news20100303jt

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

[EDUCATION AND BILINGUAL]
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
BILINGUAL: KEYES' POINT

At times the job of a saibanin can be real murder
By MICHAEL HOFFMAN

Reiko glances nervously about her. She's never been in a saibansho (裁判所, courthouse) before. The sixth floor, the yobidashijō (呼び出し状, summons) had said. She looks around for an elevator.

"Sumimasen . . . "

Momentarily startled, she quickly regains her self-composure. "What am I so bikubiku (びくびく, jumpy) about?" She smiles tentatively at the young man addressing her.

"Are you a saibanin (裁判員, lay judge) too?" he asks.

"Yes."

He laughs awkwardly. "Jitai suru riyū ga arimasendeshita (辞退する理由がありませんでした, I couldn't get out of it). Oh well, kaisha wo yasumu kō jitsu nimo narimasushi (会社を休む口実にもなりますし, It's also an excuse to get off work). Also, of course" — another awkward laugh — "it's a shakaiteki koken (社会的貢献, contribution to society)."

"Where's the elevator?"

"Over there, I believe."

Signs posted on the sixth-floor walls lead them down a long corridor to a large room, bare except for a round table in the middle, at which four others are already seated: two women, two men. Reiko is too tense to observe them closely. No one is talking; everyone is waiting expectantly.

"Saibanin no minasan, omatase shimashita (裁判員の皆さん、お待たせしました , Lay judges, I apologize for keeping you waiting)." Three people in long judges' robes have entered the room: two men and a woman. The older man looks about 50; Reiko is surprised at how young the other two look. The older man proceeds: "Watashi wa tōsaiban no keiji-bu de saibanchō wo tsutomete orimasu (私は当裁判の刑事部で裁判長を務めております, I am the chief judge of this court's criminal division). Tazawa desu (田沢です, My name is Tazawa."

"Saibankan no Endo desu (裁判官の遠藤です, I am Judge Endo)," the younger man says.

"Onajiku saibankan no Fujino desu (同じく裁判官の藤野です, And I am Judge Fujino)," says the woman.

Judge Tazawa's manner as he proceeds with his setsumei (説明, explanation) is calm, cordial, engaging. He is grave without being intimidating. Reiko's tension eases. He is like a good teacher — like herself in the classroom, it occurs to her.

"The case we will be judging," he says, "is a satsujin jiken (殺人事件, a case of murder) that occurred four months ago. The higaisha (被害者, victim) was a wakai josei (若い女性, young woman) . . . "

"Oboete imasu (覚えています, I remember)," interposes one of the two women saibanin excitedly. She is young and, Reiko notices now for the first time, wearing a pink dress, which suddenly strikes her as vaguely out of place. "It was on all the terebi waido shō (テレビワイドショウ, TV talk shows)."

"Right, right," says the young man Reiko came in with, as he leans back in his chair with exaggerated nonchalance. "The guy josei ni tsukimatotte ita (女性に付きまとっていた, had been hanging around her) . . . They said on TV that he jikyō shita (自供した, confessed) and that he . . . "

Quietly but firmly, Judge Tazawa interrupts. "We must not," he says, "prejudge the case based on what the keisatsu (警察, police) or masukomi (マスコミ, media) have been saying. Whether the hikokunin (被告人, defendant) is yūzai (有罪, guilty) or muzai (無罪, innocent) is for us, saibankan and saibanin together, to determine, based only on the shōko (証拠, evidence) we hear in court.

"Remember," Tazawa continues, "the kensatsukan (検察官, prosecutor) must prove his case gimon no yochi ga nai hodo (疑問の余地がないほど, beyond reasonable doubt). Go-iken ya go-shitsumon wa arimasu deshō ka? (ご意見やご質問はありますでしょうか? Are there any comments? Any questions?)"

Reiko raises a hand. "I just want to say . . . Watashitachi no handan (私たちの判断, our judgment) will hikokunin no isshō wo sayū shimasu (被告人の一生を左右します, determine the course of the defendant's entire life)." She is looking at the rather oroka na (愚かな, flaky) young man as she speaks, because somehow she doubts he fully appreciates this. "Terrible mistakes have been made. The Sugaya case just recently — Mr. Sugaya confessed under keisatsu ni yoru gōin na torishirabe (警察による強引な取調べ, coercive police questioning) to killing a child. He spent 17 years in prison before his innocence was recognized and he was shakuho saremashita (釈放されました, released)."

Tazawa nods. "You are absolutely right. The point you make cannot be stressed too strongly." He pauses to let it sink in, and then he says," Hōtei e mairimasho (法廷へ参りましょう, let us proceed to the courtroom)."

Fiction series "Keyes' Point" appears on the first Wednesday of each month.

news20100303gdn

[News] from [guardian.co.uk]

[Environment > GM]
GM potato to be grown in Europe

German-engineered potato is first genetically modified food to be approved for cultivatation in Europe for the first time in 12 years
Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 3 March 2010 13.04 GMT Article history

The EU has approved the cultivation of a genetically modified potato and the use of three types of altered maize, saying they don't pose a health risk.

The go-ahead for the Amflora potato – developed by BASF SE, based in Ludwigshafen, Germany – was the first green light in 12 years to grow a genetically modified food in the EU.

Critics accused the European commission of pandering to corporate interests at the expense of public health.

The EU executive also approved the marketing of three genetically modified maize products from Monsanto, based in St Louis, Missouri, for food and feed purposes – though not their cultivation.

The EU's public health commissioner, John Dalli, said the EU executive is only guided by science in approving genetically modified organisms, which is an issue of fierce debate in Europe.

"Responsible innovation will be my guiding principle when dealing with innovative technologies," he said at a news conference. There were no scientific reasons to delay the approvals, he said.

The first approval request for the Amflora dates back to 2003. Dalli said the potato will produce starch for paper production to help save "raw materials, energy, water and oil-based chemicals".

Though widely used in the US, genetically modified foods face opposition in Europe, where critics see them as a health and environmental risk. Opposition is strong in the UK, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Greece and France.

Some EU countries ban them, fearing their seeds will accidentally spread and alter the natural surroundings; others do not.

Martin Haeusling, a Green EU Parliament member, said Dalli showed "flagrant support for industry interests", claiming 70% of EU consumers oppose genetically manipulated food. "There are serious concerns about an Amflora gene that is resistant to antibiotics," he said.

Heike Moldenhauer, a spokesperson for the Friends of the Earth Europe environmental group, said the EU decision "puts profit before people ... There are clear health concerns surrounding this GM potato."

The Italian government also objected. "We are against the decision ... that grants the permission to cultivate a genetically modified potato," said Italy's agriculture minister, Luca Zaia.

The German government said the Amflora potato will be grown in eastern Germany but not on an industrial scale.

Amflora and the three genetically modified maize varieties had already been approved by the European Food Safety Authority.

Dalli approved the three maize varieties after EU governments failed to come to an agreement on the issue, effectively leaving the decision to the EU executive.


[Environment > Energy efficiency]
New energy saving targets to cost homeowners more than £7bn

Homeowners will be able to take out loans for thousands of pounds to pay for insulation and solar panels, under legislation proposed by the government
Tim Webb
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 March 2010 20.35 GMT Article history

Well-off homeowners will be expected to borrow more than £7bn over the next decade to meet ambitious government energy saving targets announced today.

Local authorities will be encouraged to borrow the money needed to make buildings greener and meet local carbon emission reduction targets, for example by entering into public-private partnerships.

Energy suppliers will be required to meet about 60% of the estimated £18.6bn cost of insulating most of the UK's homes, for which the poorest households will not have to pay. Suppliers will pass these costs on to their customers, but energy secretary Ed Miliband insisted the targets would not lead to additional utility bill rises.

Under legislation proposed today, homeowners would be able to take out loans for thousands of pounds to install loft or wall insulation or solar panels. These loans would be fixed against the home, so that if the borrower moved out, they would not have to continue to pay.

The new owner would inherit the annual charge to pay for the green measures, but would also continue to benefit from the resulting lower energy bills. The government said that the finance – expected to come from retailers such as B&Q and banks including the Co-op – would initially be available on a small scale from 2012, although this would improve.

The government said that cavity wall and loft insulation should be installed in every home where possible by 2015. It also said that up to 7m "eco-upgrades", involving the installation of micro-generation technology such as heat pumps and solar panels, should be carried out by 2020. Energy companies such as British Gas will also be required to work more with local authorities to upgrade entire streets and areas.

Under the government's energy efficiency scheme, companies can mostly target who they like on a piecemeal basis, leading to criticism that many householders who are difficult to contact – usually those on lower incomes – do not benefit.

John Healey, the housing minister, said: "Some energy companies dealing with individuals at the moment are calling the shots. But under the new system they will have to work with local authorities."

Miliband also promised there would be more monitoring of companies' activities for the future scheme, which will run from 2013 to 2020. Andrew Warren, director of the Association for the Conservation of Energy, welcomed the announcement but said: "We can't afford a laissez-faire attitude and the assumption that everyone is a decent chap. The record to date on monitoring has not been good."


[Environment > Hacked climate science emails]
Institute of Physics forced to clarify submission to climate emails inquiry

Strongly worded submission to the parliamentary inquiry is being used to imply the institute questions the scientific evidence for climate change, statement says
David Adam, environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 March 2010 18.00 GMT Article history

The Institute of Physics has been forced to clarify its strongly worded submission to a parliamentary inquiry into climate change emails released onto the internet.

The institute's submission, to the science and technology select committee, said the emails from scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) contained "worrying implications for the integrity of scientific research in this field".

The submission has been used by climate sceptics to bolster claims that the email affair, dubbed "climategate", shows the scientists did not behave properly and that the problem of global warming is exaggerated.

The committee held its only evidence session yesterday and interviewed witnesses including Phil Jones, the climate scientist at the centre of the media storm.

In a statement issued today the institute said its written submission to the committee "has been interpreted by some individuals to imply that it does not support the scientific evidence that the rising concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is contributing to global warming."

It says: "That is not the case. The institute's position on climate change is clear: the basic science is well enough understood to be sure that our climate is changing, and that we need to take action now to mitigate that change."

The institute said its critical comments were focused on the scientific process, and "should not be interpreted to mean that the institute believes that the science itself is flawed."

The statement appears to contradict sections of the original submission, which suggests the emails showed scientists had cherry-picked data to support conclusions and that some key reconstructions of past temperature cannot be relied upon.

The institute statement says its submission was approved by its science board, a formal committee of experts that oversees its policy work.

The Guardian has been unable to find a member of the board that supports the submission. Two of the scientists listed as members said they had declined to comment on a draft submission prepared by the institute, because they were not climate experts and had not read the UEA emails. Others would not comment or did not respond to enquiries.

An institute spokesperson said the submission was "strongly supported" by three members of the board. "All members were invited to comment. Only a few did, all concerned approved [the submission] unanimously."

news20100303nn1

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 2 March 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/464021a
News
Weapons labs to thrive as Obama trims nukes

President takes first steps towards goal of disarmament.
By Jeff Tollefson

The administration of US President Barack Obama is nearing the completion of a much-anticipated policy that could restrict the role of the nation's nuclear arsenal while strengthening the weapons-research infrastructure at the Department of Energy laboratories.

Initially scheduled for release late last year, and then again for 1 March, the Nuclear Posture Review will lay out the administration's justifications and strategy for maintaining a nuclear arsenal. It will also be the president's first opportunity to make good on his promise, made in Prague last April, to take "concrete steps" towards nuclear disarmament and to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the US security strategy. The policy is likely to affirm the Obama administration's decision not to pursue new weapon designs, although many expect there to be wiggle room for scientists at the weapons labs to modify existing systems in the name of safety and security.

Officials are still debating how to frame the US nuclear strategy in the review, which is now expected sometime in the coming weeks. Some politicians and non-proliferation advocates have urged the president to promise that nuclear weapons will be used only to deter a nuclear attack, whereas others advocate a less restrictive phrasing.

"I personally expect to be disappointed," says Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "I think it will have some positive-sounding language, but I think the overall changes will be modest."

The document will help to guide work throughout the energy department, including at the primary weapons laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, as the administration works on a new treaty with Russia that could see the weapons stockpile reduced. An expanded role for the labs was already clear from the administration's proposed fiscal budget for 2011, released last month.

In the budget, the National Nuclear Security Administration, based in Washington DC, which manages the weapons programme and non-proliferation activities within the Department of Energy, would receive a 13.4% increase to US$11.2 billion, including more than $7 billion to manage the nuclear stockpile. Of that, $1.6 billion would go towards science, technology and engineering programmes, which include advanced computer simulations, research into the ageing of nuclear materials, and fusion experiments at the Livermore lab's National Ignition Facilty. The goal is to ensure that ageing, untested weapons would work as designed.


[naturenews]
Published online 2 March 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/464014a
News
Model response to Chile quake?

Experts debate how much emergency-response planners should rely on tsunami forecasts.
By Quirin Schiermeier

{{Waves caused by a magnitude-8.8 earthquake flattened coastal regions in Chile.}
R. Candia/AP/Press Association Images}

Moments after a magnitude-8.8 earthquake rocked Chile this weekend, a tsunami began to sweep across the Pacific Ocean at hundreds of kilometres per hour. And within 2 hours, scientists had determined that coastal communities beyond Chile probably had little to fear.

Yet around the Pacific, from Hawaii to Japan, authorities ordered extensive evacuations. To some tsunami experts the response was no more than prudent. Others think that it was a costly overreaction. "The warning system worked well in terms of trustworthiness of forecast, but its implementation had large loopholes," says Costas Synolakis, a tsunami expert at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Events in Chile, where the earthquake has claimed more than 700 lives, showed the value of a timely tsunami warning. Despite the enormity of the quake — the fifth-strongest since 1900 — the Chilean Navy, responsible for tsunami warnings, failed to issue an immediate alert. Within 34 minutes, destructive waves had hit the coastal city of Valparaíso, sweeping away buildings and people. The number of casualties there is unknown — but the Chilean minister of defence, Francisco Vidal, says that without warnings issued by local authorities and harbour officials acting on their own, many more lives would have been lost.

Tsunami forecasters were already trying to work out what would happen next. Burak Uslu, a tsunami modeller with the Pacific Marine and Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) in Seattle, Washington, used a mathematical model called Method of Splitting Tsunami, developed with Synolakis and Vasily Titov of the PMEL, to forecast when waves would arrive, how high they would be and how much dry land would be flooded. It was the first time that the model had been applied to a big tsunami in the Pacific.

About 2 hours after the quake, the tsunami passed the first of the Pacific's network of monitoring buoys, which recorded a wave one-quarter of the height of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. When Uslu used the buoy data to refine the model's predictions (see 'Catching a wave'), he found that most of the tsunami energy would pass between Tahiti and Hawaii and continue on to Japan, and that Hawaiian beaches could be flooded up to a height of 1.2 metres. Around the same time, however, the US Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, issued an ocean-wide tsunami warning.

Synolakis contends that the PTWC was divided on how to respond to the forecasts — after all, a tsunami triggered by the largest-ever recorded earthquake, which struck Chile in 1960, had killed 61 people in Hilo, Hawaii. But this is denied by Charles McCreery, director of the PTWC: "I heard no dissent in our office."

The PTWC decided that tsunami alerts should be kept in place despite the forecasts of relatively little impact outside Chile. Many thousands of people were evacuated from beaches and low-lying land in Hawaii and parts of Japan, and Californian beach-goers and communities were held on standby. "We were not going to gamble with people's lives," says McCreery. He maintains that Hawaii had a good chance of sustaining damage and points out that the Marquesas Islands in the south Pacific were hit by waves that were 4 metres from crest to trough.

In time, the model's predictions would be vindicated by events around the Pacific. When the waves arrived in Hawaii, they were little higher than the normal surf, whereas coastal communities in northern Japan, 17,000 kilometres from the earthquake zone, faced modest flooding — the worst impact outside Chile.

Scientists think that this week's tsunami was milder than the Indian Ocean event because the fault that slipped lay beneath a relatively shallow part of the ocean, and therefore displaced a smaller volume of water. The geometry of the fault and the way it ruptured probably also helped to limit the severity of the tsunami. "Had the ground ruptured a bit further north, Hawaii would had been severely hit," says Synolakis.

McCreery admits that the PTWC took a conservative approach to what the model was telling them. "We'll be looking at this very hard over the next few months, and longer, to see what improvements can be made," he says. As confidence grows in the model, experts may be more prepared to cancel tsunami warnings earlier, he adds. Although serial false alarms can make people complacent about the threat of a tsunami, McCreery says that occasional evacuations can actually increase people's confidence that the system is working.

Jörn Lauterjung, a tsunami expert at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam who oversees the German–Indonesian tsunami early-warning system, agrees that the PTWC made the right decision. If an earthquake of similar magnitude strikes the Indian Ocean region, he says, authorities should take the same action. But Synolakis argues that the increasing reliability of tsunami forecasts allows emergency planners to order evacuation only when necessary. "The authorities in charge need to listen to science," says Synolakis. "Every ounce of extra prevention is counterproductive as it reduces the overall credibility of the system."

news20100303nn2

[naturenews] from [nature.com]

[naturenews]
Published online 2 March 2010 | Nature | doi:10.1038/464019a
News
Fat rats skew research results

Overfed lab animals make poor subjects for experiments.
By Daniel Cressey

Failure to recognize that many laboratory animals live unhealthy lives may be leading researchers to misinterpret their findings, potentially misdirecting efforts to develop theraputic drugs.

The problem, reports a group at the US National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Maryland, is that many rats and mice used in experiments are so overweight that they are glucose intolerant and heading for an early death (B. Martin et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA doi:10.1073/pnas.0912955107; 2010). As a result, data from the animals — about, for example, the effects of an anti-cancer drug — may not apply to normal-weight animals.

"The vast majority of investigators who use rats and mice don't recognize that their normal conditions are relatively unhealthy," says Mark Mattson, chief of the National Institute on Aging's Laboratory of Neurosciences and a co-author on the paper. "The most logical way to extrapolate is to say any data we obtain in the animal model would be more relevant to overweight, sedentary humans than normal-weight, active individuals."

Mattson and his colleagues note that the standard lab practice of allowing rats and mice continuous access to food without much opportunity to exercise can cause some to balloon in weight to up to 1 kilogram. Beneficial effects of a potential drug or behaviour could simply result from its effect on the consequences of an animal's unhealthy lifestyle, they say, and studies showing that caloric restriction can extend lifespan may have to be reinterpreted. "A major reason the lifespan of rats and mice is extended by caloric restriction is they started from an unhealthy baseline," argues Mattson. He and his co-workers identify areas as diverse as immune function, cancer and neurological disorders that could be affected by the problem.

Mattson says that including running wheels in cages and feeding only on alternate days could solve the 'fat rat' problem, adding that the institutional committees that oversee and approve such experiments should encourage researchers to tackle the problem.

The fat-rat hypothesis is certainly credible, says Robin Franklin, a neuroscientist and director of research at the Department of Veterinary Medicine, University of Cambridge, UK. "But I suspect it's one of many factors that are responsible for the difference between animal models and human diseases," he says, adding that the problem has not been apparent in his research.

Still, Mattson and his colleagues have penned "hundreds of papers using rodent models and are widely known in their field", says Christian Newcomer, executive director of the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care, a non-profit organization based in Frederick, Maryland, that accredits animal use in many laboratories, including those of the US National Institutes of Health. "I think [the paper] is going to carry a lot of weight."

news20100303bbc

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

[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 01:42 GMT, Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Low-fat, Mediterranean and low-carb diets 'help heart'

{Fatty deposits in arteries iincrease the risk of stroke and heart disease}

Three diets - Mediterranean, low-fat and low-carbohydrate - are equally effective in helping reverse blocked arteries, say Israeli researchers.

The study of 140 people, reported in the journal Circulation, found diet could reduce the fatty build up in arteries.

The Ben-Gurion University team found that by the end of the two-year study, the arterial wall had been cut by 5%.

Experts said the study was interesting, but diet was not a "magic bullet".

Atherosclerosis is a progressive condition in which the arteries thicken with fatty deposits, increasing the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

{{It was very interesting to see that these very different diets had a similar effect}
Iris Shai, study author}

The authors of this Israeli study, which was carried out in collaboration with researchers in the US, Canada and Germany, set out to see if this natural part of ageing can be reversed through diet.

Volunteers followed one of three diets - a low-fat diet, a low-carbohydrate diet or a Mediterranean diet, which is based on eating lots of fruit and vegetables, and using olive oil as the main source of fat.

They were asked to stick to the diet for two years, and record what they ate in food diaries.

The study was carried out among overweight volunteers, mostly men, who were aged 40 to 65.

Using three-dimensional imaging, the researchers measured the volume of the wall of the carotid artery, the large artery in the neck which takes blood up to the brain. This was done at the start of the study and again after two years.

Clogged arteries

Lead researcher Iris Shai said: "It was very interesting to see that these very different diets had a similar effect.

"Some people suggest that low-carbohydrate diets are more likely to clog arteries, but we did not see that."

The research paper suggested the link could be related to falling blood pressure caused by the change in diet.

{{This study shows you can do something to reduce plaque build-up, even without pills}
Dr Charles Knight, British Cardiovascular Society}

The findings were welcomed by UK experts.

Dr Charles Knight, secretary of the British Cardiovascular Society and a consultant cardiologist, said although the study was "relatively small" and was not able to follow through to find out how many people eventually had heart attacks or strokes, the results were nevertheless "very interesting".

He pointed out that the study adds weight to the growing body of research that suggests that atherosclerosis is a modifiable disease.

Ten to 15 years ago, it was thought that fatty build-up in the arteries was irreversible, but since then drugs trials have shown that it is possible for fatty deposits to be cut.

"This study shows you can do something to reduce plaque build-up, even without pills," Dr Knight said.

"It sends an effective message from a public health perspective."

However, he warned that the scale of reduction in the volume of artery walls was relatively small and that changing diet, although helpful, was "no magic bullet".


[Science & Environment]
Page last updated at 16:54 GMT, Tuesday, 2 March 2010
GM potato cleared for EU farming

{The Amflora potato has not been cleared for human consumption}

The European Commission has cleared the way for a genetically modified potato to be grown in the EU - only the second GM product it has allowed.

The starch of the Amflora potato can be utilised for industrial uses like making paper, and for animal feed - but not for human consumption.

Environmental groups have strongly opposed the introduction of GM crops.

But the Commission insisted its decision was based on "a considerable volume of sound science".

Planting this spring

The Amflora variety was developed by German chemical and biotechnology firm BASF, for the special qualities of its starch.

BASF says: "Amflora starch can be used in many different ways. It makes yarn stronger and paper glossier; it also makes spray concrete adhere better to the wall and keeps glue liquid for longer."

But it has been a political hot potato for seven years.

BASF applied to grow it in Sweden in 2003. Sweden agreed but was obliged to seek EU permission.

The Council of ministers - the committee of national governments - has been unable to agree a decision, passing the issue back into the hands of the Commission.

Even though it has now been cleared, individual countries still have the right to decide whether it should be grown on their territory.

The potato is expected to be planted in the Czech Republic and Germany this spring, and Sweden and the Netherlands in following years.

The only other GM product currently grown commercially in the EU is Monsanto's MON 810 maize, which was cleared back in 1998.

It is grown in five countries - Spain, the Czech Republic, Romania, Portugal and Slovakia.

On Tuesday, the EU Commission also allowed three GM maize products to be placed on the European market, though not grown in Europe.

'Bad day'

Some countries remain firmly opposed to the cultivation of GM crops, arguing that they could eventually reduce biodiversity and natural resistance to pests and disease, and that it is very hard to stop them cross-pollinating with non-GM crops.

Italy said it objected to the Commission's decision.

German Green MEP Martin Hausling said it "flies in the face of the 70% of consumers who are against GM food".

"This is a bad day for European citizens and the environment," Friends of the Earth told the AFP news agency.

It said the Amflora potato "carries a controversial antibiotic resistant gene which it cannot be guaranteed will not enter the food chain".

The Commission said it was imposing strict conditions on the cultivation of Amflora to address some of the environmental concerns.

For instance, the potato "will be cultivated and harvested before it produces seeds".

It said growing this form of potato "helps to optimise the production process and to save raw materials, energy, water and oil based chemicals".

news20100303reut1

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Vera Eckert
BERLIN
Mon Mar 1, 2010 12:17pm EST
German state agency calls for quick energy plan

BERLIN (Reuters) - Time will soon run out for Germany to build up enough power generation if politicians continue dragging their feet on decisions over the fuel mix, German state energy agency Dena said on Monday.

As the quarrelling central coalition government remains fixated on a state-level election in May, it has delayed a raft of measures for the sector until a wider, long-term energy plan arrives in the autumn, which experts say loses valuable time.

"My plea to politicians would be to decide quickly. Otherwise, we will not have investments in time," Dena managing director Stephan Kohler told Reuters.

"Power markets will feel insecure," he said in an interview on the sidelines of a Focus magazine conference on power plants.

"There will be no new jobs and the power supply security of the coming years will be impaired."

Dena forecasts that Germany may be short some 14,000 to 16,000 megawatt of generation capacity if nuclear laws phase out reactors by 2021 as now planned and new projects for coal or gas plants fail to materialize due to public opposition.

Germany, which has around 80,000 MW of total installed capacity, expects power demand to hold stable at around 500 terawatt hours a year, as energy savings are offset by more new gadgets.

To safeguard supply, it either has to lengthen the lifetimes of nuclear plants or accelerate the expansion of renewable energies at unprecedented speed, given that coal is shunned for its carbon pollution and gas raises reliance on imports.

But the government has failed to act on its commitment to prolong nuclear plants' lives due to internal fighting between pro-nuclear Liberals and a nuclear-skeptic Conservative Party environment minister.

Elections in May in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, home to leading utilities E.ON and RWE, could produce a Conservative/Green Party local coalition which could dramatically change priorities.

Kohler warned of yielding to anti-coal/gas sentiments, saying if new capacity plans fell through, this could backfire.

"If those do not materialize this would mean that old and inefficient plants would continue to operate."

"In that case, we will have much higher avoidance costs for CO2 emissions," he said.

But if carbon-free nuclear plants were to run longer, then new investments could wait, which would also cut power bills.

(Reporting by Vera Eckert)


[Green Business]
LONDON
Tue Mar 2, 2010 10:20am EST
EU carbon at 2-week high supported by oil, German power

LONDON (Reuters) - European carbon emissions futures rose to a two-week high on Monday, supported by stronger German power and oil prices, traders said.

EU Allowances for December delivery rose 14 cents or 1.08 percent to 13.14 euros ($17.85) a tonne at 0801 GMT, having eased from an intra-day high of 13.25 euros.

EUAs last traded at those levels on February 17. Volume was light at 980 lots traded.

"It seems German power and oil are lending some support, along with the cold weather," an emissions trader said.

German Calendar 2010 baseload power rose 1.20 euros or 2.57 percent to 47.90 euros per megawatt hour.

Oil rose more than 1 percent to top $80 a barrel amid threats by Iran that it could cut off energy supplies to Europe.

Traders warned that the market still needs some external stimulus to give it more direction as it still stuck in range-bound trade.

"The EU's precarious economic position, with the 27-nation bloc skirting a double dip recession, continues to weigh on sentiment and could only change after the release of 2009 emissions in April," said Jean-Francois Cauvet at COER2 Commodities.

In April, data will be released detailing the bloc's emissions in 2009.

Meanwhile, interest is building on the 2012 and 2013 contracts, as the spread has widened, traders said.

Open interest on the Dec-12 contract reached almost 140 million on the European Climate Exchange on Friday, just below the Dec-10 volume, showing that investors are bullish in the long term.

Certified emissions reductions <CEREZ0 were slow to trade.
[Green Business]
Pete Harrison - Analysis
BRUSSELS
Tue Mar 2, 2010 4:15am EST
Europe all mouth and no money in green tech race

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe's plan to lead the green technology race has a gaping financial hole for the next four years, handing the advantage to rivals China, Japan and the United States.

Even after 2014, when the European Union budget should have been thoroughly overhauled, there is no guarantee that green tech will have triumphed in a battle for funds versus the powerful farming lobby.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso lays out his vision for the next decade on Wednesday, and he is expected to champion green growth as a means of protecting the climate and boosting jobs.

"The market for green technologies is forecast to triple by 2030," says a leaked draft of Barroso's strategy, seen by Reuters. "The EU was largely a first mover in green solutions, but its advantage is being challenged by strong growth in other markets, notably China and North America."

Industry experts say the EU currently has a pot of around 7.5 billion euros ($10.2 billion) available for green tech research.

The number may look big, but it is less than 1 percent of the total current EU budget, which weighs in at 862 billion.

The European Commission estimates 80 billion euros must be raised over the next decade to stay ahead in the green tech race.

Easier said than done.

While China's authoritarian government has little trouble mobilizing research funding, and the United States and Japan have a strong track record, the 27-nation European Union has a convoluted funding process to navigate.

TECHNOLOGY RISK

Industry says it cannot -- and will not -- make the necessary investments on its own.

"A low carbon economy does not come cheap," says Giles Dickson, an EU affairs expert at French engineer Alstom.

"There's a huge commercial and technology risk for companies that spend money on demonstrating technologies that are not yet commercially viable," he added. "Industry will pay most of this bill, but we cannot pick up this bill on our own."

A one-off injection of 400 billion euros will also be needed to roll out that technology on a pan-European scale, he adds.

Many politicians had hoped that the EU's Emissions Trading System, which forces companies to buy pollution permits, would have made traditional fossil fuels so expensive that firms would steadily shift to greener sources.

That change is not happening fast, with the price of permits to emit carbon dioxide hovering at a paltry 13 euros per tonne, and most decision-makers have accepted the need to speed the shift by subsidizing green technology.

BAD RECORD

Funding from national coffers is not seen as a realistic option as the EU's 27 countries emerge from the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s.

Furthermore, if European countries were to fund their own research programs they would run the risk of wasteful duplication.

The answer is funding at a pan-European level, and in the long term that means tapping the EU budget.

"The best thing that could happen is to transfer some of the funds that are locked into agricultural support," said Anders Wijkman, a member of the European Parliament until last year.

Agriculture takes up 40 percent of the EU budget, with French farmers accounting for about a fifth of that. But with a new budget looming in 2014, Britain, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands are pushing for change.

The battle is not expected to be easy.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has urged colleagues to embark on an "offensive strategy" to control the debate, and support is expected from Poland, Italy, Spain and Greece.

In Brussels, Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos from Romania and Budgetary Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski from Poland are seen as likely allies.

Ahead of that fight, money is also scarce.

The European Commission launched its flagship "Strategic Energy Technology" funding plan last October with a vision of spending 8 billion euros a year on green tech research -- 5 billion more than current levels.

"There're instruments that can provide around 2.5 billion euros a year, but what they're looking for is 5 billion a year for strategic energy technologies, so there's still a gap," says Jesse Scott of environment think tank E3G.

"When it comes to putting its money where its mouth is, the EU is failing miserably."

(editing by James Jukwey)

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[Green Business]
LONDON
Tue Mar 2, 2010 8:42am EST
Spain's Iberdrola makes Scotland offshore wind HQ

LONDON (Reuters) - Iberdrola Renovables is to base its global offshore wind power headquarters in Glasgow, Scotland, the Spanish company said on Tuesday.

Iberdrola, which owns Scottish Power, said it will develop one of the largest offshore wind farms in the world in the UK with capacity of up to 7,200 MW, in addition to another 2,500 MW elsewhere in Europe.

Iberdrola Renovables expects to invest 9 billion euro in renewables generation between 2010-2012, with 4.9 billion euro channeled into its business in the United States, 1.9 billion euro in Britain, 1 billion in Spain, and 1.2 billion euro in the rest of the world.

(Reporting by Daniel Fineren)


[Green Business]
Gerard Wynn
LONDON
Tue Mar 2, 2010 9:50am EST
Britain plans soft loans for home efficiency

LONDON (Reuters) - British households will be able to take out soft loans to improve the efficiency of their homes, under a new proposed law to fight climate change and cut fuel poverty, the government said on Tuesday.

The aim is to overcome the high upfront cost of home refurbishments, for example to insulate lofts, thicken walls and install draught-proof windows, by allowing people to take out long-term loans at subsidized interest rates.

The cash-strapped British government hoped high demand would entice private sector lenders including banks, energy companies and low-carbon technology installers to supply loans at low rates of interest.

The plan depended on new legislation to tie new loans to a house rather than a person, allowing residents to move house independently of whether they have re-paid the debt or not.

"By spreading the repayments over a much longer period -- more like 25 years than the eight years that someone might want to live in a house -- that's what makes it financially affordable," Energy and Climate Secretary Ed Miliband told Reuters.

"The key thing that we're doing is to put the proposed legislation forward to ensure that the re-payments are attached to the house not the person."

Financing could not therefore be arranged until after legislation in the next parliament, assuming the government won a forthcoming election expected in the next two months.

Miliband couldn't confirm how much he expected lenders to make available.

"It will be for the private sector to come forward and offer the financing, and I think there will be a large market in this, that people will want to come forward."

Local governments would make sure that interest rates were set at levels that households could repay their loan from resulting energy savings, said Marian Spain, director of strategy at the Energy Saving Trust, which advises government.

"Some of the schemes will be subsidized by the local authority," she added.

EMISSIONS

The "Warner homes, greener homes" initiative aimed to cut carbon emissions from homes by 29 percent by 2020. Around a quarter of British emissions come from the energy used in homes.

A lack of clarity over just how much finance would be available disappointed campaigners.

"It's not good enough to depend on the market to deliver low-cost finance. You need a green bank to allow whole-house retrofits, rather than just incremental improvements," said Ed Matthew, who leads energy efficiency at climate think-tank E3G.

The government announced two other changes - allowing local government to force energy companies to invest in energy savings, a previously centralized obligation, and new rental property standards forcing owners to invest in efficiency.

The strategy would fit alongside the existing Carbon Emissions Reduction Target, now in its third, three-year phase from 2008-2011 expected to drive private energy company investment of around 2.8 billion pounds ($4.17 billion) in home efficiency improvements.

The new strategy aimed to offer up to 7 million "eco upgrades" by 2020, compared with 26 million homes in Britain in total.

Britain has previously announced plans to install smart meters -- which allow residents to view energy use in real time -- across all homes by 2020, and for all new homes to be "zero carbon" from 2016.

(Reporting by Gerard Wynn; editing by James Jukwey and Amanda Cooper)


[Green Business]
Nina Chestney
AMSTERDAM
Tue Mar 2, 2010 10:08am EST
Tricorona sees less CERs to 2012 on delays

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Carbon offset supply to 2012 could fall to only 800 million tonnes if delays in registering clean energy projects continues or gets worse, the technical director at Swedish carbon offset provider Tricorona said.

"Worst case scenario is we will see not one billion deliveries up to 2012 but 800 million or possibly less," Susanne Haefeli-Hestvik told Reuters at a carbon conference on Tuesday.

Analysts Point Carbon sees a 1.1 billion tonne supply of the offsets called certified emissions reductions (CERs) to 2012.

The U.N. has issued a total 388 million CERs since October 2005 including 123 million last year.

Analysts say pipeline delays, time lags and procedural complexities in the U.N.'s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) will reduce carbon offset supply, harm companies' cash flow and ultimately undermine carbon dioxide reductions.

The CDM is a U.N.-backed carbon offset trading scheme. Companies like Tricorona can invest in clean energy projects in emerging nations and in return get offsets from the U.N. which can be used toward emissions targets or sold for profit.

"We see projects staying on the drawing board today and some countries could be holding back before designing renewable energy policies," Haefeli-Hestvik said.

Countries like Sri Lanka or the Philippines building renewable energy policies might hold back for now until there is more clarity regarding the scheme's processes.

A U.N. panel's rejection of several Chinese wind projects in December has also made investors to lose confidence in CDM.

"In parts of the U.N. system and some countries there is some jealousy of China instead of copying with pride what China has done," Haefeli-Hestvik said.

PUNISHMENT

Tricorona cut its forecast for deliveries of CERs to 4-5 million from 8-10 million for 2010.

"The market punishes us for that, shares have been sold and that makes us a more likely takeover target," Haefeli-Hestvik said.

Energy and environmental technology group Opcon AB has offered to buy Tricorona in an all-share deal valuing the clean energy project developer at just over 1 billion Swedish crowns ($138.7 million).

Market conditions have been difficult for Tricorona and other offset companies because of uncertainties surrounding the future of the U.N.'s CDM after 2012.

Rival player EcoSecurities is cutting an unspecified number of staff in a strategic review process following its acquisition by JP Morgan, a company source said.

An unspecified number of its worldwide offices will close. The firm's British and Irish offices will remain open.

The move will not affect any of the company's contracts with clients, the source said.

(Editing by James Jukwey)


[Green Business]
AMSTERDAM
Tue Mar 2, 2010 10:36am EST
S&P, Point Carbon to develop carbon offset risk service

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Financial market intelligence provider Standard & Poor's (S&P) and carbon analysts Point Carbon are considering jointly developing carbon offset project risk assessment products and services, they said on Tuesday.

The companies have signed a memorandum of understanding and will work together to determining how they can leverage their expertise in a global carbon market which could be worth 121 billion euros ($163.6 billion) in 2010, according to Point Carbon.

Under a U.N.-backed scheme, companies invest in clean energy projects in emerging nations and in return get offsets from the U.N. which can be used toward emissions targets or sold for profit.

"Demand for independent evaluation of the risk of carbon offset projects is growing rapidly around the world," Vickie Tillman, Senior Vice President of sustainability business development at S&P's parent The McGraw-Hill Companies, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by William Hardy)


[Green Business]
HONG KONG
Tue Mar 2, 2010 11:32am EST
BYD shares up 5 percent on Daimler electric car agreement

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Shares of BYD rose as much as 5.4 percent on Tuesday morning after German carmaker Daimler said it plans to develop electric cars for China using batteries made by BYD.

Shares in BYD, a Chinese car and battery maker backed by U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett, rose to an early high of HK$66.50 before trimming gains to 3 percent at HK$65.05 by 0203 GMT.

It outperformed the broader Hang Seng Index, which was down 0.6 percent in early trade.

Daimler and BYD would establish a new brand for the Chinese market, and would build a technology center in China to develop and test the vehicle, Daimler said late on Monday.

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[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
WASHINGTON
Tue Mar 2, 2010 12:17pm EST
Senate bill revives biodiesel credit for 2010

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The $1 a gallon biodiesel tax credit would be revived for 2010 under a jobs and tax-cut bill under consideration in the Senate, Finance Committee leaders said Tuesday.

A vote on the bill, which was unveiled on Monday and would be the second in a series of job creation legislation, is possible later this week.

The biodiesel credit expired at the end of 2009. About 12 percent of U.S. soyoil is used to make biodiesel. The American Soybean Association says production has virtually ceased since expiration of the credit.

Traders in soybean oil on the Chicago Board of Trade have been watching whether the credit would be restored as it would improve market demand.

Besides renewing the $1 biodiesel credit through 2010, the bill extends the small agri-biodiesel producer credit of 10 cents per gallon. It also extends through 2010 the $1.00 per gallon tax credit for diesel fuel created from biomass.

Altogether, the biodiesel incentives are estimated to cost $1 billion over 10 years.

The bill also has a disaster-relief package for farmers, estimated at $1.98 billion. The package is a priority of Senate Agriculture Committee leader Blanche Lincoln, of Arkansas. Heavy rains disrupted the harvest in the South last fall.

The bill would deny cellulosic biofuels tax credits to so-called "black liquor," a byproduct of paper-making that is used to fuel paper plants.

(Reporting by Charles Abbott; Editing by Rebekah Kebede)


[Green Business]
Nina Chestney
AMSTERDAM
Tue Mar 2, 2010 12:18pm EST
Big carbon permit sell-off unlikely this year

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Companies with excess carbon permits are stock-piling them rather than selling them off in anticipation of tighter emissions caps and higher carbon prices from 2013, industrial firms and utilities said on Tuesday.

Many investors in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) have been concerned that industrial users such as steel and cement firms would dump the rest of their surplus permits for 2009 in the first half of this year, causing prices to crash.

Industrial firms sold carbon permits, called EU Allowances, (EUAs) last February to raise cash after the economic downturn reduced their output, causing prices to drop as low as 8.05 euros ($10.89) a tonne. Prices have since risen by about 66 percent.

Most of the 27-nation bloc has now issued 2010 permits, but traders said there has been little evidence of a major sell-off so far.

The threat of higher carbon prices and stricter rules on emissions limits after 2013 could be preventing selling.

"Industrial selling is not expected to a large extent," Ralf Wagner, manager of forward analysis at German utility E.ON AG, said at a carbon conference.

The economic position of many companies has improved this year, reducing their need to sell EUAs and buy back later to make profit, he added.

"You don't see a marked rise on spot volumes, suggesting industrials aren't selling as soon as they receive new allocations," Thomas Winklehner, head of emissions trading at Centrica told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.

"Selling has been taking place but not in huge volumes and not with the urgency we saw last year," he said.

SELECTIVE SELLING

In a report last week, Deutsche Bank said it expected some selective selling of EUA surpluses at periodic intervals over the course of 2010, rather than large-scale liquidation.

Cement company Italcementi said it has resisted the temptation to sell its remaining surplus, preferring to build up its stocks for the EU ETS' third phase (2013-2020) when permits will be auctioned and prices are expected to rise.

"When we have banked our requirements for Phase 3, we will sell any residual suplus on the market," said Manuela Ojan, climate protection manager at Italcementi.

Some believe that if a sell-off did happen, its effects would be temporary and would not do any lasting harm to the market.

"I am not too afraid. A sell-off in the short term is not that bad," said at Statkraft, adding that longer-term supply and demand factors to 2020 are more important for the market.

But if really hard economic times return for industrial companies, they could be forced to sell again.

"If we see more of a downturn in terms of economic development we would expect another sell-off," said Markus Weber, emissions trading manager at steel company Thyssenkrupp.

(Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by Amanda Cooper)


[Green Business]
Nicole Mordant
VANCOUVER
Tue Mar 2, 2010 2:11pm EST
Sustainable Energy bets on Ontario solar market

VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Sustainable Energy Technologies Ltd, a solar equipment maker that recently relocated to Toronto from Calgary, may soon land its first large-scale orders in its new home province, the world's newest "go-to" region for solar power.

The company, whose shares have risen 150 percent in the past year, also expects to announce a tie-up soon with a top European solar panel maker to supply the Ontario market with thin-film panels carrying Sustainable Energy's power inverters, its chief executive said on Monday.

Inverters are key components of power systems that turn the sun's rays into electricity as they convert the direct current output generated by the solar panels into the alternating current that the power grid runs on.

"We have been approaching the major thin-film suppliers in Europe. ... We have developed substantive relationships with those European suppliers, which are major names in the market place," said Chief Executive Officer Robert Bucher.

"We expect to have an announcement soon on that for the Ontario marketplace," he told Reuters in an interview.

Ontario last October launched the most comprehensive and generous set of feed-in tariffs in North America, piquing the interest of Canadian and foreign renewable energy companies at a time when Europe is starting to roll back its support for the sector.

Ontario's incentives guarantee sellers of electricity produced from the sun and other renewable sources fixed, above-market prices for 20 years, with the rooftop solar industry -- Sustainable Energy's main market -- getting some of the most mouth-watering rates.

"We see Ontario as taking over most of our investment this year and next year even though we will continue in Spain and Greece," Bucher said.

Sustainable Energy, which sells its inverters in Spain and Eastern Europe, is a small fish in a big pond housing competitors like Germany's SMA Solar Technology AG, the world's No.1 inverter company with more than 50 percent of the market.

But the 11-year-old Canadian company, which started off life in the fuel cell industry, has won some fans who like its technology. Unlike most competitors' systems, Sustainable's cuts out the need to have an inverter on every solar panel, which is expensive.

"We definitely think it's the most compelling inverter out there in the market right now," said Khurram Malik, research analyst at Jacobs Securities, a Toronto-based renewable energy brokerage.

Sustainable Energy recently moved its head office from Calgary to Toronto to take advantage of Ontario's lucrative green energy incentives.

It plans to have a production facility up and running in Ontario by the summer producing 60 megawatts of power. It expects to double capacity to 120 MW in 2011.

Bucher expects the first Ontario orders for commercial rooftop systems of 200 kilowatts or higher in the next few days or weeks, a step toward the company's targeted revenue this fiscal year of between C$40 million ($38.4 million) and C$60 million.

That is a massive increase on 2009's revenue of just C$82,443.

Sustainable Energy's stock closed down 1 Canadian cent, or 2.86 percent, at 34 Canadian cents on the TSX Venture Exchange on Monday.

(Reporting by Nicole Mordant; Editing by Frank McGurty)


[Green Business]
LOS ANGELES
Tue Mar 2, 2010 4:00pm EST
Lazard sees sunny outlook for Chinese solar firms

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Chinese solar companies are likely to post strong quarterly results on rising demand in Germany and declining costs, but could face currency risks in the coming months, Lazard Capital Markets said on Tuesday.

Chinese solar players -- Canadian Solar Inc, LDK Solar, ReneSola Ltd, Solar Power Holdings, Suntech Power and Yingli Green Energy Holding Co -- are scheduled to report fourth-quarter earnings soon, staring with Canadian Solar on Wednesday.

Demand for solar panels crashed last year as the global economic downturn dried up financing and prices plummeted as panels flooded the market.

But demand is rising this year as scheduled subsidy cuts in Germany, the world's largest solar market, are pushing projects forward.

"We expect strong 4Q09 earnings across our coverage universe, driven by potential for higher shipments resulting from the demand pull in Germany, along with modestly lower pricing and declining silicon costs," alternative energy analyst Sanjay Shrestha Lazard Capital Markets wrote in a research note to clients.

He said companies would likely also report positive outlooks through the first half of 2010, though currency fluctuations remain a key risk as a falling euro would cut into profits of companies with the bulk of their sales in Europe.

(Reporting by Dana Ford; Editing by Richard Chang)

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[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Richard Cowan and Thomas Ferraro
WASHINGTON
Tue Mar 2, 2010 7:23pm EST
Senator Graham calls cap-and-trade plan dead

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The idea of imposing a broad cap-and-trade system to cut America's greenhouse gas emissions is dead and will be replaced with a new approach, an influential Republican senator said on Tuesday.

Lindsey Graham, one of three senators working against daunting odds to produce a compromise climate bill, has recently turned against imposing the kind of cap-and-trade system used in Europe, which involves companies buying and selling pollution permits.

Graham did not specify whether another mechanism or some sort of cap-and-trade would be used more narrowly, such as to control emissions in the power utility sector. "The cap-and-trade bills in the House and Senate are dead. The concept of cap-and-trade is going to be replaced," he said.

Cap-and-trade would involve cutting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions between 2012 and 2050 by establishing a regulated financial market where a wide range of companies would buy and trade a shrinking number of permits to pollute, which critics say would raise costs for consumers and companies.

International climate change negotiations hinge in part on the ability of the United States, the largest carbon polluter in the developed world, enacting a pollution-control law.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers were pressing ahead with plans to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from regulating carbon emissions if Congress fails to pass a bill.

Senator John Rockefeller told reporters he is preparing legislation giving the EPA a two-year timeout on such regulations on stationary sources of pollution.

A permanent prohibition is being offered by Senate Republicans. In the House of Representatives, Republican leader John Boehner and 85 of his colleagues introduced their version.

Democratic Senator Evan Bayh cautioned that the future of a climate change bill may be closely linked to how Congress gets through a rancorous debate in this election year over healthcare reform.

"Let's get through healthcare because the world might look a lot different depending on how that's handled," Bayh told Reuters when asked about a climate bill.

Both issues are high priorities of President Barack Obama.

The controversial environmental bill pits various regional and energy interests against each other.

A group of 13 Democratic senators from the east and west coasts wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday urging that any climate bill require coal-fired power plants to meet modern pollution standards.

COAL PLANTS

The senators complained that a bill passed by the House "rolled back" Clean Air Act requirements for existing coal plants, many of which are old and high-polluting.

Midwestern states rely heavily on energy from those coal-fired plants and lawmakers fear their constituents will be jolted by higher costs if the plants must be revamped.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said there was still a chance the Senate would pass a climate bill this year with a cap-and-trade program.

"It is not dead," Chu told Bloomberg TV, referring to the cap-and-trade approach. "We need a comprehensive bill. We would very much want and need it this year."

Democratic Senator John Kerry told reporters he hoped a compromise climate control bill could be put together this month, although many meetings still must be held. Graham told reporters it will be "weeks" before a bill is ready.

But Senator Joseph Lieberman, an independent working with Graham and Kerry, said a detailed outline of a bill could come within days and that it will have to include a ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions that drops in future years.

Last June, the House narrowly passed a climate change bill with cap-and-trade as its centerpiece and a carbon-reduction target of 17 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels. The initiative stalled in the Senate, despite Senate Environment and Public Works Committee approval of a similar bill.

But Kerry said he was feeling "more confident" that a climate change bill could be presented to the Senate for passage this year. "We're looking at a new way of coming at this that we think can attract greater support," he said.

Environmentalists speculated that the bill the senators will produce could take a "sectoral approach" by imposing a new carbon-pricing mechanism on utilities, which account for about 40 percent of the emissions blamed for global warming.

Sources also have said there is talk of a transportation tax. Pollution controls on manufacturers could be put off for a few years to give time for more affordable alternative energy sources to come on line, they have said.

Kerry said it was "not necessarily accurate" that there will be such a sectoral approach.

Asked about taxes being inserted into a climate bill, Lieberman would only say: "Nothing frozen yet, so I have to be evasive about that."

(Additional reporting by Tom Doggett; editing by Chris Wilson)


[Green Business]
BEIJING
Wed Mar 3, 2010 2:06am EST
China is studying environmental tax: vice minister

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is studying whether to introduce a new environmental tax, vice environment minister Pan Yue said on Wednesday.

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the opening session of the annual Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, Pan said the new levy would not increase the tax burden on companies because existing environment-related taxes would be scrapped.

(Reporting by Michelle Chen and Simon Rabinovitch; editing by Ken Wills)


[Green Business]
Nina Chestney
AMSTERDAM
Wed Mar 3, 2010 5:50am EST
Hopes for global carbon market dim

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Investors are downbeat about prospects for a global carbon market as uncertainty over policy continues, a survey showed on Wednesday.

Hopes for an emissions trading scheme in the United States by 2015 have dimmed, with 61 percent of respondents confident this will happen, compared with 81 percent last year, the survey by Point Carbon showed.

Respondents expect a lower global carbon price of 31 euros ($41.92) a tonne in 2020, down from 35 euros in last year's survey.

"Failure to get a deal at the Copenhagen COP in December and the Obama administration's failure to land a U.S. cap-and-trade program may have knocked the momentum in carbon markets," said Kjetil Roine, author of the report.

World leaders failed to reach a legally binding climate agreement in December in Copenhagen. The chances of reaching a deal this year are also viewed as slim.

"The survey also confirms that the EU ETS gains in maturity each year and we predict that it will continue to grow both in volume and value this year and next," he added.

Some 43 percent of respondents believe the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is the most cost-efficient mechanism of reducing emissions in the European Union.

The survey was based on 4,767 responses from 118 countries.

(Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by William Hardy)


[Green Business]
SIGNORESSA DI TREVIGNANO, Italy
Wed Mar 3, 2010 8:28am EST
Italy to present new solar plan Thursday: minister

SIGNORESSA DI TREVIGNANO, Italy (Reuters) - Italy, Europe's third-biggest solar power market, will present a much-awaited new solar power incentives scheme at a meeting on Thursday, Industry Minister Claudio Scajola said on Wednesday.

Asked by reporters if the plan will be presented at a key meeting of a body that oversees relations between the central government and regions, Scajola said "there are many meetings in the programme, there is also that one."

But the meeting of the "Unified Conference of State and Regions" which should approve the plan before it goes for signing by industry and environment ministers is yet to be called, said an official at the state body.

That leaves only a few hours for the meeting to be convened.

Investors and other solar energy market operators say the new plan has suffered delays because of the regional elections in Italy, due at the end of March, and that was preventing them from drafting their strategies for Italy's booming solar market.

Scajola said on Monday Italy's installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity which turns sunlight into power had exceeded 1,000 megawatts. Italy's current support scheme expires when the capacity covered by the incentives hits a 1,200 MW cap.

Aiming to bring incentives in line with falling sector costs, Rome plans to cut the current scheme that is among the most generous in Europe and has given a boost to Italy's market since it was adopted in 2007.

(Reporting by Carlo Saccon, writing by Svetlana Kovalyova)

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[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Wed Mar 3, 2010 8:27am EST
Canadian Solar Q4 profit misses estimates

(Reuters) - Chinese solar-cell maker Canadian Solar Inc posted a quarterly profit that missed market estimates, after it had earlier cut its gross margin view citing faulty equipment and a dip in prices.

The company predicted brisk demand in the current year.

"Demand is expected to be very strong for all of 2010," Chief Executive Shawn Qu said in a statement. "In the first quarter of 2010, we are expecting shipments growth over the fourth quarter of 2009 with further sequential shipments growth in the second quarter."

Net income for the fourth quarter was $14.9 million or 35 cents a share, compared with a loss of $49.2 million, or $1.38 a share, in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue soared 317 percent to $287 million, after results in the year-earlier quarter were hit by rapid price declines and shrinking funding for solar projects.

Analysts on an average were looking for earnings of 45 cents a share, before items, on revenue of $267 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

On February 19, the company said margins were hurt by higher processing costs and lower yields, and due to defective production equipment at its new ingot and wafer plant.

Canadian Solar shares were down 3 percent at $19.70 before the bell on Wednesday.

(Reporting by Arundhati Ramanathan in Bangalore; Editing by Mike Miller)


[Green Business]
Muklis Ali
JAKARTA
Wed Mar 3, 2010 5:37am EST
Indonesia energy firms welcome government forest decree

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's new decree, allowing mining, power plant, transport and renewable energy projects in protected forests, was welcomed by several companies in those sectors.

PT Pertamina Geothermal Energy (PGE), a unit of state oil firm Pertamina, said it could now proceed with the construction of geothermal projects that could produce 1,340 megawatts (MW).

"We welcome the government decree to allow such projects, especially geothermal power plants in the protected forest," said Adiatma Sardjito, PGE spokesman.

"We are optimistic that we can achieve our target to build 1,340 megawatts of geothermal power plant projects by 2014," he said.

Indonesia has established two crash programs to increase power generation by 10,000 megawatts (MW) in a bid to resolve chronic power shortages and frequent blackouts.

About 40 percent of the first program should be completed by the middle of this year. It will rely on coal-fired power plants, while the second program, due to start this year, has 3,900 MW of power slated to come from geothermal sources.

Pertamina's projects are part of the second phase. Sardjito said Pertamina was still in talks with the state-backed Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) to finance its geothermal projects.

PGE currently operates geothermal plants in West Java and North Sulawesi, with a combined capacity of 272 MW.

Usman Slamet, a manager at Chevron Indonesia, a unit of Chevron Corp, said the company is joining a tender to build a geothermal project in North Sumatra as part of the second phase.

Chevron operates a geothermal plant producing about 600 MW in Indonesia.

Increasing exploitation of mineral resources and the acceleration of infrastructure development are seen as key for boosting growth and creating jobs in Southeast Asia's biggest economy.

But the decree, which was obtained by Reuters and came into effect on February 1, has angered green groups given Indonesia already has one of the fastest rates of deforestation in the world.

Bustar Maitar, Greenpeace forest campaigner, said the decree would not improve legal certainty, accusing the government of being inconsistent by coming up with regulations clashing with other policy aims such as on climate change.

"These are clearly protected areas, areas that have been deemed to have conservation values and should be preserved. Even if there are very valuable mining deposits there, that doesn't mean it can be opened for economic interests," he said.

The decree said the use of forest areas for development activities can be done for unavoidable strategic purposes and said key development projects included power plants, renewable energy, toll roads and railways.

Indonesia is tapping alternative sources of energy to meet rising power demand and cut consumption of expensive crude oil as its own reserves dwindle.

The vast archipelago, with hundreds of active and extinct volcanoes, has the potential to produce an estimated 27,000 MW of electricity from geothermal sources.

However, that potential remains largely untapped because the high cost of geothermal energy makes the price of electricity generated this way expensive.

Indonesia's state electricity firm PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) has 25,000 MW of generating capacity but daily output is far less because most of its plants are old and inefficient.

(Additional reporting by Sunanda Creagh; Editing by Sara Webb) and Ed Davies)


[Green Business]
Nina Chestney
AMSTERDAM
Wed Mar 3, 2010 8:24am EST
Climate finance key for Cancun talks: U.N. chief

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The debate on using public and private financing to fight climate change must be resolved for the Cancun climate summit to succeed where Copenhagen failed, U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer warned on Wednesday.

World leaders meet in Cancun in Mexico at the end of the year to hammer out a legally binding climate agreement, after they failed to do so in Copenhagen last December.

The focus before that meeting should be on getting short-term financing moving through existing institutions and clarifying the mechanisms for long-term finance, de Boer said.

Developing countries also need to be confident that public money will go to their priorities, he added.

"If we can create some kind of supervisory mechanism, which maybe doesn't manage all of the money, but does determine the criteria of what should and should not be considered as eligible for financial support, we will make major steps forward," de Boer told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a conference.

How much will come from public money and the private sector has yet to be defined.

"The last thing we should do is create a firewall between public and private finance. We should be using public finance to change the investment parameters of the private sector," de Boer said.

This could be done by using public money to finance new state-of-the-art technology and public-private partnerships to give business the investment security it would not have on its own, he said.

CANCUN HOPES

The Copenhagen summit yielded a non-binding political accord in its final hours that fell far short of the goal of reaching a legally binding agreement to replace the existing Kyoto Protocol and strengthens the fight against climate change.

De Boer said it was important to resolve the debate on finance ahead of the Cancun summit, as that would create more willingness to talk about the role of markets.

As part of a U.N. climate deal last year, rich nations agreed to provide $10 billion a year from 2010-12, with a goal of $100 billion a year from 2020, to help poor nations deal with climate change.

But the figure of $100 billion per year is not enough to tackle climate change, de Boer said.

According to the International Energy Agency, there will be a $20 trillion investment in the energy sector is needed over the next 20 years, which would push emissions up by 50 percent in the absence of clear sense of policy direction.

"The challenge is to use public finance to make sure that 20 trillion goes green and not brown. In that context, $100 billion a year is not enough," de Boer said.

Earlier de Boer said the core of the financing problem was that the process was an inter-governmental one and did not involve dialogue with business.

"I do believe the process needs a good spanking. More meetings does not necessarily mean more success," he said.

(Reporting by Nina Chestney; Editing by Amanda Cooper)

news20100303reut6

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Victoria Bryan
LONDON
Wed Mar 3, 2010 6:39am EST
LED firm seeks growth from greener traffic lights

LONDON (Reuters) - British lighting technology firm Dialight is hoping a switch to low-carbon LED traffic lights across Europe and on cellphone masts will help it to drive revenues over the next few years.

"There's sufficiently strong growth drivers within the signals and illumination business for us to expect double-digit growth," Chief Executive Roy Burton told Reuters after the group reported full-year results slightly ahead of expectations on Wednesday.

"We've opened the current year nicely," he said. "Our lighting business finished the year strongly and is continuing to perform well and our components business is continuing its recovery into the first couple of months of this year."

Newmarket-based Dialight supplies LED technology that original equipment manufacturers such as Siemens use to make traffic lights.

While almost 70 percent of all traffic lights in the U.S. have been converted to more energy efficient LEDs, adoption in the European market is currently in the low teens, Burton said.

Dialight is also focusing on the market for air traffic obstruction lighting, where lights are used on tall buildings and structures such as radio masts to warn pilots of their presence.

"We expect growth to continue on the back of the two major contracts won last year for the US cellphone tower market and further adoption from other operators," Burton said.

The firm also saw growth in the use of LED lights on wind turbines in the U.S. last year.

For 2009, the firm reported operating profit of 5.5 million pounds ($8.19 million), up slightly from 5.3 million last year, and maintained revenues at 77 million pounds.

Broker Canaccord Adams on Wednesday upgraded its 2010 operating profit forecast for the firm to 9 million pounds and extended its forecasts to 2011, when it estimates profit of 12 million.

(Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

($1=.6713 Pound)


[Green Business]
Erik Kirschbaum
BERLIN
Wed Mar 3, 2010 8:26am EST
German cabinet agrees solar incentive cuts: source

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet as expected has agreed to a proposed cuts to state-mandated solar power incentives in July, a government source told Reuters on Wednesday.

The government wants to cut the incentives for rooftop solar power by a one-off 16 percent from July 1 while incentives for conversion sites like dumps and unused army bases will be dropped by 11 percent.

After passing the cabinet, the measure will head to the Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, later in March where Merkel's center-right coalition has a comfortable majority.

Merkel's government also agreed to entirely eliminate support for converted farmland. The cuts in the so-called feed-in tariff will also include a 15 percent cut for non-agricultural fields.

Feed-in tariffs (FIT) -- prices utilities are obliged to pay to generators of renewable energy -- are the sector's lifeline until grid-parity, the point where renewables cost the same as fossil fuel-based power, has been reached.

The tariffs have made Germany the world's largest market for photovoltaic installations, accounting for about half of all installations in 2009 in the 18 billion euro ($24.5 billion) global market.

Last year, Germany added a record 3 gigawatt of new capacity to bring its total of installed capacity to about 9 gigawatts.

The center-right government wanted to cut the FIT further in 2010 because an overall decline in prices outpaced the annual FIT cut of 8-10 percent in recent years due to the rapid growth of the industry and a global oversupply of solar panels.

Environment minister Norbert Roettgen wanted steeper cuts for rooftop systems to take effect even sooner, on April 1.

Roettgen's plans faced stiff opposition from within the center-right coalition as well as from several states where the solar power industry has flourished. They fear hasty and radical cuts over 10 percent will harm the fast-growing sector.

The FIT was already cut by 9 percent in January -- and has dropped by 8 to 10 percent per year since the Renewable Energy Act was created by the last center-left government in 2000.

SolarWorld, the country's biggest solar company by sales, and Q-Cells, one of the world's largest makers of solar cells, have said Roettgen's cuts were too steep, too fast and would kill jobs in Germany.

Utilities are obliged to pay 39 euro cents per kilowatt hour of electricity produced for a period of 20 years for systems installed in 2010, down from 43 cents for those built in 2009.

That has gradually fallen from 57 cents per kwh in 2004. Utilities pass on the higher costs to consumers.

(Additional reporting by Markus Wacket; Editing by Hans Peters)


[Green Business]
JoAnne Allen
WASHINGTON
Tue Mar 2, 2010 1:13pm EST
Climate change may extend allergy season: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sneezing, congestion, and runny noses from hay fever may be lasting longer because climate change may be extending pollen seasons, doctors in Italy said on Monday.

Pollen seasons as well as the amount of pollen in the air progressively increased during a 26-year study in Italy, the doctors told a meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology in New Orleans.

The team at Genoa University recorded pollen counts, how long pollen seasons lasted and sensitivity to five types of pollen in the Bordighera region of Italy from 1981 to 2007.

"By studying a well-defined geographical region, we observed that the progressive increase of the average temperature has prolonged the duration of the pollen seasons of some plants and, consequently, the overall pollen load," Dr. Walter Canonica, who worked on the study, said in a statement.

The percentage of patients with reactions to the allergens increased throughout the study but it is not clear whether longer pollen seasons actually put more people at risk for developing allergies, the researchers said.

Allergic rhinitis, commonly known as hay fever, is a reaction to indoor or outdoor airborne allergens, such as pollen.

"Longer pollen seasons and high levels of pollen certainly can exacerbate symptoms for people with allergic rhinitis and for those who previously had minimal symptoms," said the AAAAI's Estelle Levetin, who was not involved in the study.

About 25 million Americans, nearly half of them children, had hay fever in the past year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


[Green Business]
Carey Gillam
KANSAS CITY
Tue Mar 2, 2010 2:23pm EST
Lawsuit filed over GMO crops in nature refuge

KANSAS CITY (Reuters) - Environmentalists filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on Monday accusing the service of illegally allowing farmers to grow genetically modified crops in a national wildlife refuge.

The groups said up to 80 other national wildlife refuges across the United States are now growing genetically engineered crops and could be vulnerable to similar legal action.

Fish & Wildlife Service spokesman Joshua Winchell said the government agency had no comment.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for Delaware by the Widener Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic on behalf of Delaware Audubon Society, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Center for Food Safety.

The groups want the court to force the Fish & Wildlife Service to remove genetically engineered crops from the National Wildlife Refuge at Bombay Hook in Delaware, alleging the crops are a result of illegal cooperative farming agreements.

The groups said the service has allowed hundreds of acres to be plowed over without the environmental review required by the National Environmental Policy Act .

In March 2009, the same groups won a similar lawsuit against plantings of genetically modified crops within the Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge.

"These refuges are to be administered to benefit wildlife, not farmers," plaintiffs' attorney Christine Erickson said in a statement.

Erickson said Fish & Wildlife Service policy forbids genetically modified agricultural crops in refuge management unless it is determined they are essential to accomplish refuge purposes.

The suit seeks to enjoin any cultivation of genetically engineered crops on Bombay Hook until environmental assessments are completed as required by the National Environmental Policy Act.

(Reporting by Carey Gillam; Editing by Rebekah Kebede)

news20100303reut7

[Top News] from [REUTERS]

[Green Business]
Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO
Wed Mar 3, 2010 8:02am EST
Farm pest blitz may be aided by biodiversity plan

OSLO (Reuters) - A bug-sized version of biological warfare that can protect crops such as coffee or mangoes may be aided by new rules meant to be agreed in 2010 under a U.N. treaty for safeguarding nature, experts say.

Some countries may be denying others access to a potential tiny army of parasites or other creatures able to control farm pests because of the current lack of U.N. rules on "access and benefit sharing" of biodiversity.

Ahmed Djoghlaf, head of the Secretariat of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, told Reuters he was fairly confident that agreement will be reached on new rules at a U.N. conference set for Japan in October,

Ahmed Djoghlaf, head of the Secretariat of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, told Reuters.

Agreement would help pharmaceutical companies, for instance, by laying out more clearly how they can get access to plants in the Amazon rainforest. It might aid indigenous peoples by setting guidelines for sharing revenues, for instance, from any drugs developed from plants or animals on their lands.

Djoghlaf said the value of genetic resources was dampened by high costs and the long time needed to develop products, as well as by the lack of clarity about access and benefit sharing.

In the insect-scale version of the problem, the arrival in 2003 of a fruit fly in Kenya -- probably from Sri Lanka -- has hit African mango crops and undermined exports to Europe worth $42 million a year.

The fly has flourished partly as it has no natural enemies in Africa. Insect experts visited Sri Lanka -- mangoes originate in the region -- and found a tiny parasitoid wasp that lays eggs in the fly larvae and so keeps the pests in check.

WASP

"We didn't get the permit" to export the wasp, said Fabian Haas, head of the Biosystematics Support Unit at the Kenya-based International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology.

"It's looking very much as if this discussion on access and benefit sharing was the reason," he said.

An alternative parasite has now been identified from Hawaii -- but better rules would ease cooperation.

By allowing exports, Sri Lanka might benefit, for instance, from scientific research grants to help understand mango parasites. Under new rules it could not expect a share of any higher mango earnings if the fruit fly is controlled.

Until now, companies have unilaterally negotiated with developing world governments -- among many deals, Danish Novozymes has an accord with the Kenyan Wildlife Service to explore microbial diversity.

Most countries have an interest in allowing access to biodiversity, even for rival producers, because their own crops may be the next to suffer and need help, Haas said.

Showing that interdependence, South American coffee growers have benefited from parasites from Ethiopia -- from where coffee originally came. And cassava growers in Africa have also used parasites introduced from South America, cassava's home.

One study estimated a parasitoid wasp introduced to Africa from Paraguay in the 1970s that preyed on a mealybug wrecking cassava crops gave benefits of $4.5 billion for $27 million.

"Benefits go to the smallholder cassava farmers who produce more crops, save spraying and have less losses. There is no mechanism to collect anything from these farmers," Haas said.

And controls can go wrong, meaning that any attempted system of payments could backfire. The cane toad was brought to Australia from Hawaii in 1935 to control a beetle damaging sugar cane. But the toad is poisonous and kills native wildlife.