[Top News] from [REUTERS]
[Green Business]
Peter Murphy
SAO PAULO
Fri Jan 22, 2010 2:18pm EST
Brazil developing microbe to clean mining effluent
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A Brazilian scientist is developing a method of purifying contaminated waste water that accumulates at mining sites by using a genetically modified bacteria that can absorb heavy metals.
Ronaldo Biondo, from the University of Sao Paulo, is developing the technology for the country's largest miner, Vale, which hopes to use the technology as a simpler, cheaper way to recover the heavy metals that contaminate mines' waste water.
The firm has provided about 4 million reais ($2.19 million) to fund the research and will have exclusive access to the technology.
Large pools of effluent accumulate at mining sites due to particles washed from exposed surfaces by rain water or from water used to draw minerals from underground pits. Ponds with impermeable clay linings are usually dug to contain it.
Mining firms have a legal obligation to treat the water before disposing of it, but current methods requiring chemical treatment, filtration and sedimentation are expensive.
"With the bacteria, you can have a system where all of this is done in one step," Biondo said in an interview at a laboratory at the university. "There are two things: cleaning and recovery (of metal). It is a biological alternative. It is a lot cheaper and this is a big advantage."
After developing a bacteria with the required properties, Biondo is now working on building an industrial scale bioreactor, a sort of chamber where the microbe will capture metals from mine waste water fed into it.
"We are at the stage where we are taking (the bioreactor) from the laboratory to scale it up. We have to do this gradually until we get to the scale that industry needs," he said. His university has applied for two patents for the system.
Metals that remain in the bioreactor can be recovered by incinerating the residue. Quantities recovered would depend on how contaminated the effluent was to begin with, Biondo said.
Scaling up the bioreactor to handle the pools of effluent at industrial mines is likely to take several years of trial and error to ensure it works as efficiently as the laboratory model. Biondo said it could be ready in about five years.
The idea arose during a conversation in 2003 between the executive director of Vale, Roger Agnelli, and Ana Clara Schenberg, a professor of microbiology at the university, during an event Vale held as part of the carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro.
"It is working very well in the laboratory, but we have to see how it goes when we scale it up," Schenberg said.
Biondo undertook the modification of the Cupriavidus Metallidurans, or CH34, bacteria, which is unharmed by toxic, heavy metals, for his doctoral thesis.
He changed its DNA to make more of a negatively charged protein that enables larger quantities of metal ions to adhere to its cell wall.
The modified microbe is most effective in recovering lead, zinc, copper and cadmium, but Schenberg said there would be further work to see how it could be made more effective in treating effluent at mines extracting iron ore, Vale's main product.
It is also being adapted to be able to recover mercury and could be made suitable for use with nickel and manganese.
(Editing by Walter Bagley)
[Green Business]
BERLIN
Mon Jan 25, 2010 9:14am EST
Germany seeks investors to hit CO2 target: paper
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany needs some 400 billion euros ($565.6 billion) to meet its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 and aims to achieve the goal by making green investing attractive, the environment minister told a newspaper.
Norbert Roettgen told the Financial Times Deutschland the government would make the conditions for investment in climate profitable for private sector investors, the paper said.
"Investments in climate protection are basically not the business of the state, but rather a good financial investment," he told the paper in an interview printed in its Monday edition.
"In Germany, to reach the CO2 reduction goal of 40 percent in the next 10 years, we need around 400 billion euros, or some 40 billion euros per year," he added.
Roettgen, who is due to meet bankers in Frankfurt on Monday, said the 40 percent goal was "secure." Germany had previously vowed a reduction in emissions of some 30 percent but Roettgen said such a target would not require innovation.
"Then the company that doesn't invest in innovation would have an advantage," he said.
[Green Business]
HONG KONG
Mon Jan 25, 2010 6:09am EST
China's BYD to invest $3.3 billion in solar battery plant
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese car and battery maker BYD Co Ltd, 10 percent owned by U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, will invest 22.5 billion yuan ($3.30 billion) over five years to build China's largest solar power battery plant, a report said on Saturday.
Shenzhen-based BYD, which aims to sell 800,000 vehicles next year, will build the plant in China's Shaanxi province, a report in the South China Morning Post said, citing the Shaanxi Provincial Development and Reform Commission website.
The plant will have capacity to produce a total of 5,000 megawatts of batteries, the report said.
In December, BYD received 15 billion yuan in credit from the Bank of China.
The company is likely to use the credit to invest in new areas, such as solar energy and new energy vehicles, Frank He, an analyst with BOCI Research in Hong Kong, said at the time.
BYD's F3 sedan was the best-selling car in China in the first 11 months of 2009, leading other popular domestic and foreign models, such as Hyundai Motor's new Elantra and Chery Automobile's QQ.
BYD plans to start selling its first electric car, the e6, in the first quarter of 2010, Paul Lin, manager of the company's marketing department said in late December.
($1=6.827 Yuan)
(Reporting by Joseph Chaney; Editing by David Fox)
[Green Business]
Christoph Steitz
FRANKFURT
Mon Jan 25, 2010 8:23am EST
Conergy aims for refinancing deal by end: Q1
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Solar company Conergy paved the way for striking a refinancing deal by the end of March thanks to a breakthrough settlement with wafer supplier MEMC, its CEO told Reuters on Monday.
The news led to a relief rally in the highly volatile penny-stock, rising as much as 31 percent on Monday to 1.019 euros a share. At 0956 GMT, shares in the company were 19.3 percent higher.
"We have laid the foundation for talks with the banks. We aim for a refinancing deal by the end of the first quarter," Dieter Ammer said in an interview.
Conergy late Sunday said it reached an out-of-court settlement regarding a contract dispute with U.S. peer MEMC.
The disagreement centred around a contract that forced Conergy to buy wafers at above market rates.
Under the terms of a new agreement, Conergy can cut the minimum quantity of wafers it must buy over the remaining running time of the contract.
Ammer, who will step down from his post in mid-2010, said that the agreement will positively impact Conergy's 2009 full-year results by 34 million euros ($48.04 million).
In the first nine months of 2009, the company accumulated a net loss of 79 million euros, burdened by costs for its ongoing restructuring process and an industry crisis that led to a slump in product prices.
Conergy's move comes shortly after German peer Q-Cells last month struck a similar deal with Chinese rival LDK, in a sign that solar companies are under intense pressure to renegotiate supply contracts concluded at the height of the solar boom, when prices were much higher.
However, Ammer said that business in the industry was slowly recovering after an appalling year.
"It is true that the fourth quarter in the industry was significantly more active than the previous quarter. And we assume that this will be the case at our company too," Ammer said, adding that political pressure could deal a blow to the crisis-ridden sector.
Germany, which houses the world's biggest solar market, last week proposed to slash feed-in tariffs for solar power by at least 15 percent from April, sparking large criticism in an industry that the government sees as overly subsidized.
"In general, we think an adjustment makes sense as we do not want to remain a subsidized industry forever. But the size and the speed of the proposed cuts will endanger the sector. This would be sledge hammer regulation," Ammer said.
($1=.7078 euros)
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz; Editing by Mike Nesbit)
[Green Business]
Peter Murphy
SAO PAULO
Fri Jan 22, 2010 2:18pm EST
Brazil developing microbe to clean mining effluent
SAO PAULO (Reuters) - A Brazilian scientist is developing a method of purifying contaminated waste water that accumulates at mining sites by using a genetically modified bacteria that can absorb heavy metals.
Ronaldo Biondo, from the University of Sao Paulo, is developing the technology for the country's largest miner, Vale, which hopes to use the technology as a simpler, cheaper way to recover the heavy metals that contaminate mines' waste water.
The firm has provided about 4 million reais ($2.19 million) to fund the research and will have exclusive access to the technology.
Large pools of effluent accumulate at mining sites due to particles washed from exposed surfaces by rain water or from water used to draw minerals from underground pits. Ponds with impermeable clay linings are usually dug to contain it.
Mining firms have a legal obligation to treat the water before disposing of it, but current methods requiring chemical treatment, filtration and sedimentation are expensive.
"With the bacteria, you can have a system where all of this is done in one step," Biondo said in an interview at a laboratory at the university. "There are two things: cleaning and recovery (of metal). It is a biological alternative. It is a lot cheaper and this is a big advantage."
After developing a bacteria with the required properties, Biondo is now working on building an industrial scale bioreactor, a sort of chamber where the microbe will capture metals from mine waste water fed into it.
"We are at the stage where we are taking (the bioreactor) from the laboratory to scale it up. We have to do this gradually until we get to the scale that industry needs," he said. His university has applied for two patents for the system.
Metals that remain in the bioreactor can be recovered by incinerating the residue. Quantities recovered would depend on how contaminated the effluent was to begin with, Biondo said.
Scaling up the bioreactor to handle the pools of effluent at industrial mines is likely to take several years of trial and error to ensure it works as efficiently as the laboratory model. Biondo said it could be ready in about five years.
The idea arose during a conversation in 2003 between the executive director of Vale, Roger Agnelli, and Ana Clara Schenberg, a professor of microbiology at the university, during an event Vale held as part of the carnival celebrations in Rio de Janeiro.
"It is working very well in the laboratory, but we have to see how it goes when we scale it up," Schenberg said.
Biondo undertook the modification of the Cupriavidus Metallidurans, or CH34, bacteria, which is unharmed by toxic, heavy metals, for his doctoral thesis.
He changed its DNA to make more of a negatively charged protein that enables larger quantities of metal ions to adhere to its cell wall.
The modified microbe is most effective in recovering lead, zinc, copper and cadmium, but Schenberg said there would be further work to see how it could be made more effective in treating effluent at mines extracting iron ore, Vale's main product.
It is also being adapted to be able to recover mercury and could be made suitable for use with nickel and manganese.
(Editing by Walter Bagley)
[Green Business]
BERLIN
Mon Jan 25, 2010 9:14am EST
Germany seeks investors to hit CO2 target: paper
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany needs some 400 billion euros ($565.6 billion) to meet its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 and aims to achieve the goal by making green investing attractive, the environment minister told a newspaper.
Norbert Roettgen told the Financial Times Deutschland the government would make the conditions for investment in climate profitable for private sector investors, the paper said.
"Investments in climate protection are basically not the business of the state, but rather a good financial investment," he told the paper in an interview printed in its Monday edition.
"In Germany, to reach the CO2 reduction goal of 40 percent in the next 10 years, we need around 400 billion euros, or some 40 billion euros per year," he added.
Roettgen, who is due to meet bankers in Frankfurt on Monday, said the 40 percent goal was "secure." Germany had previously vowed a reduction in emissions of some 30 percent but Roettgen said such a target would not require innovation.
"Then the company that doesn't invest in innovation would have an advantage," he said.
[Green Business]
HONG KONG
Mon Jan 25, 2010 6:09am EST
China's BYD to invest $3.3 billion in solar battery plant
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese car and battery maker BYD Co Ltd, 10 percent owned by U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, will invest 22.5 billion yuan ($3.30 billion) over five years to build China's largest solar power battery plant, a report said on Saturday.
Shenzhen-based BYD, which aims to sell 800,000 vehicles next year, will build the plant in China's Shaanxi province, a report in the South China Morning Post said, citing the Shaanxi Provincial Development and Reform Commission website.
The plant will have capacity to produce a total of 5,000 megawatts of batteries, the report said.
In December, BYD received 15 billion yuan in credit from the Bank of China.
The company is likely to use the credit to invest in new areas, such as solar energy and new energy vehicles, Frank He, an analyst with BOCI Research in Hong Kong, said at the time.
BYD's F3 sedan was the best-selling car in China in the first 11 months of 2009, leading other popular domestic and foreign models, such as Hyundai Motor's new Elantra and Chery Automobile's QQ.
BYD plans to start selling its first electric car, the e6, in the first quarter of 2010, Paul Lin, manager of the company's marketing department said in late December.
($1=6.827 Yuan)
(Reporting by Joseph Chaney; Editing by David Fox)
[Green Business]
Christoph Steitz
FRANKFURT
Mon Jan 25, 2010 8:23am EST
Conergy aims for refinancing deal by end: Q1
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Solar company Conergy paved the way for striking a refinancing deal by the end of March thanks to a breakthrough settlement with wafer supplier MEMC, its CEO told Reuters on Monday.
The news led to a relief rally in the highly volatile penny-stock, rising as much as 31 percent on Monday to 1.019 euros a share. At 0956 GMT, shares in the company were 19.3 percent higher.
"We have laid the foundation for talks with the banks. We aim for a refinancing deal by the end of the first quarter," Dieter Ammer said in an interview.
Conergy late Sunday said it reached an out-of-court settlement regarding a contract dispute with U.S. peer MEMC.
The disagreement centred around a contract that forced Conergy to buy wafers at above market rates.
Under the terms of a new agreement, Conergy can cut the minimum quantity of wafers it must buy over the remaining running time of the contract.
Ammer, who will step down from his post in mid-2010, said that the agreement will positively impact Conergy's 2009 full-year results by 34 million euros ($48.04 million).
In the first nine months of 2009, the company accumulated a net loss of 79 million euros, burdened by costs for its ongoing restructuring process and an industry crisis that led to a slump in product prices.
Conergy's move comes shortly after German peer Q-Cells last month struck a similar deal with Chinese rival LDK, in a sign that solar companies are under intense pressure to renegotiate supply contracts concluded at the height of the solar boom, when prices were much higher.
However, Ammer said that business in the industry was slowly recovering after an appalling year.
"It is true that the fourth quarter in the industry was significantly more active than the previous quarter. And we assume that this will be the case at our company too," Ammer said, adding that political pressure could deal a blow to the crisis-ridden sector.
Germany, which houses the world's biggest solar market, last week proposed to slash feed-in tariffs for solar power by at least 15 percent from April, sparking large criticism in an industry that the government sees as overly subsidized.
"In general, we think an adjustment makes sense as we do not want to remain a subsidized industry forever. But the size and the speed of the proposed cuts will endanger the sector. This would be sledge hammer regulation," Ammer said.
($1=.7078 euros)
(Reporting by Christoph Steitz; Editing by Mike Nesbit)
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