Green Topics

2009-11-06T09:41:00.000-05:00

Continuation of the Economist article on falling Fertility rates

The link between wealth and fertility does not explain everything. In some countries, poor women have the same number of children as rich ones. This suggests that other factors are at work. The most obvious is that many people in poor countries want fewer children, and family planning helps them get their wish.

A surprising amount is known about how many children parents want, thanks to a series of surveys by the Demographic and Health Surveys programme. The picture it paints is of huge numbers of unplanned pregnancies. In Brazil, for example, the wanted fertility rate in 1996 (the most recent year available) was 1.8; the actual fertility rate then was 2.5. In India the wanted rate in 2006 was 1.9, the actual one, 2.7. In Ghana the figures for 2003 were 3.7 and 4.4. The rule seems to be that women want one child fewer than they are having (except in some rich countries, where they say they want more).

One study in 2002 estimated that as many as a quarter of all pregnancies in developing countries in the 1990s were unintended. Yet another found that more African women say they want to use contraceptives but cannot get them (25m) than actually use them (18m). Unmet demand in turn implies that fertility in some countries could be even lower than it actually is if more family planning were available. The proportion of women using contraception in Latin America and East Asia is four times the African rate.

That points to another big reason why fertility is falling: the spread of female education. Go back to the countries where fertility has fallen fastest and you will find remarkable literacy programmes. As early as 1962, for example, 80% of young women in Mauritius could read and write. In Iran in 1976, only 10% of rural women aged 20 to 24 were literate. Now that share is 91%, and Iran not only has one of the best-educated populations in the Middle East but the one in which men and women have the most equal educational chances. Iranian girls aged 15-19 have roughly the same number of years of schooling as boys do. Educated women are more likely to go out to work, more likely to demand contraception and less likely to want large families.

Lastly, a special case: China’s one-child policy, which began nationwide in the early 1970s. China’s population is probably 300m-400m lower now than it would have been without it. The policy (which is one of population control, not birth control) has had dreadful costs, including widespread female infanticide, a lopsided sex ratio and horrors such as mass sterilisation and forced abortions. But in its own terms, it has worked—20m people enter the workforce each year, instead of 40m—and, to the extent that China is polluting less than it would have done, it has benefited the rest of the world.

The Goldilocks moment

Higher standards of living, then, reduce fertility. And lower fertility improves living standards. This is what China’s government says. It is also the view that has emerged from demographic research over the past 20 years.* In the 1980s, population was regarded as relatively unimportant to economic performance. American delegates told a UN conference in 1984 that “population growth is, in and of itself, neither good nor bad; it is a neutral phenomenon.” Recent research suggests otherwise.

Cutting the fertility rate from six to two can help an economy in several ways. First, as fertility falls it changes the structure of the population, increasing the size of the workforce relative to the numbers of children and old people. When fertility is high and a country is young (median age below 20), there are huge numbers of children and the overall dependency ratio is high. When a country is ageing (median age above 40), it again has a high dependency ratio, this time because of old people.

But the switch from one to the other produces a Goldilocks generation. Because fertility is falling, there are relatively few children. Because of high mortality earlier, there are relatively few grandparents. Instead, countries have a bulge of working-age adults. This happened to Europe after the baby boom of 1945-65 and produced les trente glorieuses (30 years of growth). It is happening now in Asia and Latin America. East Asia has done better than Latin America, showing that lower fertility alone does not determine economic success. Eventually developing countries will face the same problems of ageing as Europe and Japan do. But for the moment, Asians and Latinos are enjoying fertility that is neither too hot, nor too cold. According to David Bloom of the Harvard School of Public Health, the “demographic dividend” (his term) accounted for a third of East Asian growth in 1965-90.

Slowing fertility has other benefits. By making it easier for women to work, it boosts the size of the labour force. Because there are fewer dependent children and old people, households have more money left for savings, which can be ploughed into investment. Chinese household savings (obviously influenced by many things, not just demography) reached almost 25% of GDP in 2008, helping to finance investment of an unprecedented 40% of GDP. This in turn accounted for practically all the increase in Chinese GDP in the first half of this year.

Lastly, low fertility makes possible a more rapid accumulation of capital per head. To see how, think about what happens to a farm as it is handed down the generations in a country without primogeniture. The more children there are, the more the farm is divided. Eventually, these patches become so tiny they cease to be efficient. This is occurring in Bangladesh.

The importance of tackling such problems, which go by the ugly name of “capital shallowing”, was discounted in the 1980s but has recently made a comeback. Hu Angang of Tsinghua University estimates that half of Chinese growth per person in 1978-98 can be attributed to the increase in capital stock per head.

This link between growth and fertility raises awkward questions. In the 1980s the link was downplayed in reaction to Malthusian alarms of the 1970s, when it was fashionable to argue that population growth had to be reined in because oil and natural resources were running short. So if population does matter after all, does that mean the Malthusians were right?

Not entirely. Neo-Malthusians think the world has too many people. But for most countries, the population questions that matter most are either: do we have enough people to support an ageing society? Or: how can we take advantage of having just the right number for economic growth? It is fair to say that these perceptions are not mutually exclusive. The world might indeed have the right numbers to boost growth and still have too many for the environment. The right response to that, though, would be to curb pollution and try to alter the pattern of growth to make it less resource-intensive, rather than to control population directly.

The reason is that widening replacement-level fertility means population growth is slowing down anyway. A further reduction of fertility would be possible if family planning were spread to the parts of the world which do not yet have it (notably Africa). But that would only reduce the growth in the world’s numbers from 9.2 billion in 2050 to, say, 8.5 billion. To go further would probably require draconian measures, such as sterilisation or one-child policies.

The bad news is that the girls who will give birth to the coming, larger generations have already been born. The good news is that they will want far fewer children than their mothers or grandmothers did.

Go forth and multiply a lot less

Oct 29th 2009

From The Economist print edition

Solar Streetlights

2009-11-06T07:02:00.000-05:00

Early streetlights relied on a flickering flame, while later versions got a bulb and electric-power lines.

Now a new streetlight is poised to rule the road, one that taps the sun's energy by day and turns it into a bright glow by night. Several are already on the job in Central Florida.

Managers at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s east Orange County campus have opted to toss out 25-year-old streetlights riddled with rust and lightning damage. They were wired to underground utility lines for electricity.

Their replacements plug into solar panels and use a fraction of the power of ordinary streetlights. Lockheed Martin thought the swap would be good for the environment and better for the balance sheet.

Robert Carey, chief facilities engineer, said the 35 solar streetlights will cost about $342,000 over 20 years, including purchase price and maintenance — with zero expense for the sunlight.

The comparable figure for conventional streetlights, including new wiring and ongoing utility bills, would have been about $563,000.

Not a hard choice, Carey said.

Solar streetlights like the ones at Lockheed show the steady advance of efficiency and clean energy into ordinary living. Residential landscape lights that run on the sun now cost less than a specialty cup of coffee — about $3 each at do-it-yourself stores.

Solar streetlights, according to their maker, reached the realm of doable only last year because of improvements in what makes them shine.

They're equipped with a light-emitting diode, or LED, which sort of marries the idea of a light bulb to the technology of computer chips to produce an extremely efficient, long-lasting and adjustable source of light.

Carey said he evaluated six companies, including two in Florida, and settled on the Canadian firm Carmanah Technologies of Victoria, British Columbia.

As solar streetlights become more common, drivers won't have a hard time noticing them. Conventional streetlights produce a yellowish tint. The LEDs of solar streetlights have a bluish cast.

Greg Miller, Carmanah's manager of market development, said his company's solar-streetlight LEDs burn about as much energy as conventional streetlights to produce comparable amounts of light overall.

The big difference is the bulbs of conventional streetlights shine in too many directions, including not just the pavement below but into adjoining yards and homes and even into the night sky.

But the LEDs in solar streetlights aim the light only where it is needed. In the case of the new streetlights at Lockheed Martin, mounted 25 feet high, they brighten 125 feet of road and little more.

Since the solar streetlights don't waste light, they need just 100 watts to do the job of a 250-watt conventional streetlight, Carey said.

Carmanah doesn't suggest its lights are always the cheapest option. At development sites where the ground is still bare, for example, it can be more affordable to put in conventional lights along with other utilities, Miller said.

But when replacement of streetlights is a challenge or when tapping existing power lines is costly, Miller said, solar lighting can be the more affordable choice.

Solar lights also reduce planet-warming carbon emissions from power plants. Lockheed thinks the solar lights over 20 years will avoid putting more than 17,000 tons of carbon into the atmosphere — about as much as 3,000 typical cars produce in a year.

The solar streetlights will work during prolonged periods of cloudiness. Each one has four car-size batteries capable of powering the lights through at least five nights. The 41-by-42-inch solar panels also continue to produce electricity on overcast days, but at a reduced rate.

Kevin Spear can be reached at kspear@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5062.
11-2-09

Lower Fertility Rates will Help us All

2009-11-05T06:40:00.001-05:00

We have always been vigilant in our belief that one of the largest causes of high pollution, high raw material use, high oil and gas price, high consumption, etc is overpopulation. We feel the replacement family number of 2 kids for each man and woman pair is the greatest plenty to power a good world economy but not wreck that economy with over population.

Below are portions of a great article from The Economist on how "replacement level" population can bring out the best in humanity.

SOMETIME in the next few years (if it hasn’t happened already) the world will reach a milestone: half of humanity will be having only enough children to replace itself. That is, the fertility rate of half the world will be 2.1 or below. This is the “replacement level of fertility”, the magic number that causes a country’s population to slow down and eventually to stabilise. According to the United Nations population division, 2.9 billion people out of a total of 6.5 billion were living in countries at or below this point in 2000-05. The number will rise to 3.4 billion out of 7 billion in the early 2010s and to over 50% in the middle of the next decade. The countries include not only Russia and Japan but Brazil, Indonesia, China and even south India.

The move to replacement-level fertility is one of the most dramatic social changes in history. It manifested itself in the violent demonstrations by students against their clerical rulers in Iran this year. It almost certainly contributed to the rising numbers of middle-class voters who backed the incumbent governments of Indonesia and India. It shows up in rural Malaysia in richer, emptier villages surrounded by mechanised farms. And everywhere, it is changing traditional family life by enabling women to work and children to be educated. At a time when Malthusian alarms are ringing because of environmental pressures, falling fertility may even provide a measure of reassurance about global population trends.

The fertility rate is a hypothetical, almost conjectural number. It is not the same as the birth rate, which is the number of children born in a year as a share of the total population. Rather, it represents the number of children an average woman is likely to have during her childbearing years, conventionally taken to be 15-49.

If there were no early deaths, the replacement rate would be 2.0 (actually, fractionally higher because fewer girls are born than boys). Two parents are replaced by two children. But a daughter may die before her childbearing years, so the figure has to allow for early mortality. Since child mortality is higher in poor countries, the replacement fertility rate is higher there, too. In rich countries it is about 2.1. In poor ones it can go over 3.0. The global average is 2.33. By about 2020, the global fertility rate will dip below the global replacement rate for the first time.

Modern Malthusians tend to discount the significance of falling fertility. They believe there are too many people in the world, so for them, it is the absolute number that matters. And that number is still rising, by a forecast 2.4 billion over the next 40 years. Populations can rise while fertility declines because of inertia, which matters a lot in demography. If, because of high fertility in earlier generations, there is a bulge of women of childbearing years, more children will be born, though each mother is having fewer children. There will be more, smaller families. Assuming fertility falls at current rates, says the UN, the world’s population will rise from 6.8 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050, at which point it will stabilise (see chart 1).

Behind this is a staggering fertility decline. In the 1970s only 24 countries had fertility rates of 2.1 or less, all of them rich. Now there are over 70 such countries, and in every continent, including Africa. Between 1950 and 2000 the average fertility rate in developing countries fell by half from six to three—three fewer children in each family in just 50 years. Over the same period, Europe went from the peak of the baby boom to the depth of the baby bust and its fertility also fell by almost half, from 2.65 to 1.42—but that was a decline of only 1.23 children. The fall in developing countries now is closer to what happened in Europe during 19th- and early 20th-century industrialisation. But what took place in Britain over 130 years (1800-1930) took place in South Korea over just 20 (1965-85).

Things are moving even faster today. Fertility has dropped further in every South-East Asian country (except the Philippines) than it did in Japan. The rate in Bangladesh fell by half from six to three in only 20 years (1980 to 2000). The same decline took place in Mauritius in just ten (1963-73). Most sensational of all is the story from Iran.

When the clerical regime took over in 1979, the mullahs, apparently believing their flock should go forth and multiply, abolished the country’s family-planning system. Fertility rose, reaching seven in 1984. Yet by the 2006 census the average fertility rate had fallen to a mere 1.9, and just 1.5 in Tehran. From fertility that is almost as high as one can get to below replacement level in 22 years: social change can hardly happen faster. No wonder the explosion on the streets of Iran this year seemed like a clash between two worlds: 15-29 year-olds, one-third of the population, better educated and with different expectations, against the established regime and the traditionalists.

Why has fertility fallen so fast, so widely? Malthus himself thought richer people would have more children and, as any biologist will tell you, animal populations increase when there is more food around.

To understand why wealthy people differ from well-fed animals, imagine yourself a dirt-poor (male) peasant 50 years ago. Your fields are in the middle of nowhere. Your village has no school, hospital or government services, certainly no pensions. Few goods come into it from outside, though disease is rampant and security fragile. Ploughing and reaping are done by hand. But if the harvest is normal, you usually have enough to go round. In these circumstances, the benefit of an extra pair of hands to gather the harvest outweighs the cost of feeding an extra mouth (which anyway falls on your wife more than you). And when you can no longer work in the fields, your children will be the only ones to look after you. In such a society, all the incentives point to having large families.

Now imagine you are a bit richer. You may have moved to a town, or your village may have grown. Schools, markets and factories are within reach. And suddenly, the incentives change. A tractor can gather the harvest better than children. Your wife may get a factory job—and now her lost wages must be set against the benefits of another baby. Education, thrift and a stake in the future become more important, and these middle-class virtues go hand in hand with smaller families. Education costs money, so you may not be able to afford a large family. Perhaps the state provides a pension and you no longer need children to look after you. And perhaps your wife is no longer willing to bear endless offspring. Higher living standards, better communications and more education enable you to rely on markets and public services, not just yourself and your family.

Macroeconomic research bears out this picture. Fertility starts to drop at an annual income per person of $1,000-2,000 and falls until it hits the replacement level at an income per head of $4,000-10,000 a year (see chart 2). This roughly tracks the passage from poverty to middle-income status and from an agrarian society to a modern one. Thereafter fertility continues at or below replacement until, for some, it turns up again (see article).

The link between living standards and fertility exists within countries, too. India’s poorest state, Bihar, has a fertility rate of 4; richer Tamil Nadu and Kerala have rates below 2. Shanghai has had a fertility rate of less than 1.7 since 1975; in Guizhou, China’s poorest province, the rate is 2.2. So strong is the link between wealth and fertility that the few countries where fertility is not falling are those torn apart by war, such as Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where living standards have not risen.

Family research adds detail to this sketch. Indonesia’s Family Life Survey showed that, on average, each birth reduced by a fifth the likelihood that a woman would have a job—lowering household income and pushing some families into poverty. So smaller families made middle-class status more likely. Between 1974 and 1996, Bangladesh turned a district called Matlab into a giant demographic experiment: some villages and households got family planning, others did not. According to one study of the results, fertility in the areas that received help declined by around 15% more than in those that did not. And over the two decades of the experiment, indicators of the well-being of women and their children—health, earnings, household assets and so on—were all higher in the villages that got the planning. Does this suggest that lower fertility causes wealth, or that wealth lowers fertility? It would be better to say that the two things go together.

We will offer the balance of this article in the 11/6/09 blog posting

Go forth and multiply a lot less

Oct 29th 2009

From The Economist print edition

SuperFreakonomics and Climate Change

2009-11-04T06:38:00.003-05:00

This article points to 2 important points in the book SuperFreakonomics(follow up to the book Freakonomics) by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner that climate change gurus should consider although the majority of the book, "manage(s) to downplay the global warming threat, compare climate change believers to religious fanatics, and accept at face value the assertion by some pointy-headed geeks that they can save the world on the cheap."

OK, enough. The real point here is get beyond the bad in SuperFreakonomics and focus on two messages that deserve greater discussion in the world of climate wonkery.

First, Levitt and Dubner do what economists do best, and that’s note that emissions from burning fossil fuels are a negative externality—fancy economist speak for the fact that we don’t really pay the full cost of relying on coal, oil, and gas. Power plants and their customers around the world generally don’t pay anything now to deal with the environmental impact of CO2 emissions and other bad stuff—heavy metals in the emissions and ash, health effects of particulate pollution, etc.

And it’s an open question whether an international carbon-cap system based on trading credits and buying offsets can genuinely cut carbon emissions enough to reduce global warming that’s already predicted to happen. At the end of the day, no matter what is decided at Copenhagen, it’s still in too many people’s economic interests to keep burning fossil fuels. It’s also right for Levitt and Dubner to note that cutting carbon emissions won’t address methane from livestock or nitrous oxide from fertilizer.

Second, and just as significant, Levitt and Dubner are doing a real service by talking about geoengineering and stressing that technology and innovation are going to be a part of saving our asses—it won’t be done through complex cap-and-trade schemes alone. As fancical and unproven as the ideas proffered by Myrhvold and company are, eggheads everywhere should be encouraged to think about them and figure out ways to execute them. We might just need some wacky tech solutions to fend off the worst effects of global warming while we transition the global economy toward clean, renewable energy.

So, read the book. Take the Steves’ dismissive tone with a grain of salt, but think hard about how we insert geoengineering into the climate discussion, and heed their warning about the limits of public policy to steer people away from the old ways of doing things.

from Grist.com 11-3-09
article by Russ Walker

We've always felt one of the largest untabulated "negative externalities" of sourcing the majority of our petrol from the middle east is the cost for the USA and NATO troops forced to police the governments and shipping lanes to keep the oil flowing. Should not some of the cost of both Iraq wars be figured into what the price at the pump is. Fraid your elected officials of either party will not touch that one and as long as you can go to your neighborhood pump and fill up you probably do not think of it either?

French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality

2009-11-04T04:30:00.000-05:00

PARIS — Just as Le Corbusier’s white cruciform towers once excited visions of the industrial-age city of the future, so Vélib’, Paris’s bicycle rental system, inspired a new urban ethos for the era of climate change.

Residents here can rent a sturdy bicycle from hundreds of public stations and pedal to their destinations, an inexpensive, healthy and low-carbon alternative to hopping in a car or bus.

But this latest French utopia has met a prosaic reality: Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped.

With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.

“The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,” Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. “The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.”

The heavy, sandy-bronze Vélib’ bicycles are seen as an accoutrement of the “bobos,” or “bourgeois-bohèmes,” the trendy urban middle class, and they stir resentment and covetousness. They are often being vandalized in a socially divided Paris by resentful, angry or anarchic youth, the police and sociologists say.

Bruno Marzloff, a sociologist who specializes in transportation, said, “One must relate this to other incivilities, and especially the burning of cars,” referring to gangs of immigrant youths burning cars during riots in the suburbs in 2005.

He said he believed there was social revolt behind Vélib’ vandalism, especially for suburban residents, many of them poor immigrants who feel excluded from the glamorous side of Paris.

“It is an outcry, a form of rebellion; this violence is not gratuitous,” Mr. Marzloff said. “There is an element of negligence that means, ‘We don’t have the right to mobility like other people, to get to Paris it’s a huge pain, we don’t have cars, and when we do, it’s too expensive and too far.’ ”

Used mainly for commuting in the urban core of the city, the Vélib’ program is by many measures a success. After swiping a credit card for a deposit at an electronic docking station, a rider pays one euro per day, or 29 euros (about $43) for an annual pass, for unlimited access to the bikes for 30-minute periods that can be extended for a small fee.

Daily use averages 50,000 to 150,000 trips, depending on the season, and the bicycles have proved to be a hit with tourists, who help power the economy.

But the extra-solid construction and electronic docks mean the bikes, made in Hungary, are expensive, and not everyone shares the spirit of joint public property promoted by Paris’s Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë.

“We miscalculated the damage and the theft,” said Albert Asséraf, director of strategy, research and marketing at JCDecaux, the outdoor-advertising company that is a major financer and organizer of the project. “But we had no reference point in the world for this kind of initiative.”

At least 8,000 bikes have been stolen and 8,000 damaged so badly that they had to be replaced — nearly 80 percent of the initial stock, Mr. Asséraf said.

JCDecaux must repair some 1,500 bicycles a day. The company maintains 10 repair shops and a workshop on a boat that moves up and down the Seine.

JCDecaux reinforced the bicycles’ chains and baskets and added better theft protection, strengthening the mechanisms that attach them to the electronic parking docks, since an incompletely secured bike is much easier to steal. But the damage and theft continued.

“We made the bike stronger, ran ad campaigns against vandalism and tried to better inform people on the Web,” Mr. Asséraf said. But “the real solution is just individual respect.”

In 2008 , the number of infractions related to Vélib’ vandalism rose 54 percent, according to the Paris police.

“We found many stolen Vélib’s in Paris’s troubled neighborhoods,” said Marie Lajus, a spokeswoman for the police. “It’s not profit-making delinquency, but rather young boys, especially from the suburbs, consider the Vélib’ an object that has no value.”

Sometimes the bikes are also victims of good old adolescent anarchic fun. These attitudes are expressed by the “freeriders,” and a bicycle forum, where a mock poll asks riders whether the Vélib’ can do wheelies, go down stairs and make decent skid marks.

It is commonplace now to see the bikes at docking stations in Paris with flat tires, punctured wheels or missing baskets. Some Vélib’s have been found hanging from lampposts, dumped in the Seine, used on the streets of Bucharest or resting in shipping containers on their way to North Africa. Some are simply appropriated and repainted.

Finding a decent one is now something of an urban treasure hunt. Géraldine Bernard, 31, of Paris rides a Vélib’ to work every day but admits having difficulties lately finding functioning bikes.

“It’s a very clever initiative to improve people’s lives, but it’s not a complete success,” she said.

“For a regular user like me, it generates a lot of frustration,” she said. “It’s a reflection of the violence of our society and it’s outrageous: the Vélib’ is a public good but there is no civic feeling related to it.”

Still, with more than 63 million rentals since the program was begun in mid-2007, the Vélib’ is an established part of Parisian life, and the program has been extended to provide 4,000 Vélib’s in 29 towns on the city’s edges.

So despite the increasing costs, Paris and JCDecaux are pressing on. The company invested about $140 million to set up the system and provides a yearly fee of about $5.5 million to Paris, which also gets rental fees for the bikes. In return, the company’s 10-year contract allows it to put up 1,628 billboards that it can rent.

Although JCDecaux will not discuss money figures, the expected date for profitability has been set back. But the City of Paris has agreed to pay JCDecaux about $600 for each stolen or irreparably damaged bike if the number exceeds 4 percent of the fleet, which it clearly does.

In an unsuccessful effort to stop vandalism, Paris began an advertising campaign this summer. Posters showed a cartoon Vélib’ being roughed up by a thug. The caption read: “It’s easy to beat up a Vélib’, it can’t defend itself. Vélib’ belongs to you, protect it!”

from:
By STEVEN ERLANGER and MAÏA DE LA BAUME

Published: October 30, 2009 nytimes.com

Copenhagen and the USA

2009-11-03T17:58:00.002-05:00

When U.S. negotiators show up in Copenhagen next month to work on a deal to tackle global warming, they probably won't have in their pockets what they most wanted: a law enacted by Washington committing the country to carbon pollution reductions.

With legislation hung up in the Senate, developed and developing countries alike might be skeptical of the United States' commitment to addressing climate change problems.

Here are some of the questions facing U.S. negotiators as they approach Copenhagen and attempt to allay those concerns:

* CAN THE U.S. PUT ON A BRAVE FACE?

The world's second biggest polluter of carbon dioxide will be in the difficult position of trying to cajole China, India and other major polluters to promise to cut their emissions. Nevertheless, the United States will likely try to downplay its own shortcomings and accentuate the positive.

After eight years of relatively few accomplishments on the climate front during the Bush administration, President Barack Obama's negotiators can argue there's been a major shift.

In less than a year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a climate bill; a similar one is pending in the Senate and the Environmental Protection Agency is requiring domestic automakers to significantly reduce tailpipe carbon emissions.

Furthermore, the EPA has taken steps toward regulating smokestack emissions of carbon for the first time.

* WHAT ELSE CAN THE U.S. PROMISE?

Even if Congress can't pass legislation next year, U.S. negotiators can tell Copenhagen the EPA is waiting in the wings. By March or so, the agency could produce initial regulations for limiting carbon emissions.

The regulatory route is not Obama's desired path; he wants more comprehensive legislation. But the EPA has made clear it would proceed without Congress if need be.

Negotiators also could stress that there's still hope for Congress to pass a comprehensive bill. If "cap and trade" won't work for U.S. lawmakers, they might try an alternative.

They also could point out that the United States has a long history of approving major environmental laws in an election year, which 2010 is.

* CAN THE U.S. BUY ITS WAY OUT OF TROUBLE?

Experts think Washington could go a long way toward building confidence for a global deal if the United States put forth a specific proposal on how much money it would throw into an international pot.

The funds would be dedicated to helping poor countries develop alternative energies and deal with the fallout from global warming. Tens of billions of dollars could be required annually.

A problem: In tough economic times and with astounding domestic budget deficits, many members of the U.S. Congress would be nervous about promising money for others.

* IS THERE A FALLBACK OPTION?

The head of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said on Tuesday a full-fledged climate deal would not be reached at Copenhagen but it was still possible to develop a framework agreement.

Many U.S. environmental group agree, and are already asking their government's negotiators to push for a substantive interim deal.

Last July, major economic powers, including the United States, agreed to work toward limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, and this could provide a useful backdrop to an interim deal.

Experts say the best that can realistically be hoped for from the meeting is an agreement that has the 190 nations accepting the 2 degree goal, a new specific date for wrapping up a final deal and progress on how a new global carbon-reduction scheme would be enforced.

* WHAT IS THE WORST CASE SCENARIO?

The Pew Center on Climate Change sees the worst case scenario coming out of Copenhagen as one in which countries blame any summit failure entirely on the United States.

If the talks fall into disarray, a "blame the U.S." plot line would likely deepen opposition in the U.S. Congress to comprehensive climate control legislation and deliver an additional setback to international talks -- one that some fear could take a decade or so to recover from.

Todd Stern, the lead U.S. negotiator, would have to employ all his diplomatic skills if he sees the world ganging up on Washington.

reuters.com

By Richard Cowan

11-3-09

Water Desalination 2.0

2009-11-03T04:16:00.002-05:00

THERE is a lot of water on Earth, but more than 97% of it is salty and over half of the remainder is frozen at the poles or in glaciers. Meanwhile, around a fifth of the world’s population suffers from a shortage of drinking water and that fraction is expected to grow. One answer is desalination—but it is an expensive answer because it requires a lot of energy. Now, though, a pair of Canadian engineers have come up with an ingenious way of using the heat of the sun to drive the process. Such heat, in many places that have a shortage of fresh water, is one thing that is in abundant supply.

Ben Sparrow and Joshua Zoshi met at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, while completing their MBAs. Their company, Saltworks Technologies, has set up a test plant beside the sea in Vancouver and will open for business in November.

Existing desalination plants work in one of two ways. Some distil seawater by heating it up to evaporate part of it. They then condense the vapour—a process that requires electricity. The other plants use reverse osmosis. This employs high-pressure pumps to force the water from brine through a membrane that is impermeable to salt. That, too, needs electricity. Even the best reverse-osmosis plants require 3.7 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy to produce 1,000 litres of drinking water.

Mr Sparrow and Mr Zoshi, by contrast, reckon they can produce that much fresh water with less than 1 kWh of electricity, and no other paid-for source of power is needed. Their process is fuelled by concentration gradients of salinity between different vessels of brine. These different salinities are brought about by evaporation.

The process begins by spraying seawater into a shallow, black-bottomed pond, where it absorbs heat from the atmosphere. The resulting evaporation increases the concentration of salt in the water from its natural level of 3.5% to as much as 20%. Low-pressure pumps are then used to pipe this concentrated seawater, along with three other streams of untreated seawater, into the desalting unit. As the diagram explains, what Mr Sparrow and Mr Zoshi create by doing this is a type of electrical circuit. Instead of electrons carrying the current, though, it is carried by electrically charged atoms called ions.

Salt is made of two ions: positively charged sodium and negatively charged chloride. These flow in opposite directions around the circuit. Each of the four streams of water is connected to two neighbours by what are known as ion bridges. These are pathways made of polystyrene that has been treated so it will allow the passage of only one sort of ion—either sodium or chloride. Sodium and chloride ions pass out of the concentrated solution to the neighbouring weak ones by diffusion though these bridges (any chemical will diffuse from a high to a low concentration in this way). The trick is that as they do so, they make the low-concentration streams of water electrically charged. The one that is positive, because it has too much sodium, thus draws chloride ions from the stream that is to be purified. Meanwhile, the negative, chloride-rich stream draws in sodium ions. The result is that the fourth stream is stripped of its ions and emerges pure and fresh.

It is a simple idea that could be built equally well on a grand scale or as rooftop units the size of refrigerators. Of course, a lot of clever engineering is involved to make it work, but the low pressure of the pumps needed (in contradistinction to those employed in reverse osmosis) means the brine can be transported through plastic pipes rather than steel ones. Since brine is corrosive to steel, that is another advantage of Mr Sparrow’s and Mr Zoshi’s technology. Moreover, the only electricity needed is the small amount required to pump the streams of water through the apparatus. All the rest of the energy has come free, via the air, from the sun.

from:

Oct 29th 2009
From The Economist print edition

A fresh way to take the salt out of seawater

Solar Panel Pricing and Demand/Supply for 2010

2009-11-02T06:26:00.002-05:00

Executives from solar power companies see clearer skies in 2010 for the beleaguered industry, even as quarterly reports from heavyweights like First Solar Inc and SunPower Corp have disappointed investors and dragged down shares.

The industry has struggled to emerge this year from tight credit markets, a global glut of panels and falling prices..............

Executives from Sharp Corp, BP's solar unit and other solar power players shared similar optimism about the sector's outlook in 2010 at the Solar Power International conference being held in Anaheim, California, this week.

The industry, which grew at a clip of more than 40 percent for several years, has suffered in the recession, but solar companies kept a bullish attitude on growth next year.

Executives cited various forces that could drive growth in 2010, including U.S. stimulus funds for green projects, extended tax incentives and new financing...........

Kenedi said work on government projects has been a "bright spot," while BP Solar Chief Executive Reyad Fezzani said new subsidies in markets like India will spur industry growth and that Italy has built up a lot of momentum.

Fezzani predicted the sector could grow globally 50 percent next year and warned that pent-up demand could even spark fresh supply issues.........

PANEL PRICES AT PLATEAU

While panel prices have tumbled about 50 percent over the last year, companies said that the decline is slowing or has even stalled.

Still, more polysilicon is expected to come onto the market, putting margin pressure on producers of the material, which is used in the majority of panels, said Olaf Koester, chief executive of Solon's U.S. unit, based in Tucson, Arizona.

Some in the industry also remain wary that financing has yet to fully recover. BP's Fezzani said that companies still need banks to provide financing in a timely way.

"They have the intent, they have the resources, they've hired the lawyers to do the due diligence. But, frankly, the issue is they're not signing the checks and it's causing delays," Fezzani told reporters at the conference.

excerpts from reuters.com

10-29-09

By Laura Isensee

Americans using less water

2009-11-02T04:11:00.000-05:00

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Americans are using less water per person now than they have since the mid-1950s, thanks to water-saving technologies and a nationwide push to safeguard dwindling supplies.

A report released Thursday by the U.S. Geological Survey also shows that industries as well as the general population are sucking up less water overall than in 1980, when the nation's thirst for water peaked.

Experts said it was particularly welcome news in the burgeoning West, where cities built in dry regions are grappling with intense disputes and ecosystem collapse tied to dwindling supplies.

"Even during a time of population growth and economic growth, we are all using less water," said Susan Hutson, a USGS hydrologist in Memphis, and an author of the report. "It's exciting to see we have responded to these crises by really seeking solutions."

California, in the third year of a withering drought, was the most water-hungry state in 2005, the most recent year for which figures were available.

California used about 9 percent of all water extracted from lakes, rivers and underground aquifers, followed by Texas, Idaho and Illinois. All told, those four states drew more than a quarter of the country's total freshwater supplies in 2005.

Nationwide, about 80 percent of the 410 billion gallons used each day went to produce electricity at thermoelectric power plants and to irrigate farm fields.

But as the drought and environmental battles persist in California, some of the state's most productive farmers are receiving as little as 10 percent of their normal supplies, forcing growers to leave hundreds of thousands of acres unplanted and lay off thousands of farmworkers.

This year, city dwellers, too, have been forced to shorten their showers and let their lawns turn brown under mandatory water rations.

"We still have collapsing ecosystems because of water use, we still have rivers and aquifers that are overtapped, and we still have rapid population growth," said Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, an environmental think tank based in Oakland. "I guess the optimistic way to put it is, we're learning our lessons about smart water use but we have a long way to go."

Occasional shortages and disputes have arisen even around the water-rich region of the Great Lakes, which hold 95 percent of the nation's fresh surface water and meet the drinking needs of 34 million people in eight states.

Last year, the states signed a compact that limits any diversions of lake water to areas outside the drainage basin, in reaction to fears of Sun Belt water grabs.

Scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have warned that climate change will exacerbate water scarcity problems around the world. Computer models suggest a warming climate may send the Great Lakes' levels substantially lower by century's end.

"The pressure's on to conserve," said Tim Eder, director of the Great Lakes Commission, an interstate agency. "We're trying to position ourselves so we'll have an abundant supply that can be used sustainably, particularly if businesses want to relocate here from places where water is expensive or unavailable."

GARANCE BURKE, JOHN FLESHER Associated Press Writers

8:12 a.m. EDT, October 30, 2009

Japan as a guide to CO2 levels and economic activity

2009-11-01T10:48:00.002-05:00

Excerpts below from the article in Reuters point to how the Earth has benefited by the economic slow down because with lower consumer demand there is less being made therefore less pollution from manufacturing.

Sadly the same economic slow down has impacted the humans of the Earth significantly and even though the early 21st century was characterized by waste and over consumption, that style of living does create more manufacturing jobs.

The Kyoto and Copenhagen summits are for trying to bridge this gap so we can have manufacturing and growth but not damage the Earth while so doing.

A slumping economy pushed down Japanese CO2 emissions from burning fuels by a record 6.7 percent in the year to March 2009, the trade ministry said on Friday, but the country is still far from meeting its Kyoto Protocol obligations.

Improvements in energy efficiency in Japan, the world's fifth-biggest emitter, and a shift to non-fossil fuels contributed to less than 10 percent of the decline.

Japan's Kyoto commitments are to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1.19 billion tonnes in carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent on average in the five years starting from the last fiscal year, down 6 percent from 1990/1991 levels.

CO2 created from burning fuels, which are largely affected by industrial activity, account for about 90 percent of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions. CO2 from chemical reactions and other processes account for about 5 percent and the remainder is made up of other greenhouse gasses, such as hydrofluorocarbons used in refrigerators and air conditioners........

The preliminary data on Friday showed that CO2 emissions from fuel fell 6.7 percent to 1.14 billion tonnes in fiscal 2008/2009 from a year earlier when a record 1.22 billion tonnes were emitted......

The decline in CO2 emissions was mainly attributed to a record 6.8 percent decline in Japan's final energy consumption in the past fiscal year, when the world's No.2 economy shrunk by 3.2 percent and the number of people who lost their jobs rose by a hefty 640,000....

Unlike in the EU where companies being bound to compulsory emission caps play a key role in curbing greenhouse gas emissions, Japan's plans to meet its minus 6 percent reduction goal are based on voluntary emission cuts by major industries.

The plans also include buying of emissions offsets from abroad via the Kyoto Protocol's market schemes.

reuters.com
By Risa Maeda
Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:30am EDT

Greening the World of Computers

2009-10-30T05:27:00.001-05:00

The goal of producing 100% wholly-green computers is not fully realized, but the market for green hardware will grow from about $47 billion in 2009 to $223.7 billion in 2013, according to a new report.

A green computer/server, as defined by NextGen Research, is one that is built from eco-friendly materials, features low power consumption and Computer Power Management (CPM) capabilities, has fewer and smaller component parts and generates less heat than previous models, and ultimately is responsible for the emission of less CO2 into the atmosphere.

A wholly green product also would be packaged in recyclable materials and, at the end of its useful life cycle, will be traded in to the manufacturer or to another organization that will reuse and/or recycle the equipment, rather than dumping it into a landfill.

Computer and server vendors are working to make their products increasingly energy-efficient and environmentally benign, in order to tap into the growing market, NextGen Research states.

The study's author, Laura DiDio, notes that all the hardware vendors competing in the computing equipment sectors share the common philosophy that "green desktop and server hardware are good for the planet, and what's good for the planet is good for business." They're also motivated by a lengthening list of legislative initiatives that regulate everything from component materials, manufacturing guidelines, green building codes, and carbon emissions to disposal and recycling efforts.

As the recession ebbs and the economy strengthens, the burgeoning global green PC and server hardware market will be spurred by a number of key trends, which include growing electrical demand; constraints on corporate data space, power requirements and costs; and a lower cost of ownership for green computing products that can help cost-constrained corporations keep more green in their wallets over the long term.

Ms. DiDio also notes that governmental and utility incentives and mandates to curb power consumption and reduce carbon footprints will help spur demand for green computing equipment. However, she says, "It will take years beyond the forecast period before all computer and server hardware consists of electrically efficient devices made up of biodegradable, recyclable and/or reusable parts."

The report "Green Computing: Reducing the Environmental Impact of PCs, Servers By Using Safer Materials, Slashing Power Needs" is available online.

10-6-09
By SustainableBusiness.com - Matter Network

Improving Energy Efficiency of Existing Commercial Buildings

2009-10-29T11:24:00.001-05:00

About 50 businesses were approved by an Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority committee today to enter the second year of a program designed to bolster the energy efficiency of downtown buildings.

The businesses, large and small, represent about 560,000 square feet in downtown Ann Arbor — roughly 200,000 square feet more than last year, when the DDA launched its Downtown Energy Saving Grant Program and had 40 downtown businesses participate.

Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, says the program has clear environmental benefits.

“More importantly, this is about saving money,” she said. “If we can get our businesses and our building owners to rein in some of their overhead costs, some of their energy costs, that may be some of what helps to keep them going. ... This is absolutely about helping businesses and building owners get through this tough time.”

Participating companies receive a free energy audit from a city-approved contractor, worth anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 for large buildings, according to Pollay.

The auditor will identify a custom list of improvements that would boost energy efficiency.

After consultation with the DDA, landlords then pick which energy efficiency improvements to make. After the improvements are made, the DDA rebates half of the landlord's cost, up to $20,000.

The DDA budgeted $150,000 for audits and $250,000 for improvements.

More than 370,000 square feet across 31 buildings were audited in last year's program. Those audits recommended about $880,000 worth of energy-saving improvements, which collectively would save an estimated $180,000 in annual energy costs, according to DDA figures.

Jim Curtis, co-owner of Curtis Commerical L.L.C., enrolled in the program after reading about it last year in the now-defunct Ann Arbor News.

His property management firm owns eight buildings in the 200 and 300 blocks of South Main Street. A total of roughly 50,000 square feet was audited, Curtis said.

Curtis agreed to front about $45,000 in energy efficiency improvements spread throughout his properties, mostly by updating lighting and windows. Even though Curtis' firm has made energy efficient investments in the past, he credited the DDA's program for spurring these improvements.

“We would not have done them … had it not been for the support of the DDA,” Curtis said. “There's no question that we have accelerated and prioritized the energy efficiency programs provided through the DDA as our capital improvement projects for this year and next.”

Crains Detroit Business
POSTED: 4:29 p.m., Oct. 14, 2009
Ryan Beene

German Hoards Light Bulbs before the EU ban

2009-10-29T05:55:00.000-05:00

Reporting from Frankfurt, Germany - Here's a twist: How many lightbulbs does it take to change a person?

For Ulf Erdmann Ziegler, the answer is 3,000. That's how many bulbs are squirreled away in his modest apartment here in Frankfurt, the number that turned an otherwise ordinary guy into a hoarder, made him the object of his neighbors' pity and got him thinking about death and divorce.

His enormous stockpile is the fruit of a frenzied summer shopping spree. For weeks, he spent many of his waking hours on the phone and online tracking down vendors and snapping up enough incandescent bulbs to last him the rest of his life.

The buying binge was necessary, he said, to beat a ban by the European Union. As of Sept. 1, the manufacture and import of 100-watt incandescent bulbs have been outlawed within the EU, to be followed by their dimmer brethren in coming years. Once current stocks are gone, such bulbs will join Thomas Edison in the history books.

"It will run out," Ziegler warned of the limited supply, "and everyone will be sorry."

The ban is part of the EU's effort to retard global warming. The object is to encourage people to switch from traditional energy-wasting incandescent bulbs to compact fluorescent lamps, which last longer and are up to 75% more efficient.

For EU officials, it's all about the math. Ditching old-fashioned bulbs, they say, will save nearly 40 billion kilowatt-hours a year by 2020, equivalent to the output of 10 power stations. Australia has already abandoned incandescent bulbs, and the United States is set to begin phasing them out in the next few years as well.

But not everyone considers it such a bright idea. The ban has been met with some resistance in Europe, showing what happens when the collective goal of greening the planet clashes with issues of individual choice and even aesthetics.

Dissenters such as Ziegler have sprung up across the continent, people who complain that fluorescent lamps are inferior, more expensive and come with their own environmental problems. Art galleries fret over how best to display their works without the warm glow cast by incandescent bulbs. A petition to save the conventional bulb is circulating on the Internet.

There have also been reports of runs on lighting stores. In Britain, where major retailers began taking 100-watt incandescent bulbs off their shelves even earlier, in January, a retired teacher in southern England spent $800 of her pension to buy 1,000 of them.

"There's been quite a bit of consumer backlash," acknowledged Peter Hunt, chief executive of Britain's Lighting Assn. "A lot of it we expected."

To help consumers and manufacturers get used to the change, the EU decided not to ax all incandescent bulbs at once. Last month's ban covers 100-watt clear bulbs and all frosted ones. Clear 40- and 60-watt incandescents are to be eased out by September 2012.

The advantages of the ban outweigh any deficiencies, EU officials say. Good-quality fluorescent bulbs can last years, many times the life span of regular bulbs, so although they cost more, they are more economical in the long run.

The new lamps also cut electricity bills because of their more efficient use of energy. In conventional bulbs, most of the energy is lost as heat rather than converted to light.

"You can . . . look at it the same way that you're looking at improvements of washing machines and fridges, where consumers don't even notice that the fridges [have] become more efficient," said Andras Toth, a policy officer in the EU's energy directorate.

Maybe. But then how to explain that low-energy fluorescent lamps have been around for 25 years but have never caught on with consumers? Though he supports the switch-over, Hunt acknowledges that there were good reasons why fluorescent bulbs were passed over on store shelves.

"The early ones were the size of large jam jars, they flickered, they had a cold blue light and they took a long time to switch on," he said. "So it's not surprising that consumers have a bad preconception of this lighting."

The technology has improved considerably on all those counts, Hunt said. But fluorescent bulbs haven't shaken their bad rap.

Their start-up time still lags well behind the instant on-and-off of incandescent bulbs. They cannot be used with dimmer switches. And the most commonly available ones still do not provide the same spectrum of light as the old lamps, which worries art collectors, photographers and others who need light sources that offer sharp color rendition. (Officials point out that halogen bulbs, which give off light of a similar quality to incandescent varieties, remain on the market.)

Then there is the fluorescent bulbs' mercury content, up to 5 milligrams per bulb. Cleaning up a shattered bulb requires more than just sweeping up jagged shards: Users should ventilate the room and avoid touching pieces with bare skin.

Still, "if you compare it to other mercury content, like dental fillings, the amount we're talking about is really rather small," Toth said. "And you have to be extremely unlucky to be exposed to it in a dangerous way."

None of that cuts any ice with Ziegler.

A writer and former art critic, he sees the EU's ban as unnecessarily extreme. Why not slap a tax on the old-fashioned bulbs, rather than outlaw them entirely?

"The law just says you can't use the best lightbulb ever invented," he grumbled.

A few months ago, with the Sept. 1 deadline looming like a neon sign, he decided to take preemptive action.

With typical German precision, he went through every room of his apartment with a floor plan in hand, marking an X wherever there was a light fixture -- about 25 in all -- and noting what kind of bulb it required. Then he took the checklist to his local vendor, who worked out how many bulbs Ziegler would need for the next decade.

"I said forget 10 years," Ziegler recalled. "I want a lifetime supply."

That, though, posed an unanticipated question. At 50, he suddenly had to ponder -- or guess -- how much longer he expected to live. He drafted his wife into his existential contemplations, and together, like actuaries, they finally decided that a lifetime supply meant enough bulbs to last 30 years.

Laying his hands on 3,000 incandescent bulbs was another story. He cleaned out one supplier and went on to the next, seeking them out on the Internet. Bulky packages kept arriving at the apartment, and "I was not unaware of the pitying looks of my neighbors," he confessed in a newspaper column.

Thankfully, his wife supported his panic buying, because she "hates [fluorescent bulbs] even more than I do," Ziegler said.

But that sparked yet another uncomfortable discussion. Who gets custody of the hoard in case of divorce? (Stay tuned.)

For now, the incandescent cache is carefully stowed away in the attic, to which Ziegler disappears to extract an unusually shaped bulb to show a visitor the way a wine lover might disappear down the cellar to produce a prized bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild.

Ziegler still hopes the EU ban will somehow fail, or be repealed. He's mulling the idea of writing a political manifesto on behalf of the incandescent bulb, laying out its history and its merits.

And he urges people to build their own stockpiles as soon as they can, before supplies dry up.

"If you want to get in on it, get in," he said. "It's not too late."

10-18-09
henry.chu@latimes.com

Teaching Kids to go Green by Making Schools go Green

2009-10-28T05:40:00.003-05:00

This is a very important initiative for the future of the USA.
If today's kids are taught the importance and the "why" of saving energy, then possibly they will demand less energy for their upcoming adult lives than has our generation and the whole thing spirals in a positive direction of less natural resource use and less dependence on non-USA sources of raw energy basics.

This year, New York City became the largest school district in the country to announce that it would “go green.” This is no small undertaking—the district has more than 1200 buildings and 1 million students—but efforts are already paying off. “In one building, becoming more energy-efficient helped slash electric bills in half,” says John Shea, chief executive for the NYC Department of Education’s Division of School Facilities. And just as important, Shea adds, is that students can take the positive message home to their families and communities.

With these recent efforts to green its schools, New York has joined a growing movement to create learning environments that benefit both students and the health of the planet. States including New Jersey and Maryland have passed legislation requiring all new school buildings to meet stricter standards of sustainability, and others are taking similar measures. The benefits could be enormous. “Going green can save large sums of money, reduce a school’s carbon footprint, and teach children the importance of being environmentally aware,” says Jennifer Freeman, a volunteer with the Green Schools Alliance, which works with nearly 2000 schools nationwide.

At a time when many districts are strapped for cash, the financial savings in electricity and water bills may be particularly enticing. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, taxpayers spend about $8 billion a year on energy for K–12 schools. But, Freeman says, “if everyone went green, we could reduce that by about 35%.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean building brand-new schools or implementing costly renovations in existing ones. Small steps—like setting computers to shut down at night or installing motion sensors to turn off lights when no one is in the room—have a large environmental and financial impact. Even just putting a recycling bin in the cafeteria and adjusting the heat or air-conditioning by a few degrees can make a difference.

Schools should encourage parents to get involved, too, by sending their children to school with reusable lunch bags and not leaving their cars idling at the curb during pick-up and drop-off times. They’ll lower their household bills and set a good example at the same time.

The Green Schools Alliance suggests that students join staff in a scavenger hunt to find other ways to lower energy use in their schools and homes. “We breed leaders by making them feel in control of energy usage at their school,” Freeman says. “They are helping the planet and saving money. Most of all, they are becoming part of a community of people working to make the world a better place.”

from parade.com
by Emily Listfield

published: 10/25/2009

Obama and the Smart Grid

2009-10-27T05:10:00.001-05:00

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will announce the largest investment of economic stimulus funds in clean energy during a visit to Florida, an Obama administration official said on Monday.

The announcement will involve the smart grid, which will help bring energy from clean domestic sources to consumers in 49 states and help build a strong and more reliable electricity grid, the official said.

Obama is to travel to Arcadia, Florida, on Tuesday to make the speech and take a tour of the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center.

Separately, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden plans on Tuesday to visit a closed General Motors plant in Wilmington, Delaware, where he is expected to announce that it will be reopened for the building of plug-in hybrid electric cars.

The California-based venture capital firm Fisker Automotive Inc has reached a deal to buy the former GM assembly plant and plans to use it for the manufacture of the cars, according to a source familiar with the details of Biden's visit.

A White House statement on Biden's visit said he planned a major announcement about the assembly plant's future, but gave no other details. Delaware is Biden's home state.

10-26-09
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle

Micro-inverters will make Solar Electric Home Power more practical

2009-10-27T05:04:00.000-05:00

We recently took some continuing ed on solar electric. One of the neat things the professor focused on is the emergence of micro-inverters.
An inverter is a sophisticated electric switching box that converts DC current wavelengths to AC current wavelengths so solar, which is DC can power a conventional home which is AC.
The traditional method of inverting is to have the collective DC power from all solar panels funnel to one main inverter which then converts the collective amount of power from DC to AC. The micro-inverter as we see in the article below replaces the one main inverter with many smaller ones that are solar panel specific.

If you’re just getting familiar with solar electric technology, you probably know at this point that there are two major components necessary to produce usable electricity from the sun. Simply slapping panels up on your roof and running wire down to your home won’t do a whole lot of good unless you plan on vaporizing your spouse. To convert that direct current from the panels into usable electricity, what is required is a pretty bulky box called an inverter. So, you might imagine that a “micro-inverter” would simply be a smaller version of this box, right? Kinda like a “micro-chip” or a “micro-machine” or “micro-economics” (ugh)? The short answer is, “uh-huh”. In sum, this micro-technology is a hell of a lot better for many reasons. To understand why though, let’s get a little more familiar with “regular” inverters and how they work with solar panels...............

In a conventional solar power system, interdependent strings of panels are placed on roofs and operate in much the same fashion as Hector’s miners. Panel A, Panel B, and Panel C are a lot like Juan, Domingo, and Maria. If one panel gets obstructed even by just a little bit by a big leaf, bird poop, or lovely tree shade, the entire string of solar panels suffers, sending significantly less or even no raw power down the line. Each panel needs to work with other panels in the string to get raw power to the inverter. The regular inverter is a lot like Jose, taking the direct, rough, unfinished current from the combined panels and converting it into sparkly, glittery alternating current you can use in your home. So, when shading or obstructions impact one of the panels (a lot like Juan, Domingo, or Maria taking a breather), the inverter (Jose) has a lot less raw material or current to work with. Let’s go back to the mine.

What if you placed small robots alongside Juan, Domingo, and Maria to monitor their performance and carefully polish raw diamond material into finished diamonds? Then, even if Domingo is unable to find any raw diamond material to extract, Maria can still be extracting, polishing, and producing. In addition to teaching your employees new skills (which by the way has been related to lower turnover), you are now a lot less reliant on a disgruntled employee (Jose), you can increase your diamond harvest, and you are able to eliminate a point of failure along your production line. Your only concern is that your workers get along well with their new micromanaging robot companions.

This is precisely the reasoning which led Enphase Energy engineers to create micro-inverters. Micro-inverters are attached to every single solar panel in the system and each one is capable of converting direct current from its solar panel into usable electricity – independent of other panels on the string. This means that even if one panel gets shaded a little bit by dust, bird poop, or a tree, the other panels are still capable of feeding usable electricity into your home or business. Moreover, you are no longer reliant on the regular inverter, a bulky eyesore of a box that has a lifespan of 10-20 years. Currently, if you have a massive solar installation on your commercial plant, when your inverter fails, you need to purchase all of your electricity from the grid until it gets replaced. That can represent a sizable chunk of unplanned cash out of pocket.

In addition to more uptime, micro-inverters allow system owners to monitor the energy output of each individual panel, alerting them if one is underperforming (Each micro-inverter can send a signal through your internet connection so that you can see how well each one is doing). What’s more, you can now combine different types of panels together and place them at different orientations to the sun and still expect good production out of them – unheard of before. Finally, micro-inverters allow your solar system to be scalable – meaning you can purchase a few panels to start out with, then add onto your system without additional engineering outlays. Lab tests indicate these micro-inverters will have a lifespan of about 120 years.

Published on August 23, 2008 by Dan Hahn.
solarpowerrocks.com

Outlaw Clotheslines???

2009-10-26T04:32:00.000-05:00

CANTON, Ohio — After taking a class that covered global warming last year, Jill Saylor decided to save energy by drying her laundry on a clothesline at her mobile home.

“I figured trailer parks were the one place left where hanging your laundry was actually still allowed,” she said, standing in front of her tidy yellow mobile home on an impeccably manicured lawn.

But she was wrong. Like the majority of the 60 million people who now live in the country’s roughly 300,000 private communities, Ms. Saylor was forbidden to dry her laundry outside because many people viewed it as an eyesore, not unlike storing junk cars in driveways, and a marker of poverty that lowers property values.

In the last year, however, state lawmakers in Colorado, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont have overridden these local rules with legislation protecting the right to hang laundry outdoors, citing environmental concerns since clothes dryers use at least 6 percent of all household electricity consumption.

Florida and Utah already had such laws, and similar bills are being considered in Maryland, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia, clothesline advocates say.

The new laws have provoked a debate. Proponents argue they should not be prohibited by their neighbors or local community agreements from saving on energy bills or acting in an environmentally minded way. Opponents say the laws lifting bans erode local property rights and undermine the autonomy of private communities.

“It’s already hard enough to sell a house in this economy,” said Frank Rathbun, a spokesman for the national Community Associations Institute, an advocacy and education organization in Alexandria, Va., for community associations. “And when it comes to clotheslines, it should be up to each community association, not state lawmakers, to set rules, much like it is with rules involving parking, architectural guidelines or pets.”

As much a cultural clash as a political and economic one, the issue is causing tensions as homeowners, landlords and property managers have traded nasty letters and threats of legal action.

“I think sheets dangling in the wind are beautiful if they’re helping the environment,” said Mary Lou Sayer, 88, who was told firmly by fellow residents at her condominium in Concord, N.H., that she could not hang her laundry outdoors after her daughter recently suggested she do so to save energy.

Richard Jacques, 63, president of the condominium’s board, said he moved to the community specifically for its strict regulations. “Those rules are why when I look out my window I now see birds, trees and flowers, not laundry,” he said.

Driven in part by the same nostalgia that has restored the popularity of canning and private vegetable gardens, the right-to-dry movement has spawned an eclectic coalition.

“The issue has brought together younger folks who are more pro-environment and very older folks who remember a time before clotheslines became synonymous with being too poor to afford a dryer,” said a Democratic lawmaker from Virginia, State Senator Linda T. Puller, who introduced a bill last session that would prohibit community associations in the state from restricting the use of “wind energy drying devices” — i.e., clotheslines.

At least eight states already limit the ability of homeowners associations to restrict the installation of solar-energy systems, and legal experts are debating whether clotheslines might qualify.

“It seems like such a mundane thing, hanging laundry, and yet it draws in all these questions about individual rights, private property, class, aesthetics, the environment,” said Steven Lake, a British filmmaker who is releasing a documentary next May called “Drying for Freedom,” about the clothesline debate in the United States.

The film follows the actual case of feuding neighbors in Verona, Miss., where the police say one man shot and killed another last year because he was tired of telling the man to stop hanging his laundry outside.

Jeanne Bridgforth, a real estate agent in Richmond, Va., said that while she had no personal opinion on clotheslines, most of her clients were not thrilled with the idea of seeing their neighbors’ underwear blowing in the breeze.

She recalled how she was unable to sell a beautifully restored Victorian home in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond because it looked out onto a neighbor’s laundry hanging from a second-story back porch. In June, the house went into foreclosure.

“Where does it end?” Ms. Bridgforth said of the legislative push to prevent housing associations from forbidding clotheslines.

Dwight Merriam, a lawyer from Hartford and an expert in zoning law, dismissed this concern.

“This is not some slippery slope toward government micromanaging of private agreements,” Mr. Merriam said, adding, however, that for these state laws to succeed they need to exempt existing agreements.

One of the biggest barriers to change, he said, is that most housing compacts that were written more than 30 or so years ago allow rules to be altered only if 80 percent to 100 percent of the association members attend a meeting and vote, which rarely happens.

Ms. Saylor, from the mobile home park, said, “Pressure makes a difference.” After a petition calling on the owner of the property where she lived to reverse the prohibition against line drying laundry, she said, the owner recently acquiesced.

But Alexander Lee, a lawyer in Concord, N.H., who runs a Web site, Project Laundry List to promote hanging clothes to dry, said the actual electricity consumption by dryers was probably three times as much as federal estimates because those estimates did not take into account actual use at laundromats and in multifamily homes.

Change promises to be slow, said Mr. Lee, 35. “There are a lot of kids these days who don’t even know what a clothespin is,” he said. “They think it’s a potato chip clip.”

nytimes.com

By IAN URBINA

Published: October 10, 2009

Living Off the Grid in central Florida

2009-10-24T05:06:00.002-05:00

After a year of living with no indoor shower, dishwasher or central air-conditioning, an east Orange County couple calls it an off-the-grid paradise.

Terry and Tia Meer built their electric-sipping, super-efficient log cabin down a gravel path alongside the Econlockhatchee River as a way to live what they preach -- making as little environmental impact as possible.

"You don't have to live uncomfortably, totally cut off from the world or in a tent to use less energy," said Tia Meer, 30, recently as she tended one of the couple's vegetable gardens on their 5-acre plot near Christmas.

The Meers, who met about a decade ago when both were students at the University of Central Florida, are among the founders of the Orlando-based nonprofit called the Simple Living Institute. The group is dedicated to promoting environmentally friendly lifestyles through organic gardening, meager energy use and other methods.

They moved into their 1,024-square-foot Florida Cracker-style house last fall to show how that lifestyle is possible. A few months later, the pair got some national attention in the January issue of O, The Oprah Magazine about people living in environmentally friendly ways. Their fame has waned a bit, but folks still stumble across the Meers' story online. Others stop by for weekend plant sales or to learn about living off the grid.

"The grid" is the common term for the electricity network and wires that deliver power to the masses. It also loosely refers to most public utilities.

But unlike the hippie idealism of the 1970s that encouraged people to homestead like early American pioneers, today's off-the-grid movement doesn't shun all modern conveniences. The Meers have electric lights, a small air conditioner for the bedroom and a refrigerator. They do their laundry at coin-operated laundromats. And during a summer heat wave, the pair admitted to fleeing to the air-conditioned comfort of a public library.

"We just had to," Tia Meer said.

Solar panels linked to a bank of batteries give them the electric juice to run a few appliances and recharge batteries in their cell phones and computers. Rain-catchers on the roof store up enough water for the Meers' showers, their banana grove and vegetable gardens, as well as their five red hens and a stray cat.

Their outdoor shower is inside a Gilligan's Island-like frame of sticks and honeysuckle vines, on the side of the house. Neither complained about ever getting bug-bitten, and the shower doubles as an irrigation system for their banana grove. They also have a backup well to use during Florida's seasonal dry spells.

The Meers have no water bill, and their electric bill is only about $30 a month, which includes a $10 minimum monthly service charge, said Terry Meer, 34.

Orlando Utilities Commission spokesman Sheridan Becht said the power company doesn't know of anyone who lives 100 percent "off the grid," but said about 160 homes in the area augment their electricity with solar power.

The most well-known solar-power enthusiast in Orlando is Dr. Robert Stonerock Jr., a retired kidney specialist who has followed the Meers' progress.

"What they've done is a rare phenomenon, especially in this area where energy is still relatively cheap compared to other parts of the U.S.," Stonerock said. "For just the two of them, doing this on their own, I think is extraordinary."

Tia Meer's mother, Shirley Silvasy, said she didn't bat an eye when her daughter first talked about building an off-the-grid house about four years ago.

"I'm tickled that she's followed through on this," Silvasy said. "It sounds unconventional, but she grew up spending her summers with my mom on her farm in Pennsylvania. I think she learned her independence there."

Tia Meer, who works as a native plants expert, and Terry Meer, who has his own low-energy advisory company, spend a lot of their spare time tending to their squash, tomato and bean gardens.

Their monthly grocery bill is about $50, Terry Meer said.

"Our next project is to build a carport with more solar arrays on top, so we can cut that [electric] bill down to zero," he said.

The Meers also get by on organic eggs from a half-dozen hens in a coop they share with their neighbors on Hamilton Drive.

Neighbor Rusty Mauer, who watched the Meers' house go up last year, attests to their determination.

"I couldn't believe it when they started," Mauer said. "And I didn't think that they'd hang in there, but they're driven. And look at this place. It's marvelous." Tia Meer said that after a year on the Econ, she can't imagine living anywhere else.

"This is our home; we live here for real and probably for the rest of our lives."

10-22-09
Rich McKay can be reached at rmckay@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5470.

Solar PV Panel Global Over Inventory

2009-10-23T06:01:00.000-05:00

According to Industrial Info Resources, half of all solar panels manufactured in 2009 will not be sold, resulting in a massive oversupply that will take until at least three years to sort out. Technology value chain research and advisory corporation, iSuppli, reports that a collapse in demand is responsible for the glut of panels.

The reduced demand is largely the result of changes in Spain's feed-in tariffs. In September last year, the Spanish government announced a 500-megawatt (MW) cap on solar installations for 2009, alongside reduced feed-in tariffs. While not as severe as the 300-MW cap originally proposed, the move has severely curtailed Spain's need for solar panels. Spain accounted for 50% of worldwide installations in 2008.

Reports from iSuppli also state that the demand drop has led to a massive buildup of inventory throughout the supply chain, ranging from polysilicon to photovoltaic cells to complete solar systems. Despite this, solar cell and panel makers have continued to increase capacity and production of solar cells, exacerbating the situation.

For 2009, total solar panel production will grow 14.3% to 7.5 gigawatts (GW), up from 6.5 GW in 2008. However, only 3.9 GW worth of installations will take place this year, meaning that almost one out of every two panels produced in 2009 will not be installed, but stored in inventory.

iSuppli announced, "Even in the face of the downturn, many panel and cell producers have continued to ramp up their capacities as if a recession had never occurred. Most companies are doing this in order to maintain their share in the market. As a result, Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd. (Jiangsu, China) will push Q-Cells aside and become the No. 1 producer of crystalline cells in 2009, we predict. Sharp Corp. (Osaka, Japan), Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. (Baoding, China) and JA Solar also will defend their top-five positions this year by not reducing their solar-cell production increases. Those suppliers that have reduced or made adjustments to their production of cells and panels as a result of the softening demand have seen their short- and mid-term strategies falter. These suppliers include Q-Cells, SunPower and BP Solar."

One of the world's largest manufacturers of solar cells, German company Q-Cells SE (Bitterfeld-Wolfen), recently announced plans to slash 500 jobs from the company's 2,600-strong workforce in order to deal with depressed prices in the sector. Q-Cells withdrew the company's 2009 sales forecast in July, claiming that the price drop and high operating costs were responsible for a 62 million euro second-quarter operating loss.

Just this month, Chinese solar rivals LDK Solar Co. Ltd. (Xinyu) and JA Solar Holdings Co. Ltd. limited posted miserable quarterly results due to the price slump caused by oversupply and reduced demand.

8-26-09
Source: Industrial Info Resources, a leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy related markets.

Can New York City go Green?

2009-10-23T05:56:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Recession-stricken New York City plans to double its current green work force by creating over 13,000 new jobs in the next decade, partly by competing with London to become the new center for carbon trading, a city official said on Wednesday.

London, whose prominence as a financial capital rivals New York City and Tokyo, got an early lock in trading pollution credits by training lawyers, accountants and other experts "before the market even existed," Seth Pinsky, president of the Economic Development Corporation, told Reuters.

New York City's new boot camp in green finance will be run by the State University of New York's Levin Institute. It will be open to laid-off workers or future entrepreneurs, much like an already "booming" incubator for financial start-ups, Pinsky said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who made his first fortune as a Wall Street bond trader before getting into politics, is expected to announce on Thursday this green job branch to his two-year-old PlaNYC program, which set ambitious goals for reducing greenhouse gases, planting 1 million trees and crowning skyscrapers with wind turbines.

The mayor's $7.5 million green jobs plan will call on Columbia University to help offer public school pupils "hands-on" learning in energy efficiency, according to Bloomberg, who is running as an independent candidate for a third term. His plan also will create an Urban Technology Innovation Center to tap academic research. Existing city and state funds and federal stimulus dollars will pay for it.

HARNESSING THE WIND AND RAYS

New York City residents and businesses spend about $15 billion a year on energy -- one of the biggest U.S. markets. The city will capitalize on its breezy coastlines by installing wind turbines at Hunts Point in The Bronx, for example, instead of beginning with the rooftop windmills critics said might prove unsafe. Solar projects are planned for the Brooklyn Army Terminal, which would produce enough power for 100 households for a year. More solar projects are planned in Long Island City.

The city is already testing turbines in the Hudson River off Roosevelt Island to take advantage of strong local tides.

New York City has 5 billion square feet of building stock -- more than any peer -- and building codes will be overhauled to encourage owners to add energy saving and other green technologies. Developers and building owners will be able to share their experiences at the new technology center.

Many U.S. cities and states also have green agendas and some seem to be following in Bloomberg's footsteps. New York City was the first large city to use energy-saving traffic lights, Pinsky's spokesman said.

Houston's Mayor Bill White, a Democrat, said on Wednesday that over half of his city's 2,425 traffic signals now have LED lights, which will save $190,626 a year.

Bloomberg has already launched an incubator for media entrepreneurs.

Fashion, bioscience and higher education are next.

"We've got great schools, but they tended in the past to be Ivory Tower places, which don't really connect with the real economy," Pinsky said. "We're trying to make that connection."

Europe's cap-and-trade program to cut greenhouse-gas emissions is more advanced than anything in this country. New York and nine of its Northeast neighbors already have a cap-and-trade market, but President Barack Obama's plan is still winding through Congress.

reuters 10/22/09

By Joan Gralla

Making Profit vs Protecting Nature

2009-10-22T05:18:00.002-05:00

We feel the UN study on sustainable manufacturing practices is a very important look at the relationship between the human and non human participants of the Earth experience.

Humans are taught that their Earth experience is the sole reason for the Earth to exist but this UN effort shows that humans and non humans must attempt to live in some type of position of mutual respect.

Everything produced by humans comes from some type of raw material and has some type of waste of production.

The manufacturers that make their products with the smallest amount of raw material and recycle or reuse the largest amount of production waste should be rewarded by tax policy or other incentives to give their shareholders a higher return for this stewardship of nature.

OSLO (Reuters) - Companies must step up efforts to safeguard nature, according to a U.N.-backed study on Thursday that praised consumer foods giant Unilever as among few firms doing enough.

The report, looking at 31 companies in the food, drink and tobacco industries, predicted increasing risks to raw materials supplies and reputation for firms that undervalued natural services such as healthy soils, water and insect pollination.

"Many companies are failing to adequately address the issue of sustainable sourcing," according to the study by the U.N. Environment Program's Finance Initiative, conservation charity Fauna & Flora International and a Brazilian business school.

The "Natural Value Initiative" (NVI) study said only Unilever qualified as "best practice" in the survey, judged against a new Ecosystem Services Benchmark.

"British retailer Marks & Spencer also performed well," it added. "Both companies were distinguished by their well-documented, strategic and risk-focused approach."

Unilever, for instance, had guidelines for sustainable use of farm crops ranging from palm oil to peas.

A U.N. report last year estimated that the world was losing $50 billion in natural services -- ranging from water purification by wetlands to pollination by bees -- every year.

A rising world population, set to reach 9 billion by 2050 from 6.8 billion now, is damaging nature by raising demand for food with spinoffs including deforestation, pollution and climate change.

In other sectors -- but scoring lower than Unilever -- United Plantations was best among food producers, BAT top in tobacco and SABMiller and Fosters scored highest among beverage groups.

NO CLEAR STRATEGY

Annelisa Grigg, project director of the Natural Value Initiative for Fauna & Flora, said too many companies had only piecemeal policies for sourcing raw materials.

"They lack a clear strategy," she told Reuters. The study said it was the first comprehensive analysis looking at the sector's impacts and dependence on ecosystems.

Among retailers, for instance, J. Sainsbury and Carrefour were alone in addressing pollination.

About 35 percent of world food production benefits from animal pollination, worth $112-$200 billion a year. But bees are in decline due to pollution, disease and loss of habitats.

Grigg said the survey, which looked mostly at multinationals as well as a few Brazilian firms, did not name the worst performers. A wider ranking was likely in future.

She said there were signs that investors were shifting away from a short-term focus to demand that companies did more to protect nature -- even though stripping nature, for instance, could often boost short-term profits.

Assets under management in the fast-growing socially responsible investments industry stand at $2.71 trillion, more than a tenth of total assets held by U.S.-based investors, according to the Social Investment Forum.

"Companies and their investors have long taken ecosystems for granted as if they came for free," said Karina Litvack, of F&C Investments which was among asset managers helping to design the benchmark for the study.

Among signs of companies surveyed trying to track their dependence on nature, a study by PepsiCo showed that the biggest element of greenhouse gases linked to its orange juice was caused by fertilizers.

reuters 10/22/09
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

Forest Fund for Carbon Offsets

2009-10-21T08:05:00.001-05:00

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - South Africa's Standard Bank is close to launching a A$250 million ($230 million) forestry fund in Australia, aimed at selling carbon offsets to companies, in what is believed to be the largest fund of its kind so far.

It will focus on companies that will need to meet emissions reduction targets under carbon trading laws awaiting approval by the Australian Senate, said Singapore-based William Pazos, global head of origination and finance at Standard Bank.

"The fund is targeted at compliance buyers that don't want to get involved in management of forests but are really interested in the underlying credits that are going to be generated by the forests," Pazos told Reuters.

The fund is still in the planning stages but is expected to be formally launched in the next few weeks, he added.

The fund is believed to be the largest and most ambitious to be launched so far covering the fledgling carbon forestry sector in Australia, said Sean Lucy, head of environmental finance solutions at National Australia Bank.

The fund will cover the planting and management of 50,000 ha (125,000 acres). Perth-based agribusiness investment firm Rewards Group Ltd would plant and manage the forests, Pazos said.

Forests soak up planet-warming carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels. Managed forests that meet government or U.N. guidelines can yield saleable offsets, with one offset representing a ton of CO2 locked away by trees as they grow.

Companies can buy offsets to meet greenhouse emissions reduction targets set by governments.

Australia's planned carbon-trading scheme, if passed, would oblige about 1,000 of the nation's most polluting firms to meet increasingly tougher emissions targets.

TIMING, PRICE

The emissions from those firms, called compliance buyers, covers about 75 percent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

The government will re-introduce the emissions bills in the lower house of parliament later this week and expects a final vote in the Senate, which rejected the laws earlier this year, in the last week of November.

If the legislation is passed, forestry would be the first sector to operate under the scheme from July 2010, followed by a fixed A$10 per ton carbon price for a year from July 2011 for other sectors except agriculture.

While the fund was ambitious, investors needed to ask if the timing was right and whether there would be sufficient appetite for offsets, given the legislative uncertainty, Lucy said.

Another issue was price.

"It is all going to come down to price as these things are going to have to compete with CERs and the like," said Gary Cox, vice president, commodities, energy, Newedge Australia.

He was referring to U.N.-backed carbon offsets called certified emissions reductions, which Australian firms will also be able to buy to meet their emissions targets.

In July, Origin Energy, Australia's second-largest power retailer, signed a deal to fund a mass planting of trees as a hedge for its own carbon-emission liabilities.

If the deal was fully implemented, contingent on the national scheme being enacted, the carbon forest-sink development program could be worth up to A$169 million over 15 years, Origin said.

($1=92.7 Australian cents)

Reuters 10/20/09
By David Fogarty, Climate Change Correspondent, Asia

Bikes(Bicycles), Cars, and People in the USA

2009-10-20T12:07:00.003-05:00

Bikes(Bicycles), cars, and people are an interesting triumvirate in the USA.
They all exist on the roads but in varying degrees of politeness and coexistence.

One of our co workers was almost injured badly while riding his bike(bicycle) Saturday in a residential area on a sanctioned city bike lane when an auto owner opened the door of his parked car directly, without disregard, in the path of the on-coming bike and our friend who slammed head first into the door.

Thankfully we feel he is ok but it does bring up this crazy relationship of the bike, the car, and the human.

If public transport was wide spread, the need for the car in an urban setting would be nil since the public transport and the bike would do the job.
[a funny aside- I see where some German sex clubs are offering free admission to those who arrive on their bike vs their car]
But in most parts of America the biker is considered a real pest to the car owners and drivers.

I feel this could be changed during drivers ed training. I would imagine most folks do not realize that the biker has some of the same rights as the car driver on certain non major roads. It needs to be emphasized more by authorities.

A friend told me the other day of an incident he experienced. He was in a biking group that goes about town once monthly. They group together and take up one lane as they are allowed by law.
Apparently a car driver tried to enter the group and hit one biker seriously. The car driver did not stop immediately. The bikers ended up surrounding his vehicle forcing him to stop until the police came.

Strength in numbers did the job in this case but most times a lone bike rider is at the mercy of luck and a higher being when on the paved road competing with the car.

Of course a tax rebate or credit for biking rather than car riding would certainly get a few more folks on their bikes and out of the car which would help their health, reduce gas demand, and make the totality of bikers greater so that they would have more leverage over the car driver.

I will have to admit there are times I am in the car and am forced to wait for a biker to pass and sometimes my initial instinct is one of perturbation, but thankfully I remember oh yea I'm a biker so I need to treat this fellow twin wheeler with respect.

Just be careful when you are biking out there and search google for your local municipal rights as a biker.

New Renewable Energy Grid

2009-10-19T07:02:00.001-05:00

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - By any yardstick, it's an ambitious project: allow energy to flow more freely across the nation's three massive power grids, breaking down significant barriers to ramping up alternative energy in the United States.

A proposed "Tres Amigas Super Station" in Clovis, N.M., would do just that, routing energy from isolated wind and solar installations to urban centers and other places that consume the most power.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who served as President Bill Clinton's energy secretary, said the transmission station would be "historic."

"This is going to be the largest power converter in the world, making New Mexico the meeting place for America's electricity needs," he said at a news conference Tuesday to unveil the project.

The transmission hub would be located across 22 square miles in eastern New Mexico near the Texas border. Clovis was chosen because it is nearest to where the nation's three power grids — called the East, West and Texas interconnections — come closest together.

No above ground power lines
Tres Amigas would build a triangular pathway of underground superconductor pipelines, combined with AC/DC converters that synchronize the flow of power between the interconnections. The equipment allows electricity to be transferred from grid to grid.

Construction could begin in 2011 or 2012, and the hub could be running in 2013 or 2014, said Phil Harris, chief executive of the Santa Fe-based Tres Amigas.

The pipelines, 3 feet in diameter, contain hair-thin ceramic fibers developed by Devens, Mass.-based American Superconductor and can carry enough electricity to power 2.5 million homes.

"That's how we're going to break the power gridlock in this country," said Greg Yurek, the company's founder and chief executive.

American Superconductor has partnered with scientists at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and Argonne national laboratories for two decades to develop the superconductor, which already is being used in Columbus, Ohio; and Long Island and Albany, N.Y., Yurek said.

Harris, a New Mexico native, said the transmission hub will have a 5-gigawatt capacity but will be built for an ultimate capacity of 30 gigawatts to move renewable energy out of the Southwest to the rest of the nation.

The facility will cost an estimated $600 million to build in its first phase, said Russ Stidolph, chief financial officer for Tres Amigas.

Stidolph said financing for the development stage has come from private investors and strategic partners, but long-term financing has not yet been obtained.

The strategic partners include American Superconductor, which has acquired a minority equity interest in Tres Amigas for $1.75 million in cash and AMSC stock.

Fewer blackouts promised
Richardson said the station would "help enormously" to lessen the effects of blackouts and brownouts in the East and West.

While the nation's need for renewable energy is driving the building of the hub, the transmission station could also transmit power from a nuclear or coal-powered facility.

"You've got a major oilfield here, but it's in terms of wind and solar, so let's tap that," Harris said. "We truly couldn't unleash the potential of renewables unless we found a way to put these grids together."

New Mexico alone has a potential capacity to produce 27 gigawatts of renewable energy, he said.

The Tres Amigos hub will employ 50 people and could potentially generate $4 billion in revenue annually, Richardson said. It would make money from fees utilities would pay to buy and sell electricity over the hub.

Yurek said the next step for the project is to file a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the rates and terms and conditions of use for the East and West interconnections. Texas regulates its own grid.

But locating and building the physical connection between the grid and Tres Amigas' station would be under the purview of the states involved, said Mary O'Driscoll, a FERC spokeswoman.

O'Driscoll said Tres Amigas has not yet made any formal requests to FERC concerning the project.

Associated Press 10-15-09

from msnbc and sustainablebusiness.com

Small solar solutions for the Third World

2009-10-17T08:36:00.002-05:00

The advantage of the accessibility to the sun and small solar powered gadgets give many in the world an experience those in the first world take for granted.

Selections from this Reuters article speak to this solar solution

So when (Uganda Telecom) brought out the solar phones, since I got it, that very day, I have never had any problem with my phone," said Mawa, clutching the

It might not sound like much but for Mawa and millions of people in Africa and Asia, with no connection to electricity grids or unreliable and expensive power access, these little solar-powered gadgets are proving to be revolutionary.

Farmers can check market prices before deciding which crop seeds to sow, speak to buyers from their fields and get weather forecasts. And unlike with standard mobile phones, they don't have to worry about their phone battery losing power.

Solar cell phones could build on the economic advantages that mobile phones have already brought to far-flung regions of Africa and the Indian subcontinent, including price transparency and more accurate and timely information.

Mobile phone penetration in these regions has been held back by a lack of electricity: there is simply no way to charge a cell phone in many rural areas of developing countries.

An estimated 1.6 billion people have no access to electricity at all, while another 1 billion people have no electricity for much of the day, according to estimates by development groups.

Fortuitously, perhaps, most of these people live in sunny climates. And this is where solar mobile phones come in................

Take Uganda as a case in point: Just eight percent of the country's 32 million plus population have electric grid access.....

Until solar cell phones were introduced, charging a phone in remote areas, off the electricity grid, entailed a bone-jarring journey to the nearest town, where the phone battery could be charged at kiosks run on generators for relatively hefty fees.

The journey might take all day and the battery charge fee might cost more than that day's lost wages....

Across the ocean, in India's remote Orissa state, farmers living off the power grid are generating electricity with solar power which is making inroads in rural India and Bangladesh. For them, solar-powered cell phones are a natural extension.

The potential in rural India for cell phone makers and operators is huge. Consider this: India had nearly 500 million wireless users, and some 10 million new users are signing up each month. That doesn't count the millions in India's remote villages where electricity is rare or non-existent....

Solar phones are not new: The top phone maker Nokia sold a model a dozen years ago, but with technology development their usability and prices are starting to reach masses....

With proper positioning and pricing, solar-powered cell phones could reach about two billion people across the globe who have no access to electricity. Aside from the commercial opportunities, there are very real economic benefits.

"Nowadays, farmers use mobile phones to know about the market situation ... so that the middlemen cannot exploit them and this is happening in Bangladesh, this is happening in Uganda, this is also happening in India," said Abdul Bayes, an economics professor from Bangladesh's Jahangirnagar University.

Bayes, who has studied the impact of mobile phones on developing economies, estimates that GDP increases by one or two percent for every 10 percent increase in mobile phone access.

Savings, he said, come not just with improved market knowledge but by increasing productivity as farmers can call for information rather than leave their fields to travel to the city to speak to buyers and suppliers.....

Sony Ericsson and Nokia are rolling out phones with greener features such as lower energy consumption, use of recycled materials, smaller packages and electronic user manuals.

from reuters.com 10-14-09

By Hereward Holland and Leonora Walet