Click4Carbon

The recyclable APPLE !

2008-09-09T23:03:00.003+01:00

The fourth generation Nano was launched at a US press conference by Apple chief Steve Jobs, who announced new shuffle and library features.

He also listed the Nano's environmental credentials, including arsenic-free glass and a mercury and PVC-free body that is "highly recyclable".

But is it a smart move to talk about how you'll have to throw it away someday!?!

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Electronic smog is disrupting nature

2008-09-07T20:58:00.001+01:00

Mobile phones, Wi-Fi systems, electric power lines and similar sources of "electrosmog" are disrupting nature on a massive scale, causing birds and bees to lose their bearings, fail to reproduce and die, a conference will be told this week.

Dr Ulrich Warnke – who has been researching the effects of man-made electrical fields on wildlife for more than 30 years – will tell the conference, organised by the Radiation Research Trust at the Royal Society in London, that "an unprecedented dense mesh of artificial magnetic, electrical and electromagnetic fields" has been generated, overwhelming the "natural system of information" on which the species rely.

He believes this could be responsible for the disappearance of bees in Europe and the US in what is known as colony collapse disorder, for the decline of the house sparrow, whose numbers have fallen by half in Britain over the past 30 years, and that it could also interfere with bird migration.

Dr Warnke, a lecturer at the University of Saarland, in Germany, adds that the world's natural electrical and magnetic fields have had a "decisive hand in the evolution of species". Over millions of years they learned to use them to work out where they were, the time of day, and the approach of bad weather.

Now, he says, "man-made technology has created transmitters which have fundamentally changed the natural electromagnetic energies and forces on the earth's surface. Animals that depend on natural electrical, magnetic and electromagnetic fields for their orientation and navigation are confused by the much stronger and constantly changing artificial fields."

His research has shown that bees exposed to the kinds of electrical fields generated by power lines killed each other and their young, while ones exposed to signals in the same range as mobile phones lost much of their homing ability. Studies at the University of Koblenz-Landau, reported in The Independent on Sunday last year, have found bees failed to return to their hives when digital cordless phones were placed in them, while an Austrian survey noted that two-thirds of beekeepers with mobile phone masts within 300 metres had suffered unexplained colony collapse.

Dr Warnke also cites Spanish and Belgian studies showing that the number of sparrows near mobile phone masts fell as radiation increased. And he says that migrating birds, flying in formation, had been seen to split up when approaching the masts.

But the Mobile Operators Association, representing the UK's five mobile phone companies, says a US research group has found collapsing bee colonies in areas with no mobile phone service, and Denis Summers-Smith, a leading expert on sparrows, has described the link as "nonsense".

(Thanks to the Independent newspaper)

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We need your VOTE!

2008-08-29T23:14:00.004+01:00

The Search Race; part of AltSearchEngines whose motto is 'The most wonderful search engines you’ve never seen' compiles a list of the TOP Alternative/Niche Search Engines on the WWW.

As part of our mission to be recognised as the Environmental Alternative to Traditional Search Engines we need your vote. To find us please register on the SearchRace and browse the 'Green Search' category.

And don't forget to spread the word!

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Vote for the Greenest Person on the Planet

2008-08-28T09:56:00.004+01:00

Click4Carbon would like to offer their support and vote to Matthias Gelber who is in the top 5 of the Greenest Person on the Planet competition which is managed by 3rdWhale.

We hope to publish an interview with Matthias soon. In the meantime please watch one of Matthias's videos and don't forget to vote.

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A Golden Opportunity for Africa

2008-08-26T21:36:00.003+01:00

Africa has a "golden opportunity" in U.N. climate talks to ensure that the world's poorest continent gets help to cope with global warming, the head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat said on Tuesday.

Yvo de Boer said Africa was still lagging in attracting investments in green technology to help slow rising greenhouse gases and in getting help to adapt to the effects of droughts, floods, rising seas and less predictable rains.

Speaking during 160-nation Aug. 21-27 climate talks in Accra, de Boer urged African nations to insist on their interests regarding a new U.N. climate treaty due to be agreed by the end of 2009 in Copenhagen.

"I really tried to emphasise here that this process up to Copenhagen is a golden opporutnity for African countries to make sure that the next regime does meet their needs in a much better way," he said.

"They need to formulate what is essential to them to act, both to limit emissions and to adapt to the impacts of climate change," he said.

"Africa has to know what's to the liking of Africa."

African nations are among those that have done least to stoke climate change, blamed mainly on emissions of gases from burning fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution, and yet is among the continents most vulnerable to a changing climate.

A U.N. Climate Panel report last year, for instance, projected that up to 250 million people in Africa would be living in areas of stress on water supplies by 2020.

LAGGING

And China, India and Brazil have attracted far more investments than Africa under a U.N. project that lets rich nations invest in developing world projects to cut greenhouse gases -- such as wind farms or destruction of industrial gases -- and claim credits back home.

"Africa is still not profiting from the instruments we have," de Boer said.

But a separate U.N. report on Tuesday said things may be changing -- clean energy projects were emerging in nations including Mali, Mozambique and Madagascar. In Kenya, for instance, one project involved a geothermal scheme.

De Boer said the Accra meeting had made progress in defining how to help slow tropical deforestation -- a source of up to almost 20 percent of greenhouse gases from human activities.

"Countries have developed a better understanding here of how they want to deal with deforestation, how they want to reward people for forest conservation," he said.

And there was a feeling that sectoral targets, such as goals for maximum emissions from producing a tonne of aluminium, steel or cement, were useful within nations but not as part of a binding international system.

"I think there's a strong sentiment in the room, especially among developing countries, that a decision to address a sector is something you decide at the national level," he said.

"It's not something that you could or should try to impose at the international level," he said. Many poor nations fear that sectoral targets are a prelude for trade barriers on less efficient industries.

(Thanks to Reuters for this news item)

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Top Driving Tips

2008-08-21T13:43:00.005+01:00

Before you set foot in your car always ask yourself:

A) Do I need to drive to get to where I am going. Could I walk, cycle or even use public transport.

and

B) Do I actually need to go there in the first place.

Even if it is a business meeting can all or some of you take part by video or telephone conference.

If you have to drive here are some excellent driving tips:

* Limit the amount of time your car engine is running (idling) when you're not driving - turn it off if you stop for more than 10 seconds (except in traffic). Idling also prevents the catalytic convertor from working properly.

* Avoid rapid acceleration and heavy braking - accelerate smoothly, even in a traffic jam. Smoother driving can use 30% less fuel. Also, obey the speed limit. Doing 50mph can use 25% less fuel than 70mph.

* Service your car regularly (usually every 12 months or 10,000 miles).

* Make sure your tyres are properly inflated. (For every 6psi a tyre is under-inflated, fuel consumption can rise by 1%)

* Make sure your garage throws in an emissions test with the service. This can save you money as well as helping to prevent breakdowns by identifying problems with the engine.

* Wide-open windows, roof racks, heavy clutter in the boot and air conditioning can all add to your fuel bill.

* On cold days, limit warm-up idling to 30 seconds or less (the best way to warm up your vehicle is to drive it).

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Gwyneth offends her animal-rights friends

2008-08-17T10:33:00.001+01:00

Fur flies as Gwyneth Paltrow offends her animal-rights friends. The actress courts controversy in an ad campaign and puts her relationship with Stella McCartney on the line.

She is almost as famous for her green, holistic lifestyle as she is for her film roles, but Gwyneth Paltrow has become the focus of angry animal rights campaigners.

The actress is fronting the autumn collection of fur-lined boots and bags from the Italian company Tod's – which also uses ostrich and snakeskin in its products.

Photographs of the Hollywood star draped in fox fur feature in the company's latest advertising campaign. Activists have branded the 35-year-old – who is married to the Coldplay singer and prominent vegetarian Chris Martin – as stupid and say that she should be ashamed of herself.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) went as far as to criticise her parenting, saying: "Gwyneth Paltrow won't be the apple of her daughter's eye if she continues to flaunt fur.

"It's a terrible example to set for a young child, promoting an industry that electrocutes animals, snaps their necks and skins them alive."

Tony Wardle, associate director of the vegetarian charity Viva!, said: "There is nothing feminine about inserting an electrode into the anus of a terrified and struggling fox and then electrocuting it. Ms Paltrow is an actress – and seemingly a particularly stupid one at that."

Mark Glover, director of Respect for Animals, said: "Gwyneth Paltrow should be ashamed to promote something so steeped in animal suffering. I can only assume that Paltrow either is ignorant of the facts or lacks human decency and compassion."

The row is ironic, as Ms Paltrow enjoys a close friendship with the designer Stella McCartney. Following in the footsteps of her staunchly vegetarian mother, Linda, Ms McCartney refuses to use fur – in direct contrast to the views of her friend, who has in the past described it as being "feminine and very elegant".

Ms McCartney, smarting from a recent run-in with the furrier Hockley for showing one of her bras under a mink coat it was advertising in Vogue, is said to be furious with the actress. This is unlikely to persuade Ms Paltrow to forsake fur, however.

Peta said yesterday that repeated overtures to the actress have been rebuffed. "We've written to her many times, and sent her videos showing how animals suffer for fur, but have never received a response.

"Apparently her beauty really is only skin deep," said a spokesman.

The British Fur Trade Association said: "Animal rights groups are entitled to their opinion but many people do not share this opinion and it is certainly not reflected in the rising global demand for fur.

"Regrettably, not everyone understands the difference between animal welfare, which has the full commitment of our sector, and animal rights, which seeks to ban every animal use by man, whether for food, medical or scientific research, clothing or companionship."

No comment was available from Ms Paltrow or Mr Martin last night.

(Thank you to The Independent Newspaper UK for this news item)

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Save the world and eat Kangaroo!

2008-08-09T20:42:00.004+01:00

Switching from beef to kangaroo burgers could significantly help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, says an Australian scientist.

The methane gas produced by sheep and cows through belching and flatulence is more potent than carbon dioxide in the damage it can cause to the environment.

But kangaroos produce virtually no methane because their digestive systems are different.

Dr George Wilson, of the Australian Wildlife Services, urges farming them.

He says they have a different set of micro-organisms in their guts to cows and sheep.

Sheep and cattle account for 11% of Australia's carbon footprint and over the years, there have been various proposals to deal with the problem.

Now Dr Wilson believes kangaroos might hold the answer.

He said: "It tastes excellent, not unlike venison - only a different flavour."

The country already produces 30 million kangaroos farmed by landholders in the outback.

But Dr Wilson is keen to see that population dramatically increased to produce the same amount of kangaroo meat as that currently produced by conventional livestock.

(Thanks to the BBC for this news item)

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Amazing footage of the Beijing Smog

2008-08-07T22:05:00.004+01:00

Watch this amazing footage of thick smog cloud that covers Beijing before the Olympic Games are set to commence.

As Beijing's polluted air came close to exceeding levels even the Chinese consider dangerous yesterday, one of the International Olympic Committee's most senior figures dismissed the yellow-grey haze that periodically hangs over the city as mist, and blamed the media for overstating pollution problems.

Air quality in Beijing remains a big cause for concern three days before the start of the games. Members of the US athletics team arrived in the city wearing face masks yesterday and organisers are preparing to postpone or relocate endurance events including the marathon and road cycling if smog levels reach dangerous limits.

But yesterday Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IOC's medical commission, said he was confident that pollution would not harm athletes or visitors, and suggested media coverage had created a false impression of pollution levels.

"The mist in the air that we see in those places, including here, is not a feature of pollution primarily but a feature of evaporation and humidity," he told the IOC's annual session. "We do have a communication problem here. Once the misconception has become sort of established in the minds of people, it's not that easy to get the right message through.

"I would not discourage athletes from wearing protection devices if they are concerned, but I do not think it is necessary. I would not wear one whether I was an athlete or not." Two days of haze gave way to sunshine yesterday afternoon, but the official measure of air quality remained close to dangerous levels.

Official readings collated by Beijing's municipal environmental protection bureau yesterday gave an air pollution index (API) of 91 for Beijing as a whole, and 87 at the Olympic stadium. The World Health Organisation regards an API of more than 50 as high, and a reading of 100 or more is considered unsafe. The authorities monitor air quality hourly, including levels of particulates, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, and take limited readings for ozone.

Ljungqvist said the readings were in line with the WHO's interim targets for developing countries, and that the pollution did not pose a threat to the health of athletes visiting for the Olympics.

He met with the WHO's local representative three days ago, and characterised his concerns as being primarily with the "exaggeration of the problem that has been seen in the media".

"Those [WHO] standards are fairly tough to meet, but in many respects the Beijing area does so. I'm sure, I'm confident the air quality will not prove to pose major problems to the athletes and to the visitors in Beijing," he said.

"We have had some readings that were above the interim target data, but since then they have gone down and been below that level. We will evaluate those [pollution levels] and, should problems arise, we may have to take some action."

Ljungqvist said the WHO's standards were relevant only to the long-term health of local residents rather than Olympic athletes and visitors. "To come to a city even though the air quality [might be] inferior, the long-term effects should no longer be feared by temporary visitors," he said.

Beijing authorities have taken measures to control pollution including banning half of the city's 3.3m cars from the roads on any given day.

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Obama in U-turn on energy policy

2008-08-06T08:47:00.002+01:00

Barack Obama has laid out an ambitious energy plan under which US dependence on foreign oil would end within 10 years.

The Democrat contender's policy is seen as an attempt to blunt the apparent progress his Republican opponent John McCain is making with US voters who are struggling with high energy costs.

During a speech in Lansing, Michigan, Mr Obama performed a U-turn by calling for the release of 70 million barrels of crude oil held in federal stockpiles as a short-term means of lowering gasoline prices.

Last week, the Illinois senator also changed his position on his opposition to ending a quarter-century ban on drilling for oil along America's coast. He said he could accept limited and environmentally sound offshore exploration as part of a larger energy compromise that was being formulated in Congress.

The struggling US economy and rocketing energy costs are top of voter concerns, and Mr McCain has made headway in the White House contest by calling for an end to the drilling ban.

Mr McCain's campaign team described Mr Obama's policy switch yesterday as a "flip-flop".

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Can you live for a month without plastic?

2008-08-01T10:56:00.009+01:00

Click4Carbon sets you a challenge to see how long you can survive without using anything plastic.

By this we mean not buying or accepting anything which contains plastic or is packaged in plastic.

So, no take-away coffees, bottles of water or pre-packed sandwiches.

Can you forsake punnets of strawberries and packs of chicken, supermarket milk and bottled cleaning products, and switching to reusable nappies for my toddler.

Are you able to not slump in front of the telly of an evening with the latest DVD, a takeaway curry and a bottle of wine (the cork could be plastic).

You can however keep using the plastic you already own. But even so, it's going to be very difficult.

Durable, versatile, lightweight, hygienic, cheap and strong: synthetic plastic is arguably one of the most useful inventions of the last century.

It is essential in medical equipment, technology and thousands of devices which have increased our standard of living.

But those very same attributes of durability and cheapness make plastic one of the most pervasive forms of waste on the planet.

Plastic soup

Evidence of our failure to deal with plastic rubbish is everywhere, from bulging landfill sites and countryside litter in the UK to a toxic plastic "soup" swilling around the middle of the North Pacific, thousands of miles from continental land.

Island groups such as Hawaii and Midway which, by their location in the Pacific should be pristine, instead are awash with plastic, killing seabirds, turtles and other marine life.

The UN Environment Programme estimates that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean on Earth.

Some marine scientists believe that microscopic plastic fragments in the ocean can soak up pollutants which may then get passed up the food chain into fish and, ultimately, humans.

Plastic audit

We're as guilty as anyone of treating this useful resource as utterly disposable.

Do try to remember to take reusable bags to the shops and drop my bottles into the recycling bag which the council collects every week.

And try not to junk the vast majority of plastic which comes into your home.

We've kept a month's worth of plastic waste, to use as a barometer for our month of abstinence. It isn't pretty - 603 items, including:

36 carrier bags

67 food packaging bags and films such as bread bags, cheese wrappers (and a jumbo pack of Maltesers!)

23 polystyrene tea cups with lids and 24 coffee cup lids

15 fruit punnets and vegetable trays

13 yoghurt pots

16 water bottles, 10 milk bottles, 7 juice bottles

Two toothbrushes

Probably the least pretty aspect to my household's waste at the moment comes in the form of disposable nappies.

Inevitably, however, packaging forms the greatest part of my plastic haul.

In the UK they throw away 58 billion items - 1.5 million tonnes - of household plastic packaging a year, according to the government-funded Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) and it's growing annually by 2-5%.

Considering that most plastics are lightweight, that's a mind-boggling volume of rubbish, especially as it does not include non-packaging plastic waste (as government figures do not exist for this).

In theory, most household plastics can be recycled but in practice, most local authorities only offer the facility to collect and recycle plastic bottles. A handful do collect all plastics but they are few and far between.

These make up a third of household plastic packaging waste so even if every single bottle was recycled (currently 35% are), the majority of our plastic rubbish would still be destined for landfill or incineration.

It's something that annoys consumers admits Paul Davidson, plastics sector manager at Wrap.

"Plastics packaging waste in particular is a very visible part of the waste stream and it's also growing.

"Ironically as we become more successful at recycling generally, what's left in the bin tends to be just the plastic. So more and more people are looking in their bins and saying there's just bits of plastic here why can't I recycle them?"

The situation will improve in the next three to five years, he adds, as UK recycling plants are developed which can handle trays, tubs, pots and punnets as well as bottles.

Under-packaging - worse?

Everyone has their favourite over-packaging bugbear be it the infamous shrink-wrapped coconut or bananas packaged singly on polystyrene trays.

But the other extreme leads to food waste, which has a far greater environmental impact than excess plastic according to Dick Searle, chief executive of the UK Packaging Federation.

"A lot of packaging is designed to lengthen the shelf-life of the products that are being sold so if you take it out of the packaging there's a good chance that it will actually not last as long.

"And unless you're very, very disciplined - and most of us frankly aren't - then you're quite likely to end up by throwing more [food] away."

Meat is a prime example, he says, with so-called "modified atmosphere packaging" - gas-filled supermarket packs which delay deterioration - meaning that packaged cuts last as much as two weeks longer than the same product bought from a butcher.

Plastic-free wagon

And yet we used to manage without all this plastic. In the 1950s, less than five million tonnes of plastic was produced worldwide, today it is close to 100 million tonnes.

The clink of glass milk bottles on the doorstep has been replaced by the purchase of two-litre plastic bottles at the supermarket. Chocolate bars were once packaged in foil and paper; packed lunches used to consist of a homemade sarnie in some greaseproof and an apple.

But our lifestyles have changed too - we no longer shop for groceries every day, many more women go out to work and fewer meals are eaten or prepared at home.

If plastic in general, and plastic packaging in particular, is all about facilitating our current way of living, will we have to return to the labour-intensive shopping patterns of previous decades to complete our non-plastic mission? we're about to find out.

We will be keeping a record of our progress - and any falls from the plastic-free wagon - in a blog which you can find here.

(NOTE: This article was was originally posted on the BBC News Website and written by Christine Jeavans)

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Drivers unaware of emission levels

2008-07-31T14:58:00.002+01:00

Nearly three in four drivers do not know how much carbon dioxide their car emits, it was revealed today.

Yet when buying a new vehicle, 89% of consumers want environmental features brought to their attention, a survey by the Energy Saving Trust (EST) found. Nearly half (48%) are considering replacing their car in the next year, the poll of 1,511 UK drivers showed. Half said they would drive more efficiently if they had more "green" information, while 51% of those shows a list of popular cars had no idea which was the least polluting.

Fuel efficiency came third behind price and style/look as the thing that grabbed consumers' attention in car advertisements. The poll also revealed that 51% take their car on journeys of less than one mile and 71% for trips of less than 1.5 miles.

EST said that if everyone who bought a new car chose the greenest car in its class, a typical motorist could save £375 a year in fuel costs, or nearly £1 billion for all UK motorists. The survey backed up a report of the car market for the last four decades by EST which found that car buyers were making poor choices both economically and environmentally when it came to purchasing new vehicles.

The report pointed to "a market failure" in which more-desirable cars within vehicle model ranges tend to have higher CO2 emissions and where there was a "lack of awareness and advice" about emission-saving. The EST said car companies and dealers must do more to publicise the CO2 emissions of cars they sell.

EST chief executive Philip Sellwood said: "The bottom line is that, at the moment, the car market is failing: there is no good reason why at a time of rising fuel prices and higher vehicle excise duties for higher CO2 vehicles, people are continuing to buy inefficient cars. It's not good for the environment or the pockets of customers. While car manufacturers are starting to place CO2 information more prominently in their advertising, this is only helpful up to a certain point."

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Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told to shut up!

2008-07-29T16:49:00.002+01:00

Amid intensifying scrutiny of its failure to act on climate change, the US environmental protection agency (EPA) has ordered employees not to talk to internal auditors, Congress or the media, according to a leaked email released yesterday by green campaigners.

The EPA has refused repeated requests from Congress to explain its December denial of California's request to regulate greenhouse gas emissions - a move that overruled the agency's own career scientists.

Three Democratic senators have scheduled a press conference today to discuss the controversy.

On June 16, after an email from the campaign group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (Peer), the EPA told its enforcement officials not to answer questions on the issue - even those from the agency's in-house auditors.

"If you are contacted directly by the [auditors'] office or [congressional investigators] requesting information of any kind … please do not respond to questions or make any statements," the email said.

Enforcement officials were told to refer all questions to specific EPA representatives.

The issue is whether White House officials, including aides to vice-president Dick Cheney, improperly influenced the process by pressuring the EPA to reject California's bid to regulate emissions.

Peer, a non-profit group founded to fight political influence on government scientists, called the email proof of a "bunker mentality" at the agency.

"Inside the current EPA, candour has become the cardinal sin," Peer's executive director, Jeff Ruch, said.

"The clear intention behind this move is to chill the cubicles by suppressing any uncontrolled release of information."

Peer questioned whether the email could be a illegal obstruction of the EPA inspector general (IG), which conducts independent audits of the agency. IG auditors are given broad freedom under US law to examine internal policies at government agencies.

The EPA spokeswoman Roxanne Smith said the email was partly a response to a 2007 report by agency auditors on how to streamline communications. That report made no specific suggestions about how the EPA could make its process more efficient, however.

"There is nothing in the procedure that restricts conversation" between EPA staff and investigators, Smith said via email. "The procedure simply ensures timely responses and assists in tracking and record-keeping obligations."

One of the senators set to discuss the issue today, the environment committee chairman Barbara Boxer, accused the EPA chief, Stephen Johnson, of kowtowing to industry opponents of carbon regulations.

"Stephen Johnson is turning the EPA into a secretive, dangerous ally of polluters instead of a leader in the effort to protect the health and safety of the American people," Boxer, from California, said.

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Britain tries to block green energy laws

2008-07-24T11:48:00.002+01:00

From the Guardian ...

Britain is trying to water down tough new European legislation to boost the uptake of renewable energy, despite a pledge by Gordon Brown last month to launch a "green revolution" based on clean technology.

Documents obtained by the Guardian show the UK wants to block attempts to give renewable electricity sources such as wind farms priority access to the national grid. The European official who drafted the legislation accused Britain of "obstructing" EU efforts on renewables and said UK officials wanted to protect traditional energy suppliers and their coal, gas and nuclear power stations.

Claude Turmes, a Luxembourg MEP and architect of the EU renewables directive, said: "This would take us backwards and would weaken the possibilities of connecting renewable energy to the grid. A government that says it wants to promote renewables cannot go for other policies behind the scenes."

The renewables directive is intended to support an EU target to generate 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.

On access to the electricity grid, the draft directive said: "Member states shall also provide for priority access to the grid system of electricity produced from renewable energy sources".

However, documents seen by the Guardian show Britain wants to change "shall" to "may" - which experts say would seriously undermine the directive. Turmes said the original wording was based on a similar policy used successfully to boost renewables in Germany, Spain and Denmark, and was meant to help countries "kick dirty energy sources like coal off the grid".

A lack of connections to the national grid, which was not designed to channel power from the scattered and remote locations that suit renewables, has stalled the uptake of alternative energy in Britain and led to completed wind farms across Scotland standing idle. A recent report from the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills said 9.3GW of wind power projects were currently waiting to be connected - the equivalent of a new generation of nuclear power stations.

Last month, ministers launched a renewables strategy on how to meet the UK's share of the EU 2020 target, which requires Britain to generate 15% of its energy from clean sources.

The strategy included steps on "removing grid access as a barrier to renewables deployment". Gordon Brown said it would remove "without delay the barriers that currently prevent renewable generators connecting to the national grid".

But the strategy also noted that the draft EU directive obliged member states to give priority grid access to renewables, and said the government was working to "clarify this obligation".

At a meeting of the EU energy working group this week, leaked documents show British officials tabled several amendments to the draft directive, including changing "member states shall also provide priority access to the grid ..." to "member states may also provide access ...".

Oliver Schäfer, policy director of the European Renewable Energy Council, said: "It might look like a minor thing to change the word "shall" to "may", but in terms of policy it's a major change. The word "may" means nothing when it comes to legislation."

Britain's justification for the change, included in the document, was that it was concerned about relying too heavily on intermittent renewablewable sources of electricity. It said: "The use of 'shall' could have substantial implications on network balancing and security of energy supply." It said "thermal sources" of electricity were needed as back-up, and "over time this essential back-up generation might not be available if new renewable generation projects must be given access to the grid". It said the UK wanted the "discretion to prioritise renewable generation".

Turmes said other countries including Spain, Germany and Denmark had experienced no problems giving priority to clean energy, and that large scale renewables such as offshore wind were no more intermittent than existing energy sources.

He said: "This is not a technical problem. Britain just does not want to make the choice to promote renewables, and that means it is lining up with the worst countries in Europe on this issue." He said he was concerned Britain's lead could be followed by France and that the directive would be weakened.

Turmes claimed the UK position was influenced by energy companies. "The incumbent operators want to make life difficult for newcomers."

A spokesman for the DBERR said: "Priority access for renewables is not necessary for us to meet our fair share of the EU renewables target. What renewable generators want is quicker access to the grid, not priority access. The UK is already taking significant steps to remove grid access barriers for renewables."

John Sauven, of Greenpeace, said: "We've always said there was a danger that going for nuclear power would squeeze out renewables. The government has been caught red handed undermining clean energy, and all because of Brown's ideological obsession with atomic power."

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Meet the team!

2008-07-06T11:40:00.004+01:00

WET! Very wet indeed ....

On Saturday 5th July 2008 we attended the Jools Holland concert at Stanford Hall, Leicestershire UK.

It was a fantastic evening even though, after 7 dry days, it rained relentlessly all night.

Some enjoyed it more than others.

Can anyone see Matt!

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Biofuel caused food crisis

2008-07-06T10:20:00.004+01:00

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

"It would put the World Bank in a political hot-spot with the White House," said one yesterday.

The news comes at a critical point in the world's negotiations on biofuels policy. Leaders of the G8 industrialised countries meet next week in Hokkaido, Japan, where they will discuss the food crisis and come under intense lobbying from campaigners calling for a moratorium on the use of plant-derived fuels.

It will also put pressure on the British government, which is due to release its own report on the impact of biofuels, the Gallagher Report. The Guardian has previously reported that the British study will state that plant fuels have played a "significant" part in pushing up food prices to record levels. Although it was expected last week, the report has still not been released.

"Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. "It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat."

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as "the first real economic crisis of globalisation".

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."

Even successive droughts in Australia, calculates the report, have had a marginal impact. Instead, it argues that the EU and US drive for biofuels has had by far the biggest impact on food supply and prices.

Since April, all petrol and diesel in Britain has had to include 2.5% from biofuels. The EU has been considering raising that target to 10% by 2020, but is faced with mounting evidence that that will only push food prices higher.

"Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertiliser prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.

It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

Other reviews of the food crisis looked at it over a much longer period, or have not linked these three factors, and so arrived at smaller estimates of the impact from biofuels. But the report author, Don Mitchell, is a senior economist at the Bank and has done a detailed, month-by-month analysis of the surge in food prices, which allows much closer examination of the link between biofuels and food supply.

The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact.

Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants.

"It is clear that some biofuels have huge impacts on food prices," said Dr David King, the government's former chief scientific adviser, last night. "All we are doing by supporting these is subsidising higher food prices, while doing nothing to tackle climate change."

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Plants and Trees Head for the Hills ...

2008-06-30T07:41:00.002+01:00

Trees, shrubs and other plants that make up mountainside forests are shifting to higher ground to escape the warming climate, researchers have found.

Common species found on mountain ranges across Europe have steadily spread to higher altitudes during the 20th century, thriving on land that is on average 29m higher each decade, records show.

French scientists who examined plant records for six mountainous regions, including the western Alps and northern Pyrenees, said their findings point to the dramatic affect climate change is having on plant life.

"For the first time we have showed that climate change is already having a significant effect on a large set of plant species," said Jonathan Lenoir, lead author on the study at AgroParis Tech, a consortium of French academic institutions.

The study is particularly significant because the mountain ecosystems are not regarded as especially sensitive to climate change, unlike many others regions on the planet.

Writing in the US journal Science, the researchers describe how parts of France have witnessed greater temperature rises in the 20th century than the global average. In some alpine regions, temperature rises have exceeded 0.9C over the period.

In the study, Lenoir and his team examined 3991 historical inventories of plant life that had been conducted between 1905 and 1985 or over a later period from 1986 to 2005. The surveys showed how the distribution of 171 different plant species varied with time across six mountain ranges, including the Western Alps, the Northern Pyrenees, the Massif Central, the Western Jura, the Vosges and the Corsican range. All of the plants grew between sea level and an altitude of 2,600m.

The surveys showed that as temperatures increased over the decades, the altitudes plants thrived at also rose, with short-lived species such as grasses and ferns heading for higher, and cooler ground, more quickly than long-lived species such as trees and shrubs.

Plants that grow almost entirely on mountainsides, such as sidebells wintergreen (Orphilia secunda), moved more than plants that are also found in lowlands, such as the paris herb. Fast breeding species were also found to have moved to higher latitudes than slow-breeding woody plants, such as the whitebeam (Sorbus aria).

Not all of the plants included in the study shifted to higher altitudes. Of those studied, 53, or nearly one third moved down mountainsides to lower land, the surveys revealed.

"Our results show that species displayed different rates of movement, behaving in a seemlngly idiosyncratic way in response to climate change," Lenoir said.

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Los Angeles to fight drought with 'cloud-seeding'

2008-06-17T21:37:00.002+01:00

Eight hundred thousand dollars should buy a lot of water. But in Los Angeles county, where a recently declared drought is starting to bite, lawmakers plan to spend that much firing silver iodide particles into the sky in the hope of boosting rainfall by as much as 15%.

"There are no assurances or guarantees that it will produce anything," Richard Hansen, general manager of Three Valleys Municipal Water District told the Associated Press. "But it doesn't hurt to try."

Los Angeles engaged in cloud-seeding from the 1950s to the 1990s, when the practice was suspended because of concerns that it could trigger landslides.

But other areas, including nearby Santa Barbara, have continued to use the method, typically employing airplanes or ground-based generators to spray silver iodide above mountains and watersheds.

Los Angeles county plans to place generators along the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, north of the city. The generators will use propane burners or flares to spray the particles into the air, where the silver iodide will interact with naturally occurring clouds to create additional ice crystals.

The exercise will take place during the winter rains, to minimise the risk of fire and because, for the theory to work, there need to be natural clouds.

A study by the National Academy of Sciences released in 2003 found that there was no evidence that cloud-seeding worked, although experts acknowledge that it is difficult to gauge whether a cloud is producing more rain than it might normally do.

"It's something that I wish there were more good hard research on," Maury Roos, California's chief hydrologist told the Los Angeles Times. "I think there's something to it. The question is, how much, versus how much is it going to cost?"

Should the practice catch on, it will mark a return to the days of one of southern California's earliest obsessions with modifying nature and the exploits of "Hatfield the Rainmaker".

Practicing his craft in the first decades of the 20th century, Charles Mallory Hatfield would place "evaporating tanks" filled with chemicals in drought-affected areas. His most notable achievement was to coax 16 inches of rain in two days from the skies over San Diego in 1916. The city, however, refused to pay Hatfield, declaring, "We told you merely to fill the reservoir - not to flood the community."

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Do you want to buy a rainforest!

2008-06-12T08:49:00.003+01:00

An environmental group has been stirring up anger with its campaign to buy up parts of the Amazon rainforest. Its tactics may end up making things worse.

Cool Earth, a British environmental group, has declared itself to be "bewildered" at reports that the Brazilian authorities were investigating the activities of its founder Johan Eliasch for allegedly urging foreigners to buy up the Amazon rainforest. Hopelessly naive might be a better description.

Eliasch, a Swedish-born businessman, is a former deputy treasurer of the Conservative party, and now serves as Gordon Brown's special representative for deforestation. In the course of a speech in 2006 he said that hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico had cost insurance companies "$75bn" and it might be cheaper to buy the entire Brazilian rainforest for "$50bn" thereby preventing deforestation and making hurricanes less frequent.

Eliasch has himself bought up around 400,000 acres of Amazon rainforest, an area about the size of Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city. He made the purchase in 2005 and is believed to have paid around £8m for it.

According to its website, the idea behind Cool Earth is that "rainforests are worth much more left standing both for the planet and for local communities." His organisation, Cool Earth, invites people to donate money to "secure one area of land that would otherwise be sold to loggers and ranchers and to price deforestation out of the market". The charity says that it puts its money into a local trust and that it "employs local people to do the work, helping them to get income from the forest without cutting it down, and make sure the rainforest is worth more standing than cut down".

Last week President Lula said that said that foreigners need to "understand that the Amazon has an owner, and that is the Brazilian people". On Monday one of Brazil's main newspapers reported that the police and intelligence services were investigating Eliasch for his claim about buying the forest and Carlos Minc, Brazil's new environment minister, said he was shocked by the report. He announced that one of his first acts in his new post would be to open an inquiry into the matter and it has also been raised within the ministry for external affairs.

Matthew Owen, the director of Cool Earth, has issued a statement saying that the organisation "does not own any land in Amazon, we fund conservation projects but we are not interested in owning lands which we think would be an inappropriate use of a UK-based charity." He added, "the ownership of the Amazon is a very politicised topic and understandably the government wants to understand what all players are doing. We are successful in bringing ... funding for the protection of the Amazon but there is no evidence whatsoever that we infringed any regulations."

Cool Earth's only real offence has probably been a marketing campaign, which might appeal to potential donors but is grossly insensitive towards the feelings of its intended beneficiaries – a bit like the "sponsor a black baby" adverts that some aid charities used to run. The reality is that the organisation could not buy up the Amazon, even if it wanted to, since much of it is already in public hands. However, as Greenpeace Brazil has pointed out, Cool Earth could actually exacerbate the problem caused by the profusion of false property titles which means that it might end up funding the grilleiros (land-grabbers) and buying lands that are already protected by law.

Good idea / bad idea? What do you think?

Comments are appreciated!

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Oil shortage is a myth

2008-06-09T21:58:00.003+01:00

There is more than twice as much oil in the ground as major producers say, according to a former industry adviser who claims there is widespread misunderstanding of the way proven reserves are calculated.

Although it is widely assumed that the world has reached a point where oil production has peaked and proven reserves have sunk to roughly half of original amounts, this idea is based on flawed thinking, said Richard Pike, a former oil industry man who is now chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Current estimates suggest there are 1,200 billion barrels of proven global reserves, but the industry's internal figures suggest this amounts to less than half of what actually exists.

The misconception has helped boost oil prices to an all-time high, sending jitters through the market and prompting calls for oil-producing nations to increase supply to push down costs.

The environmental implications of his analysis, based on more than 30 years inside the industry, will alarm environmentalists who have exploited the concept of peak oil to press the urgency of the need to find greener alternatives.

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June 9th: National Liftshare Day!

2008-06-06T09:50:00.004+01:00

Don't forget that June 9th is National Liftshare Day so make sure that one day next week during one of the regular journeys that you make that you share the journey with someone else. It needs though to be a journey that you make frequently!

Liftsharing is, quite simply, offering a lift to or accepting a lift from, someone making the same journey as you. There are now 33m vehicles on Britain's roads, the bulk of which are cars. The average UK motorist drives 8,700 miles each year, emitting 3.1 tonnes of CO2 in the process. In 2006, 60% of cars on the road only had one occupant: the driver.

According to a 2005 report by liftshare and Transport 2000 (now the Campaign for Better Transport), doubling the number of car-passenger trips (assuming the passengers were previous drivers) could reduce the number of trips made as a car-driver by 56%. It claims this alone would enable the UK to achieve 82% of its target for cutting emissions by 20% by 2010.

The workplace is a good starting point for promoting liftsharing because commuting and business trips represent 29% of the total distance travelled by car. If you have no other option but to travel by car, try to find other colleagues who make the same journey as you and take it in turns to drive. Not only will you save money and have someone to talk to on the journey, but you'll be chauffeur-driven for half your journeys to work.

Encourage your company to make it easier for employees to make more sustainable decisions on travel. The government has just released The Essential Guide to Travel Planning, aimed at helping businesses do just that.

It claims that by making simple changes such as setting up a car-share register, establishing a car-park management system and installing cycle shelters, can help cut the number of people driving to work by 15%. A firm of 2000 whose staff mostly drove to work could slash their total annual mileage by a million miles in this way.

Liftshare hosts a national network of online car-sharing systems. After registering your details on its website, you can post details of a journey you wish to make either as a driver or passenger. The site will provide a range of possible matches and you can choose the best one. It claims that 36% of journeys listed result in a match being contacted.

National liftsharing schemes targeting particular types of journey include: StudentCarShare.com and School-run.org. There are also more local networks, such as CarshareSouthWest.com, CentralLondonLiftshare.com and BracknellForestTravelShare.co.uk. You can find liftsharing schemes in your area at carshare.com.

The hope for this week's pledge is that by liftsharing on a regular journey for one week, you'll see the benefits of reducing your carbon footprint while cutting congestion, and will continue double-up for this journey in the future. The UK currently looks likely to miss its target to cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2010; your actions could help make the difference.

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World's biggest solar farm at centre of Portugal's ambitious energy plan

2008-06-06T07:27:00.001+01:00

The Guardian newspaper (UK) today reported:

From a distance the bizarre structures sprouting from the high Alentejo plain in eastern Portugal resemble a field of mechanical sunflowers. Each of the 2,520 giant solar panels is the size of a house and they are as technically sophisticated as a car. Their reflective heads tilt to the sky at a permanent 45 degrees as they track the sun through 240 degrees every day.

The world's largest solar photovoltaic farm, generating electricity straight from sunlight, is taking shape near Moura, a small town in a thinly populated and impoverished region which boasts the most sunshine per square metre a year in Europe.

When fully commissioned later this year, the £250m farm set on abandoned state-owned land will be twice the size of any other similar project in the world, covering an area nearly twice the size of London's Hyde park. It is expected to supply 45MW of electricity each year, enough to power 30,000 homes.

Portugal, without its own oil, coal or gas and with no expertise in nuclear power, is pitching to lead Europe's clean-tech revolution with some of the most ambitious targets and timetables for renewables. Its intention, the economics minister, Manuel Pinho, said, is to wean itself off oil and within a decade set up a low carbon economy in response to high oil prices and climate change.

"We have to reduce our dependence on oil and gas," said Pinho. "What seemed extravagant in 2004 when we decided to go for renewables now seems to have been a very good decision."

He expects Portugal to generate 31% of all its energy from clean sources by 2020. This means lifting its renewable electricity share from 20% in 2005 to 60% in 2020, compared with Britain's target of 15% of all energy by 2020. Having passed its target for 2010 it could soon top the EU renewables league.

In less than three years, Portugal has trebled its hydropower capacity, quadrupled its wind power, and is investing in flagship wave and photovoltaic plants. Encouraged by long-term guarantees of prices by the state, and not delayed by planning laws or government indecision, it has proved a success. Firms are expected to invest £10bn in renewables by 2012 and up to £100bn by 2020.

However, Portugal says it wants to develop a renewables industry to rival Denmark or Japan. When the government invited companies for tenders to supply wind, solar and wave power, it demanded they work with manufacturing companies to establish clusters of industries.

This is a great success, say regional governments. In northern Portugal, where the world's biggest wind farm, with more than 130 turbines, is now being strung across the mountainous Spanish border, a German firm employs more than 1,200 people building 600 40-metre-long fibreglass wind turbine blades a year.

The turbines are earmarked for Portuguese farms first, but orders are being taken from Britain and other countries. Half the workforce are women who once worked in the declining textile industry.

It is Portuguese plans for wave power that are prompting the most interest in Europe. The world's first commercial wave farm is being assembled near Porto. Three "sea snakes", developed by the Edinburgh-based company Pelamis, will shortly be towed out to sea and will start pumping modest amounts of electricity into the grid later this year.

It is the start of a potentially giant global industry with Portuguese firm Enersis planning to invest more than £1bn in a series of farms that together would power 450,000 homes.

Pinho dismisses nuclear power. "When you have a programme like this there is no need for nuclear power. Wind and water are our nuclear power. The relative price of renewables is now much lower, so the incentives are there to invest. My advice to countries like the UK is to move as fast as they can to renewables. With climate change and the increase in oil prices, renewables will become more and more important.

"Countries that do not invest in renewables will pay a high price in future. The cost of inaction is very high indeed. The perception that renewable energy is very expensive is changing every day as the oil price goes up."

He added: "Energy and environment are the biggest challenge of our generation. We need to develop a low-carbon model for the world economy. The present situation is dangerous."

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Half a million jobs in Brazil to be lost

2008-06-05T07:42:00.003+01:00

Half a million jobs and 500 years of tradition are to be phased out in Brazil's booming sugar cane industry to satisfy western demands for more socially acceptable work practices in the biofuel sector.

Sugar cane cutters who have been working Brazil's land since 1525, when Portuguese colonialists first experimented with growing the crop, are to make way for mechanisation.

The Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association (UNICA) said 80% of the 500,000 jobs would be gone within three years and admitted that moving to a tractor-based system would cause pain and upheaval for its migrant workforce.

"This will not solve the problem of migration — there will still be a social problem," Marcos Jank, the president of the association, told a briefing on biofuels in Sao Paulo, adding the group had signed a new "social" and "green" protocol with the government to improve overall conditions in the field.

The condition of sugar workers was rarely noticed when the commodity was exported for sugar but the position has changed now that Brazil is the world's second-largest exporter of sugar-based ethanol to use as a biofuel in petrol.

Behind the move to phase out sugar cane cutters are tales of exploitation that have damaged the image of Brazilian biofuels in big importing countries such as Sweden and potentially in Britain, where the government has mandated that 2.5% of all petrol come from biofuels.

Critics have accused Brazil's sugar cane industry of presiding over child labour, high accident rates and workers earning as little as $1.35 (67p) an hour. Employers insist that pay is three times that level.

Manual labour is also blamed for poor environmental practices such as crop wastage and the burning of stubble. Mechanised systems will be able to harvest more of the crop and allow Brazil to use by-products for powering electricity plants, argues UNICA.

Brazilian ethanol output grew by nearly a quarter during 2007 to a record 22bn litres, with around 4bn being exported.

The government believed it was going to be able to build a huge new export industry around biofuels. But that dream is under threat as the emerging crop-based fuel sector becomes mired in arguments over "food for fuel" and the idea that rising food prices can be attributed to farmers using land to grow fuel crops.

There are also claims that biofuels are causing deforestation in sensitive areas such as Brazil's Amazon Basin, seen by scientists as the lungs of the world because the trees there absorb so much carbon.

UNICA says subsidies in America and Europe for farmers and biofuels may be one element of the rising price of food which has caused riots in Haiti and other countries. But Jank insists Brazil is not contributing to that development because only 1% of arable land is used for ethanol production.

He is also adamant that increased ethanol production is not affecting the Amazon, claiming the area is too wet to grow sugar and insisting other farming is not being pushed into the rain forests to make way for ethanol elsewhere.

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US Scientists find solution to slow global warming

2008-06-01T07:38:00.003+01:00

It has long been the holy grail for those who believe that technology can save us from catastrophic climate change: a device that can "suck" carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, reducing the warming effect of the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas produced each year.

Now a group of US scientists say they have made a breakthrough towards creating such a machine. Led by Klaus Lackner, a physicist at Columbia University in New York, they plan to build and demonstrate a prototype within two years that could economically capture a tonne of CO2 a day from the air, about the same per passenger as a flight from London to New York.

The prototype so-called scrubber will be small enough to fit inside a shipping container. Lackner estimates it will initially cost around £100,000 to build, but the carbon cost of making each device would be "small potatoes" compared with the amount each would capture, he said.

The scientists stress their invention is not a magic bullet to solve climate change. It would take millions of the devices to soak up the world's carbon emissions, and the CO2 trapped would still need to be disposed of. But the team says the technology may be the best way to avert dangerous temperature rises, as fossil fuel use is predicted to increase sharply in coming decades despite international efforts. Climate experts at a monitoring station in Hawaii this month reported CO2 levels in the atmosphere have reached a record 387 parts per million (ppm) - 40% higher than before the industrial revolution.

The team is working to build a prototype at a laboratory in Tuscon, Arizona. Run by a company called Global Research Technologies (GRT), of which Lackner is vice president of research, the laboratory unveiled a "pre-prototype" air capture machine last year, based on a different technique -rinsing trapped CO2 off the membrane with liquid sodium carbonate, and then using electricity to liberate the CO2 from the fluid.

The team is also working on ways to dispose of the pure CO2 gas produced by each scrubber.

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$1.2bn fund to feed the poor

2008-05-30T10:31:00.004+01:00

The World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, yesterday unveiled a $1.2bn (£606m) rapid response fund to help developing countries deal with the food price crisis. Speaking from an African development meeting in Japan, Zoellick said the fund was part of a $2bn general increase in World Bank spending on agriculture.

Last week Saudi Arabia donated $500 million to the World Food Programme allowing it to meet its $755 million appeal to maintain its food aid operations.

The fast-track World Bank money would be available immediately, bypassing the normal project vetting procedures, and would help fund safety net support for the hungry, in the form of school feeding programmes or food-for-work schemes. Zoellick said priority would be given to pregnant women and infants, who were most vulnerable. The money would also be spent on seeds and fertiliser for farmers for the next few harvests.

Zoellick said the World Bank board was also planning to introduce risk management tools such as hedge funds and insurance schemes to protect poor countries and their farmers.

He also called for a review of subsidies and targets for biofuels, which are competing with food for land, investment and other resources.

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