AKAR

A Bright future for LED tubes???

2010-06-14T23:50:00.000-07:00

Light emitting diode (LED) fluorescent tubes begin to catch on with consumers—but do the long-term savings outpace the upfront investment?

Light emitting diode (LED) fluorescent tubes are all the rage in the lighting market these days. The technology promises to be more energy efficient, less environmentally harmful and more economical than traditional fluorescent tube lighting. Still, there is a lot of debate over whether they are ready for widespread commercial use.

We recently came across an instance in which this very debate was being discussed in a LinkedIn electrical construction group. It was a heated thread with two electrical contractors hashing out the pros and cons of using LED fluorescent tubes. To continue our series of articles on “green” construction, we thought we’d tackle the issue ourselves. So here we present our findings on LED fluorescent tubes.

What is a LED Fluorescent Tube? Actually, “LED fluorescent tube” is a misnomer. LED lights and fluorescent lights are completely different technologies. LEDs are very small bulbs illuminated by movement of electrons in a diode. Fluorescent bulbs use electrodes and a gas combination of argon and mercury to produce light. As such, the name “LED fluorescent tube” really refers to an LED tube that reminds us of traditional fluorescent tubes (such as the one that is likely overhead as you read this).

LED lights should also not be confused with compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. CFLs use the same technology as fluorescent tubes to produce light, but on a smaller scale. They are a replacement for the incandescent bulbs commonly found in most home light fixtures. CFLs have garnered a lot of press because of their energy efficiency and environmental benefits (i.e., they are considered to be greener than traditional lights because they use less power).

An LED tube is made up of hundreds of individual LEDs. They come in a variety of sizes (2, 4 or 6 feet), different temperatures (i.e., different colors of light), and varying arrays of LEDs. They can be purchased with new fixtures, or used for retrofitting existing fixtures. However, they don’t require the ballasts that traditional fluorescents need, so those will need to be removed when replacing fluorescent bulbs with LED tubes.

When comparing LEDs to fluorescent tubes, here are four key specifications that should be reviewed:

* Lumens – This is the unit of measurement for strength of light. Look for tubes with 1500 lumens or more.
* Watts – This is a unit of measurement for power consumption. Four-foot LED tubes typically use 15 to 25 watts, while fluorescent tubes of this size use more than 30 watts.
* Lifespan – This is how long the bulb will last. It’s measured in hours. 50,000 hours is common for LED tubes.
* Color temperature – The temperature of the light is the color of the light. It is measured in units of absolute temperature, or Kelvin (K). 3000K is considered warm (redder), 4100K is considered neutral, and 5800 K is cool (bluer).

Pros and Cons of LED and Fluorescent Tubes. To give recognition where it’s due, fluorescent tubes are a great invention. They have been lighting most of America ever since GE brought them to market back in 1938. They are four to six times more energy efficient than incandescent bulbs and are said to last 10 to 20 times longer. Of course, they come with their own set of disadvantages, as well.

Fluorescent tubes contain mercury and phosphor, which present a number of health and environmental risks. The lights require a ballast, which adds to the cost of the lamp and can cause a buzzing noise. Finally, they frequently flicker, and the light is often drab.

On the other hand, LED bulbs last longer than fluorescents, and they don’t contain harmful ingredients like mercury. Perhaps most signficantly, LEDs use much less power than fluorescent lamps -- and there are many other benefits, as well.

Still, LEDs aren’t perfect. The tubes are generally not as bright and can cost more up front. And unfortunately, cost will likely be the number-one driver of greater adoption. So let’s compare the costs of each type of bulb:

Costs of LED Tubes vs Fluorescent Tubes. The debate over LED vs fluorescent tubes always teeters when it comes to the cost argument. When comparing the upfront cost of one LED tube to one fluorescent tube, fluorescent wins, hands-down. However, when you consider volume discounts and the longer lifespan of LEDs, the scale leans the opposite direction. Let’s compare the costs of each taking these factors into consideration.

This table compares the first-year cost of a single commercial-grade (i.e., UL and CE compliant), four-foot T8 LED tube to a four-foot T8 fluorescent tube. To measure kilowatts per year, we assumed the lights would be on for 12 hours a day, 255 days a year. We used an average energy rating of 20 watts per hour for LEDs and 32 for fluorescents. To calculate energy cost, we used an average cost per kilowatt of $0.11.

Clearly, fluorescents are less expensive in the first year. However, when you account for product longevity, LED tubes are the winner. LED tubes last an average of 50,000 hours (roughly 16 years) while fluorescent T8 tubes last an average of 25,000 (roughly 8 years). To determine this, we looked at every fluorescent T8 tube that Sylvania offers (nearly 150) and calculated average lifespan. To be precise, it was 24,787.67 hours.

In this next table, we compare the 16-year cost (the lifespan of an LED tube) of 40 LED tubes compared to 40 fluorescent tubes. In this example, the number 40 is somewhat arbitrary. We have 20 2′ x 4′ fixtures in our office, so we chose 40 bulbs as our basis of comparison. Keep in mind, fluorescent fixtures require ballasts, so we’ll need to tack on an additional $400 to fluorescent tubes (20 ballasts at $20).

Using prices from our previous table, in the first year it will cost $3,069 for the energy and initial purchase of 40 LED tubes. The fluorescent tubes would cost $1,071. Every year thereafter, the energy costs of LED tubes will be $269, and $431 for the fluorescents. In the eighth year, the fluorescent bulbs will need to be replaced at a cost of $240.

You’ll notice the numbers in our table look a little different. That’s because we’ve included an annual energy inflation rate of 5%. We also used a 2.5% inflation rate to calculate the cost of the replacement fluorescent bulbs in the eighth year. Finally, we used a 6% discount rate to determine the net present value (NPV).

As our analysis reveals, the 16-year cost for 40 LED tubes is $6,431, while the cost for fluorescent tubes is $6,846. This is 6% in savings over the life of the tubes. Keep in mind, this is only 40 tubes. Building owners with more light fixtures will realize more savings, as the volume discount will be greater and energy costs will be lower. So, over the lifespan of the product, LED tubes are more cost effective than fluorescent tubes.

A Bright Future for LED Tubes. The cost of manufacturing LEDs is dropping. Researchers at Purdue University have developed a way to create LEDs using inexpensive, metal-coated silicon wafers instead of expensive sapphire-based bulbs. This discovery has the potential to bring the cost down to levels competitive with fluorescent tubes. You can stay up to date on news of this development over at the Eartheasy blog.

In the meantime, there’s no reason electrical contractors shouldn’t promote LED tubes. LED tubes can help building owners achieve eligibility for government and utility company incentives. They help companies capture the desirable -- and highly marketable -- green cachet. They provide greater energy cost savings than fluorescents. And finally, they are simply better for the Earth. They are the future of commercial lighting.

Source: http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/are-led-fluorescent-tubes-ready-for-prime-time/

Effluent treatment plants to be mandatory for restaurants

2010-06-02T21:44:00.000-07:00

Restaurants, banquet halls and eating joints in the city will soon have to install effluent treatment plants (ETPs) with the Delhi Government taking steps to implement the recent order of the Centre in this regard.

"Initially, we will start with an awareness programme regarding the effluent standards for the hotels notified by the Environment Ministry," said a senior official from Delhi environment department.

The official said a public notice will soon be issued to the owners of restaurants, eating joints such as 'dhabas', banquet halls and similar other units having minimum seating capacity of 36 for adhering to the norms.

Till now, there were no specific standards to keep a tab on the discharge of effluents being generated by such businesses which usually get mixed with city sewerage and are discharged into the rivers or contaminate groundwater.

These units will be checked on the basis of effluent parameters that have been defined by the environment ministry.

Also, with the water availability proving to be major problem, the hotel industry is being encouraged to set up on-site waste water treatment facilities for recycling of water for gardening and other non-domestic use.

The ETPs would be brought under regulatory mechanism for effective monitoring and pollution control.

"Though some big hotels have installed treatment plants, small restaurants and banquets have no such facilities. But now they cannot escape from their responsibilities," the official added.

Save Water - Mumbai following Delhi's way...

2010-05-14T22:16:00.000-07:00

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is considering laying separate water pipeline to supply potable and non potable water to citizens on the line of Delhi.
Municipal commissioner Swadheen Kshatriya announced it on the demand made by Union Minister of State for Communications and IT Gurudas Kamat who is also MP from Mumbai Northwest constituency. Kamat met Kshatriya to discuss various issues related to the city and his constituency.
“I suggested the BMC to adopt the Delhi pattern under which recycled water is used for non potable purpose through separate lines to avoid wastage of potable water.” said Kamat.
The BMC said it is open to adopt the pattern used by civic government in Delhi. “I agree with the Kamat's suggestion as I saw two separate water lines for potable and non potable when I was in Delhi for some time. It will work in the city as well,“ said Kshatriya.
The civic body has planned for recycling plant at six locations in the city to supply water for non potable purpose.
“As phase I, we will commence recycle plants with BOT basis and then will be laid pipeline for supply,“ Kshatirya added. The civic body is also considering giving rights to private agency to sell non potable water to the industrial area.
The city is currently reeling under an unprecedented water crisis, with a 15 per cent cuts imposed on the residential users and a 30 per cent on the commercial users.
Apart from water issue Kamat has also demanded that the civic body should keep open spaces reserved under Recreation Ground, Play Ground and Gardens as open. “Also those, whose leases are still on, should be strictly monitored and public access should be ensured. While those who have developed private clubs and whose lease ended should be taken place in spite of 810 years possession like Matoshree sports club in Jogeshwari, such allotments should be cancelled forthwith, “said Kamat.
Kamat also submitted a Memorandum expressing concern about the Water situation in Mumbai and the need to desilt all lakes and reservoirs, to ensure the storage capacity of water.
To strictly ensure usage of Solar Electricity in all new buildings as agreed to by the government of Maharashtra.
To ensure that Recreation Grounds and Playgrounds are accessible to the common man and no private clubs be allowed. BMC: Developer should declare carpet area The BMC will ensure that no proposals for the development will be accepted, unless the developer would declare the carpet floor space index to be sale. This will be strictly monitored by the civic body Building Proposal department, said BMC chief Swadheen Kshatriya.
Gurudas Kamat MP, led a delegation comprising of Congress MLA's and corporators met municipal chief to discuss various issues including carpet area issue. “Though the rule exists about flat purchasing and selling should be as per carpet area is not implemented properly,“ alleged Kamat.

From Hindustan Times, 15th May, 2010

Iceland - The cleanest country in the world

2010-04-27T03:09:00.000-07:00

Iceland is the cleanest country in the world. This may be hard to believe right now, what with the clouds of volcanic ash grounding flights across northern Europe, but according to researchers at Yale and Columbia universities, the Nordic island ranks first out of 163 countries on their Environmental Performance Index.

Researchers ranked countries based on 25 indicators, including water and air quality, greenhouse gas emissions and the impact of the environment on the health of the population. (For more detail on the methodology, click here.) A score of 100 is excellent. Sierra Leone ranks at the bottom of the list with a score of 32. The U.S. ranks in the middle of the pack with 63.5. Iceland took top honors with a score of 93.5 thanks to ample clean water, lots of protected nature areas, good national health care and a plenitude of usually clean geothermal power.

Will Eyjafjallajokull wreck Iceland's rating the next time the academics run the numbers in 2012? The answer is no. "We do not score natural disasters," says Daniel Esty, a professor of environmental law at Yale who heads up the EPI and wrote the acclaimed book Green to Gold. The index is weighted to metrics that track how governments are performing relative to environmental policy goals, such as access to adequate sanitation and water, habitat protection and industrial emissions. The amount of sulfur dioxide released from fuel usage counts, not what's put out by volcanoes.

There are two paths that can take a country to the top of the EPI rankings. First, a country could be gifted with a rich endowment of clean water, diverse biology and not have sullied it with rampant industrialism. That's how Cuba, Colombia and Costa Rica placed so high.

Alternatively, a country could have industrialized and polluted its environment, but eventually gotten rich enough to start cleaning it up. That's the case with the European countries that make up more than half of the top 30.

"The richer you become, the more polluted you become, to a point. Then you become cleaner," says Christine Kim of Yale, research director for the EPI.

The U.S. is still on the upswing, says Esty. "Forty years ago the U.S would have had bad scores" like China (rank: 121st) and India (123rd). America, as it's matured, has made big strides in cleaning up lakes, rivers and streams, with clean drinking water available to practically the entire population. Air quality has gotten much better in places like Los Angeles. What's more, "no country is a better forest steward," says Esty. And despite the plague of pine bark beetles laying waste to millions of acres of forests across the west, "the U.S. is re-foresting at a rapid rate."

Sounds good, so why does the U.S. rank so much lower than those Europeans? "People in the U.S. are shocked the U.S. ranks so low. In Europe they're shocked the U.S. ranks so high," says Esty.

Trace the cognitive dissonance to greenhouse gas emissions, where the U.S. places very poorly because of our reliance on coal for 50% of power generation and our reliance on cars to traverse wide-open spaces. America's fully industrialized peers Japan (ranked 20th), Germany (17th) and the U.K. (14th) did far better. The best way for America to improve its score: make a big push toward generating power from nuclear and natural gas.

But could we ever place better than Cuba, which is ranked ninth? Well, Cuba's scant industrial base limits pollution, while socialized health care helps limit environmental-related illness. At least that's what the data claims.

"There's some made-up data out of Cuba," says Esty. They have problems with the veracity of China's data, too. The U.S. on the other hand has very high data quality because "we [in the U.S.] are able to get bad news published." Despite misgivings on Cuban data, "we don't use our judgment on data to push down countries' rankings."

Another unusual case is Belgium, which lags far behind its neighbors France, the Netherlands and Germany and the rest of Western Europe. Belgium is in 88th place, on par with Ukraine and lower than any other European country. The data on Belgium shows "incontrovertible systematic underperformance," says Esty. Less nuclear power, worse water quality and less protection of open spaces.

Esty cautions that it's more useful for policymakers to compare a country's results with those in its peer group. Desert countries will have trouble scoring high in the rankings because of their complete lack of emissions-free hydropower, and limited ecological diversity. Yet in the 2010 study, for the first time, the researchers decided to count sea water desalination as a renewable water source. This helps the oil-rich countries, which can afford to build desalination plants. (See "Making Sweet Water From (Almost) Perpetual Motion.")

In an enviro-measurement quandry, those oil and gas-rich regimes like Saudi Arabia (99th place) and Qatar (122th), don't get docked for the environmental impact of their exported hydrocarbons.

Esty says that of the 75 nations to give feedback to his researchers on their EPI rankings, none has been more outraged than South Korea. Landing in 94th place, between Gabon and Nicaragua, South Koreans see this study as an insult unbefitting their status as a first-world developed nation. The South Korean ambassador filed a protest. A bureaucrat even called up research director Christine Kim's grandmother back home in South Korea to complain. The South Koreans' overly rosy environmental self-assessment might have something to do with the worse performance of neighboring China and North Korea (147th place). Esty says the data on low levels of biodiversity and significant air pollution aren't in doubt.

A bastion of hope and irony: the most biodiverse place on the Korean Peninsula is the demilitarized zone, says Esty. Yet some of the deer there, because of landmines, only have three legs.

By: Christopher Helman, Forbes.com

Modular homes made from recycled plastic

2010-03-04T01:59:00.000-08:00

By Anthony Clark

A Welsh company, Affresol, has developed the technology to build affordable low carbon homes from recycled waste plastic and minerals – including packaging and manufacturing waste. Each house consists of approximately 18 tonnes of material that would otherwise be destined for landfill.

The first of the modular buildings has been ordered by Worcester Bosch, a UK manufacturer of domestic heating and hot water systems, for its plant in Warndon, Worcestershire. Supplying Affresol with plastic recovered from recycled boilers will enable the heating specialist to achieve a zero waste policy.

Affresol has developed a material called Thermo Poly Rock (TPR) from recycled plastics and minerals for use as a structural building product. The patented process uses a low energy cold process which converts the plastics into a strong structural element.

The TPR panels are bolted together to form the load bearing frame of the house, which can be externally clad using a material of choice (brick, block or stone), and the interior insulated and plastered as standard. The roof is tiled from recycled materials.

Outlining the benefits, managing director Ian McPherson said TPR is stronger and lighter than concrete, waterproof, fire retardant, does not rot and has excellent insulation properties.

A sustainable code 4/5 home built using TPR can be up to 12% cheaper than standard build, the TPR superstructure can be erected on site within four days. The houses have an estimated life cycle of more than 60 years and the TPR elements are 100% recyclable at the end of life.

The company has spent the last two years working with Cardiff and Glamorgan universities, the Building Research Establishment (BRE) and the Carbon Trust developing the product.

The Welsh Assembly Government also provided support through the Single Investment Fund in the test and development stage, setting up an automated production facility and in the final stages leading up to accreditation.

Finance Wales, a provider of commercial funding to businesses in Wales and a subsidiary company of the Assembly Government, has also provided debt investment in the business

McPherson said: “Our management team and business partners believe there is tremendous potential for this new product particularly with the growing focus on carbon reduction, low energy affordable homes and sustainability.”

Affresol forecast building 3,000 homes per annum – recycling 40,000 tonnes of waste – with the main market being affordable homes for social housing.

Source: http://www.prw.com/subscriber/newsmail2.html?id=1267180929

Palm Oil, Sugar Cane Most Sustainable Energy Crops, Study Shows

2010-02-20T00:08:00.000-08:00

By Rudy Ruitenberg

Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Sugar cane grown in Brazil and palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia rank as the most sustainable of the current generation of biofuel crops, according to researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

Researchers at the university’s plant-science department compared nine crops on criteria including soil erosion, water use for each unit of energy produced and nitrogen usage, according to Sander de Vries, author of the comparative study.

“In terms of net energy, sugar cane has the best score of all energy crops,” Wageningen University’s De Vries said by telephone yesterday. “A crop like corn, which scores poorly, is at 10 percent of that.”

Biofuels production amounted to 83 billion liters (21.9 billion U.S. gallons) in 2008, up fourfold from 2000, and accounted for 1.5 percent of global transport fuel consumption, according to the International Energy Agency. First-generation biofuels have faced “heavy criticism” regarding their long- term effect on the environment, according to the IEA.

Sorghum in China, as well as oil palms and sugar cane, make the most efficient use of land, water, nitrogen and pesticides to produce a unit of energy, according to the study in the journal Biomass and Bioenergy. Provided no forest is cleared to grow the three crops, they produce “much less” greenhouse gases than fossil fuels, the study said.

“It takes a lot of water to grow sugar cane, but on balance you get a big return,” De Vries said. “You get back a lot of sugar cane.”

Nine Criteria

The crops were compared by ranking them against the best- performing plant on each of nine criteria, De Vries said. Sugar beet and rapeseed in Europe, cassava in Thailand and soybeans in Brazil had an average ranking, according to the study.

“In every case we looked at the dominant production area,” De Vries said. “With regards to erosion, oil palm scores well, rapeseed also. Soy doesn’t do well in terms of net energy, but does in nitrogen efficiency.”

Oil palm was most sustainable with regards to the maintenance of soil quality, according to the study, which disregarded effects on societies, economies and biodiversity.

U.S. corn and wheat in Europe, used to produce ethanol, had the worst sustainability score of the nine crops studied.

“It takes a lot of energy to process those crops,” De Vries said. “For corn it’s just positive. For wheat the balance of greenhouse-gas reductions is zero.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Rudy Ruitenberg in Paris at rruitenberg@bloomberg.net

Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&sid=atgC7em.HRHg

Baja Fresh launches 'Earth Fresh' initiative

2010-02-20T00:01:00.000-08:00

Baja Fresh Mexican Grill has announced its 2010 "Earth Fresh" initiative. Beginning in December of 2009, Baja Fresh introduced recycled napkins, paper bags, burrito wrapping paper, and biodegradable plates in eight restaurants, including their California locations in Cypress, Westlake Village, Simi Valley, Beverly Hills, Tustin Marketplace, South Irvine and Lakewood.

All Baja Fresh paper bags in the aforementioned restaurants now contain a minimum of 40 percent postconsumer material. Papers utilized also are not made with processed chlorine or its derivatives, and converted papers are FDA compliant.

The new plates are designed to disintegrate and biodegrade swiftly and safely in a professionally managed composting facility. The plates are certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute and the natural fibers with which they are produced are a byproduct of wheat harvest. The type of renewable resource is reportedly an excellent alternative to polystyrene foam and conventional molded fiber.

Additionally, the production and use of natural, unbleached burrito wraps versus bleached paper wraps have significant impact on the world’s resources including:

* 46 percent reduction in waste water
* 21 percent reduction in wood pulp use
* 16 percent reduction in solid waste
* 10 percent reduction in green house gas production.

For every 1,000 tons of natural paper produced versus bleached paper of the same weight 6,089 trees will be saved, 15 full swimming pools of wastewater will be removed, and 13 garbage trucks of solid waste will be eliminated.

"Baja Fresh recognizes the importance of the earth’s resources and our customers’ penchant to conserve them. By offering our products in biodegradable, recycled, and recyclable packaging, not only are we meeting the requests of our guests, but also those of the environment," Baja Fresh president Charles Rink said. "We will continue to seek environmentally friendly solutions for additional products used in serving Baja Fresh menu items, and we look forward to the success of the current products in test. We hope to offer them companywide within the year."

Source: http://www.fastcasual.com/article.php?id=17327&na=1&s=2

Stimulus funds for clean energy largely unspent

2010-02-19T23:54:00.000-08:00

Only 63,000 of the jobs directly created or saved by the stimulus bill last year were clean-energy jobs. That number should rise, economists say.

Making a “tremendous down payment on the clean energy transformation” of the United States was a top priority of the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package – but, despite some notable accomplishments, it remains mostly a promise at this point.

Most of the funds from the stimulus still haven’t been spent, and the clean-energy down payment is a long way from being completed. Its impact so far on those jobs has only been lightly felt in pockets across the nation, economists and others watching its impact in their regions say.

“It’s fair to say the stimulus is a down payment, but I wouldn’t call it a tremendous down payment at this point,” says Joan Fitzgerald, an expert on economic development at Northeastern University in Boston, who has analyzed the stimulus’s impact on the wind-power and other clean-technology industries.

Overall, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or stimulus bill, has seen $263 billion spent of the $787 billion available by the end of last year. As a result, the US economy is now employing about 1.5 million to 2 million more workers, the President's Council of Economic Advisors recently reported – and other independent economists agree.

But so far, just one-third of the roughly $90 billion ($60.7 billion in direct spending and $29.5 billion in tax incentives) targeting the clean-energy sector has actually hit the street – to fund wind-farm development, solar plants, battery factories, high-speed rail, and home weatherization, among many other projects.

As a result, just 63,000 of the jobs directly created or saved by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by the end of last year were clean-energy jobs, the president's economic council reports.

That so-far modest impact should become much more significant as the US Department of Energy ramps up its approval process and spends the remaining billions by September, David Sandalow, assistant secretary of energy for policy and international affairs, said at a press conference Wednesday.

Over the next two years, the $90 billion spent on clean energy is expected to create 720,000 job-years of employment. In addition to jobs, some 16,000 megawatts of wind, solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy capacity propelled by the stimulus will power about 4 to 5 million homes.

“Each one of [these jobs] is doing work made possible by the recovery act,” Mr. Sandalow said. “The recovery act has been crucial to unlocking financing” for new wind, solar, geothermal power projects.

High-speed rail construction in Wisconsin, new-generation plug-in hybrid vehicle battery factories in Detroit and wind farm turbines sprouting across the US landscape last year – all would not exist without the stimulus passed by Congress last year, other observers agree.

“Some folks on one end of the spectrum say the stimulus hasn’t done a darn thing,” says Rob Sargent, who tracks clean-energy for EnvironmentAmerica, a Washington-based advocacy group. “If you look around and see – it has led to investments in clean energy of a magnitude we’ve never seen.” Other expert watchers agree.

“Broadly speaking, the stimulus has helped an enormous amount,” says Alex Klein, research director for Emerging Energy Research, a market research company based in Cambridge, Mass. “Treasury grants have helped expedite wind development, manufacturing incentives have jump-started battery manufacturing – and kept wind and solar manufacturing in the US alive.”

The stimulus has expedited both project development and helped to build local supply chains, Mr. Klein says. But some note that the stimulus, while keeping the wind-power and other renewable industries from tanking in 2009, has not worked a miracle on US clean-energy manufacturers’ competitiveness.

“We’re not competitive yet with other clean-energy export nations,” says Kevin Book, managing partner with ClearView Partners, a Washington energy research and consulting firm. “There’s an argument to be made that we could become the next big manufacturer of clean tech, but we’re not the most compelling candidate right now. China and Germany are ahead of us."

News reports highlighting Texas wind-farm projects that purchased Japanese-made turbines – and others with plans to purchase turbines from China – have had congressmen throwing up their hands in protest.

So is Bob Lloyd, plant manager at Clipper Wind Power’s Waterloo, Iowa, manufacturing plant. His plant had layoffs a year ago and is still operating at less than half its capacity.

“We’re trying to build this product,” he says. “ 'Hey, we're paying taxes, and we don’t want to pay taxes to bring in foreign-made products' – that’s the feeling of folks around here.”

Clipper and General Electric are America’s only domestic wind-turbine manufacturers. But while Clipper’s business is picking up, their plight highlights a conundrum: Until US demand for clean energy grows, it will be hard to develop domestic clean-energy manufacturing that can out-compete overseas companies on price as well as quality, experts say.

The stimulus support can't produce an overnight transformation for US clean-energy manufacturers, Mr. Book says. What’s needed is a “natural demand” for clean-energy, or a “legislative demand.” And yet, a cap-and-trade climate bill that would do just that, by putting a price on carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants, is stalled in Congress.

“Unless natural demand for clean energy develops in the US – or it can become a competitive exporter to markets overseas, the spending won’t have succeeded,” he says. “We have to have a price on carbon.”

----

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0218/Stimulus-funds-for-clean-energy-largely-unspent

A new look at carbon offsets

2010-02-19T23:49:00.001-08:00

Source: https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Corporate_Finance/Capital_Management/A_new_look_at_carbon_offsets_2533

New wind power tops all other sources in 2009

2010-02-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

Wind and solar technology made up over half of Europe’s new electricity generating capacity in 2009, as the number of new coal and nuclear facilities fell.

Wind accounted for 39 per cent of increased European energy capacity, ahead of gas (26 per cent) and solar (16 per cent). In contrast, the nuclear and coal power sectors decommissioned more megawatts of capacity than they installed in 2009, with a total of 1,393 MW of nuclear and 3,200 MW of coal decommissioned.

'It is a remarkable result in a difficult year. The figures, once again, confirm that wind power, together with other renewable energy technologies and a shift from coal to gas, are delivering massive European carbon reductions, while creating much needed economic activity and new jobs for Europe’s citizens,' said EWEA CEO Christian Kjaer.

According to the EWEA report, €13 billion has been invested in wind farms across the EU in the last year, making them capable of meeting 4.8 per cent of EU energy demands.

Spain is the country with the biggest share of new wind capacity (24%), followed by Germany (19%), Italy (19 per cent), France (11%) and the UK (10%).

The wind energy sector has grown by an average of 23 per cent over the last 15 years, with annual installations up from 472 MW in 1994 to 10,163 MW in 2009.
Commenting on prospects for 2010, Kjaer added: “I am quite optimistic about the medium-term outlook for wind power in Europe, but project finance is still tight and it is clear that more orders must be announced in the coming months for the sector to repeat the 10 GW installed this year.”

Source: http://www.greenjobs.ie/newsletters.cms.asp

Wipro first India company to offer 100% recyclable and toxin-free computers

2010-02-11T02:14:00.000-08:00

BANGALORE: Information technology services corporation Wipro Infotech has claimed to be the first Indian company to build a 100 per cent
recyclable and toxin-free computer, and joins a small group of manufacturers worldwide who have developed toxic-free electronics.

According to the company, the eco-friendly Wipro Greenware desktops are completely free from harmful chemicals such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and brominated flame retardants (BFRs).

The company's range of Greenware Intel Core 2 Duo processor PCs can be easily recycled once their technology becomes obsolete and they pass their 'shelf life'.

"Wipro Infotech has taken significant strides and strong leadership in Green Computing, providing responsible and environment-sensitive computing solutions to our customers," The Independent quoted Anand Sankaran, Senior Vice President and Business Head of Wipro, as saying.

E-waste is fast becoming an environmental hazard in Asia, as expanding stockpiles of obsolete electronics and computer products have been amassing in poor neighborhoods forcing governments to discuss measures to deal with the expanding problem.

Wipro joins larger, global consumer electronics manufactures like Apple, HP and Nokia in the struggle to develop toxin-free electronics.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/hardware/Wipro-first-India-company-to-offer-100-recyclable-and-toxin-free-computers/articleshow/5559909.cms

Pre-Namaz in a eco-friendly way...

2010-02-02T23:55:00.000-08:00

Kuala Lumpur: A Malaysian company has invented a machine it says will help Muslims purify themselves before prayers without excessively wasting water.
The ornate, green-coloured machine comes with automatic sensors and basins to curb water usage during wudu, an Arabic word used to describe the act of washing the face, arms and legs before prayers.
The wudu, or ablution, rite preceeds the five daily prayers Muslims are obligated to perform. There are more than 1.7 billion Muslims in the world, with the majority in Africa and the Middle East where water supplies are scarce.
Inventors AACE Technologies is counting on rich countries in these two regions to snap up the machines that will be available in the next six months and will cost $3,000-$4,000 a piece.
“Saving water is a motivation for people to adopt this system rather than the conventional methods, where there’s a lot of water wastage”, AACE chairman Anthony Gomez said while launching the product in the Malaysian capital.
The device, which also emits recorded Koranic verses, is 5 ft 5in tall. It only uses 1.3 litres of water compared to the conventional methods, which usually involve leaving faucets running for the duration of the washing ritual, which can last
for several minutes.
“During the Haj, two million people used 50 million litres water a day for wudu. If they introduce this machine they are saving 40 million litres per day”, he said.
The Gulf city of Dubai has shown interest in acquiring the product for its airport, Gomez said, adding that the machine took two years to develop at the cost of $2.5 million.
AACE also wants to target mosques and offices with wallmountable models. “The idea is good and it is built in line with Islamic teachings. But water here is cheap, so it is not worthwhile to have this machine”, an office worker, Aminuddin, said. REUTERS

Source: TOI, 2nd Feb, 2010

Yamuna... Drain or River???

2010-02-02T23:53:00.000-08:00

New Delhi: We all know Yamuna water is not fit for bathing, let alone drinking. But the latest report from the Central Pollution Control Board, sure to raise a stink before the Commonwealth Games in the capital, says the river is so full of excreta that its water resembles that of a drain.
According to stipulated standards, water can be made potable with treatment if faecal coliform is less than 500 per 100ml and it’s fit for bathing if the number is less than 5,000 per 100ml. According to CPCB’s 10-month-long monitoring of the Yamuna at Nizamuddin, the lowest level of faecal coliform in the water was 4.4 lakh per 100ml, on May 4, 2009. That’s almost 100 times above the level considered safe for bathing.
Faecal coliform are bacteria that originate in excreta. Coliform levels reached as high as 1.79 crore per 100ml on February 3. Drinking water without conventional treatment but after use of disinfectant should not have a coliform count in excess of 50 per 100ml and must have a minimum DO of 6mg per litre.
Worse, the dissolved oxygen (DO) content of Yamuna water was “nil’’ on all the testing dates, though the water at Palla on all these days had a DO level of over 4 milligrams per litre, which is the standard. Palla is where the river enters Delhi, embarking on its most polluted 22-km stretch.
The monitoring took place between January 6 and October 6 last year, according to the latest report submitted to the Supreme Court by CPCB through counsel Vijay Panjwani.
Even at Palla the water quality could not be termed potable because of the high level of faecal coliform. Except for September 2, 2009, when the faecal coliform was 2,900 per 100ml, in all other months it was above the stipulated 5,000 level. The highest coliform count at Palla was 43,000, on July 7.
The alarming rise in faecal coliform content by the time it reaches Nizamuddin was mainly because of the number of drains that join it, throwing in untreated sewage and industrial effluent. “The total pollution load discharged through 25 drains in river Yamuna during the ten rounds of monitoring from January to October was between 174 tonnes per day to 330 tonnes per day,’’ CPCB said.
CPCB is monitoring the river water quality at five locations – Palla, Madanpur Khadar, Okhla, the meeting point of Shahadra drain and Nizamuddin – along with 25 drains, in compliance with a Supreme Court order and has submitted results of monitoring since 1999.

How Unclean Is Delhi’s Pride

Water can be made safe for drinking if faecal coliform is less than 5,000 per 100 ml. The lowest level on the Yamuna was 4.4 lakh per 100 ml last May
Dissolved oxygen content was nil all testing days, but at Palla, where the river enters Delhi, it was 4 mg per litre, which is the standard
Even at Palla faecal coliform content was above the stipulated 5,000 level

Source: TOI, 2nd Feb, 2010

‘Centre’s help needed to set up desalination plant’

2010-02-02T23:37:00.000-08:00

Mumbai:The BMC will seek financial assistance from the Centre for setting up city’s first desalination plant.
Municipal commissioner Swadheen Kshatriya, who went on a study tour to Chennai, said if BMC has to base its model on Chennai’s, then it would need some help from the central government.
It is estimated that the municipal corporation would need at least 20 acres of land along the western coastline, for which it has sought help from the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT).
“We are exploring two possibilities; one is part financial assistance from the central government and another to seek land from the port authorities who are managing the western coastline. As soon as a proposal is prepared, we will move in these directions,’’ Kshatriya said.
About 18 firms have submitted expressions of interest to carry out a feasibility study. Their job would be to set up plants with a capacity of 10 mld at various places near the coastline. Another project in the pipeline is to set up a plant with a capacity of 10 million litres daily at a cost of Rs 125 crore on navy land at Colaba.
By setting up desalination plants, the BMC hopes to make sea water potable. This comes at a crucial time when the city is facing its worst water crisis ever.
Kshatriya said once the study is complete, BMC would identify a suitable technology for desalination, chalk out a financial framework and a distribution network for treated water.
“Though reverse osmosis (RO) is popular for desalination, we can’t rule out the use of other technologies,’’ Kshatriya said.

CIVIC NOD FOR CITIZENS’ PLAN

Additional municipal commissioner Anil Diggikar on Monday approved a plan put forward by a citizens’ group to help the BMC tide over the water crisis.
The group comprising Gerson D’Cunha of Action for Good Governance and Networking for India (AGNI), historian Sharada Dwivedi, former municipal commissioner V Ranganathan and others had met civic chief Swadheen Kshatriya a fortnight ago with immediate, short-term and long-term suggestions to tackle the water crisis. ‘‘If the crisis is not tackled soon, we would face great trouble. We have to plan at the earliest and make sure the city tides over this water crisis,’’ said Dwivedi.
The suggestions include auditing pipelines across the city, audit city wells and so on. According to members of the delegation, a sustained effort by citizens to help the BMC save water is the need of the hour.
“There should be timely audits regarding the water situation. Officials should have periodic checks on water meters. We, on our part, can spread awareness with ad campaigns and so on,’’ said D’Cunha.

Source: TOI, 2nd Feb, 2010

EU to stick with lower climate offer to U.N

2010-01-25T19:37:00.000-08:00

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union will stick with its lowest offer for cutting carbon emissions under a U.N. climate accord, fulfilling the wishes of industry, a draft letter shows.

The 27-nation bloc has committed to unilaterally cut carbon dioxide to 20 percent below 1990 levels over the next decade.

Ahead of the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen in December it offered to deepen those cuts to 30 percent if other rich countries made similar efforts.

That offer still stands, according to the draft letter to top U.N. climate official Yvo de Boer. But it is unlikely to be carried out because the Copenhagen talks ended with a weak deal.

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

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

But many EU countries and industries are wary of increasing cuts to 30 percent alone, because the cost of cutting emissions might put factories at a disadvantage to rivals in less regulated countries.

LEVERAGE

"After the Copenhagen failure, the EU would be foolish to again unilaterally increase its greenhouse gas objective," Gordon Moffat, the head of steel industry group Eurofer, said in a statement on Thursday. "Another 10 percent would be fatal."

But environmentalists say the EU is naive to think its conditional 30 percent offer creates any negotiating leverage and the bloc should move there anyway to set a moral example.

"Tackling climate negotiations with the same strategy as trade negotiations will simply get them bogged down like the current Doha round of trade talks," Greenpeace campaigner Joris den Blanken said.

Spain, which holds the EU's rotating presidency until July, drafted the letter, seen by Reuters, and will wait for feedback from all 27 EU nations before signing and sending it next week.

While participants in the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme, the bloc's main weapon against climate change, were worried that a 30 percent goal would raise the cost of carbon permits, analysts said the 20 percent target was largely priced into the market.

"Thirty percent is out of the picture for now," said Emmanuel Fages of Societe Generale. "Nobody was seriously attaching any probability to it post-Copenhagen."

At a meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels on Thursday, a group of eastern European countries led by Poland joined Italy, Cyprus and Malta to call for the deletion of any reference to the 30 percent, even as a conditional offer, diplomats said.

Britain, Denmark, France and the Netherlands wanted the 30 percent offer to be prominent but to remain conditional.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60L1WE20100122

European space company wants solar power plant in space

2010-01-25T19:33:00.000-08:00

EADS Astrium, Europe's biggest space company, plans to put a solar power satellite in orbit to demonstrate the collection of solar power in space and its transmission via infrared laser to provide electricity on Earth.

Chief executive officer of Astrium, François Auque, said the system is at the testing stage, but that a viable system collecting and transmitting power from space could be within reach soon. Auque said space solar power is an attractive idea because it is an inexhaustible and clean form of energy. Unlike solar plants on Earth, orbital solar collectors can work around the clock, and there is no interference from clouds or atmospheric dusts or gases, which means the energy hitting photovoltaic cells in orbit is much greater than it would be for the same panels on the ground.

Earlier concepts of beaming power to Earth from space were criticized because they relied on microwaves to transmit the power to the ground, which has safety concerns, so Astrium plans to use infrared lasers instead, which means that even if they were misdirected people and objects hit by the laser beams could not be scorched.

The transmission of power via infrared laser has been tested in Astrium’s laboratories, and they are now concentrating on improving the system’s efficiency. Work on developing converters to convert received infrared energy to electricity is proceeding rapidly, and Astrium is collaborating in this work with scientists at the University of Surrey, in the UK. The company is hoping to achieve 80% efficiency in the conversion.

According to Astrium’s chief technology officer, Robert Laine, at present the power handled by the system is limited by the size of the laser that can be built. A demonstration mission would also be necessary to prove the system works, and this should be possible within the present decade.

The concept of harvesting solar power in space has been discussed for at least the last three decades, but the problems of power loss during transmission and the expense and difficulty of assembling large arrays of solar collectors in space have seemed almost insurmountable. However, Astrium is not the only company close to bringing the idea to fruition. Last September Japan announced it is planning to put a small demonstration solar collecting satellite in orbit by 2015. This system will transmit the power to Earth using microwaves.

EADS Astrium is seeking investors and partners such as the EU, national governments, space agencies, or power companies, to fund and contribute in other ways to the development of its operational orbital solar collection and transmission system.

Source: http://www.physorg.com/news183278937.html

Samsung Signs $6.6 Billion Deal to Build Wind and Solar Power in Canada

2010-01-25T19:28:00.000-08:00

In what’s being described as the largest deal of its kind in the world, Samsung C&T and the Ontario government signed a $6.6 billion investment deal Thursday under which the Korean industrial conglomerate will build 2,500 megawatts of wind and solar power in the province, as well as establish manufacturing facilities that will build the equipment.
Photo

The third player in the deal is Korea Electric Power Corp., the country’s largest utility, with 10,200 megawatts of generation capacity worldwide, including a new 1,200-megawatt wind farm in China.

The deal, initially proposed by Samsung a year ago, was spurred on by the province’s Green Energy Act, which was passed last year to provide generous incentives for clean-energy production. “This means Ontario is officially the place to be for green energy manufacturing in North America,” Ontario’s premier, Dalton McGuinty, said during a signing ceremony in Toronto.

Under the terms of the agreement, officials said, Samsung must build four manufacturing plants in Ontario, promising 16,000 direct and indirect jobs over the next five years. The energy generated will be enough for 580,000 homes.

“I think 16,000 jobs in this economy is pretty good,” said Mr. McGuinty, who has taken some criticism for selecting Samsung without an open tendering process. He rejected suggestions that Samsung’s presence would crowd out other suppliers.

The first phase will be built near Windsor, in southwestern Ontario where energy was once generated by a coal plant that is due to be decommissioned by 2014.

Korean trade officials said at the event that Samsung selected Ontario as a base of operations to make wind and solar equipment for customers not just in Ontario, but across North America.

Ontario’s green energy laws include domestic content provisions that require some of the equipment to be made in Ontario. It also gives the province a leg up in the race to supply wind and solar equipment to the rapidly transforming American electricity sector, Mr. McGuinty said. “If you ask around state capitals in the U.S., they would be secretly asking themselves why they didn’t do it first.”

Quebec adopted similar domestic content rules for its own wind sector, which is largely based in the Gaspe region on the south shore of the St. Lawrence River.

Samsung is a relative newcomer to the green energy business and says it is using expertise from its other heavy industry divisions, including its shipbuilding group, to manufacture wind turbines.

And it is not the only Korean firm pushing into the North American green energy market. Last year, Hyundai Heavy Industries moved into wind turbine manufacturing and has also been pushing to make inroads into the United States.

Source: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/samsung-signs-66-billion-deal-to-build-wind-and-solar-power-in-ontario/

Now Greenroads - Rating system for Sustainable Road Construction.

2010-01-22T00:23:00.000-08:00

The Greenroads evaluation of the impact of US road building is a step in the right direction, but still has miles to travel

America has 10% of the the planet's roads and building each mile of freeway uses as much energy as 200 US homes in a year.

With 4m miles of highway, the USA has around 10% of the entire planet's paved roads – and spends $85bn (£52bn) annually on rolling out tens of thousands more miles. Building and maintaining a single mile of freeway takes as much energy as 200 US homes use in a year, consumes as much raw material as 1,000 households get through in 365 days and generates more waste than 1,200 homes produce annually.

Now University of Washington researchers and engineering firm CH2M Hill have launched the world's first rating system for sustainable road construction, along the lines of the LEED programme for green buildings. Greenroads evaluates a road's overall environmental and social impact, taking into account everything from construction materials and practices to noise pollution, habitat control and bike lanes. Projects have to fulfil basic building, waste, pollution, lifecycle and outreach plans, and can then earn extra points for using recycled or local resources, reducing their reliance on fossil fuels, minimising water use and implementing smart traffic management systems.

"We are trying to be very inclusive and address the range of roadway projects," says Steve Muench, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington. "For example, in an urban project you might spend a lot of time and effort building a surface that lasts decades with minimum maintenance or reduces tyre noise. In a rural environment, you might be more focused on treating stormwater and including wildlife crossings."

The Greenroads system already has the support of five US state departments of transport and the University is following 15 case study projects to see how its ratings system affects energy usage, carbon footprint and – where the rubber hits the road – cost. "We think it may cost a little more upfront but if you look at the total lifecycle cost of that road, you'll be miles ahead," says Muench. "I look at what has happened with green buildings. It started out as completely voluntary but it's evolved over the last decade and now nearly 300 government and education agencies have policies that all their new buildings must be LEED-certified. In that sense, it's no longer voluntary, it's no longer an option: it's required. With Greenroads, we want to push the industry in the right direction."

Road builders point out that they have already embraced some eco-friendly practices. The Portland Cement Association claims to have reduced energy usage by nearly 40% over the last 40 years, says 2m tons of recycled aggregate are now used in roads annually, and has ensured a less energy-intensive "warm mix" of asphalt is gradually becoming more widely used. But with 95% of aggregates still being mined fresh from the ground and highway spending forecast to increase 8% this year, America seems a long way from ever building truly sustainable roads.

"Right now, we're on the side of the scale where we produce waste that is not very useful, we use more than we put back and we're altering ecosystems more than we should," admits Muench. "With Greenroads, we're basically trying to get a point where we're doing less evil."

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/19/greenroads-us-road-construction-environment

Green Fuel for 13 cities in India: Indian Govt

2010-01-13T00:11:00.000-08:00

NEW DELHI: Thirteen major cities — including the four metros — will get Euro-IV grade motor fuels from April 1 as per the government's
commitment to the Supreme Court and the roadmap laid down by the Mashelkar report. Also from that date, the rest of the country will move to Euro-III standard but sale of such diesel may be delayed by 3-6 months in some cites due to logistical issues.

"Euro-IV petrol and diesel will be supplied for sure in 13 designated cities from April 1. Petroleum minister Murli Deora has called a review meeting to assess the situation and a clear picture (about supply of Euro-III diesel in remaining parts) will emerge after that," petroleum secretary R S Pandey said on the sidelines of an IndianOil science seminar on Tuesday.

Euro-IV standard specifies a maximum of 50 parts per million of sulphur in petrol and diesel. Euro-III fuel specifications allow a maximum of 350 parts per million of sulphur.

Pandey said efforts were being made to ensure Euro-III petrol to be supplied in rest of the country and some more time was being sought to start sale of diesel of the same grade.

The time lag, Pandey said, was because some refineries were yet to complete their upgrade and would continue to produce Euro-II grade fuel beyond April. Such fuels could not be exported due to inland location of the units. And so, it would be difficult to manage three grades of fuel.

IndianOil's Barauni refinery in Bihar and Digboi and Guwahati units in Assam will commission facilities to produce Euro-III compliant diesel by June-July.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/Oil-secy-says-13-cities-to-keep-date-with-green-fuel/articleshow/5439801.cms

SPML wins orders worth Rs 64 crore for solid waste management in Uttar Pradesh

2010-01-07T23:40:00.000-08:00

Subhash Projects And Marketing Ltd (SPML) one of India's leading infrastructure development companies has won two orders totaling to Rs. 64 crore from Construction & Design Services, Uttar Pradesh Jal Nigam for solid waste management related activities in the state. The orders consist of Development of Integrated Solid Waste Management Facilities for Allahabad Municipal Corporation and Mathura Nagar Palika Parishad, Uttar Pradesh.

The capital cost of the Project is Rs.62 Crs., which will be partly funded by the Govt. grant amounting to Rs.40 Crs. The concession period will be for 30 years and the tipping fees will be paid on per tonne basis.

These order wins will strengthen SPML's base in the field of environmental engineering, one of the focus areas for SPML and a crucial requirement for the well being of the country in present times. SPML is also providing solid waste management solutions in Delhi through DWM since 2007.

Mr. Subhash Sethi, Vice Chairman, SPML, commented, "With rapid urbanisation, the need for scientific and efficient waste management has become a critical issue today. After the success of our pilot project through Delhi Waste Management, a PPP venture, wherein we have an output of 1500 tonnes a day, we are looking at providing ERP driven solutions to various urban local bodies for collection and segregation of solid waste."

About Subhash Projects & Marketing Ltd.:

Subhash Projects And Marketing Limited (SPML) is a leading infrastructure development company with more than two and half decades of multi-disciplinary experience in Water, Power, Environment, Infrastructure, Manufacturing and Technology. The company that started in 1981 as a water pumps agency in Guwahati has evolved today into a multi-faceted conglomerate. Promoted by the Sethi family, SPML was incorporated as a public limited company in August 1983. An ISO - 9001: 2000 certified company, SPML has executed more than 400 projects across India and has established its leadership in the contracting business.

SPML has proven business capabilities in the Water, Energy, Environment and Infrastructure domain, on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) & Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) basis.

SPML's vision to become a force in the global infrastructure sector is supported by its core strengths - pan India presence, 28 years of experience in turnkey projects, innovative in- house designs and engineering solutions, highly skilled team of over 2000 professionals; complimented by its focus on innovation and cutting edge technology.

Source: http://www.indiaprwire.com/pressrelease/construction-building/2010010740942.htm

7 Green Business Resolutions for 2010

2010-01-07T03:25:00.000-08:00

Being an eco-conscious business is no longer just something that’s the right thing to do – it makes financial sense. Environmental policy and energy efficiency are priorities of the Obama administration, so businesses that don’t take voluntary steps to reduce their carbon footprints may face regulations later on. What’s more, consumers are demanding more sustainable practices from the companies they patronize.

New Year’s is perfect time to hone a game plan for the year ahead. Here are seven steps to get your business greener in 2010:

1. Write a sustainability plan. Put your environmental goals in writing, so you have a roadmap to follow throughout the year. Any plan should include a mission statement describing what you’re trying to achieve and set some attainable goals for the year ahead – along with descriptions of how you’ll achieve those goals. Find out more about sustainability planning here.

2. Focus on low- and no-cost first. Before you install solar panels, look for easy, affordable ways to cut waste. You may be surprised: Simple steps, such as setting energy-saving modes on office computers, installing motion sensors to control lights or writing an office recycling policy can generate big effects and savings at little cost.

3. Get an audit. Most utility companies offer their commercial customers energy audits for free or at little cost. An auditor can tell you how where your business uses the most energy and the expected financial payback of various upgrades, so you know where to target your precious dollars.

4. Track your progress. Keep tabs on the steps your taking and monitor how much money and waste or energy you’re saving. Not only will this provide great motivation (and bragging rights), but it will allow you to see whether your sustainability plan is working. You might, for instance, track your monthly energy bills or track your carbon savings.

5. Find financial incentives. States and cities are suppose to use some of their federal stimulus dollars toward energy-conservation projects and many are rolling out grants and other financial incentives for businesses making energy-efficiency improvements. Also, many utilities already offer rebates and low-interest loans to business customers making energy upgrades, such as installing high-efficiency lights, or installing renewable power sources. Don’t overlook these incentives and take advantage while you still can – they may not be around forever. You can find a list for incentives in your state here.

6. Mobilize your employees. The most successful environmental initiatives in the workplace are those that involve all employees, so think creatively about getting employees motivated to pitch in. Some businesses form “green” committees made up of employees, while others reward perks to employees who take steps to reduce their carbon footprint.

7. Make it fun. Keeping your business on track with its sustainability plan will require persistence. But you’ll boost the odds if you make it fun and interesting. You might have competitions in the office to see who can reduce the most waste or host a regular educational series on environmental topics.

Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/2010/01/7-green-business-resolutions-for-2010.html

Tobacco biofuel to solve energy/ environment crisis?

2010-01-04T23:43:00.000-08:00

By Lewis Page

Boffins in Philadelphia, America have come up with a radical new plan for biofuels. Rather than the cars of tomorrow running on various forms of alcohol, sunflower oil, algae etc, the scientists propose that they should instead be fuelled by burning tobacco.

"Tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren't used in food production," says Dr Vyacheslav Andrianov of Thomas Jefferson University.

"We have found ways to genetically engineer the plants so that their leaves express more oil. In some instances, the modified plants produced 20-fold more oil in the leaves."

It seems that typical baccy leaves contain 1.7 percent to 4 percent of oil as a proportion of dry weight. One gene modification tried out by Andrianov and his colleagues gave 6.8 percent of oil per dry weight.

Production of oil in the leaves is seen as the big trick. Tobacco seed oil has already been tried out in diesel engines, but baccy doesn't produce enough seeds to be useful - just 600kg per acre. However it is a "high-biomass" plant overall, once the leaves are included.

"Based on these data, tobacco represents an attractive and promising 'energy plant' platform, and could also serve as a model for the utilization of other high-biomass plants for biofuel production," says Andrianov, whose paper is soon to be published in the Plant Biotechnology Journal.

Baccy power would seem likely to suffer from the same issues as any other "first generation" or crop biofuel, however, despite Andrianov's optimism. Biofuels typically require the use of huge amounts of farmland to supply energy on the scale required by modern industrial civilisation, and this would still be the case with tobacco. Food might not be taken directly out of the market to make fuel, as happens with corn-based alcohols, but in the event of baccy power becoming a mainstream idea one might expect farmland to be switched from food production to tobacco. This would lead to starvation and deforestation just as ordinary biofuels do.

This is why many people keen to see biofuels succeed - for instance the aviation industry - prefer to focus on "second generation" feedstocks such as algae or jatropha, which could perhaps be grown in unused areas such as seas or deserts. Tobacco certainly doesn't fall into this class, however.

Tobacco farmers might still find the idea of an alternative, subsidised biofuel market pleasing in today's smoking-ban-swept world, though, just as US corn farmers and their powerful political allies do. And the nicotine-enslaved victims of the smoking bans would perhaps be on-side too, pleased at the idea of every car, train, home boiler etc puffing out clouds of delicious carcinogenic smoke.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/31/tobacco_biofuel/

China Guarantees a Market for Renewable Energy

2010-01-03T23:04:00.001-08:00

China is trying out an interesting new rule that privileges energy sources like solar and wind power over coal. The country has modified existing law to require that utilities buy all the available power from renewable energy developments.

The new law is more than a bureaucratic formality: it’s an attempted antidote to habitual under-planning. Some completed wind farms weren’t even hooked up to the grid last year, and the waits have continued this year. It’s also tempting for Chinese utilities to buy from existing coal plants at the expense of renewables.

Now, any utility company that fails to buy power from a renewable energy development in its territory will be fined.

As the Motley Fool points out, domestic wind companies like A-Power Energy Generation Systems stand to benefit from the rule. Solar power isn’t as development-ready, but aggressive companies like First Solar, which is already planning a huge solar farm for Inner Mongolia, could also use the rule to their advantage.

The real winner, though, may be China’s distribution grid. Forced to quickly connect remote developments with urban centers, the utilities will in the process have the chance to build an interconnected super-grid that pools the country’s wind resources.

There’s good reason to put money into a national grid — with current wind generation fragmented, new coal plants have had to be built just to deal with wind’s intermittency problems. The government’s strong central planning abilities suggest that it could easily help push such a project.

It’s a grand experiment, of sorts; in the United States, lawmakers are considering pushing renewables from the opposite direction, by requiring utilities to use more as part of their power mix. It may turn out that the Chinese plan, aimed at creating an assured market for those best qualified to build solar and wind plants, will turn out to be the superior option.

Source: http://industry.bnet.com/energy/10002714/china-guarantees-a-market-for-renewable-energy/

Indian IT going green

2009-12-30T23:50:00.000-08:00

Going green is the mantra I often hear among Indian IT companies today. Patni Computer Systems constructed a 175 crores worth IT/BPO campus that got certified as green. Cisco has adopted the "Let's Talk Cisco Green" program that aims to spread awareness among employees to keep the green aspect foremost on their minds. CSC spearheaded a car pool initiative that avoids the AC for six months a year and its ‘Save Trees, Go Green’ campaign which recognizes employees who save paper by minimal use of printers. Several Indian IT companies are adopting "Going green" as a integral part of their corporate wide policies. Why and what in the world is prompting the IT industry to go green?

Going green is all about "Sustainable Design of Products and Processes". The official definition of green engineering is

Green Engineering is the design, commercialization and use of processes and products that are feasible and economical while minimizing:
• Generation of pollution at the source.
• Risk to human health and the environment.

Launched as a program by Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), USA in 1998, t goals of the Green Engineering Program are to incorporate “green” or environmentally conscious thinking and approaches in the academic and industrial communities regarding the design, commercialization, and use of processes and products.

The recent news clips on global warming, climate changes, recurrences of high intensity hurricanes, breaking of ice shelves at the poles and the ultra rapid growth happening over a wide swathe of the planet have all induced an element of urgency in inculcating the green aspect into the DNA of every major corporation and institution. Just hoping we are not too late !!

Source:

Copenhagen outcome good but not adequate: Pachauri

2009-12-30T00:08:00.000-08:00

NEW DELHI: The Copenhagen Accord was a good outcome but not adequate to fight climate change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chief RK
Pachauri said on Wednesday.

"We expected much more from the Copenhagen summit. We need to work very hard and come out with a legally binding commitment. There is a urgency to reach an agreement by the end on 2010 as we are losing valuable time. If delayed further, it will get very difficult and expensive to limit global temperature rise to two degree Celsius," said Pachauri.

Under the accord, by Jan 31, 2010 both developed and developing countries will have to inform of their commitment to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing global warming.

"The developed countries will give percentage of emission reduction while developing countries will give nationally appropriate mitigation action. By February next year, we will have fair idea what countries are willing to commit," he said.

Pachauri said action will be taken soon after to use these submissions as a basis for creating a legally binding agreement within a reasonable period of time.

"The Copenhagen Accord does provide a foundation and framework that allows for a binding agreement to be developed incorporating the specific commitments by all countries, particularly industrialised countries," he said.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/developmental-issues/Copenhagen-outcome-good-but-not-adequate-Pachauri-/articleshow/5370546.cms

The cost of saving Earth

2009-12-29T04:43:00.000-08:00

If negotiators reach an accord at the climate talks in Copenhagen it will entail profound shifts in energy production , dislocations in how and
where people live, sweeping changes in agriculture and forestry and the creation of complex new markets in global warming pollution credits.

So what is all this going to cost?

The short answer is trillions of dollars over the next few decades. It is a significant sum but a relatively small fraction of the world's total economic output.

In energy infrastructure alone, the transformational ambitions that delegates to the UN climate change conference are expected to set in the coming days will cost more than $10 trillion in additional investment from 2010 to 2030, according to a new estimate from the International Energy Agency.

As scary as that number sounds, the agency said that the costs would ramp up relatively slowly and be largely offset by economic benefits in new jobs, improved lives, more secure energy supplies and a reduced danger of climate catastrophe.

Most of the investment will come from private rather than public funds, the agency contends. "People often ask about the costs," said Kevin Parker, the global head of Deutsche Bank Asset Management, who tracks climate policy for the bank. "But the figures people tend to cite don't take into account conservation and efficiency measures that are easily available. And they don't look at the cost of inaction, which is the extinction of the human race. Period."

Whatever global warming's effects - and most scientific projections are less dire - there are also varying estimates of the economic costs of failing to act to address the problem soon, some of them very high.

In Copenhagen, some of the most intense and difficult discussions for negotiators centre on any potential agreement's near-term financial arrangements.

Some of the poorest and most vulnerable nations are calling for a gigantic transfer of wealth from the industrialised world to island nations and countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America that are most likely to feel the ravages of a changing climate.

The money would be used to help developing nations reduce emissions by switching to renewable energy sources like wind and solar and by compensating landowners for not cutting down or burning forests, a major source of carbon dioxide emissions.

Other funds might be used be used to adjust to effects of a changing climate like rising sea levels, by building flood walls or relocating settlements to higher ground.

Perhaps the most detailed analysis of the financing needs of any climate change agreement comes from Project Catalyst, an initiative of the European Union and ClimateWorks , a foundation-supported policy group based in San Francisco.

The group's work has helped shape the negotiations in Copenhagen. The group estimates that roughly $100 billion will be needed by 2020 to finance climate change programs in the developing world.

About half could come from the growing global market in carbon emissions credits under a cap-and-trade system, which will be worth an estimated $2 trillion a year by 2020. A cap-and-trade system is already operating in Europe and is under consideration by Congress.

An additional $10 billion to $20 billion would come from taxes on fuels used in aviation and shipping. The rest, perhaps $25 billion to $35 billion, would be loans and grants from industrialised nations to poorer countries, split roughly three ways among the US, the European Union and Canada, Japan and Australia.

The good news is that everybody now is supporting our proposal for financing," said UmaÃ±a , the Costa Rican delegate at Copenhagen . "The bad news is that it's happening 15 years too late. Without real money on the table, this will be a disaster."

BUDGET DEFICIT

Roughly $100 billion will be needed by 2020 to finance climate-change schemes in the developing world. About half could come from the growing global market in carbon emissions credits under a cap-and-trade system. An additional $10 billion to $20 billion would come from taxes on fuels used in aviation and shipping. The rest, perhaps $25 billion to $35 billion, would be loans and grants from industrialised nations to poorer countries

YOUR POCKET

ENERGY

The overall costs of Copenhagen are impossible to quantify. Most of the money will be spent by rich countries switching to a "low carbon economy" in order to meet targets on cutting greenhouse gases. This will mean investing in renewables and nuclear energy and will most likely end up on your fuel bills. Electricity costs will rise, though in the distant future power could even be free as energy is generated from natural sources

TAXES

Carbon taxes that are imposed on polluting industries are likely to be passed onto the consumer. There could also be direct carbon taxes on individuals if "carbon allowances" are introduced to limit the amount of energy, travel and other electricity each person is allowed to use

AIR TRAVEL

Airlines do not currently have a lowcarbon alternative to jet fuel. Unless one is found, they will bear the full burden of higher fuel costs and carbon taxes, and average fares will rise by at least 140 per cent. Video conferencing and mobile technology should get cheaper as it becomes more popular as an alternative to travel

TRANSPORT

Developed countries will be investing in high speed trains to bring down emissions. But the prices will not fall in the short term because of the investment needed. Electric vehicles should become cheaper as nations encourage manufacture and a switch from petrol cars fuels demand

FOOD

Cost of food flown from abroad could go up with the cost of transport. Prices of locally-grown food could also increase because of a rise in the cost of fertilisers

OTHER GOODS

Cost of clothing is likely to rise by one per cent and of other household goods like washing machines by two per cent, according to a New Scientist study conducted this year

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/global-warming/The-cost-of-saving-Earth-/articleshow/5330087.cms

Oceans becoming nosier thanks to pollution: Report

2009-12-23T22:27:00.000-08:00

PARIS: The world's oceans are becoming noisier thanks to pollution, with potentially harmful effects for whales, dolphins and other marine life,
US scientists said in a study published Sunday.

Low-frequency sound in the ocean is produced by natural phenomena such as rain, waves and marine life, and by human activities such as sonar systems, shipping and construction.

The sound is absorbed mainly through the viscosity of the water and the presence of certain dissolved chemicals, said the report published in the science journal Nature.

But the concentration of chemicals that absorb sound in the oceans has declined as a result of ocean acidification, in turn caused by rising concentrations of carbon dioxide.

Rising levels of carbon dioxide come from human activity such as shipping, with the number of ships roughly doubling over the past 40 years, the scientists said.

This was in turn increasing the acidity of the ocean, shown by a lowering of its pH levels, they said.

Using model simulations, the scientists found that increases in acidity could reduce seawater sound absorption by as much as 60 percent by 2100 in high latitude oceans.

Concern about the negative effect of the sea's increased acidity had previously been concentrated on the reduced rate of calcification, such as in coral reefs.

"However, a less anticipated consequence of ocean acidification is its effect on underwater sound absorption," the authors said.

"A decrease in seawater pH lowers sound absorption in the low-frequency range and, as a result, leads to increasing sound transmission."

Future global warming due to an accumulation of greenhouse gases may further decrease the ocean's sound absorption capacity at certain frequencies, the study said.

"High levels of low-frequency sound have a number of behavioural and biological effects on marine life," it added.

This included tissue damage, mass stranding of mammals such as whales and temporary loss of hearing in dolphins associated with military tests using intense mid-frequency sonar, the report said.

Marine species had adapted to varying levels of noise but the consequences of the sea's decreased ability to absorb sound were uncertain and required further research, the scientists said.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/pollution/Oceans-becoming-nosier-thanks-to-pollution-Report-/articleshow/5360546.cms

Danish island becomes one of first places on Earth to be energy self-sufficient

2009-12-16T04:12:00.000-08:00

The Danish island of Samsø has become one of the first industrialized places on Earth to qualify as completely energy self-sufficient.

The tiny island — just 30 miles long and 15 miles wide — first began its push toward sustainability in 1997. In just over a decade, Samsø erected 21 electricity-producing wind turbines and a heating system fueled by wood chip- and straw-burning furnaces accompanied by several small solar panels.

Eleven of Samsø’s turbines are onshore and ten are offshore; all generate one megawatt each. The onshore turbines produce more electricity than the island consumes — enough to offset 690,000 gallons of oil — while the offshore turbines produce enough power to handle the island’s transportation energy budget.

The island invests excess power in new energy projects.

If that’s not enough, the Samsø experiment has also inadvertently transformed the island’s workforce into green collar workers. Plumbers and carpenters regularly perform energy-efficient home conversions, and their expertise has allowed them to work on green projects elsewhere, including mainland Europe.

Source: http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/danish-island-becomes-one-of-first-places-on-earth-to-be-energy-self-sufficient/2443/

'Crystalline sponge' can help capture CO2

2009-12-15T23:59:00.000-08:00

Source: The Economic Times

To sequester carbon dioxide as part of any climate-change mitigation strategy, the gas first has to be captured from the flue at a power plant or
other source. The next step is just as important: the CO² has to be released from whatever captured it so that it can be pumped underground or otherwise stored for the long term.

That second step can be costly from an energy standpoint. Materials currently used to capture CO² have to be heated to release the gas.

But chemists at University of California
, Los Angeles, say that a new class of materials they developed called metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, hold promise for carbon capture. In the study, Omar Yaghi describes the performance of one MOF, which he says can free most of the CO² it captures at room temperature.

Yaghi described a metal-organic framework as a "crystalline sponge", a hybrid lattice of organic compounds and metal atoms that has a huge internal surface area where gas molecules can be absorbed. The MOF used in the study contains magnesium atoms, "which make just the right environment for binding carbon dioxide", he said.

In experiments, the material separated out CO² while allowing methane to pass. What was really surprising, though, was that at room temperature 87% of the CO² could be released.

'2010 to be the world's warmest year'

2009-12-15T23:43:00.000-08:00

LONDON: 2010 is likely to be the world's warmest year on record, the British Met Office has
predicted.

According to the Met Office, man-made climate change will be a factor and natural weather patterns would contribute less to 2010's temperature than they did in 1998, the current warmest year in the 160-year record.

El Niño effect, the cyclical heating of the Pacific Ocean, is much weaker than it was in 1998, but the Met Office expects the warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions to more than make up the difference, 'The Times' reported.

It predicts that the global average temperature next year to be almost 0.6 C warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average, and forecasts an annual average of 14.58 C.

The Met Office has also said that it expects half the years between 2010 and 2019 to be warmer than 1998. It sounded a note of caution, saying that a record year in 2010 was not a certainty, especially if the current El Niño began to decline earlier than normal or there was a large volcanic eruption.

However, experts are divided on the prediction. Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "If 2010 turns out to be the hottest year on record, it might go some way towards exploding the myth, spread by the climate conspiracy theorists that we're experiencing global cooling. In reality the world is getting possibly a lot hotter, and humans are causing it."

But, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, has accused the Met Office of making a "political intervention" in the international negotiations taking place in Copenhagen.

"Suggestions by the Met Office that a warming trend will resume in the next year or two should be treated with reserve in light of the recognised difficulties in making such confident predictions," it said.

Climate pledges will make Earth warmer by 3.5°C

2009-12-09T01:59:00.000-08:00

Source: The Economic Times

PARIS: Current pledges from rich and developing nations for cutting carbon pollution will stoke potentially catastrophic warming by century’s
end, according to a study released on Sunday on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit.

National commitments proposed so far for the December 7-18 UN conference would mean the global temperature would rise by 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times, way over a 2.0 C (3.6 F) threshold widely considered safe, the study said.

Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO²) would hit about 650 parts per million (ppm), according to the tally published by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and energy specialists Ecofys. “The pledges on the table will not halt emissions growth before 2040, let alone by 2015 as indicated by the IPCC [the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
] and are far from halving emissions by 2050 as has been called for by the G8,” said Niklas Hoehne of Ecofys.

“Instead, global emissions are likely to be nearly double 1990 levels by 2040 based on present pledges.” The Copenhagen conference gathers the 192-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Its task is to craft a global pact that will dramatically reduce man-made carbon emissions — invisible gases that trap solar heat and warm the atmosphere, interfering with Earth’s delicate climate system.

Hoehne said that pledges by developed countries so far were currently projected to be 13 to 19 percent below 1990 levels.

Copenhagen is Europe's greenest city: Study

2009-12-09T01:38:00.000-08:00

Source: The Economic Times

BERLIN: Copenhagen, host city of the ongoing United Nations climate summit, is the greenest major city in Europe, according to a survey published
on Tuesday.

The study, presented by German industrial giant Siemens during the Copenhagen meeting, ranked 30 major European cities in eight categories, including carbon dioxide emissions, air quality and energy use.

Stockholm, Oslo, Vienna and Amsterdam were placed just behind Copenhagen at the top of the list. The least environmentally friendly cities were Kiev, Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade and Zagreb.

Among other major capitals, Berlin ranked eighth, Paris 10th, London 11th and Rome 14th.

James Watson, managing director of the Economist Intelligence Unit, said that almost all of the 30 cities had lower CO2 emissions per capita than EU countries as a whole.

"All of the cities face formidable challenges, however. For example, renewable sources of energy currently account for only seven percent of these cities' energy supply, which is significantly under the target of 20 percent set by the EU for 2020," said Watson.

The December 7-18 climate summit in Copenhagen has brought together 193 countries to hammer out a climate deal to curb global warming and help poor nations cope with its consequences.

Rice an unlikely global warming culprit

2009-12-08T01:30:00.000-08:00

LOS BANOS, Philippines: Asian rice farmers typically do not fly around the world on holidays or own big-engine cars but scientists say they have
an important role to play in helping cut the world's output of greenhouse gases.

While much of the globe's focus in the climate change fight is on the burning of fossil fuels and the logging of rainforests, water-logged rice paddies are also a major source of global warming-causing methane.

"If you step through a rice field, there is a lot of gas bubbling out and the large bulk of that is methane," said Reiner Wassmann, a biologist specialising in climate change at the International Rice Research Institute.

While carbon dioxide is the most famous of the gases that cause global warming, methane is at least 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere.

In an interview with AFP from the institute's headquarters in Los Banos, a farming area on the Philippines' main island of Luzon, Wassmann explained that methane was responsible for one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions.

About 10 percent of the methane comes from rice farming, while other sources include the flatulence of cows and decomposing landfill garbage dumps.

Wassmann said it was essential that rice farmers in Asia and the rest of the world did their bit to tackle climate change, but lumping them in with more obvious, fossil-burning culprits of climate change was wrong.

"Culprit gives an emotional tone to it that is not necessary," he said, describing some calls by green groups for the billions of people who rely on rice as their staple to eat less of it as being too extreme.

"I have heard suggestions like that but I don't think that makes sense. The key is on the production side, not on the consumption side," he said.

However Trinidad Domingo, a 57-year-old rice farmer with a 2.5-hectare (six-acre) plot of land in northern Luzon, said it seemed unfair to ask people such as herself to make sacrifices as part of the climate change fight.

"If we are contributing to this problem, we are just trying to survive and don't do this intentionally," Domingo told AFP from her small brick home.

"The big factories and industrialists should be the ones to be blamed. Why pick on peasants like us? They are the big contributors to the problem."

Indeed, Domingo's carbon footprint would appear to be a fraction of that of an average businessmen in the United States or elsewhere in the developed world -- she does not own a car and her main luxury is a small television.

"I am a simple rice farmer, a peasant who just wants to eat three times a day," she said.

Offering some hope, Wassmann said reducing greenhouse gas emissions from rice fields did not necessarily require a sacrifice, rather the implementing of smarter and more efficient farming strategies.

The first step is for farmers to use less water, because the methane is created when submerged organic material decomposes.

Wassmann said this was a logical path to follow regardless of the climate change issue because water would only become more scarce in an increasingly populated world.

Using less water can be done through draining the rice fields regularly during the growing season.

However the complicating factor is that nitrous oxide -- an even more potent gas and which mostly originates from widely used nitrogen fertiliser -- is released from drained rice fields.

"The only solution to that we can see is that we couple water saving... with increasing efficiencies of nitrogen fertiliser," he said, adding this could be done without sacrificing yields.

However convincing rice farmers to use less fertiliser will be a huge challenge, as evidenced by the reaction of Domingo when asked if she would change her farming techniques.

"If it contributes less to climate change, we are willing to cut down on using it, but I am afraid my crops won't grow as fast, leading to lesser yields. There could be a problem there," she said.

"We are willing to find alternatives but, at the end of the day, we are just small farmers."

Wassmann also said that there was no concerted push across the world's rice farming industries to educate and help farmers.

"As far as methane is concerned, there is not a single project in the real world, outside of the experimental farms, where there are programmes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from rice," he said.

Wassmann also said he expected rice to be a virtual non-issue at this week's climate change summit in Copenhagen, and that he expected it would only be discussed in depth at follow-up, more technically focused meetings.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/global-warming/Rice-an-unlikely-global-warming-culprit-/articleshow/5303516.cms

Climate: Copenhagen talks set to be a cliff-hanger

2009-12-07T21:18:00.000-08:00

Source: The Times of India

COPENHAGEN: Driven by an ever-louder drumbeat of alarm, the world's nations come together on Monday in a bid to lift the curse of climate change
hanging over coming generations.

In the brief history of environmentalism -- and, some would argue, in the longer sweep of human history itself -- the stakes at the 12-day conference in Copenhagen have never been higher.

The goal: to roll back the peril of hunger, disease, drought, flood, storm and rising seas created by mankind's unwitting impact on the weather system.

To achieve this aim, the 192 members of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) must show solidarity and sacrifice on an unprecedented scale.

More than 100 leaders are set to attend the finale on December 18. They are under ratcheting pressure to seize the day rather than a photo opportunity, to seal a deal rather than preside over a fiasco.

Trillions of dollars, powerful economic and national interests and the livelihoods of millions underpin the Copenhagen moment.

Countries must agree to curb their use of coal, oil and gas, the fossil fuels hewn from the ground or drilled from beneath the earth that have powered our prosperity -- and helped create the carbon monster.

And they must set up a financial safety net for poor countries least to blame for global warming but most exposed to its wrath, and provide them with technology to avoid becoming big polluters in turn.

"The aim is nothing less than to slice through the Gordian knot intertwining climate change and development," says Jean-Charles Hourcade of the International Centre on Environment and Development (CIRED), a French thinktank.

Some thinkers, like British economist Nicholas Stern, liken the December 7-18 conference in importance to Bretton Woods, the 1944 conference that reshaped the world's monetary system.

Others see it as a do-or-die moment for the United Nations, for it raises core questions about the ability of nation states to cooperate.

"It is a very crucial test of the UN system," Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN panel of climate scientists, told AFP. "It is an extremely important test of the ability of nation states to get together and manage the global commons."

The road to Copenhagen began two years ago, at UNFCCC talks in Bali, Indonesia.

There, after arduous wrangling, countries set their eyes on a global pact that would take effect from 2013, after current pledges expire under the Kyoto Protocol, the world's first emissions-curbing accord.

Bit by bit, hopes that Copenhagen would yield a soup-to-nuts treaty have vanished.

The lesser objective now is a strong outline accord, one that can be fleshed out by further negotiations in 2010.

Yet there is no guarantee that even this skeletal agreement can be reached.

Mistrust is entrenched among -- and within -- the three main negotiation groups.

Poor countries are angry that rich countries, as a bloc, have not come nearly far enough on their emissions and funding proposals.

Developing nations, they say, will not sign up to any targeted, binding emissions of their own, arguing they too have the right to use cheap, plentiful fossil fuels to haul themselves out of poverty.

The European Union (EU), meanwhile, is looking to the United States, the world's No. 2 polluter, to dig deep into its pocket and its carbon pollution.

The US, meanwhile, is turning to the emerging giants -- China, No. 1 emitter, as well as India and Brazil -- for proof that their emissions measures, while voluntary, will be tough, transparent and verifiable.

Even if this negotiation triangle can be smoothed out into a consensus, another problem lurks: what kind of legal form should this agreement take?

Poorer countries are clamouring for a second round of pledges under the Kyoto Protocol, yet this seems out of the question so long as the United States remains outside that treaty.

The negotiations are likely to start low-paced, building to a crescendo in the middle of the second week with the arrival of environment ministers, followed by the heads of state or government, including the leaders of the United States, China, Germany, France and Britain.

The likelihood beckons of frenzied all-night climate poker in the back rooms.

Green activists have scheduled demonstrations on Saturday, December 12, while a hard-left group has threatened to interrupt the talks at Copenhagen's Bella Center on December 16.

Emission cuts: India follows China's footsteps

2009-12-07T04:33:00.000-08:00

Published on Thu 3rd Dec 2009 12:39:25
Source: Zopang.com

New Delhi, December 3 :

Following in China's footsteps, India has also decided to slow down the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

Last week, China had claimed that it would cut carbon emissions up to 45 percent by 2020. India has decided to cut its carbon intensity by 24 percent by 2020.

India is at present under immense pressure to pronounce the details of how it would cut its carbon intensity. New Delhi's position will strengthen at the Copenhagen summit if it is successful in its aim.

Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said, "We now have taken on performance targets in energy, building, forestry and various sectors of the economy. We are not going to be taking any legally binding emission cuts. That is simply out of the question, but we can look at various alternatives. Incidentally, our carbon intensity is very low. The Chinese have just announced a carbon intensity decline by 2020 and according to that, they will be in the year 2020 where India was in 2005 as far as carbon intensity is concerned."

With this stand, India is under immense pressure to set emissions targets ahead of the Copenhagen summit. The western countries are imposing their pressure on India to quantify the cuts.

To add to that, the developed countries want India to draw out and state a plan that India will follow to cut its emissions.

Carbon capitalists warming to climate battle using derivatives

2009-12-07T00:24:00.001-08:00

Source: The Economic Times

Across Uganda, thousands of women warm supper over new, $8 orange-painted stoves. The clay-and-metal pots burn about two-thirds the charcoal of
the open-fire cooking typical of East Africa, where forests are being chopped down in the struggle to feed the region’s 125 million people.

Four thousand miles away, at the Charles Hurst Land Rover dealership in southwest London, a Range Rover Vogue sells for £90,000 pounds. A blue windshield sticker proclaims that the gasoline-powered truck’s first 45,000 miles (72,421 km) will be carbon neutral.

That’s because Land Rover, official purveyor of 4x4s to Queen Elizabeth II, is helping Ugandans cut their greenhouse gas emissions with those new stoves.

These two worlds came together in the offices of Blythe Masters at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Masters, 40, oversees the New York bank’s environmental businesses as the firm’s global head of commodities. JPMorgan brokered a deal in 2007 for Land Rover to buy carbon credits from ClimateCare, an Oxford, England-based group that develops energy-efficiency projects around the world. Land Rover, now owned by Mumbai-based Tata Motors, is using the credits to offset some of the CO2 emissions produced by its vehicles.

For Wall Street, these kinds of voluntary carbon deals are just a dress rehearsal for the day when the US develops a mandatory trading program for greenhouse gas emissions. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley will be watching closely as 192 nations gather in Copenhagen next week to try to forge a new climate-change treaty that would, for the first time, include the US and China.

US CAP AND TRADE

Those two economies are the biggest emitters of CO2, the most ubiquitous of the gases found to cause global warming. The Kyoto Protocol, whose emissions targets will expire in 2012, spawned a carbon-trading system in Europe that the banks hope will be replicated in the US.

The US Senate is debating a clean-energy bill that would introduce cap and trade for US emissions. A similar bill passed the House of Representatives in June. The plan would transform US industry by forcing the biggest companies , such as utilities, oil and gas drillers and cement makers, to calculate the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases they emit and then pay for them.

Estimates of the potential size of the US cap-and-trade market range from $300 billion to $2 trillion.

BANKS MOVING IN

Banks intend to become the intermediaries in this fledgling market. Although US carbon legislation may not pass for a year or more, Wall Street has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars hiring lobbyists and making deals with companies that can supply them with “carbon offsets” to sell to clients.

JPMorgan, for instance, purchased ClimateCare in early 2008 for an undisclosed sum. This month, it paid $210 million for Eco-Securities Group, the biggest developer of projects used to generate credits offsetting government-regulated carbon emissions. Financial institutions have also been investing in alternative energy, such as wind and solar power, and lending to clean-technology entrepreneurs.

The banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell carbonrelated financial products to outside investors.

Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the mix, she says.

Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity — in this case, CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

‘HEAVY INVOLVEMENT’

“This requires a massive redirection of capital,” Masters says. “You can’t have a successful climate policy without the heavy, heavy involvement of financial institutions.”

As a young London banker in the early 1990s, Masters was part of JPMorgan’s team developing ideas for transferring risk to third parties. She went on to manage credit risk for JPMorgan’s investment bank.

Among the credit derivatives that grew from the bank’s early efforts was the credit-default swap. A CDS is a contract that functions like insurance by protecting debt holders against default. In 2008, after U.S. home prices plunged, the cost of protection against subprime-mortgage bond defaults jumped. Insurer American International Group Inc., which had sold billions in CDSs, was forced into government ownership, roiling markets and helping trigger the worst global recession since the 1930s.

LAWMAKERS LEERY

Now, that story — and the entire role the banks played in the credit crisis — has become central to the US carbon debate. Washington lawmakers are leery of handing Wall Street anything new to trade because the bitter taste of the credit debacle lingers. And their focus is on derivatives. Along with CDSs, the most-notorious derivatives are the collateralized-debt obligations they often insured. CDOs are bundles of subprime mortgages and other debt that were sliced into tranches and sold to investors.

Melting Himalayan glaciers threaten 1.3 billion Asians

2009-12-06T21:43:00.000-08:00

Source: The Economic Times/Dated: 6th Dec, 2009

KATHMANDU: More than a billion people in Asia depend on Himalayan glaciers for water, but experts say they are melting at an alarming rate,
threatening to bring drought to large swathes of the continent.

Glaciers in the Himalayas, a 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) range that sweeps through Pakistan, India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, provide headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers, lifelines for the 1.3 billion people who live downstream.

But temperatures in the region have increased by between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius (0.27 and 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade for the last 30 years, dramatically accelerating the rate at which glaciers are shrinking.

As world leaders gather in Copenhagen this month for a crucial climate change summit, campaigners warn that some Himalayan glaciers could disappear altogether within a few decades.

"Scientists predict that most glaciers will be gone in 40 years as a result of climate change," said Prashant Singh, leader of environmental group WWF's Climate for Life campaign.

"The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people living in the Himalayan drainage systems who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body regarded as the world's top authority on climate change, has warned Himalayan glaciers could "disappear altogether by 2035" and experts say the effects of global warming are already being felt in the region.

In Nepal and Bhutan, the receding glaciers have formed vast lakes that threaten to burst, devastating villages downstream.

Nepalese mountaineer and environmental campaigner Dawa Steven Sherpa said he first became interested in climate change after a close call when part of the Khumbu icefall above Everest base camp collapsed during an expedition in 2007.

Sherpa, who has scaled Everest three times, was walking on the glacier minutes before the collapse, and said his near miss alerted him to the dramatic toll that global warming is already taking on the Himalayas.

"Every time I go to the mountains the older Sherpas tell me this is the warmest year yet," Sherpa, who will take part in a special "summiteers' summit" in Copenhagen, told AFP.

"Initially it struck me how much more dangerous mountaineering would become. But then I realised it was much bigger than that. Entire villages could be wiped out if one of the glacial lakes burst."

In China, studies have shown that the rapid melting of the glaciers will result in an increase in flooding in the short term, state news agency Xinhua has reported.

In the longer term, it said, the continued retreat of glaciers would lead to a gradual decrease in river flows, severely affecting large parts of western China.

Experts say the resulting water shortages could hit the economic development of China and India, with potentially dire consequences for development in two of the world's most populated countries.

Even in low-lying Bangladesh, prone to severe floods, the IPCC has said rivers could run dry by the end of the century.

But research on the impact of global warming on the rugged and inaccessible Himalayas remains sparse, with the IPCC describing the region as a "blank spot" due to a lack of scientific data.

Even the experts disagree on the issue, with some arguing that some of the Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing.

India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh recently came under fire for denying that climate change was causing Himalayan glaciers to melt, citing research by the Indian geologist Vijay Kumar Raina.

The Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has studied the Himalayan region for more than three decades and warns of an "urgent need" for more research on the impact of climate change.

"There are so many uncertainties surrounding where, how and to what extent the Himalayan region will be affected by climate change," ICIMOD climate change expert Arun Shrestha told AFP.

"But most experts accept that temperatures are changing, and this is happening more rapidly at altitude."

ICIMOD has warned that the current trends in glacial melt suggest flows in major Asian rivers including the Ganges, Indus and Yellow Rivers will be "substantially reduced" in the coming decades.

"The situation may appear to be normal in the region for several decades to come, and even with increased amounts of water available to satisfy dry season demands," it said in a recent report on the Himalayas.

"However, when the shortage arrives, it may happen abruptly, with water systems going from plenty to scarce in perhaps a few decades or less."

Shrestha added: "When the glaciers get hotter, you get more water, but there comes a point when the water will run out.

"It's like a bank balance, if you're not putting money in, you can't take it out."

Regulatory measures for roof top rain water harvesting

2009-09-29T23:18:00.000-07:00

Submitted by editor on September 29, 2009 - 21:00 -->
The Central Ground Water Authority (CGWA) under Ministry of Water Resources has written to all States having overexploited blocks to take all necessary measures to promote/adopt artificial recharged to ground water/rain water harvesting including making mandatory provision of roof top rain water harvesting. It has also issued directives to Group Housing Societies, Institutions/ Schools, Hotels, Industrial establishments and Farm houses in notified areas of NCT of Delhi & Haryana to adopt roof top rain water harvesting system.
Besides this, all Group Housing Societies located in NCT of Delhi, where groundwater levels are more than 8m and are abstracting groundwater have also been directed to adopt roof top rain harvesting system. The directions have been issued under Section 5 of Environment (Protection) Act 1986.
The Ministry of Water Resources has requested all the States/UTs to make suitable provisions in their planned schemes for construction of roof top rain water harvesting structures in all the Government buildings. Ministry of Urban Developments has also written to States on similar lines. Many of the States/ UTs have taken various initiatives to promote rain water harvesting in Government and private buildings and amended building bye-laws incorporating mandatory adoption of rain water harvesting in existing/new buildings. The Government of India provides financial and technical support for such activities.
The latest status of action initiated by States/ UTs for making provision of roof top rain water harvesting is as follows :-
• 18 States and 4 UTs namely, Andra Pradesh., Bihar, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerela, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Nagaland, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh., Uttarakhand, West Bengal., Chandigarh, Daman & Diu, NCT Delhi and Puducherry have already made roof top rain water harvesting mandatory in their respective States. .
• 4 States namely Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand and 2 Union Territories ie Lakshadweep and Andaman & Nicobar are also in the process of making such provision.
• 4 States namely Chhatisgarh, Sikkim, Mizoram, Assam and 1 UT ie Dadra & Nagar Haveli have not initiated action in this regard so far.
• 2 States namely J & K and Manipur have not yet responded.

Source: http://www.hclindia.com/node/466048

Spies Like Us: Will Secret Videotapes Derail the Chevron Pollution Case?

2009-09-25T05:24:00.000-07:00

By Kirsten Korosec

The latest plot twist in the $27 billion pollution lawsuit against oil giant Chevron offers up at least one lesson: small spy-like bugging devices can be purchased from Skymall, the in-flight magazine tucked in the seatback pockets of many airlines.

The 16-year legal battle has all the trappings of Hollywood’s next courtroom drama. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of a group of indigenous Ecuadoreans living in the Amazon region, alleges Texaco caused massive contamination to the rain forest and its water sources during the company’s operations there. Chevron bought Texaco in 2001 and as a result, inherited the lawsuit.

The latest shocker — just a few months from an expected verdict — has Chevron on the offensive with allegations of bribery, a judge with a predetermined verdict and the secret tapes to prove it. The plaintiffs in the case have countered with accusations of entrapment, doctored up videos and Nixon-like dirty tricks.

Two of the videos show Ecuadorean Judge Juan Nuñez in meetings with American businessman Wayne Hansen and Ecuadorean Diego Borja, who are looking to land some of the environmental cleanup work that would presumably be awarded after a verdict is handed down. The men tape the meetings using a camera-equipped pen and watch and ask Nuñez questions about the court process. Hansen, in his unmistakable gringo accent, asks if Chevron is guilty. Nunez responds off camera, “Yes, sir.”

The other video records a meeting with men who claim they are members of President Rafael Correa’s ruling Alianza Pais party. The men proceed to discuss the terms of a $3 million bribery scheme, where at one point the president’s sister is named.

There a number of questions involving the videotapes, including why these businessmen had the James Bond-inspired equipment with them in the first place?

More importantly, will these tapes derail a multi-billion dollar case?

There’s no question, the stakes — for all parties – are high. Chevron stands to lose a case with a $27 billion payout or at least years of costly court appeals in its future. The secret videotapes could damage Ecuador’s pursuit of most-favored-nation trade status from U.S. Congress. And then there are the indigenous tribes living in the Amazon region where the pollution originally occurred.

Chevron has fought the claims in the lawsuit through an aggressive public relations campaign, a strategy the company defends, calling the case a judicial farce that has left the company with no alternative but to speak openly about the denial of justice.

And speak openly they have. Chevron’s public relations machine has been operating in overdrive in an effort offer their side of the story. The company has a blog, aptly named the Amazon Post, and a Texaco in Ecuador Web site as well as youtube channel with a variety of videos. Earlier this spring, the company hired a former CNN reporter to counter a planned ”60 Minutes” report about the Amazon pollution case.

Chevron’s involvement has been questioned, although the company is adamant that it had nothing to do with the secret video tapes. Chevron has said in other news reports, it doesn’t know why the men made the recordings or why they turned them over to the company back in June.

The plaintiffs argue the opposite. Both have called for investigations.

Which leaves the rest of us pouring over the video tapes — shaky hands and poor gringo Spanish galore – in hopes of finding some clue.

For the complete videos go to Chevron’s youtube channel.

Source: http://industry.bnet.com/energy/10001966/spies-like-us-will-secret-videotapes-derail-the-chevron-pollution-case/

Why Do Oil Prices Swing So Wildly?

2009-09-25T05:21:00.000-07:00

by: Cait Murphy

Over the past two years, the price you’ve paid for a gallon of gas has ranged from an average of $1.60 to $4.11. To use an economic term, that’s nuts. While the Arab oil embargo, the Iranian revolution, and the Gulf War, not surprisingly, provoked big price jumps at the pump, not one of those events caused a two-year round trip as dramatic as the one we’ve just seen. And the geopolitical drama that caused the most recent spike, sending the price of a barrel of crude up to $145 on July 4, 2008? Well, there wasn’t one. So why did gas prices leap 100 percent in 12 months only to plummet to $30 on December 23, and then more than double, to a recent peak of almost $75 on August 21? And how much will it cost you to fill up your tank in the coming years?

Crude Oil Prices 2000-Present

What’s Driving Prices

There are four major factors that determine oil prices — supply, consumption, financial markets, and government policies. What has happened is that what have historically been the fundamental factors in pricing the barrel — supply and consumption — are no longer in the driver’s seat. So this year, for example, there has been abundant supply and slowing demand, but prices have doubled. Economics 101 says that shouldn’t happen. But it has.

“In today’s world, oil-price dynamics are different than even 10 years ago,” says Kenneth Medlock, an energy economist at the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston.

Prices are not just curious; they are wild. From 1999 to 2004, the biggest difference between the high and low price in any given year was $16; from 2005 on, the average variance was $52 — but in 2008 it was $115. Oil, of course, is not the only commodity that has been frisky; copper has been even more so this year, and everything from onions to equities has seen massive price swings. At the same time, investment in commodity indexes, which are heavily weighted in oil, has risen sharply, from about $15 billion in 2003 to $200 billion last year.

And, yes, there is a relationship between increased investment and increased volatility, so speculators are indeed making a big difference in the oil market, something that has riled up politicians here and in Europe, who are concerned that high oil prices could hurt their countries’ economic recoveries. In late July, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission held hearings on what, if anything, to do about that. The CFTC is considering new rules for the oil markets.

But before you go out and demand your Congressman ship all those speculators to an oil rig in Siberia, remember that speculation is an essential part of any financial market; the purchase of any stock, for example, is really an act of speculation on the future prospects of the company. And a larger point is that, like any market, oil operates in a context.

The Bigger Picture

One reason prices have been rising so strongly this year, for example, is that futures traders are doing what they are supposed to do — anticipating. Just as stock prices anticipate future returns, so do commodity prices. Specifically, traders are betting that the global economy will recover later this year, and that the supplies will therefore tighten. There is good reason to believe this is correct; world oil production last year was barely above 2004 levels, and there is little chance it is going to shoot up. Rather the opposite: Daniel Yergin, author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power, and head of IHS/CERA, an energy consultancy, told Newsweek in early July that “of the 15 million barrels of new net capacity that was supposed to come online between 2008 and 2014, over half of it is at risk of not happening.” Investment in new fields has not been robust; when the current overcapacity is sucked up, the gap between supply and consumption will narrow again, forcing prices up.

On that thinking, $75 per barrel can look like a good bet. “Over the last six months, crude-oil futures have been a proxy on economic growth six months out,” concludes Tom Kloza, publisher of Oil Price Information Service, a newsletter that tracks the oil market. “You can read the sentiment swings out there.”

OK, but what about the really speculative speculation, such as the hedge funds, money managers, and banks that have gone into commodities big-time? Looking back, it seems almost certain that traders chasing paper profits drove some of last year’s frenzy; $145 oil at a time of soft demand and ample supply was “nuts, absolutely,” says Medlock. “Speculators can influence price beyond the fundamentals. When a majority of players don’t have a physical stake, they trade on technical indicators — psychological numbers. Quite frankly, that is nonsense in a physical market.”

So why oil? Why not something else? Again, think context. Oil is globally traded, dollar denominated, and there is a lot of it. What has happened is that it has become, in effect, a financial instrument, being used as a hedge against both a falling dollar and inflation. If the dollar weakens, a trader can make money just by keeping the rights to a barrel and selling it as the greenback sinks. Before 2002, there was a weak correlation between the value of the dollar and the price of oil, but since then, the correlation has been strong. “Oil is the antidollar, even more than gold,” says Sean Brodrick, a natural resources analyst at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Florida. “I literally see this relationship on the screens — out of the dollar into oil, back and forth.”

Then there is the fear of inflation. Date this back to the dot-com stock-market crash of 2000-01 and subsequent aggressive easing of monetary policy by the Fed. Concerned by the inflationary potential, money managers began to hold bigger commodity positions. Now consider the big spending increases by the Bush administration, plus the hugely expansionary nature of the Obama administration’s bailout and fiscal policies, combined with historically low interest rates. For those who think all this will be inflationary, the demand for oil and other commodities is going to be strong.

What to Do About It

Given that speculation is one of the villains in volatility, the natural political temptation is to whiplash the oil traders. And naturally, the traders are against any new restrictions, arguing that they provide necessary liquidity to the markets, allowing end users like airlines to hedge. The thing is, the latter seem to be ungrateful for the favor. The Air Transport Association denounced the “destructive volatility in oil markets” at the CFTC hearings on July 28; Delta Airlines (DAL) estimated the 2007-08 oil bubble cost it $8.4 billion. Consequently, “position limits” that restrict the number of contracts traders can hold are likely, as are increases in margin requirements and new requirements to reveal who is trading what and when.

But this will not be enough. Volatility is likely when there is a tight fit between supply and demand. So the U.S. could also try to create a little more breathing room by reducing its consumption of oil and boosting its own production. The one and only certain way to reduce consumption is to raise prices; from November 2007 to October 2008, during the course of the Big Price Run-up, Americans drove 100 billion fewer miles than the year before. You won’t hear this on Capitol Hill, home to the illusion that conservation and cheap gas can occur simultaneously, but a higher tax on gas could help to stabilize prices. So could opening up more territory for drilling. And so would some assurance that there is a plan to finance government spending without simply printing money.

Where Will Prices Go From Here?

Oil-price forecasting is not for the humble. The oil market has often made very smart people look pretty stupid. And it is common for several smart people to look at the exact same data and then arrive at opposite conclusions. Right now, for example, Philip Verleger, a Colorado-based oil-price analyst, is predicting that prices could dip to the $20 range this year; Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, puts the figure at $85, considerably more than its December guess of $45, but well below its May 2008 prediction of a spike to $200. T. Boone Pickens estimates a 2009 average price of $75 and Morgan Stanley, $60.

But over the long term, there is something akin to consensus that the days of cheap oil that characterized most of the 20^th century are gone. While new CFTC regulations might cool some of the hottest money — and that is anything but certain, if the oil markets in London, Dubai, and elsewhere do not follow suit — all the other factors argue for higher prices. China and India’s desire for oil will only grow, and when the economic recovery comes, consumption will also rise in the U.S. and Europe. And the drop-off in investment means that once the current overhang is sucked up, demand will rise faster than supply. In this case, Econ 101 does apply: Prices will go up.

Moreover, the regulatory environment will also push up prices. New rules on sulfur content, for example, will raise demand for sweet crude, which is not as abundant as other kinds of oil. Climate-change legislation could also increase the price of fossil fuels. In the medium and long term, all indicators point to more expensive energy.

Wise consumers, then, will act as if prices have already risen, buying more fuel-efficient cars, shifting away from heating oil, and taking commuting distance into account when eyeing real estate. And it can’t hurt to have some exposure to energy in your portfolio — if you have to pay four or five bucks for a gallon of gas, it might offer some comfort to know you’re paying yourself a nice dividend. You might as well get used to it, because $2.50 gas will not be with us for long.

source: http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news/article/why-oil-prices-are-so-volatile/337483/

Six Green Consumer Myths

2009-09-25T05:17:00.000-07:00

By: Stefan Deeran

It can be tough to draw conclusions from surveys that ask people their positions on social norms. In other words, if you ask a consumer whether they care about the environment, they’ve been trained to say “yes,” even though their purchasing behavior suggests otherwise.

Nonetheless, marketing surveys have consistently found that roughly 3/4 of consumers could be roughly characterized as green (the light green/dark green divide is another story). The Shelton Group, an ad agency focused on the green market, surveyed the consumers who could be classified as green and found six myths that are “shattering the stereotypes of the green consumer.” Here the are, edited down for length:

Myth: Green consumers’ top concern is the environment. Greens still care more about the economy (59 percent) than the environment (8 percent).
Myth: Green consumers’ main motivation when reducing their energy use is to save the planet. 73 percent are mainly motivated “to reduce my bills/control costs.”
Myth: Green consumers are all-knowledgeable about environmental issues. 49 percent incorrectly believe C02 depletes the ozone layer.
Myth: Green consumers fall into a simple demographic profile. While the study detected some demographic tendencies, it found that green consumers aren’t easily defined by their age, income or ethnicity.
Myth: Children play a big part in influencing their parents to be green. Only 20 percent of respondents with children said their kids encouraged them to be greener.
Myth: If people just knew the facts they’d make greener choices. Individuals who answered all of the science questions correctly did report participating in a significantly higher average number of green activities. However, the 25-34 age group consistently answered the question correctly, yet, on average, their green activity levels were lower than those of older respondents.

Source: http://blogs.bnet.com/intercom/?p=2950&tag=nl.e713

PLASTIC MESS (Not Degradable)

2009-01-20T05:42:00.000-08:00

by: Arun Bhatia

This article was on the editorial page of TOI(ME) dated: 20/01/2009
My earth-loving conscience hurts every time i go shopping. The store guys put the selected fruit in one plastic bag to keep it apart from the plastic cheese packet and the plastic milk sachet that is in another. The soap and insecticide are in another, and flour, dal and sugar in one-kilo plastic packs are put along with all those in the cloth bag one carries. My cloth shopping bag, full of plastic thingies, is just a salve for my conscience. Cashing in on the growing awareness of the public about the limited options for disposal of plastic packaging, there are many multinational companies now offering what they term as degradable and biodegradable plastics. These claims need a closer look. Degradable plastics, i.e. photodegradable (broken down by light) or biodegradable (broken down by decay) are neither made by changing the polymer chain chemically or by mixing ordinary plastic resin with cornstarch or similar vegetable material. Calling the latter biodegradable is false because only the cornstarch decays while the plastic remains. The landfills where most plastic waste is deposited have been studied. These landfills do not have light, water or air and therefore do not allow either photodegradation or biodegradation. In fact, some decades old landfills, studied by New York’s Cornell Waste Management Institute, have yielded newspapers that can still be read and banana skins that can be identified as such.
Moreover, plastics, made by styrene and vinyl chloride and other toxic varieties of chemicals have many types of additives e.g. flame retardants, reinforcing agents, plasticisers, stabilisers, fillers and pigments, which are toxic. Plastic pigments have chemicals including lead and cadmium. All such chemicals trapped in plastics remain inert, but when plastics are broken, toxics are released in the environment. Degradable plastics are thus more damaging to the environment. They are also more likely to be ingested by animals. While the so-called degradable plastics are worse for the environment, they are also weaker than virgin chemicals and are less likely to be recycled. In sum, the ‘degradable’ plastics are neither as good as regular plastic nor will they disappear, nor do they perform well, nor can they be recycled. They are merely gimmicks of commerce. Environmentalists would do well to change from plastics altogether, regardless of whether they are claimed to be degradable or otherwise.

Paper house offers home for all

2009-01-19T17:45:00.000-08:00

TOI (ME) dt: 19th Jan, 2009

London: A scientist has created a house that is literally made from recycled cardboard and newspapers, thus effectively becoming the first “Wall paper” house, which could prove to be a cheap option for the poor and the displaced.
According to a report in the Times, the inventor of the house is Gerd Niemoeller, a design engineer, who has given the name “the Universal World House” for his creation. It has been designed together with the German development aid agency GTZ, and with the architect Dirk Donath, from the Bauhaus University in Weimar.
The 36sq m paper house weighs barely 800kg, and is light, can be easily assembled, environmentally friendly, earthquake-proof and, crucially in the age of recession, a bit of a bargain.
“Without the foundation block, the whole house actually weighs in at about 400kg,” said Niemoeller. “It will not, however, simply blow away. The basic material is resin-soaked cellulose recovered from recycled cardboard and newspapers,” he added.
Adding heat and pressure makes the paper extremely stable. The interior of the prefabricated building panels resemble honeycombs; an air vacuum fills each of the units. The result is a strong and stable exterior wall, well insulated. A similar construction technique is used in aircraft and high-speed yachts.
The house has eight built-in single and double beds and a veranda with a sealedoff area housing a shower and a lavatory. Apart from the sleeping area, there are shelves, a table and benches. The whole wall of the kitchen can be tipped open to let air in and to blur the distinction between inside and outside.
First inquiries for the house have come from the Delta State oil developers in Nigeria, and from Angola. ANI

2008 was 8th warmest year on record

2009-01-19T17:42:00.000-08:00

Article from TOI (Mumbai Edition [ME]) dt: 19th Jan, 2009

Last year was the eighth warmest year on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center. The world’s temperature in 2008 tied that of 2001 according to the center, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Preliminary calculations show the world’s average temperature for 2008 was 0.49°C above the 20th century average of 13.9°C. The ranking means that all of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997. Researchers fear far-reaching effects of global warming, ranging from changing storm patterns, damage to crops and wildlife, droughts to spread of disease. The climate center noted that since 1880, the annual combined global land and ocean surface temperature has increased at a rate of 0.05°C per decade and the rate has increased over the past 30 years.

The implication of the above article is global warming....floods....scarcity of food.....loss of lives.....END OF THE WORLD.

Himachal set to become first carbon-free state

2009-01-19T04:02:00.000-08:00

by Priya Yadav (TOI)

Chandigarh: Himachal Pradesh, which has mandated all government departments to begin the environment audit, is on its way to becoming the country’s first and the world’s second carbon-free state.
The people of Himachal will be expected to undergo lifestyle changes, according to the environment master plan and ‘Policy & Strategy on Climate Change & Harnessing Carbon Credits’. The policy will focus on the functioning of all departments, especially those involved in development. “We must ensure that the technology used for projects like road cutting and tunnel digging is not harmful to flora and fauna,’’ said Arun Sharma, secretary to CM P K Dhumal.
The plan entails a novel approach towards how civic bodies dispose off garbage and contractors involved hydel projects do away with the muck. The HP government will sign an MoU with the state of California in this regard. Over the years, India is expected to earn $2.27 billion from selling certified emissions reduction to the US. “The state will announce the implementation of its carbon neutral policy by March,’’ said environment and forest minister J P Nadda. “About 12,000 hectares have been made available for carbon credits. A validator from World Bank is to verify that this land is available for only growing trees.’’ Most of this land is under panchayats where at least four CFL bulbs have been distributed free of cost per family.

A Roadmap for a Greener Future

2009-01-17T06:25:00.000-08:00

Construction sector needs to contribute towards environmental responsibility. Architect Niteen Parulekar tells Bombay Times (TOI)

India is witnessing tremendous growth in infrastructure and construction development. Reports state that the construction industry in India is one of the largest economic activities and is growing at an average rate of 9.5 per cent as compared to the global average of 5 per cent. As the sector is growing rapidly, preserving the environment poses lot of challenges and at the same time presents opportunities. The construction sector therefore needs to play its role and contribute towards environmental responsibility. The Green Building Movement in India is a step in this direction — to minimise the negative impact of construction activity on the environment.
Green Architecture is a term used to describe energy-saving, environment-friendly and sustainable development. On the aesthetic side of green architecture or sustainable design lies the philosophy of designing a building that is in harmony with natural features
and resources surrounding the site. By using the traditional practices of sustainability and marrying them with contemporary applications we can create architecture that can be humble, stylish and green all at once. Among the world recognised Green Building rating system is US Green Building Council’s LEED rating system. India (IGBC) and Canada are the only two countries that have a USGBC affiliated, yet indigenised LEED rating system. We have also launched a green rating system TERI- GRIHA (Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Assessment) in August 2008 which evaluates building on a green scale.
In today’s times of world-class marketing and cut-throat competition, it is important that the developer is almost voluntarily forced to build green buildings. Hence we must not just use regulations, but provide incentives in the form of faster and easier approvals, quantifiable tax benefits, carbon offsetting, and thus encourage use of discounted green and local techniques. It is important for them to understand that practicing green could be an added marketing tool for better property investment, increased leasing rates and improved well-being from quality living. They will then realise the value of green rated buildings.
There is a tremendous potential for green building materials since a lot of those were being imported for a few years. This could open up a plethora of opportunities for several stakeholders like architects, material and equipment manufacturers and vendors. All these industry professionals need further incentives for extensive material research, manage inventories and use local resources. They need special discounts and tax breaks for the products. The adoption of green building materials is increasing over the years. There is also a change in the mindsets of the stakeholders. Earlier, there was a general perception that materials with recycled content were inferior in quality. However with increased awareness on green materials and their advantages the trend is rapidly changing.
A much talked about idea to deal with greenhouse emissions is Carbon credits or offsetting. Offsetting can be done in a myriad of ways; one is by buying shares in a company that will offset your gas emission by planting the required number of trees. The idea could be applied both at a company as well as an individual level. There is now a need for skilled and knowledgeable professionals who have deep understanding of sustainability and energy systems. The main objective is to enable faster reach of green concepts to wider sections of stakeholders and to provide a platform for networking at all levels.
The key to change is making people behave differently, to consume more wisely and thus “leave a smaller footprint” on the planet. It’s important that we now ‘Walk the Talk’.
Niteen Parulekar Architects Pvt Ltd actively pursue green design and encourage sustainable design professionals in their enterprise. They also conduct in-house green awareness and educational workshops.

Its Time 2 Shape Things Up!

2009-01-17T05:57:00.000-08:00

Hey...

I am an Environment lover, Rohan, willing to contribute his part in saving the environment. I am an unemployed management post graduate from Mumbai, India. I would like to work towards the Renewable Sources of Energy and Sustainable development and bringing it to the masses.

AKAR Inc., that what i have named my company, is the first step towards my mission. The next being starting up this blog.

This blog will include the recent articles from the newspapers or the internet based on Green Environment with the purpose of spreading awareness of whats going on in and around the world. I would also try to include Green Jobs for the people interested to work in the related field.

Ideas to develop this blog and make it more fruitful in creating valid awareness of the Green Technology.

Keep in touch...

Warm Regards (its winter time baby!)

Rohan Ag.

Get me at: rohany2r@yahoo.com
roan.aga@gmail.com