[News] from [guardian.co.uk]
[Environment > Guardian Environment Network]
LG Electronics to enter increasingly crowded solar market
Company will manufacture large-area thin-film solar cells as well as traditional crystalline cells.
From Tom Young for BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 December 2009 12.55 GMT Article history
The growing attractiveness of the global solar energy market was underlined this week when South Korea's LG Electronics (LG) announced that it is to start commercial production of solar cells and modules next month.
The company said that it plans to manufacture approximately 520,000 solar modules a year using silicon wafers, at a plant 200 kilometres to the south east of Seoul with a total capacity of 120MW.
LG said that it planned to set up another production line for operation by 2011, increasing total output to 240MW.
Kwan-shik Cho, vice president of the solar business team at LG Electronics, explained that the goal is to become a global player in the world's solar industry.
"While we recognise this is a crowded playing field, LG has the necessary skills, know-how and business strategy to make this a profitable venture for the long-term," he said.
LG sees the solar business as a key area of growth, and claimed that it had been preparing to enter the market since 2004.
The firm will manufacture large-area thin-film solar cells, as well as the more widespread crystalline solar cells.
In July 2009, LG announced that the company had achieved the world's most energy efficient large-area thin-film solar cells in a trial.
LG's solar operation will be administered by its air conditioning division, which it says has the necessary experience in managing energy resources and developing products efficiently.
The solar market is estimated to be worth around $11bn in 2010, with crystalline solar cells expected to make up 80 per cent of the market, according to LG.
The move will take the company into direct competiton with a raft of solar energy firms, as well as electronics rivals Sharp and Mitsubishi, both of which already operate large solar energy divisions.
[News > From the Observer > The big issue]
The big issue: Food shortages Population control must not be ignored
The Observer, Sunday 20 December 2009 Article history
Robin McKie says the Australian drought sent food prices soaring ("Why Britain faces a bleak future of food shortages", Science). However, the World Bank attributed 70% of the rise to the use of grain for vehicle fuel ethanol.
Every means will certainly be needed to raise cereal yields whose annual increase has dropped from over 2% to around 1%, but if fertiliser and chemical use are to be curtailed, the suggestion that inefficient small farms should be incorporated into larger units needs to be treated with caution. The Future of Food TV series (BBC2) showed the vulnerability of current large-scale methods using, as they do, five calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy. The only ray of hope was shown by a holding at San Antonio, Cuba, where one calorie of mostly human energy managed to produce five calories of food on a very intensive mixed crop and livestock holding
It is only in western society that this seems remarkable. Hanoi, Calcutta, Shanghai and Caracas all produce a high proportion of their food from adjacent, intensively small-scale farmed land. They may be in better shape to face the predicted perfect storm in food supply than our cities fed from distant large farms.
John Watson
Totnes, Devon
> The science of genetics is not the only answer to food shortages – there is also the science of ecology (as the planting of the nettles around wheat fields exemplifies), but this requires work on the relation of farm products to each other, both in space (eg minimising spread of disease) and in time (as in crop succession or rotation). The social sciences also are involved, with the inevitable change in farm economics and the possibility of more labour-intensive farming.
Further input from social sciences may bear upon whether there should be rationing by price or by more interventionist methods. This, in turn, involves the science of nutrition. And we can learn not only from science, but also from history, not least that of the war of 1939-45.
Dr Jeffrey Boss
Stroud, Glos
> Robin McKie mentions, more in passing than in alarm, that the UK's population is predicted to rise to 75 million in the next 40 years. The consequences of such a rise during the lead up to a period of serious world food shortages needs to be understood. This is an increase of 25% in our population. Not only is this an enormous extra number of people to feed, but it also means that a large additional area of farmland will be lost under urban development. We already lose roughly a moderately sized English county every decade.
There seems to be a belief that population increase is outside of the influence of policy, but this is nonsense. Our health, education and immigration policies all have an effect, both direct and indirect, on the numbers of unwanted pregnancies, on how the choices of how many children to have are made, and on the net balance of migration.
We can and should take population into account. Without this, pontificating about food shortages is hypocritical.
Chris Padley
Market Rasen, Lincs
> A whole page on the coming food crisis("Why Britain faces a bleak future of food shortages", 13 Dec), and the only mention of population growth is the bald statement that in 40 years it will "leap... from 6.8 billion to 9 billion", as if it was written in stone. In fact, it could be anything between 7.6 billion and 11 billion, depending on the actions we take between now and then, since the 9 billion is only the middle of three projections by the UN Population Fund.
Did any of your editorial staff watch David Attenborough's documentary on population in the Horizon series last Tuesday, and if so, why doesn't this article make any mention of the need to bring down the reproductive rate?
Roger Plenty
Stroud, Glos
[Environment > Guardian Environment Network]
LG Electronics to enter increasingly crowded solar market
Company will manufacture large-area thin-film solar cells as well as traditional crystalline cells.
From Tom Young for BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 24 December 2009 12.55 GMT Article history
The growing attractiveness of the global solar energy market was underlined this week when South Korea's LG Electronics (LG) announced that it is to start commercial production of solar cells and modules next month.
The company said that it plans to manufacture approximately 520,000 solar modules a year using silicon wafers, at a plant 200 kilometres to the south east of Seoul with a total capacity of 120MW.
LG said that it planned to set up another production line for operation by 2011, increasing total output to 240MW.
Kwan-shik Cho, vice president of the solar business team at LG Electronics, explained that the goal is to become a global player in the world's solar industry.
"While we recognise this is a crowded playing field, LG has the necessary skills, know-how and business strategy to make this a profitable venture for the long-term," he said.
LG sees the solar business as a key area of growth, and claimed that it had been preparing to enter the market since 2004.
The firm will manufacture large-area thin-film solar cells, as well as the more widespread crystalline solar cells.
In July 2009, LG announced that the company had achieved the world's most energy efficient large-area thin-film solar cells in a trial.
LG's solar operation will be administered by its air conditioning division, which it says has the necessary experience in managing energy resources and developing products efficiently.
The solar market is estimated to be worth around $11bn in 2010, with crystalline solar cells expected to make up 80 per cent of the market, according to LG.
The move will take the company into direct competiton with a raft of solar energy firms, as well as electronics rivals Sharp and Mitsubishi, both of which already operate large solar energy divisions.
[News > From the Observer > The big issue]
The big issue: Food shortages Population control must not be ignored
The Observer, Sunday 20 December 2009 Article history
Robin McKie says the Australian drought sent food prices soaring ("Why Britain faces a bleak future of food shortages", Science). However, the World Bank attributed 70% of the rise to the use of grain for vehicle fuel ethanol.
Every means will certainly be needed to raise cereal yields whose annual increase has dropped from over 2% to around 1%, but if fertiliser and chemical use are to be curtailed, the suggestion that inefficient small farms should be incorporated into larger units needs to be treated with caution. The Future of Food TV series (BBC2) showed the vulnerability of current large-scale methods using, as they do, five calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food energy. The only ray of hope was shown by a holding at San Antonio, Cuba, where one calorie of mostly human energy managed to produce five calories of food on a very intensive mixed crop and livestock holding
It is only in western society that this seems remarkable. Hanoi, Calcutta, Shanghai and Caracas all produce a high proportion of their food from adjacent, intensively small-scale farmed land. They may be in better shape to face the predicted perfect storm in food supply than our cities fed from distant large farms.
John Watson
Totnes, Devon
> The science of genetics is not the only answer to food shortages – there is also the science of ecology (as the planting of the nettles around wheat fields exemplifies), but this requires work on the relation of farm products to each other, both in space (eg minimising spread of disease) and in time (as in crop succession or rotation). The social sciences also are involved, with the inevitable change in farm economics and the possibility of more labour-intensive farming.
Further input from social sciences may bear upon whether there should be rationing by price or by more interventionist methods. This, in turn, involves the science of nutrition. And we can learn not only from science, but also from history, not least that of the war of 1939-45.
Dr Jeffrey Boss
Stroud, Glos
> Robin McKie mentions, more in passing than in alarm, that the UK's population is predicted to rise to 75 million in the next 40 years. The consequences of such a rise during the lead up to a period of serious world food shortages needs to be understood. This is an increase of 25% in our population. Not only is this an enormous extra number of people to feed, but it also means that a large additional area of farmland will be lost under urban development. We already lose roughly a moderately sized English county every decade.
There seems to be a belief that population increase is outside of the influence of policy, but this is nonsense. Our health, education and immigration policies all have an effect, both direct and indirect, on the numbers of unwanted pregnancies, on how the choices of how many children to have are made, and on the net balance of migration.
We can and should take population into account. Without this, pontificating about food shortages is hypocritical.
Chris Padley
Market Rasen, Lincs
> A whole page on the coming food crisis("Why Britain faces a bleak future of food shortages", 13 Dec), and the only mention of population growth is the bald statement that in 40 years it will "leap... from 6.8 billion to 9 billion", as if it was written in stone. In fact, it could be anything between 7.6 billion and 11 billion, depending on the actions we take between now and then, since the 9 billion is only the middle of three projections by the UN Population Fund.
Did any of your editorial staff watch David Attenborough's documentary on population in the Horizon series last Tuesday, and if so, why doesn't this article make any mention of the need to bring down the reproductive rate?
Roger Plenty
Stroud, Glos
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