Eager for the Green Mark

Zul Othman, Today Online 16 Jan 08;

ONLY 39 buildings made the mark last year. But just two weeks into 2008, nearly 120 building projects, both private and public, are lined up and eager for a Green Mark rating.

The idea of building sustainability is gaining acceptance among industry players and builders, even as need and legislation are providing the added impetus.

"So far, over 70 buildings have been Green-Mark-certified, and many more are in the pipeline for assessment. This is an encouraging sign," said Parliamentary Secretary for National Development Mohamad Maliki Osman yesterday, even as he announced even more good news: New construction demand is expected to reach between $23 billion and $27 billion this year.

The bulk of this is expected to come from private residential and commercial developments, while public sector housing, amenities and infrastructure projects will also add to demand. This buoyant period is also a time to look forward to the industry's environmental responsibilities, Dr Maliki said at the Construction and Property Prospects 2008 Seminar.

When the Building Control Act takes effect in a few months, all new buildings and existing ones undergoing major retrofitting will have to meet Green Mark standards. Green Mark Platinum buildings would have achieved 30-per-cent energy efficiency, and a basic Green Mark building at least 10-per-cent energy efficiency, said Building and Construction Authority (BCA) chief executive John Keung.

Meanwhile, to promote sustainable construction, the BCA will introduce new guidelines this month for the usage of high-strength concrete, while guidebooks on the use of steel and of recycled materials in building will also be launched soon.

A "wake-up call" came early last year, in the form of disruption to sand and granite supply that had "some developers exploring sustainable designs, using alternative or recycled construction materials," said Dr Keung.

And now — a year since Indonesia banned the export of concreting sand — Dr Maliki announced the BCA's assistance scheme to co-share the risk of bringing in sand from distant sources would be "discontinued".

"Concrete prices stabilised quickly after an initial spike and the construction boom last year was hardly affected … Based on feedback from the industry, the scheme is no longer necessary," he said.

But to ensure the long-term supply and quality of essential construction materials, the BCA is finalising details of a licensing scheme for importers.

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Soxal to build $250m hydrogen plant on Jurong Island

Matthew Phan Business Times 16 Jan 08;

(SINGAPORE) Neste Oil's decision, announced a month ago, to build the world's largest biodiesel facility in Tuas, is already yielding add-on investment.

At a joint press conference yesterday, Singapore Oxygen Air Liquide (Soxal), a subsidiary of French- owned Air Liquide, said it would invest $250 million to build Singapore's first world-class hydrogen facility on Jurong Island to support Neste, as well as other refiners in the area.

Hydrogen is used to reduce the sulphur content in automotive fuels, and refiners will need it to meet increasingly stringent vehicle emission standards in Singapore, like the Euro IV, Soxal's regional director for South-east Asia, Lee Chun Wah, told BT.

It is also needed to process heavy crude oil into usable fuels, and is used by the chemical industry as well.

Soxal's investment will more than double existing hydrogen capacity in the Jurong Island and Tuas area, said Mr Lee.

The plant, called a Steam Methane Reformer, will produce some 100,000 cubic metres of hydrogen per hour.

Soxal will also build a 30km-long pipeline network from the plant on Jurong Island to Neste's upcoming biodiesel plant in Tuas. The pipeline will serve other refining customers along the way.

Currently, hydrogen capacity on Jurong Island is largely 'merchant business', which means the refiners build their own in-house hydrogen plants, said Mr Lee. There are a few small third-party providers, including Soxal, which have only about 5,000 cu m per hour of capacity.

Hydrogen production is capital intensive. The plant will employ 20-30 highly skilled engineers when completed, he said.

Soxal will start construction soon and complete the plant by 2010, in order to support Neste's biodiesel plant, which is scheduled to come onstream by the end of that year.

Neste's plant will cost some $1.2 billion and have a designed capacity of 800,000 tonnes a year of NExBTL, its proprietary clean diesel fuel.

Fielding several questions about the rising price of crude palm oil, which will be the plant's main feedstock, Risto Rinne, president and CEO of Neste, said the firm's technology allows it to use many different feedstock - from vegetable oils like jatropha, to algae, or even animal fat - to produce biodiesel.

When the plant comes onstream in 2010, 'it won't be only palm oil', he said. 'There will be other feedstock by that time.'

Nonetheless, over 50 per cent of the plant's feedstock will be palm oil, he estimated.

According to Reuters, crude palm oil prices rose over 50 per cent in 2007, and touched recent highs of over $1,000 a tonne. In Singapore, a 600,000 tonne biodiesel plant owned by Australia's Natural Fuel is running at just 10 per cent of capacity, Reuters said, quoting a market source close to the company.

Mr Rinne said Neste, which is based in Finland, will source palm oil from Malaysian and Indonesian suppliers certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.

Biofuel plant draws $300m in spin-offs
Nicholas Fang, Straits Times 16 Jan 08;

NESTE Oil's $1.2 billion biofuel plant in Tuas will not be ready until 2010, but the mega facility has already generated close to $300 million worth of spin-off projects.

Singapore gas firm Soxal, which is wholly owned by Paris-listed Air Liquide, said yesterday that it is building a $250 million steam methane reformer to produce hydrogen for the Neste Oil project. The plant is Soxal's largest single investment in the company's 91-year history in Singapore.

Air Liquide's regional director, Mr Lee Chun Wah, said Soxal will also build and run a carbon dioxide purification and liquefaction unit at the Neste Oil plant.

This will capture waste products such as carbon from the biofuels production process. This can then be sold to other markets such as dry- ice producers and medical firms.

'The unit will cost a further $40 million to $50 million,' said Mr Lee yesterday. 'Both plants will be up and running by 2010 to support the Neste Oil operation.'

Air Liquide's group senior vice-president for the Asia-Pacific, Mr Jean-Pierre Duprieu, said the group was focused on helping clients improve process efficiencies and meet environmental responsibilities.

The Neste Oil plant has an annual capacity of 800,000 tonnes of its proprietary renewable diesel NExBTL, making it the largest facility of its kind in the world.

Construction is expected to begin within a few months. It will mainly use palm oil to make its clean diesel, which is reputed to have lower exhaust emissions and so contributes to better air quality.

Neste Oil president and chief executive officer Risto Rinne said the company aimed to use only raw materials from sustainable sources. 'We will work only with partners who provide raw materials that are certified as sustainable.'

His remarks were in response to concerns that Neste Oil's reliance on palm oil could contribute to tropical rainforests being felled to clear land for palm oil cultivation, thereby actually damaging the environment further and leading to the loss of biodiversity.

Neste Oil focuses on biodiesel
Today Online 18 Jan 08;

Biodiesel is a key growth area Finnish refiner Neste Oil will be focusing on in the coming years, despite concerns among other biodiesel manufacturers that soaring feedstocks costs could eat into margins.

With advanced technologies, the company has an option to use various raw materials, from currently expensive palm oil to cheaper animal fats, as feedstocks at its biodiesel plants, which will help maintain profitability, said president and chief executive officer Risto Rinne. "This is one of the strong points which we have," he said.

"We think we can get enough margin between the product and raw materials, because we are not just depending on palm oil," he added.

Palm oil is the most widely-used feedstock for biodiesel. Benchmark crude palm oil futures prices rose about 50 per cent last year, forcing some biodiesel producers to find alternative feedstocks and delay construction of new plants.

Demand for biofuels is also expected to grow in line with global efforts to fight climate change, which will help the biodiesel market expand globally beyond Europe, said Mr Rinne. "Climate change ... needs a global solution. That means globally, biodiesel or biofuels in general are growing."

The company will start building what will be the world's largest biodiesel plant in Singapore in the first half of this year, aiming to bring it online in 2010. It will spend 550 million euros ($1,158) to build the plant, which will have an annual capacity of 800,000 tonnes.

The biodiesel produced will be sold mainly to Europe and the United States west coast.

He added, however, demand in Asia is also expected to grow, citing Japan as a potentially major market in the region. — Dow Jones

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High LNG prices won't delay Singapore terminal: minister

Ronnie Lim, Business Times 16 Jan 08;
EMA to pick in Q2 sole LNG buyer from 5 shortlisted groups

HIGH LNG prices or escalating building costs notwithstanding, construction of Singapore's $1 billion LNG terminal should start this year-end or early next year to enable the Republic to start importing liquefied natural gas by the targeted late-2011/early-2012 date, S Iswaran, Minister of State for Trade and Industry, said.

The project proceeds as planned, he stressed, as Singapore needs to move ahead decisively with LNG, which is an important plank of its strategic policy to diversify energy sources. Currently, the Republic depends on piped natural gas from Malaysia and Indonesia, and also imported oil for its energy needs.

Mr Iswaran said this following an announcement by the Energy Market Authority that it had shortlisted five groups to vie to be the sole LNG buyer or aggregator from a total of 18 proposals involving 22 companies. EMA, however, did not disclose their identities, following requests for confidentiality from some.

Speaking to journalists after the inauguration of the Singapore Immunology Network yesterday, Mr Iswaran said that 'the market response was very promising'.

He added: 'We had 18 very strong proposals from diverse organisations, both geographically and in terms of business type. It shows Singapore is a market they are very interested in and that we offer a compelling value proposition.'

Following this first stage of the two-stage Request for Proposal (RFP) process, EMA will now move on to select the LNG aggregator in the second quarter. One of the main considerations in the choice will be that 'Singapore gets reliable, steady supplies of LNG at competitive prices,' he said.

Mr Iswaran said that the thinking behind the two-stage RFP was because of the diversity of LNG players - including producers, traders and end-users. 'We wanted to allow the diverse ideas to emerge . . . with the idea here to find (business) models suitable for the Singapore market,' he explained.

Pressed on whether there are LNG producers or Singapore corporations among the shortlisted five, he would only say that 'some have their own sources of gas, some are involved in trading. But I'd rather not comment on nationalities.'

Asked if the project economics would be affected by high LNG prices caused by demand for LNG exceeding supply come 2012, as many predict, Mr Iswaran said that 'Singapore is a long-term player in LNG. We have decided that it's part of our strategic policy for diversifying energy, and LNG is an important plank of that strategy'.

'We are not in the business of trying to time the market . . . how it (the LNG market) will evolve we don't know. So it is important we have to stay committed to our long-term strategy, and we manage the volatility as it comes.

'But as of now we have no reason to change our plans. These are billion-dollar commitments and once we make the decision, we move ahead decisively,' he stressed.

On work on the LNG terminal proper, Mr Iswaran disclosed that PowerGas, the wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Power, has made 'significant progress and should be able to make some decisions shortly'.

'PowerGas has been working on, first, to identify the core capabilities they need to build up, which they worked on quite quickly, and they are also now looking at partnerships so that they can enhance expertise within the consortia in order to develop the LNG terminal.

'After selecting partners, and completing the complex design process, my own sense is that to meet the target of early 2012 or late 2011, they will need to start actual work by the end of this year or early next year.'

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Singapore: Siemens to set up wind energy centre

Chua Hian Hou, Straits Times 16 Jan 08;

Sales office will be based at group's MacPherson building, it says at centenary celebration

IN THE latest in a spate of alternative energy-related investments in Singapore by foreign companies, Siemens will open a new regional sales office to promote its wind energy technologies.

The German industrial giant announced the new initiative at a conference as it kicked off its 100th anniversary celebrations at the Victoria Concert Hall yesterday.

The guest of honour at the event, President SR Nathan, also sealed a time capsule with 100 items, including a copy of yesterday's The Straits Times and a price list of HDB flats. It will be opened in 50 years.

Siemens also donated a $75,000 sculpture by the late Brother Joseph McNally symbolising creativity and $750,000 in cash to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

The wind energy centre, which will be based at the Siemens Centre building in MacPherson Road, will initially have just a 'handful of staff', said Siemens country manager Hans-Dieter Bott. Siemens will 'build it up over time' and hire more staff as business grows, he added.

And he is confident it will grow as countries around the world look for new sources of energy to power their economies.

Globally, he said, the 'booming' market for wind energy has grown from a multimillion-

euro market to a multibillion-euro one within a 'short time'.

And while the Republic itself is unlikely to be installing any wind generators, it is a 'strategic' location that is well linked to both the key wind energy research centres in Denmark and regional wind energy markets such as Australia and South Korea.

Siemens, said Mr Bott, has had a 'longstanding relationship' with Singapore since 1908, when it set up a sales office in the Republic. It was then one of the first German companies to establish a presence here.

Even during Singapore's 'turbulent post-independence years', the company said in a press statement, it 'signalled its strong commitment to the Republic' by setting up a semiconductor factory - its first such complex outside Germany.

Today, Siemens, which employs more than 2,200 people in its 'six companies, four major research and development sites and 16 regional centres of competence...is one of the largest European companies' in Singapore, said Mr Bott.

Its products are also part of everyday life here: Siemens has built one-third of Singapore's power generation plants and 19 Siemens trains traverse the North-South MRT line daily.

Hospital patients undergoing in-vitro diagnostics are scanned by Siemens equipment, and its mail systems sort mail for Singapore Post.

For Siemens, said Mr Bott, 'investing in Singapore and her future has never been a difficult decision', and it remains committed to the Republic 'now and into the future'.

Siemens puts wind power in S'pore sales
Republic picked to be regional HQ
Neo Chai Chin, Today Online 15 Jan 08;

You may never see a wind farm here but wind power is set to make its presence felt in Singapore's expanding renewable energy industry.

German engineering giant Siemens said yesterday it has chosen Singapore as its wind power regional sales headquarters.

"Singapore serves as a good base for us to reach markets from South Korea to Australia," said Mr Hans-Dieter Bott, country manager of Siemens in Singapore, who added that the HQ will be set up by the first quarter.

Siemens' move follows the announcement last October by Norway's Renewable Energy Corporation that it will invest $6.3 billion to build the world's largest solar manufacturing complex in Tuas in the next five years. In November, the Government said the Singapore Initiative in New Energy Technologies Centre will open this year to develop energy systems from sources such as wind, solar and fuel cell technology.

Mr Bott said yesterday Siemens will set up offices for its corporate technology division here by April. The company will further invest in research and training facilities here for water technologies, audiological innovation and in-vitro diagnostic products and solutions.

Siemens Singapore's sales revenue in the fiscal year ended Sept 30 was $1.3 billion. While Siemens' global operations are still under the cloud of a corruption scandal over bribes paid to win contracts, its businesses here are not affected, said Mr Bott.

Siemens, with more than 2,200 employees here, celebrated its 100th year in Singapore yesterday by donating a sculpture and $750,000 to the Singapore Symphony Orchestra.

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Whatever Happened to Wind Energy?

Michael Schirber, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 16 Jan 08;

Towering wind turbines have become the symbol of renewable energy, but the literally high profile of wind energy may be its biggest drawback.

"It really kills the view to have mile after mile of wind turbines," said Howard Hayden, a retired physicist and renewable energy skeptic who distributes The Energy Advocate, a monthly newsletter.

At least 260,000 turbines, each 300 feet tall, would be required to meet the United States' electricity needs.

"To me, the number is pretty small," said Cristina Archer of Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif., who sees a wind turbine as less pollution and less imported oil.

She and a colleague previously showed that the world's wind energy potential is 35 times the global energy demand. They have now shown that wind energy can provide the stable power supply that its critics have said it cannot.

"It is the nature of the wind to gust and lull," Archer told LiveScience, and this can cause fluctuations in the electricity that is generated.

However, a large network of interconnected wind farms could stabilize the supply, the team reports in the November 2007 issue of the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.

Wind conversion

The wind is a result of uneven heating of our atmosphere by the sun. In fact, 2 percent of the sun's energy reaching earth is converted into making the wind blow.

A wind turbine cannot theoretically extract all the energy from the air that moves through it, but most modern wind turbines can capture about 50 percent.

For more than 1,000 years, windmills have used wind to lift water and grind grain. The first wind turbine to produce electricity was built in 1886, but it wasn't until 1980 that the wind industry really started to take off.

In the United States, wind energy has grown by 22 percent over the past five years, thanks in large part to government subsidies. There are now more than 11,000 megawatts of wind power installed — enough to supply 3 million homes, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

Still, wind only makes up 0.7 percent of the country's electricity supply. Archer thinks this contribution could conceivably be as high as 20 to 30 percent.

Blustery forecast

Hayden thinks such a high fraction of wind energy would cost taxpayers too much, as well as cause havoc to the power grid.

"Wind has its place because it does save fuel," he said. "But it should not be more than 10 percent of the electricity supply."

The problem is that a turbine's output strongly depends on the wind speed. For example, if the wind cuts its speed by half, the power drops by almost 90 percent.

This can lead to wild fluctuations that are intolerable to the grid, which must maintain a certain voltage and frequency for consumers' ongoing demands.

Archer and her collaborator looked at ways to smooth out the wind supply by averaging over several sites.

"Chances are that it's windy somewhere," she said.

The researchers looked at wind data from the central Midwest and found high variability thanks to the collision between cold winds from Canada and warm winds from the Gulf of Mexico.

By connecting 19 wind farms in a 500 by 500 square mile area, the network could supply reliable "baseload" power at more than a third of the network's average output.

Hayden is skeptical. "We don't have a grid system to do this," he said, and constructing new transmission lines will cost about a million dollars per mile.

Archer disagrees. "The main issue is not technological, but political since this network would have to cross utility boundaries," she said.

She mentioned a plan to build a similar type of network in the North Sea that would connect offshore wind farms.

Wind in your backyard

Offshore wind is an attractive idea because the wind is stronger and steadier at sea. But a recent plan to build the first U.S. offshore wind farm off Cape Cod, Mass., has been fought by those who don't want it to spoil the view.

There are also those who complain that wind turbines are noisy and kill birds and bats.

"The environmental concerns are subtle but far-reaching," Hayden said.

Archer thinks the alternatives — coal and nuclear — are worse. Recent surveys have found that the worries about wind farms are largely imagined, since people living near them don't seem to mind them, she said.

"People fought the building of the Golden Gate Bridge, claiming it would ruin the landscape," she said. "Now it costs more to have a house with a view of the bridge."

Editor's Note: This article is part of an occasional LiveScience series about ideas to ease humanity's impact on the environment.

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'Catastrophic' climate change looms for European birds

Yahoo News 16 Nov 08;

Global warming could be "catastrophic" for European birds by wrecking their habitat, British conservationists warned Tuesday.

Three-quarters of Europe's nesting birds are likely to see their ranges shrink by the end of the century, the Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds showed.

Rising temperatures could push their distribution an average of 550 kilometres (340 miles) northeastwards, the atlas said.

The atlas was drawn up by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) along with experts from Cambridge and Durham universities.

The average bird's distribution will shrink in size by a fifth and overlap the current range by only 40 percent if temperatures rise by just under three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, the RSPB said.

"We must heed the wake-up call provided by this atlas and act immediately to curb climate change," said RSPB conservation chief Mark Avery.

"Anything above an average of two degrees Celsius (3.6 F) risks catastrophic impacts for wildlife."

"But some level of climate change is now inevitable and we must help wildlife become resilient to the worst impacts by increasing investment in creating larger areas for nature and making the countryside more wildlife-friendly to allow species to move to areas where the climate becomes more suitable," he added.

British species such as the Scottish crossbill, the Leach's petrel and the snow bunting could face extinction if suitable areas for them to live in are wiped out by warmer temperatures, according to the atlas.

Red and black throated divers, ptarmigans, redwings, greenshanks are set to see their distribution reduced to less than five percent of their current range.

And lapwings, curlews, red grouse, Arctic terns and common gulls might see their range reduced too.

However warmer temperatures in Britain might see birds such as the short-toed eagle, night heron, hoopoe and black kite move in.

"To enable these new colonists to gain a foothold we must prepare for their arrival by giving them the habitat they need and the freedom from persecution they deserve," said Avery.

Last year, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the mean global atmospheric temperature had already risen by 0.8 C (1.44 F) since the start of the 20th century.

By 2100, temperatures could rise by another 2.4 C-4.0 C (4.3-7.8 F), compared to 1980-99 levels.

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Britain: Climate change threatens coasts

Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press Yahoo News 16 Jan 08;

Climate change is warming Britain's waters, eroding its coastline, harming its marine wildlife and increasing the likelihood of devastating storms and floods, the government said in a report published Wednesday.

The "Marine Climate Change Impacts" report, drawn up by coalition of government bodies and researchers, said 2006 was the warmest year ever recorded for Britain's waters, and seven of the 10 warmest years have been in the last decade.

Milder sea temperatures have already adversely affected plankton — small water-going micro-organisms that form the foundation of the ocean's ecosystem. In the North Sea, the population of the previously dominant cold-water plankton species Calanus finmarchicus had declined by 70 percent since the 1960s, the report said.

Cold-water fish were also suffering, and that in turn was reducing the availability of prey for some of Britain's seabirds — such as black-legged kittiwakes — and harming the fish and fish farming industries, the report said.

The ocean around Britain was also becoming more violent and more acidic. Scientists have recorded increasing average wave heights in western and northern British waters, while models suggested that the chemical composition of British sea water had shifted, becoming more acidic as it absorbed increasing amounts of carbon dioxide.

The report also said erosion had taken increasingly deep bites out of the British coast, saying that the low water and high water marks were getting closer in nearly two thirds of the areas studied in England and Wales over the past 100 years. It predicted — albeit with low confidence — that the rate of erosion would increase as ocean levels rose.

Finally the report warned of the possibility of increased flood risk, both from rivers and the sea, saying the increasing trend in extreme water levels was most likely a consequence of the rise in average sea level, itself strongly linked to global warming.

Those behind the report said it should be read as a call to action. "Our winters are getting wetter and warmer, sea levels are rising and coastal erosion is increasing," Rural affairs secretary Richard Lochhead said. "These are happening now and we must take action."

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Drug-Resistant Germs Infiltrate Pristine Arctic

Charles Q. Choi, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 15 Jan 08;

There may be no place on the surface of Earth where germs dangerously resistant to antibiotics have not spread.

Swedish researchers now find drug-resistant bacteria have infiltrated one of the last outposts of wilderness, the Arctic, hitching a ride way up north on birds.

The fact that these microbes have now reached one of the most remote places on Earth sheds light on how rampant such germs have become closer to home, researchers said.

The use and misuse of antibiotics over the past few decades have led to the evolution of micobes resistant to many of the most common drugs against them, rendering more and more bacterial infections difficult or impossible to treat.

"Escalating resistance to antibiotics over the last few years has crystallized into one of the greatest threats to well-functioning health care in the future," said researcher Jonas Bonnedahl, an infectious disease physician at Kalmar University in Sweden.

Extremely surprised

The scientists investigated bacteria from the Arctic with the assumption that germs in such distant climes would be far beyond the reach of human influence.

"We were extremely surprised" to find otherwise, said researcher Björn Olsen, an ornithologist and infectious disease physician at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Olsen, Bonnedahl and colleagues ventured out into the Arctic aboard the icebreaker Oden. They made their way onto the shores of northeastern Siberia, northern Alaska and northern Greenland via inflatable boats and took fecal specimens or rump swabs from 97 birds. Bacteria from these samples were cultivated directly in special laboratories onboard the icebreaker and further tested against 17 different drugs at a microbiological laboratory in Sweden.

The scientists found eight of the samples displayed antibiotic resistance. Four of the samples proved resistant to four to eight of the 17 drugs tested.

"We took samples from birds living far out on the tundra and had no contact with people," Olsen said. The fact that these samples possessed drug-resistant bacteria "further confirms that resistance to antibiotics has become a global phenomenon and that virtually no region of the Earth, with the possible exception of the Antarctic, is unaffected."

Other pole, too?

Even the Antarctic might one day get invaded by these bacteria "via human activities such as research bases," Olsen added.

Scientists had known birds could host drug-resistant germs — migratory Canadian geese tested near the eastern shore of Maryland, for instance, or black-headed gulls in the Czech Republic.

But "it's alarming to find that these bacteria out on the tundra," Olsen told LiveScience. "They're leaking out to all over. It's just a sign of how bad the situation with antibiotic-resistant bacteria is."

The researchers note a number of bird species they studied spent the winter at warmer latitudes in up to six different continents, which is where they may have acquired the drug-resistant bacteria.

The scientists detailed their findings in the January issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

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Brazil Farming Needs Decade to Stop Deforestation

Raymond Colitt, PlanetArk 16 Jan 08;

BRASILIA - Brazil's farm sector is only just realizing the need to protect the Amazon rain forest but it could be many years before deforestation stops, the agriculture minister said.

Brazil's fast-growing agriculture business, one of the world's biggest food providers, is often blamed for much of the destruction of the Amazon.

Government authorities, many farm product traders and some producers are beginning to accept the need to conserve the world's largest rain forest but appropriate policies and resources were still inadequate, Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes told Reuters.

"Today Brazil has the conscience not to cut down trees to increase its production," he said in an interview on Monday.

"The government has decided -- no more deforestation. Now, it will be at least a decade before the policies are in place and working."

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has repeatedly boasted that Brazil reduced deforestation by 50 percent over the last two years. But record commodity prices are increasing the pressure to make Amazonian land productive and deforestation has increased again since last August, the environment ministry said.

Stephanes, a former congressmen, said Brazilian agriculture would grow by recovering 50 million hectares (124 million acres) of degraded pasture land, as well as developing another 50 million hectares of virgin savanna.

"What we cut down already is enough," he said.

But he said there were no funds or concrete policy to provide farmers with incentives not to chop down trees.

"We haven't started yet, it's not necessary yet," Stephanes said. "This discussion is new, at least in this ministry, and still needs to mature so we can create new lines of finance."

He said he fully supported the government's decision in December to ban farm products coming from illegally deforested areas. But its implementation was not his job, he said.

"If there are still people deforesting, that's a matter for the police," he said.

A tradition of conquering and settling Brazil's huge wilderness persists among many farmers and is an obstacle to environmental awareness, the minister said. Deforestation by small and mid-size farmers was likely to continue.

"You'll have small infractions, the important thing is that the big ones are over," he said.

Friends of the Earth said in a report that beef production in the Amazon increased 46 percent since 2004 and now accounted for 41 percent of the total output. Stephanes said poor peasants and small-scale ranchers who received land and loans as part of government social welfare policies were partially to blame for beef production increases.

Stephanes said cattle did not always occupy deforested areas in the region. But he urged meat packers to follow the example of soy traders and sign an agreement not to buy beef from deforested areas.

(Editing by Reese Ewing and Philip Barbara)

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Japan agrees to free whaling activists: Australia

Yahoo News 16 Jan 08;

Japan has agreed to free two anti-whaling activists held captive after boarding a whaling vessel in Antarctic waters, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Wednesday.

"Late last night I was advised the Japanese had agreed to this and they had instructed the relevant whaling ship to return the men to the Steve Irwin," Smith told national radio.

The agreement to release Australian Benjamin Potts and Briton Giles Lane -- crewmen on the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel the Steve Irwin -- came after Australian officials contacted the Japanese government, Smith said.

"The most important thing here is the safety and welfare of the two men concerned and we do as the Australian government want their immediate release.

"My most recent advice, which is in the last hour, is that that transfer has not yet occurred and I'm calling upon both parties, both the Steve Irwin and Sea Shepherd, and the Japanese whaling vessel, to effect immediately their safe return of the two men concerned."

The activists boarded the Japanese harpoon vessel Yushin Maru No 2 Tuesday to deliver a written demand that Japan stop killing whales.

Sea Shepherd said the men were assaulted and tied to the ship's radar mast, but Japan denied this, saying they were held in an office aboard the ship after boarding the vessel illegally.

Smith refused to be drawn on whether he considered the two men had been held hostage but said Australian Federal Police were investigating the incident.

"From the very first day I urged all parties in this matter to exercise restraint," he said. "It's quite clearly the case that restraint hasn't occurred here.

"If there is any illegal or unlawful activity in respect to this matter then not only do I not condone that, I condemn it."

The Japanese fleet, on a mission to kill around 1,000 whales in Antarctic waters this season, is being harassed by shipborne activists from Greenpeace as well as Sea Shepherd.

Australia's Federal Court on Tuesday ordered Japan to stop hunting and killing whales anywhere around its coastline or off Australian Antarctic territory.

However, the court noted that unless the Japanese whalers entered Australian jurisdiction where they could be seized, there was no practical way the order could be enforced.

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More of U.S. grain crop to be consumed by family car

Tom Doggett, Reuters 15 Jan 08;

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Almost a third of the U.S. grain crop next year may be diverted from the family dinner table to the family car as fuel, putting upward pressure on food prices, a leading expert warned on Tuesday.

Grain prices are near record levels as the United States produces more ethanol, now made mostly from corn, to blend with gasoline and stretch available motor fuel supplies.

Farmers, hoping to cash in, are expected to grow 30 percent of next year's grain crop for ethanol use as more refineries that process corn into fuel come online, according to Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute and long-time critic of using food grains for fuel.

"The price of grain is now tied to the price of oil," Brown said at the Reuters Global Agriculture and Biofuel Summit.

As a result, he said, prices will go up for poultry, beef and pork as well as dairy products because corn is the number one animal feed for farmers.

"Our refrigerators are stuffed with corn," Brown said. For example, feed prices make up about 40 percent of the cost of poultry alone, he said.

The pressure on food prices from ethanol will only get worse as the new energy law passed last month requires U.S. ethanol production to soar from about 9 billion gallons this year to 36 billion gallons by 2022.

"What we see are cars beginning to compete with people for world grain supplies," Brown said. "We could see a consumer revolt in this country."

Brown said that an SUV with a 25-gallon tank filling up with ethanol would use enough grain, about 560 pounds (254 kg), to feed the average person for one year.

However, the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group that lobbies for ethanol producers, says corn demand for ethanol doesn't have a big effect on retail food prices.

The group cites government data that shows labor costs account for 38 cents of every dollar spent on food, with packing, transportation, energy, advertising and profits accounting for 24 cents. Just 19 cents can be attributed to the cost of food inputs like grains and oilseeds, the group said.

Still, rising ethanol demand helped cut world grain inventories last year to an all-time low of just 53 days of demand, compared with the 70 days of grain stocks many food experts say is normal.

Brown said higher corn prices may bring back the backyard-type Victory Gardens last seen in World War II, with rural homeowners planting small plots of corn to cash in on growing ethanol use.

(Editing by Walter Bagley)

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U.S. Automakers say other industries should help on climate

John Crawley, Reuters 16 Jan 08;

DETROIT (Reuters) - With stricter U.S. rules in place to sharply improve gas mileage and reduce tailpipe emissions, domestic automakers now want Washington to look elsewhere for help in achieving climate change goals.

Senior company and trade group executives interviewed this week at the North American International Auto Show believe they did enough in the 2007 energy legislation and now want lawmakers and regulators to tap other industries.

They declined to name the industries but environmentalists said fuel producers and utilities needed to be on the list.

Carmakers are lobbying Congress to approve incentives worth billions to help them retool their businesses and develop or improve fuel and battery technologies. These investments, industry says, will underpin its ability to meet the new requirement to improve fuel efficiency by 40 percent by 2020.

Struggling General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler would benefit substantially from government investment that could help them compete against overseas rivals much better positioned on efficiency, like Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, told reporters on Tuesday at the auto show that he wants to draft a climate bill as soon as possible and believes carmakers have gone far enough.

"We've had everybody else get practically a free ride and the auto industry has come up with a 40 percent increase in fuel efficiency. We'll try and see that the pain is shared evenly all around," Dingell said.

Dave McCurdy, chief executive of trade group representing major companies, agreed: "The challenge should be for Congress to look at other sectors of the economy."

Prospects are mixed that the House of Representatives and Senate will be able to finalize a climate bill in an election year. The White House opposes mandatory curbs of greenhouse gasses, arguing such steps would harm the economy.

Dingell said Congress would also consider helping U.S. automakers meet the tougher efficiency standards, but could not say if any proposals would be in his climate bill.

Automakers have said meeting the target would be costly for them and consumers. The requirements will add, on average, $6,000 to the price of GM vehicles sold in the United States, the automaker's vice chairman Bob Lutz said on Tuesday.

Potentially adding more costs and new uncertainty would be if California prevailed in its legal fight with the Environmental Protection Agency to impose its own emissions standards, a plan that would result in even more stringent mileage targets.

Dingell said U.S. carmakers could implode if that measure eventually clears the courts and regulators and is adopted by all states, a scenario he called worst case.

While campaigning for Michigan primary votes at the auto show, Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona said a bill he backs would offer billions in incentives for car companies, especially beleaguered Detroit giants.

"There is a need for pure research and development funding from the federal government for hybrids and hydrogen and other areas -- pure research and development. So we intend to go back and try to help them," McCain said.

Sen. Thomas Carper, a Delaware Democrat also at the auto show, told reporters it was not enough for Congress to say to Detroit: "Eat your spinach."

"We've got to help them develop new battery technology, help them use the government's purchasing power to commercialize new technologies," Carper said.

Michigan Democrat, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, said in an interview she wants to activate a low interest loan program and free up hundreds of millions of dollars for battery research.

Jim Press, who helped make Toyota the leader in hybrid technology before becoming co-president of Chrysler last year, said in an interview with Reuters the new fuel standards were not going away and it was up to industry to respond.

"The main thing we need to do is help ourselves," Press said. "We will meet them or exceed them with the best technology."

(Additional reporting by Jui Chakravorty Das. Reporting by John Crawley, Editing by Julie Vorman and Peter Bohan)

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