlook for the next 100 years," said Hayward.

Peter Voser, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, said such new reserves were "global and necessary."

IRAQ OIL

BP's Hayward also expected Iraq to play a major role in filling energy demand.

"We are cautiously optimistic about the potential that Iraq can play in providing a new source of supply to global oil markets," he said.

"The reality is, absent any unforeseen political events ... the resources there are relatively easy to bring on-stream and there is no reason to believe that Iraq can't be producing 10 million barrels per day by 2020 or so."

That would require massive investment, however, Voser cautioned.

"According to official estimates, we will need $27 trillion to get to the point Tony described," he said. "This money needs to be earned ... Iraq can bring some stability (to markets) but it needs to be developed and the money needs to be earned, so we can actually finance these $27 trillion over the next 20 years."

Thierry Desmarest, chief executive of French group Total, agreed Iraq would play a key role but he too said investments in the country needed to deliver an adequate return.

"We have seen a lot of excitement in the industry on these projects. We are a bit less enthusiastic -- our priority is to bring returns to shareholders in line with their expectations," Desmarest said.

Hayward told Reuters he expected oil to trade within a range of $60 to $80 per barrel through the remainder of 2010.

"I think that OPEC have done a very good job in balancing the market -- demand for oil has fallen 2 million barrels per day since 2007, they've taken around 3 million bpd off the market, they've brought supply and demand back into balance," he said.

Hayward felt that long-term declining oil product demand in developed countries would be offset by emerging economies.

"None of us will sell more gasoline than we sold in 2007 (to developed markets). That's, however, being offset by very strong ... markets of the East and particularly China (where) last year 13 million cars were sold."

(Writing by Gerard Wynn, Editing by Mike Peacock)


[Green Business]
Laura Isensee
LOS ANGELES
Thu Jan 28, 2010 2:48pm EST
Solar startup teams up with battery maker

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - U.S. solar startup Suniva Inc said on Thursday it would partner with the U.S. unit of Japanese battery company GS Yuasa Corp to develop solar-powered energy storage systems.

Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Under the deal, Suniva and GS Battery Inc would build renewable energy systems integrating solar power panels and battery storage at various sites in the United States.

The move seeks to solve a challenge faced by the emerging renewable energy sector: how to store electricity generated by wind and solar so that the clean power is available and reliable when the wind is not blowing or sun is not shining.

"One thing that will make solar for many applications much more reliable and available is having that storage capacity," said Suniva's Chief Marketing Officer Bryan Ashley.

Ashley added that the solar panels could prove to charge batteries faster and better than the electrical grid. Instead of the alternating current from the grid, solar panels provide a direct electrical current straight to a battery, so that there is no loss of power in the change of currents, he said.

CAPACITY EXPANSION

Norcross, Georgia-based Suniva makes high-efficiency solar cells and modules, competing with modules made by U.S.-based SunPower Corp and Japan's Sanyo Electric Co Ltd, or Suntech Power Holdings Co Ltd's high-efficiency Pluto panels. Its customers include Germany's Solon SE and India's Titan Energy Systems Ltd.

Last year, the company raised $75 million in a financing round led by private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC to expand its manufacturing capacity to 100 megawatts.

In the spring, the company will increase that capacity to 175 MW and it plans to open a second plant in 2011 with an annual capacity of 400 MW to 500 MW, Ashley said.

For that second plant, the company expects to hire about 20 people, adding to its workforce of over 150 people; it is waiting for a loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy to help fund the expected $250 million investment.

For the first project with GS Battery, Suniva would build a 30 kilowatt solar array at the battery company's headquarters in Roswell, Georgia. The system would have 3,000 amp hours of storage and use nano-carbon, lead-acid batteries.

The company said the projects would focus on commercial and industrial markets and potentially the residential market. The size of the projects would range from as large as 30 kilowatts to as small as 3 kilowatts.

(Reporting by Laura Isensee, editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Gerald E. McCormick)

news20100129reut4

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Alex Lawler
LONDON
Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:41pm EST
Oil demand has peaked in developed world: IEA

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil use in rich industrialized countries will never return to 2006 and 2007 levels because of more fuel efficiency and the use of alternatives, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency said on Thursday.

The bold prediction, while made previously by some analysts, is significant because the IEA advises 28 countries on energy policy and its oil demand forecasts are closely watched by traders and policymakers.

"When we look at the OECD countries -- the U.S., Europe and Japan -- I think the level of demand that we have seen in 2006 and 2007, we will never see again," Fatih Birol told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"There may be some zig zags up and down but as a trend I think it will be a downward trend in terms of oil consumption."

Flat or declining OECD demand may ease any strain on oil prices caused by ever-growing consumption in emerging economies. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries will account for 53 percent of world demand in 2010, according to the IEA.

In its January 15 monthly Oil Market Report, the IEA forecast OECD demand would average 45.48 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2010, unchanged from 2009. World demand is forecast at 86.33 million bpd, up from 84.89 million in 2009.

Birol said the economic crisis had played a role in curbing OECD demand but the main reasons were more efficient cars and the increasing use of electricity and gas instead of oil in areas outside transport.

"It did play a role. The recession had a one-off effect," said Birol, who spoke to Reuters from the sidelines of the Davos conference of business leaders. "But the main factors are structural."

CHINA OFFSETS DECLINE

BP Plc Chief Executive Tony Hayward, also in Davos, said on Thursday demand for gasoline would not return to the rate of three years ago in established markets.

"None of us will sell more gasoline than we sold in 2007," he said, referring to developed markets. "That's, however, being offset by very strong ... markets of the East and particularly China."

In China, 13 million cars were sold last year, he said.

Interest in peak demand has grown following the surge in oil prices to a record high near $150 a barrel in 2008, a decline in world demand because of the economic crisis and efforts to combat climate change.

Reuters reported a year ago, citing analysts including the former chief economist at BP Plc, that oil demand may never return to growth in the United States, Europe and parts of Asia.

While non-OECD demand is expected to keep world oil use on a growing trend, some believe global consumption could reach a high point in the next decades as a result of policies to tackle climate change.

Saudi Arabia, which as the world's largest oil exporter has a lot to lose from a decline in oil demand, is worried about future consumption, its lead climate negotiator told Reuters earlier this month.

Muhammed al-Sabban, head of the Saudi delegation to UN talks on climate change, said the possibility that oil demand might peak this decade was a "serious problem" for Saudi Arabia.

Birol did not give any timeframe for any peak global oil demand, but said a move toward more efficient vehicles in developing markets could dampen the expected emerging country growth.

"If there is a transformation in the transport sector, it may also slow down the growth substantially."

"Advanced-car technologies ... are very strong pushed in many countries."

(Editing by Christopher Johnson)


[Green Business]
Poornima Gupta
SAN FRANCISCO
Thu Jan 28, 2010 2:45pm EST
Venture capitalist bullish on green startups

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. recession and slow global economy have created big opportunities for investments in promising green startups, an area that at one time had lofty valuations, Silicon Valley venture capitalist Steve Westly said.

Westly, a former California state controller and eBay Inc executive, said he is seeing some "great quality of deals."

"Two years ago when we were investing, there was huge competition and people had bid the market higher," Westly said in an interview this week. "Because of the recession, we think entrepreneurs' expectations have moved back to reality."

He said: "It's a terrible time to raise money, but we think this is a great buying opportunity."

Westly, founder of Menlo Park, California-based Westly Group, is currently in the process of assessing business plans of green startups.

Westly Group closed its second fund, exceeding $127 million, in December and has already invested about half of that money in diverse green technology companies, including light emitting diode (LED) fixtures startup Lunera, solar cell maker Solexel and smart grid company Eka Systems.

The fund's investors include pension funds, strategic investors and high net worth families, with the principles committing over 20 percent of the capital of the fund.

Westly is especially excited about the potential of California startup Lunera, which makes ultra-thin LED lighting units for offices.

The commercial market for LED lights is huge, he said, adding that Lunera is growing rapidly.

Looking forward, Westly said he expects many more investors to come into the green space in 2010.

Green technology "is not a bubble and is not going away," he said. "It has the potential to become one of the largest sectors."

"The only thing that held the industry back is a lack of IPOs," he added.

After a first round of initial public offerings, mainly by solar companies, in 2006 and 2007, the market for green IPOs has been slow.

The financial market turmoil following the collapse of Lehman Bros. in the latter half of 2008 virtually shut down the IPO market.

The appetite for IPOs has picked up since mid-September this year and the sector saw the successful debut of lithium- ion battery maker A123 Systems Inc.

Already a few green technology companies have filed registration statements for IPOs, including solar firm Solyndra Inc and biofuel firm Codexis Inc.

Westly says some widely expected high-profile green IPOs, such as Silver Spring Networks, would ignite the market this year.

He also expects a lot of activity in the electric and plug-in hybrid vehicle sector, including lithium-ion batteries.

And: "The area I am most intrigued with is green building materials," he said. "It's not very sexy and is a blue-collar space that most people overlook."

Silicon Valley is finding high-tech ways to make age-old materials, such as energy-efficient ways to make concrete, windows that insulate better than walls, and wood substitutes.

Although the field is new, the green building materials sector is gaining attention and growing fast.

Some surveys and studies estimate that the green building materials market is expected to reach as high as $500 billion in the next decade.

"The dollar amounts are huge and the opportunity is great," Westly said.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

news20100129reut5

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Gerard Wynn and Martin Howell
DAVOS, Switzerland
Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:23pm EST
U.S. cap and trade must take back seat: executives

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Business executives and policy officials said a U.S. cap and trade scheme must give way to a clean energy law, after U.S. President Barack Obama favored "green jobs" in his State of the Union Address.

Cap and trade works by limiting carbon emissions from polluters, which then pass on the extra cost to consumers. That model is proving a hard sell during a slow U.S. economic recovery.

Obama said on Wednesday he wanted to create more clean energy jobs and supported a "comprehensive energy and climate bill" in the Senate. But he didn't mention cap and trade.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a climate bill last year, featuring a cap and trade scheme, and is awaiting the passage of a similar Senate draft.

"I don't think that the House bill that passed will even be considered this year in the Senate," said Tom Donahue, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, noting that it was an election year and there were so many other priorities, including Obama's latest jobs plan.

"We are in search of a solid domestic bill, whether its cap and trade or cap and carbon tax or however these things are put together. We just don't want a bill like the one that came out of the House," he told Reuters on Thursday on the sidelines of a business and policy summit in the Davos Swiss ski resort.

The industry looby group ran a high-profile campaign against the House climate bill, losing some members as a result, but even businesses with big investments in green technology are now calling for a backing from cap and trade for now.

"There is so much on the plates of politicians and regulators in the United States it is hard for me to envisage a strong movement to have a cap and trade system in place in the next eight or nine months," said John Rice, a vice chairman of General Electric Co, who also serves as chief executive of its GE Technology Infrastructure division.

GE is a top wind turbine manufacturer and also has investments in solar.

"I would worry if we tried to push it through in this environment we would end up with a very incomplete solution, and I think it is more important that we are thoughtful about it and if we do it, we do it correctly," Rice said.

"You can see in the U.S. we are getting a backlash in a lot of areas and I just don't think it would be helpful."

The House bill passed a scheme which would force polluters to buy carbon emissions permits from an economy-wide quota which would be ratcheted down, to drive carbon cuts.

"It's the dumbest idea," said Timothy Wirth, former U.S. senator and now President of the U.N. Foundation, on the idea of forcing businesses to buy emissions permits.

He expected a modified scheme to pass eventually which may apply only to utilities without enforced permit auctions.

In the near term, analysts expected the United States to pass a slimmer energy bill without cap and trade, focused instead on targets for renewables and nuclear power.

"I do not believe that there will be legislation on climate any time soon in the U.S., but they will address clean energy and that will have very good benefits for the climate," said Bjorn Stigson, president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a green business lobby.

(Reporting by Martin Howell and Gerard Wynn, Editing by Stella Dawson)


[Green Business]
Gerard Wynn
DAVOS, Switzerland
Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:34am EST
Renewable power growth to beat coal: Alstom

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Power equipment maker Alstom expects demand for renewable and nuclear technologies to outstrip growth in coal and gas fired electricity projects, Chief Executive Patrick Kron said on Thursday.

"There will be a faster growth of non carbon dioxide emitting technologies, but there will also be a role in thermal (gas and coal) as part of the equation. There will be a move toward more efficient thermal plants," he said.

"Renewables and nuclear are likely to grow faster, but coal and gas will definitely grow," he added, declining to comment on which technologies Alstom expected to see greatest sales growth.

Alstom's sales of power plant turbines have suffered from a decline in electricity demand in 2009, the first year-on-year drop in global demand since 1945, said Kron.

Alstom's total orders should recover from lows seen last year but it is "not unlikely" that sales will fall in the 2010/11 reporting year because of the 2009 dip, he said.

"Over 2009 we had a slowdown in order intake as a number of customers delayed their investment decisions, because of the uncertainties," he said.

"As far as our order intakes were concerned we reached a type of low point in 2009 and now we will see how it goes."

The financial crisis has dampened energy demand growth in some countries, leading some plant builders to put off major investment projects, while smaller developers in the renewables sectors have struggled to get financing for projects.

But Kron was upbeat on prospects for long-term sales.

"Our market growth will remain steady over the medium and long term. There is a massive need for power generation," he said.

(Editing by Daniel Fineren and Jon Boyle)


[Green Business]
LONDON
Fri Jan 29, 2010 8:32am EST
EU carbon prices ease as financials continue to sell

LONDON (Reuters) - European carbon emissions futures eased in Friday's early trade, as financial institutions continued to sell to take profit from a recent rally.

EU Allowances for December delivery were down 19 cents or 1.45 percent at 12.95 euros ($18.18) a tonne at 0808 GMT. Volume was light at 1,208 lots traded.

"After a slow start, we saw a flurry of trading as sellers started to appear. There is some short-term profit taking from financials and a small amount of utility buying lending support," said Andy Ager, head of emissions trading at Bache Commodities.

EUAs opened unchanged from the previous session's close. A bout of selling pushed prices down to 12.90 before utilities lent support to push prices back toward 13 euros, Ager said.

EUAs lost ground on Thursday as lower German power prices weighed and speculators took profit following a recent rally in prices.

Heavy selling from financial institutions wiped out support from utilities who had been buying EUAs based on firmer British natural gas prices for winter and spring.

Some traders suggested the selling had been sparked by industrial companies selling small volumes of excess EUAs.

"Looks like the expected industrial flow is coming through gradually and giving some selling signals to financials," a trader said. Other traders agreed that industrial selling was happening, but in a much subtler way than last February when prices sank to 8 euros.

Spot EUAs on BlueNext were down 16 cents or 1.23 percent at 12.80 euros a tonne on Friday.

German Calendar 2010 baseload power was up 50 cents or 1.02 percent at 49.35 euros per megawatt hour.

Oil was steady near $74 on Friday, headed for a third consecutive weekly drop, as the recovery of the U.S. economy has yet to boost fuel demand.

Certified emissions reductions were down 11 cents or 0.95 percent at 11.43 euros a tonne.

The Obama Administration formally embraced the Copenhagen Accord on global warming on Thursday, a day after the president urged a fractious U.S. Congress to get to work on comprehensive legislation to stem the nation's emissions.

(Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by XXX)

news20100129reut6

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Gerard Wynn
DAVOS, Switzerland
Fri Jan 29, 2010 8:33am EST
Carbon trade mustn't be victim of bank reform: HSBC

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Emissions trading should not be in the firing line of new banking regulations, said Stephen Green, group chairman of HSBC on Friday.

U.S. President Barack Obama last week proposed reforms, including regulation of proprietary trading where banks trade their own money and private equity investing by retail banks off their balance sheet in unlisted companies.

"There's a whole range of trading activities that are perfectly normal, legitimate, regular activities of the markets in support of economic and social development, and emissions trading is one of them," said Green, on the sidelines of a business and policy summit in the Davos Swiss ski resort.

"I don't think that will be characterized as proprietary trading, emissions trading is ... trading with clients. There is a debate to be had about proprietary trading (in other areas)."

HSBC on Monday invested $125 million off its own balance sheet in a private equity deal to support Better Place, a company which aims to roll out charging infrastructure for electric cars.

"It's exactly the kind of investment you want to see happen (to drive carbon emissions cuts) ... if we're allowed to continue to do that kind of thing," said Green, referring to prospective banking reforms.

"That's an investment we have made. Let's suppose commercial banks ended up not making investments in private equity, well, (low carbon businesses will) find other people making investments in private equity," he said.

Green was speaking on the sidelines of an event where six financial institutions underscored opportunities from investing in clean technologies, under a framework of "climate principles" launched in December 2008 to encourage such investment.

Banks say they are investing in clean tech despite a U.N.-led Copenhagen climate summit last month which failed to agree to replace the present Kyoto Protocol with a new, binding deal.

"We can't sit back and wait for that all-embracing accord that may one day emerge from the international governmental deliberations, we have to get going," said Green.


[Green Business]
Leonora Walet, Asia Green Investment Correspondent - Analysis
HONG KONG
Fri Jan 29, 2010 9:21am EST
China's green tech revolution

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Targeting mainland China with his energy-saving inventions, Peter Fung and executives like him have their eye on the hottest competitive advantage around: an ambitious government with deep pockets.

"State support is the thing that drives companies like us to seek our luck in China," said Fung, a Hong Kong-based investment banker turned entrepreneur as he extolled the virtues of his company's air conditioner-cum-water heater, which promises energy savings to the more than 1.3 billion people who endure China's long, fierce winters and harsh summers.

Looking to capitalize on the billions the government is pouring into green technologies, low production costs and an easy attitude to regulation, he is just one of thousands who are helping drive China toward its ambition as the clean tech factory to the world.

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.

Fung, who is executive director at Coolpoint Energy Ltd, hopes to pick up some of the country's financial support through a manufacturing partnership with Chinese firms.

But far more significant in terms of China's aims at the moment is its ability to produce cheap solar and wind equipment.

"China is practically throwing money at the sector," said Fung. "I won't surprised if it eventually becomes the biggest clean-tech producer."

Helped by state subsidies, the costs of solar and wind energy have more than halved in recent years. They remain more expensive than coal-generated electricity, but China is uniquely placed to scale up, and undercut its rivals' costs.

Low-cost labor, cheap money and plenty of raw materials -- the formula that made China the global manufacturing giant it is today -- have easily replicated in green technology, an industry that for decades was hobbled by high costs.

AS CHEAP AS COAL?

"China may be one of the problems as it is the world's heaviest polluter, but it can also be part of the solution," said Philippe Delhaise, CEO of CIS Carbon Rating, a global rating company for carbon-related environmental projects.

China already has over 50 percent of the global market for solar panels. Its companies are now looking to export their wind turbines.

Analysts say as technologies advance and a wider market for these systems develops, the costs of wind and solar power will come down to the point where they match that of coal-powered electricity on a grid. At that point, solar and energy producers could sell electricity without state aid.

In China, this could soon be happening.

Yingli Green Energy Holdings and Suntech Power Holdings -- two of the world's largest solar panel makers, which are based in the mainland -- produce among the cheapest solar panels in the world.

They have been able to cut their prices more aggressively than German and U.S. manufacturers because they procure polysilicon, a raw material for solar panels, at cheap prices from manufacturers who have lower electricity and labor costs.

Chinese manufacturers undercut their European peers' prices by around 40 percent, according to a recent report from UBS: Chinese companies sell modules at about 1.20 euros per watt, while European panels sell at nearly 2 euros per watt.

Chinese companies have contributed to a rough decline of 40 percent in global solar energy prices.

GCL-Poly Energy Holdings, which became the world's third-largest polysilicon maker following its $3.4 billion acquisition of solar assets in China last year, expects to sell the solar raw material at $45 per kilogram in 2011, down from over $50 per kg now, said the UBS report.

Outside China, manufacturers sell polysilicon at $60 on average.

Another reason China can develop its clean technology so cheaply and fast is that Chinese companies can deliver projects without having to bother with cumbersome regulations, analysts say. State loans are available at cheap rates. Solar power stations and wind farms are built with ease, meeting none of the public resistance that dogs western developers.

Policies also favor domestic suppliers against foreign rivals, allowing local companies to thrive, analysts and their rivals say.

But the Chinese are not unstoppable.

Technological innovation is a weak spot for a country so focused on cutting costs, and the easy money that has inflated markets and spawned the feeding frenzy of companies like Fung's has created excess capacity, depressing prices further.

Polysilicon has collapsed from a peak of $400 per kg in 2008, and analysts expect prices to fall a further 10 percent this year, yet more polysilicon manufacturers are ramping up production.

"When you throw too much money at anything, something's bound to go to waste," said Fung.

(Additional reporting by Gerard Wynn, Editing by Sara Ledwith)

news20100129reut7

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Michael Hirtzer
CHICAGO
Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:03pm EST
El Nino to boost 2010 U.S. crops: report

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. farmers grew record-large corn and soy crops in 2009 but production in 2010 could be even bigger, aided by an El Nino weather pattern that is typically a boon to the Midwest but less so for growers in Australia and southeast Asia, a forecaster said on Thursday.

Allen Motew, meteorologist at QT Weather, forecast a dry U.S. spring, which should minimize problems at planting time, followed by a favorably wet summer growing season.

"It's exactly what we need to increase (crop) yields," Motew said at the Top Producer Seminar, a farmers' conference held in Chicago.

Temperatures in the U.S. Corn Belt are expected to be mostly below normal this summer, while precipitation will be above normal.

"We have a double-whammy here -- colder and wetter," Motew said. "The odds say we are going to have quite a good year."

Motew said corn yields typically increase when an El Nino weather pattern persists for two years in a row. The same is likely true for soybeans, he said.

In two of the most recent such years, 1992 and 1998, corn yields increased by 21.1 and 6.1 percent, respectively, Motew said.

He said that yields increased during the last 16 of 22 seasons of El Nino weather.

The average U.S. corn yield in 2009 reached a record 165.2 bushels per acre, resulting in a record-large crop of 13.2 billion bushels. The average U.S. soybean yield was also the highest on record, at 44.0 bushels per acre, and production topped 3.3 billion bushels.

El Nino, the abnormal warming of waters in the equatorial Pacific, was observed in May 2009 and the existing pattern may run until at least June 2010, the National Weather Service said a week ago.

While El Nino may be beneficial for farmers in the Midwest, the weather pattern can cause erratic and harsh weather elsewhere in the world.

Motew said El Nino could cause drought conditions during the latter months of 2009, stressing the palm oil crop in Malaysia and the wheat crop in Australia.

El Nino has already contributed to bizarre weather in the United States, including flooding and tornadoes in California and heavy snows in Oklahoma.

Temperatures have also been above normal in the typically frigid northern U.S. Plains, while areas in Chicago and southward have seen below-normal temperatures.

The pattern should bode well for U.S. corn and soybean farmers, however. More than 600 farmers were in attendance at the three-day seminar.

(Reporting by Michael Hirtzer; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

[Green Business]
Richard Cowan and Timothy Gardner
WASHINGTON
Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:31pm EST
U.S. embraces Copenhagen pact, Senators rework bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama Administration formally embraced the Copenhagen Accord on global warming on Thursday, a day after the president urged a fractious U.S. Congress to get to work on comprehensive legislation to stem the nation's emissions.

U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern gave notice to the United Nations that the country will aim for a 17 percent emissions cut in carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming by 2020, from 2005 levels.

The move, which confirmed the goal set by the White House late last year, was conditional on other countries also submitting their pollution-cutting targets to the accord, Stern said.

The condition was likely aimed at fence-sitters in Congress who do not want to see the United States commit to steps on fighting global warming unless other major polluters like China and India go along.

John Kerry, the Democratic U.S. senator working on a compromise climate bill, insisted that Congress would put a price on carbon, forcing companies to pay for their global warming pollution.

But he followed the lead of President Barack Obama, who called for a comprehensive climate plan during Wednesday's State of the Union speech without mentioning one of its most controversial and complicated elements, cap-and-trade, which would allow companies to trade rights to pollute.

"It's open to how you price carbon," Kerry told Reuters. "People need to relax and look at all the ways you might price carbon. We're not pinned down to one approach."

Kerry, who is working on the bill with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and independent Senator Joe Lieberman, strongly rejected the idea that progress had bogged down. "I just don't agree with that interpretation at all," he said, adding that Senate negotiations were "making headway."

GOAL DEPENDS ON CONGRESS

The final U.S. 2020 emissions goal depends on Congress passing a climate bill, Stern informed the U.N.

Kerry and others are trying to win Republican and moderate Democratic votes for the bill by including incentives for nuclear power, offshore oil drilling and clean technology jobs. Graham said the nuclear and oil drilling initiatives would not advance in the Senate without dealing with emissions.

The 17 percent U.S. target represents only about a 4 percent cut from the 1990 baseline that other rich polluters are using, showing how difficult it was for the United States to craft a domestic emissions plan.

The European Union reiterated on Wednesday an offer of a 20 percent cut by 2020, from 1990, and a 30 percent cut if other nations deepened their reductions.

The Copenhagen Accord agreed by the United States, China, India and other countries at U.N. talks in December calls for governments to submit climate plans by January 31, 2010.

It does not bind any country to emissions cuts, but it is seen as a step in moving past gridlock over the sharing of the burden of acting on climate change between rich countries and poor ones.

Duncan Marsh, director of international climate policy at the Nature Conservancy, said that with Thursday's announcement, "The United States clearly is signaling its commitment to the global process" for tackling global warming."

The House of Representatives last year passed a climate bill that relied on a cap-and-trade system. But the Senate's push to pass a bill, which might jack up consumers' energy costs, could be harder in this congressional election year as public support has appeared to dip.

A poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press said 28 percent of those surveyed listed global warming as a top priority this year, down from 38 percent in 2007.

A new poll by the Yale Project on Climate Change and George Mason University concluded that fewer people believe global warming is occurring. But it also said more people now fear it could harm their families and future generations.

HYBRID SYSTEM

Kerry said he plans to outline a comprehensive bill that could be considered this spring, although he did not want to be pinned down to a definite deadline. "We are writing and drafting; we're pulling together the titles" of a bill.

Obama acknowledged in his speech that some people doubt the science of climate change but said it was important to move on clean energy such as wind and solar power to compete with countries like China and India in the low-carbon economy.

Graham said that statement and an emphasis on nuclear power could gain support but it was "yet to be determined" if senators could come up with a bill that could pass.

Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners in Washington, said in a note that Obama "displayed a canny understanding of the political challenges confronting recession-weary, centrist fence-sitters (in Congress)."

"Voters," he wrote, "may be much more likely to embrace a plan to best other nations in trade than a plan to save other nations from rising seas (even if it's the same plan)."

Some environmentalists were angered that Obama was receptive to more oil drilling and nuclear power.

"President Obama's support for all these dirty energy sources was a big win for corporate polluters and their Washington lobbyists, but it was a kick in the gut to environmentalists across the country," said Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica.

In recent days, according to Kerry and Graham, senators have huddled with representatives of energy-intensive industries that would be most affected by government mandating less use of dirty-burning coal and oil.

The bill has been delayed in the Senate by the healthcare debate, as well as opposition from most Republicans and many moderate Democrats.

Graham said cap-and-dividend, which would mandate carbon emission reductions while limiting the trading of pollution permits, is under review along with other options. Under that system, polluters would be required to buy carbon credits in auctions and consumers would receive most proceeds.

A carbon tax has no support in Congress, Graham said.

(Editing by Paul Simao)

news20100129reut8

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Markus Wacket
BERLIN
Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:20am EST
Germany aims to delay solar incentive cuts: sources say

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen wants to delay his proposed 15-percent cuts in solar power incentives by one month until May 1 rather than April 1, government sources told Reuters on Friday.

Roettgen has faced criticism from within his own party, with regional leaders urging him to delay or water down his proposed 15-percent cut in the incentives that utilities are obligated by law to pay producers of solar power.

Solar power companies in Germany, where about half of the world's photovoltaic energy is produced and fed into the grid, have also complained about Roettgen's proposed cuts. They said they are too steep, too fast and will kill jobs.

The government sources also told Reuters that further cuts after 2011 could be steeper than Roettgen is now planning.

If there are more than 3,500 megawatts of solar power capacity added within one year the cuts would sink 3.5 percent in the following year instead of 2.5 percent now planned.

A spokeswoman for the Environment Ministry declined to comment on the Reuters report. She said members of parliament were now discussing Roettgen's proposal.

The sources also said the proposal to push back the 15-percent cut by one month had been agreed in consultation with leaders of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and their Bavaria sister party, the Christian Social Union.

The government sources said Roettgen was still seeking backing from the Free Democrats, junior coalition partners, for his proposal to cut the incentives called feed-in tariffs (FIT) that have helped make Germany a world leader in solar power.

The sources said the plans to reform the Renewable Energy Act (EEG) will be discussed in a cabinet meeting in two weeks.

(Reporting by Markus Wacket; writing by Erik Kirschbaum)


[Green Business]
Michael Hogan
BERLIN
Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:21am EST
German biodiesel plants face closure on low sales

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's biodiesel industry expects to operate at around 50 percent of capacity in 2010 as taxes are making the green fuel too expensive for motorists, a biofuels industry leader said on Friday.

Germany's 4.8 million tonne annual capacity biodiesel industry, Europe's largest, is estimated to have produced about 2.5 million tonnes in 2009, down from 2.7 million tonnes in 2008, said Elmar Baumann, chief executive of German biofuels industry association VBO.

"We expect the same level of capacity use in 2010," Baumann told Reuters. "The industry is facing a dramatically poor outlook, we will be facing more consolidation in the coming year with more plants being taken out of the market."

About half of the 49 German biodiesel plants were not working at all and many of the operational plants were producing well under capacity, he said.

"Industrial plants like this need 75 percent capacity use to remain viable, we cannot continue at this level in the long-term."

Germany's government, elected in September 2009, initially said it would review green fuel taxes to stimulate biofuel sales but later said it would only freeze taxes, not cut them.

"This will not be enough to simulate the B100 (petrol station) market," Baumann said. "Sales of B100 fell sharply in 2009 and the tax freeze will not be enough to create an improvement in 2010."

The VDO estimates sales of pure biodiesel at petrol stations fell to around 200,000 tonnes in 2009, sharply down from about 1.1 million tonnes in 2008 and a peak of 1.8 million tonnes in 2007 before taxes reduced the price attraction of biodiesel.

The VDO continues to lobby the government for a cut in taxes to revive petrol station sales but this year the main industry production will be focused on production for the blending market.

Germany's government has also scaled back the level of biofuels which must be blended with fossil fuels under the country's plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions to 6.25 percent in 2010, down from its previous plan for 6.75 percent biofuel content.

With petrol station sales down so dramatically, blending sales were now the critical market for biodiesel, said Baumann.

Oil companies did not want to deal with small biodiesel deliveries on road transport tankers but large consignments by train or inland waterways tankers, Baumann said.

"This means biodiesel producers without a river or canal link or a railway siding find great difficulty in making blending sales," Baumann said. "The future of such plants will be in question."

(Editing by Sue Thomas)


[Green Business]
WASHINGTON
Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:23am EST
U.S. government to reduce its emissions 28 percent by 2020

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Friday the U.S. government would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent by 2020 as the result of an executive order he issued to set the example on fighting climate change.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason)


[Green Business]
Ranga Sirilal
COLOMBO
Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:02am EST
Sri Lanka police raid losing candidate's office

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lankan police raided the office of losing presidential candidate General Sarath Fonseka on Friday, an aide said, two days after troops had surrounded him inside a hotel on suspicion he was plotting a coup.

Fonseka lost Tuesday's election to incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa by 1.8 million votes, after a bruising campaign with personal attacks by both, who last May stood together in victory over the Tamil Tiger separatists after a 25-year war.

"The police Special Task Force broke into the office of Sarath Fonseka," aide Asanka Magedara told Reuters.

A Reuters journalist saw police commandos outside Fonseka's office. Police spokesman I.M. Karunaratne said he had heard of a raid but could not immediately confirm it.

Also on Friday, JVP legislator Vijitha Herath said police arrested Chandana Sirimalwatte, editor of the Lanka newspaper. The paper is seen as favoring the JVP, a Marxist party which joined other opposition parties to back Fonseka.

Karunaratne, the police spokesman, said he had no official statement.

On Wednesday, soldiers surrounded the luxury hotel where Fonseka and other opposition leaders went after polling finished and vote counting was proceeding.

The former army commander, a hero to many in the Indian Ocean nation, said he feared arrest but later walked out a free man. The military said it had gone there to arrest army deserters with him that may have been plotting a coup.

MARKET TO SHRUG OFF

The political fracas was unlikely to roil the Colombo Stock Exchange, which hit a record high on Thursday after Rajapaksa's re-election. It was one of 2009's best performers with a 125 percent return.

"There won't be any impact on the equity market or the economy in the short term," a Sri Lankan financial analyst told Reuters. "Investors think there is a stable government and they only think about their returns."

It was closed for a Buddhist holiday on Friday.

However, the analyst said there could be damage to the economy if the international community intervened. Fonseka has vowed to challenge the election results in court, but few expect that case to make much headway.

Local and international observers generally praised the election's conduct, but condemned campaign violence, abuse of state resources and state media and urged investigation of election complaints. Five people were killed before the vote.

An observer mission from the 54-nation Commonwealth on Friday praised the work of the electoral commission, but said Sri Lanka "will not fully meet key benchmarks for democratic elections" until the panel was allowed sufficient independence to enforce election laws.

"There is a compromised pre-election environment, including (an) election management body unable to fully ensure respect for the rule of law; a failure of some state institutions to respect legal provisions...and incidences of violence," it said in a statement.

Immediately after the war ended in May, Rajapaksa and his brother Gotabaya, a former army officer who is the defense secretary, began to suspect Fonseka might attempt a coup.

So the president promoted him to the newly created job of chief of defense staff, which in effect sidelined Fonseka because he had no control of troops. Fonseka said those were two of the reasons he retired to enter the race in November.

(Additional reporting by Shihar Aneez and Andrew Caballero-Reynolds; Writing by Bryson Hull; Editing by Ron Popeski)