Peru Mulls New Reserves To Protect Amazon Tribes

Dana Ford, PlanetArk 24 Apr 09;

LIMA - Peru's government, which is encouraging energy companies to develop the resource-rich Amazon, is considering creating five new reserves to protect jungle tribes that are living in voluntary isolation.

Advocacy groups have been pressuring Peru to balance indigenous and environmental rights demands with those of foreign investors as the country tries to boost energy output.

The government signed 13 oil and gas concessions earlier this month and has said it will auction at least another dozen lots in July.

"The first step is to see whether there are tribes living within the proposed areas. If there are, we must recognize and protect them," said Mayta Capac Alatrista, president of the government's indigenous affairs department, INDEPA.

Three of the five proposed reserves are nestled in northeast Peru. One reserve is at the Ecuadorean border and the fifth is in central Peru.

The government has angered human rights groups in the past by casting doubt on whether isolated tribes actually exist. But the official position now is that they do and that it's the government's responsibility to protect them.

Survival International, a London-based indigenous rights group, is hopeful the proposal for new reserves will become a reality and has said the stakes are high.

Roughly half of the world's 100 so-called uncontacted tribes are thought to live in either Brazil or Peru.

"If contact is made, the tribes may be decimated, either though violent conflict or diseases against which they have no immunity," said Survival International researcher David Hill.

THE GREATER GOOD?

In most cases, outsiders -- like scientists, miners and loggers -- are not allowed on reserves for people living in voluntary isolation, but the government can make exceptions if it considers the work to be done is in the public interest.

Practically, this means oil and gas companies are free to operate on reserves marked for isolated tribes.

And they do.

The project at Camisea, a massive natural gas field in southern Peru run by Argentina's Pluspetrol, overlaps a reserve as does a lot operated by Brazil's Petrobras.

Companies have also been granted concessions to work in areas that fall within the proposed reserves.

Firms that have activities where uncontacted tribes are recognized must have a plan for how they aim to protect indigenous integrity and prevent against the spread of disease, said Capac Alatrista, adding it's the government's job to respect life.

He estimated that as many as 3,500 people may live in voluntary isolation within the proposed reserve areas.

"Peru has 29 million people and a poverty rate of around 35 percent. We can't give up the right to extract resources where they are found," said Capac.

"We prioritize, I believe, the needs of the majority, which also needs protection," he said.

(Editing by Jim Marshall)

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Afghans get first national park

BBC News 22 Apr 09;

Afghanistan has established its first national park in a spectacular region of deep blue lakes separated by natural dams of travertine, a mineral deposit.

Band-e-Amir is visited by thousands of Afghans and pilgrims, though foreign tourism stalled with the increase in violence since 1979.
Declaring Band-e-Amir a park should help protect its fragile environment.

The new park is near the Bamyan Valley, where 1,500-year-old giant Buddha statues were destroyed by the Taleban.

Afghanistan's National Environmental Protection Agency (Nepa) said the creation of the park would help the region attract international tourism and obtain World Heritage Status.

"The park will draw people from Herat to Kabul to Jalalabad... to be inspired by the great beauty of Afghanistan's first national park, Band-e-Amir, " said Mostapha Zaher, Nepa's director-general.

Hand grenades

In the stillness of the high, thin air, the blue and turquoise waters are often like glass, perfectly reflecting the slopes around them, says the BBC's Alan Johnston, who has visited Band-e-Amir.

However, this quietness may be occasionally punctured by the damaging local practice of fishing by blasting the lake waters with hand grenades, he adds.

Much of the park's wildlife has been lost, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS).

But recent WCS surveys show it still contains ibex, a species of wild goat, and urial, a type of wild sheep.

Other wildlife include wolves, foxes, smaller mammals and fish, and various bird species including the Afghan snow finch, which is believed to be the only bird found exclusively in Afghanistan.

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Food prices remain high in developing countries

Despite improved global cereal supplies food emergencies continue in 32 countries
FAO 23 Apr 09;

23 April 2009, Rome - High food prices persist in developing countries despite an improved global cereal supply situation and a sharp decline in international food prices, FAO warned today in its latest Crop Prospects and Food Situation report. This is creating further hardship for millions of poor people already suffering from hunger and undernourishment.

This year's world cereal production is forecast to decline by 3 percent from the 2008 record, but it would still be the second largest crop ever, according to FAO's first 2009 forecast. Most of the decrease is expected to be in wheat, mainly due to a significant reduction in plantings in developed countries in response to lower international prices. In developing countries, cereal output could remain close to last year's good level.

Food emergencies persist in 32 countries, despite good 2008 cereal crops in many of the countries normally most at risk of food insecurity.

Out of reach

Cereal prices in developing countries remain generally very high - in some cases at record levels, FAO said. Worst affected are the urban poor and food-deficit farmers who are dependent on the market to access food. Moreover, the global economic recession is drying up remittances from family members working abroad that often sustain the food consumption levels of vulnerable households.

An analysis of domestic food prices for 58 developing countries shows that in around 80 percent of the cases food prices are higher than 12 months ago, and in around 40 percent higher than three months ago. In 17 percent of the cases, the latest price quotations are the highest on record.

The situation is most dramatic in sub-Saharan Africa. Domestic prices of rice are much higher than 12 months earlier in all countries analyzed, while prices of maize, millet and sorghum are higher in 89 percent of the countries compared to a year earlier.

Food prices remain at high levels in other regions as well, particularly in Asia for rice and in Central and South America for maize and wheat.

Slower imports

The cereal import bill for low-income food-deficit countries (LIFDCs) is expected to decline in 2008/09 to $28 billion, down 27 percent from the previous season's all-time high, with lower international prices and freight rates bringing some relief, the report said.

But the slow pace of both commercial cereal imports and food aid is one of the factors keeping food prices high in poor countries, FAO says. By late March, only 45 percent of the LIFDCs' cereal import requirement for the marketing years ending in 2009 had been met.

Hunger hotspots

Food insecurity prevails in parts of Asia, especially in parts of Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, amid chronic food insecurity, food rations have reportedly been halved following reduced supplies.

In Eastern Africa more than 17 million people face serious food insecurity due to poor harvests, conflict or a combination of these factors. In Somalia, an estimated 3.2 million people currently require food assistance. In Sudan, the continued conflict and the recent expulsion of some humanitarian agencies in Darfur have raised serious concern for millions of vulnerable people faced already with dire situations.

In Southern Africa high domestic prices, slow pace of imports and high demand during these peak hunger months are affecting the food security of around 8.7 million people, including over 5 million in Zimbabwe, where the ongoing outbreak of cholera poses a serious threat to the health and nutrition of vulnerable groups.

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Ice Study Has Good And Bad News For Planet: Scientist

David Fogarty, PlanetArk 24 Apr 09;

SINGAPORE - A study of Greenland's icesheet has revealed that a vast store of planet-warming methane appears to be more stable than thought, easing fears of a rapid rise in temperatures, a scientist said on Friday.

Methane is about 25 times more powerful at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide (CO2) and vast amounts of the compound are trapped in permafrost in the far northern hemisphere or in seabed deposits called clathrates.

Scientists have feared climate change could trigger a huge release of methane from the clathrate reservoir, sending global warming spiraling out of control.

An estimated 5,000 billion tonnes of carbon are locked up in these deposits, said Vasilii Petrenko of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado.

"That's about equal to all of the oil, coal and gas reserves that we think we have," he told Reuters from Boulder, Colorado.

Petrenko and an international team of scientists spent six years studying air samples from vast blocks of Greenland ice to see if a rapid rise in temperatures about 12,000 years ago was triggered by methane from clathrates or another source.

The results showed the methane was most likely to have come from wetlands rather than the clathrates, deposits which resemble ice and are held in place on the ocean bed by high pressures and relatively low temperatures.

Petrenko said temperatures in Greenland 12,000 years ago had increased about 10 degrees Celsius in 20 years. But it took 150 years for methane levels in the atmosphere to increase by 50 percent.

The rapid warming was driving the release of methane, he said, with the most likely sources being tropical wetlands and the vast northern wetlands created after the large-scale retreat of icesheets about 18,000 years ago.

GOING BACK IN TIME

Previous studies of ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica had shown an increase in methane levels about 11,500 years ago came from the tropics and the northern wetlands.

But Petrenko and his team wanted to be sure of the source, particularly since a massive release of methane from clathrate deposits is believed to have sent temperatures soaring about 56 million years ago, when the planet was much warmer than today.

His team measured the amount of an isotope called carbon-14 (C14) in tiny amounts of methane extracted from air bubbles trapped in Greenland ice going back 12,000 years.

C14 deteriorates at a known rate, so the scientists can use it to determine the age of the ice and also the likely source of the methane.

Methane from wetlands has different C14 "signature" than methane from clathrate deposits.

"The project involved pushing the analytical techniques to a level no one has taken them before," Petrenko said.

Only about one trillionth of the methane from the air bubbles contained the carbon-14 isotope. The analysis was undertaken at Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization.

"The results definitely help us to say that it doesn't seem methane clathrates respond to warming by releasing lots of methane into the atmosphere, which is really good news for global warming."

But the sting in the tale were the ice core records showing methane levels rising as the planet warms.

"We're warming now and we know that there's evidence of northern wetlands becoming more productive. If it's not clathrates, the wetlands might still drag the methane up."

(Editing by Sugita Katyal)

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Fires Seen Making Climate Change Worse

Deborah Zabarenko, PlanetArk 24 Apr 09;

WASHINGTON - In a vicious cycle made worse by humans, scientists now believe fires spur climate change, which in turn makes blazes bigger, more frequent and more damaging to the environment.

Climate experts have known that a warmer world would spawn more fires, but in research published on Thursday in the journal Science, scientists reported that fires -- especially those set by humans to clear forests -- influence climate change.

Smoke particles sent into the atmosphere by fires inhibit rainfall, which makes the land drier and encourages more fires to start, said study co-author Jennifer Balch of the University of Santa Barbara in California.

On a global scale, burning releases vast amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, making fires more likely in a warming world, Balch said in a video news briefing.

The report's authors estimate that greenhouse emissions from the world's fires equal about 50 percent of emissions that come from the burning of fossil fuels.

Deforestation fires, like those set to clear forest for pasture in tropical areas like the Amazon, are part of an unintentional "extreme experiment," Balch said: "We're testing how burning forests will influence the climate system."

"THE SCARY BIT"

These deliberately set forest fires contributed up to one-fifth of all human-generated warming in industrial times, she said.

The climate-fire cycle works like this: plants store the climate-warming gas carbon dioxide; when they burn, they release the gas into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming.

The more fires, the more carbon dioxide is released, which in turn causes more warming in a cycle scientists call positive feedback.

"The scary bit is that, because of the feedbacks and other uncertainties, we could be way underestimating the role of fire in driving future climate change," said co-author Thomas Swetnam of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

This important piece of the climate change puzzle has not previously been emphasized, said co-author David Bowman of the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia.

Most climate scientists considered fire to be a natural disturbance that was not a crucial force that should be considered in creating models of how the planet's climate will change, Bowman said.

"Humans and fire have a complex and ancient relationship," Bowman said. "The relationship means that we can manage fire but we can also start fires. A citizen can't create hurricanes, but a citizen (who sets a fire) can create a mass disaster."

The report's 22 authors called on the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to take the role of fire into account when making future climate models.

Fires Fuel for Climate Change
A warmer climate mean more fires, and more fires mean more greenhouse gases, says new report
Katherine Harmon, Scientific American 23 Apr 09;

The wildfires blazing through North Myrtle Beach, S.C., today are hardly an anomaly in a warming world. According to a landmark report that will be published tomorrow in Science, fires are not just a result of a changing climate, they're also contributing to the overall warming trend much more than imagined, the authors report. As vegetation burns, it releases stored-up carbon into the atmosphere, speeding global warming and thereby exacerbating conditions that may generate a greater incidence of wildfires in the coming years.

Because fires have been part of the global environment for hundreds of millions of years—since the first land plants emerged—as well as a tool for humans for more than 50,000 years, they're largely assumed to be a natural and negligible part of the carbon and climactic cycles. As people use fire on a massive scale as a cheap and efficient way to clear forests for agriculture or development, however, it is having a much greater impact than many scientists realized. In fact, deforestation fires alone have contributed 20 percent of the total greenhouse gases humans have contributed to the atmosphere since industrialization.

The report brought together 22 scientists from a range of disciplines and countries in an effort to better understand the global impact of fire. "This is a critical move away from the thinking that fires are just a disaster," says David Bowman, a professor of forest ecology at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia, and a lead author of the report. Taken in isolation, each conflagration can cause massive human, economic and natural devastation, but as a broader force fire wields a much larger power, according to the report. "Fire is a feature of our planet…. High levels of fire activity have the capacity to change climate," he says.

But across the globe, fires have been getting larger and stronger. "We are witnessing an increasing instance of these megafires," says Thomas Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona. This year alone has seen an increase in both the magnitude and deadliness of conflagrations sweeping Australia and the U.S. Southwest. In the past 20 years, the area scorched by fire in the western U.S. was six times greater than in the two decades that preceded it. These infernos are in large part a result of longer, drier summers, which are only poised to get worse with climate change, Swetnam explains.

"The real originality of this work is that we've been able to say something so obvious," Bowman says. He noted that the challenge now will be integrating fire into the large-scale climate models, and that will take further research and understanding.

"What we're calling for," said Bowman of the report, "is inclusion [of fire] in the next [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] models." Not only is the fire of a broader concern for climate stability and human well-being, but large-scale events also pose a risk of upsetting new carbon trading schemes, notes Jennifer Balch, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara, because they can release huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with one fell poof.

For more, visit our In-Depth Report on fires and climate change.

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How to stop biofuel crops becoming invasive

IUCN 23 Apr 09;

Experts have come up with a series of tips for biofuel producers to stop biofuel crops becoming invasive species.

All introduced crops for biofuel production should be treated as suspect or potentially invasive until proven otherwise, according to the experts. Risk assessments should be carried out at the earliest stages of planning biofuel production, they add.

Production systems should be monitored for possible escapes and appropriate barriers should be used, such as fences, gullies or buffer zones of resistant plants to reduce chances of escapes and invasions.

Finally, the crops should be converted into the first stage of fuel on site if possible to remove the possibility of spreading invasions through seeds or other plant parts.

“We need alternatives to fossil fuels and the judicious development of a range of biofuel production systems is a logical way of addressing that need,” says Geoffrey Howard, IUCN’s expert on invasive species. “Biological invasions from the introduced species themselves, as well as from the production processes, are real risks to biodiversity and livelihoods. The risks can be reduced by following the recommendations we’ve set out.”

The recommendations, compiled by a workshop hosted by IUCN in Nairobi, Kenya, will be published as soon as they have been refined by industry and other invasive species experts.

The experts found that many characteristics of biofuel crops are shared by invasive species, such as fast growth, high productivity, adaptability to a range of soil and climatic conditions and resistance to pests and diseases.

“Existing standard food-crops that are used for biofuels have limited risk of becoming invasive,” says Nadine McCormick, of IUCN’s Energy, Ecosystems and Livelihoods Initiative. “But new plants that are being proposed to increase biofuel production often have higher risks of developing invasive tendencies.”

IUCN will develop a series of best practices and guidance for the avoidance of biological invasions. This will be discussed at a second workshop later in the year for eventual input to the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels principles.

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UK Imposes Carbon Limits On New Coal Plants

Nina Chestney and Gerard Wynn, PlanetArk 24 Apr 09;

LONDON - Britain announced on Thursday plans to force all new coal plants in the country to test a pioneering carbon-cutting technology, as it tries to sharpen efforts to meet steep climate change targets.

The move would make Britain the first country to require coal plants to fit carbon capture and storage (CCS), still unproven on a commercial scale.

Initially, new plants would have to apply CCS to only about a quarter of power production rising to all output by 2025, Energy and Climate Minister Ed Miliband told parliament.

The government would fund up to four CCS test plants -- including one previously announced -- said Miliband, on measures which won support from analysts and some green groups.

"We need to signal a move away from the building of unabated coal-fired power stations," he said.

CCS traps and then buries underground the carbon dioxide which power plants produce as a result of burning fossil fuels, and so cuts emissions of the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

Fossil fuels are expected to continue to provide the bulk of energy for modern life worldwide for many years, explaining the urgency to develop a low-carbon fix.

CCS adds about $1 billion to the cost of a power station. Funding for the test plants would be raised either by a premium on electricity produced or a payment per unit of carbon stored.

That would raise consumer power prices by about 2 percent by 2020. The first test should be up and running by 2015, Miliband said, on proposals the government is now consulting on.

WELCOME

Supporters want Britain to lead a CCS race already involving Australia, Norway, the United States and Canada.

"It's extremely welcome," said Stuart Haszeldine, a CCS expert at the University of Edinburgh.

"Britain will be back in front because we'll have up to four plants built. What's been stopping them is the funding."

The initial pilot plants could be in a regional cluster, piping greenhouse gases into depleted oil and gas fields in the North Sea between Britain and Germany.

The government said Humber, Teeside, Merseyside and the Firth of Forth in the North and Thames Gateway in the South were all potential regions for CCS clusters.

The new rules follow Britain's adoption on Wednesday of a target to curb greenhouse gas emissions by 34 percent by 2020. A third of Britain's aging coal plants will close in the next 10 years, adding to the urgency to develop CCS.

The proposed measures drew some support from green groups.

"At last Ed Miliband is demonstrating welcome signs of climate leadership," said John Sauven, Greenpeace executive director.

"But we're not there yet. For every tonne of carbon captured and buried from new coal plants before the 2020s, the government seems happy to see three tonnes released into the atmosphere."

Utilities broadly welcomed the news, but British utility ScottishPower, part of Spain's Iberdrola, argued the tests should apply to existing coal plants, too.

The UK unit of Germany's E.ON said it would still commit to fit CCS to a coal-fired plant in Kingsnorth, if it is approved to build it.

Coal exporters to Britain said there would be less coal consumption in Britain regardless of CCS.

The timescale for any new coal plant is so far into the future that it makes no difference, a South African supplier told Reuters.

(Editing by James Jukwey and Sue Thomas)

'Clean' coal plants get go-ahead
BBC 23 Apr 09; with links to more about how it works, tech option 2, tech option 3 and carbon burial.

The government has given the go-ahead for a new generation of coal-fired power plants - but only if they can prove they can reduce their emissions.

Up to four new plants will be built if they are fitted with technology to trap and store CO2 emissions underground.

The technology is not yet proven and would only initially apply to 25% of power stations' output.

Green groups welcomed the move but said any new stations would still release more carbon than they stored.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband's announcement followed confirmation in the Budget that there would be a new funding mechanism for at least two - and up to four - "demonstration" carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.

Stations closing

He told MPs it would allow the UK "to lead the world" in the technology - and keep coal within the UK's energy mix without abandoning climate change commitments.

It is not clear where the new plants will be located although the government said areas where the greatest benefits could be generated included parts of Kent and Essex, Humberside, Teesside, Firth of Forth and Merseyside.

In 2008 coal power stations provided 31% of the UK's electricity but a third of them are due to close in the next ten years.

Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel but is likely to remain widely used across the world because it is cheap and relatively abundant.

Mr Miliband said there was an "international imperative to make coal clean" and said the era of "unabated" growth in coal-fired plants was over.

He said only allow new coal stations fitted with CCS would be allowed to be built in England and Wales.

Higher bills

The technology would at first have to cover between 20 and 25% of the station's energy output.

Once it is "independently judged as economically and technically proven" - which the government expects by 2020 - those stations would have five years to "retrofit" CCS to cover 100% of their output.

Mr Miliband said successful CCS development could cut carbon emissions from coal by 90%.

He told MPs the move put the UK "in a world leadership position on CCS and coal".

"There is no alternative to CCS if we are serious about fighting climate change and retaining a diverse mix of energy sources for our economy," he added.

One publicly funded project had already been planned and the additional ones will be funded through a scheme which will guarantee the price companies receive for electricity generated by CCS.

Mr Miliband said that would add an estimated 2% to energy bills by 2020.

Shadow energy secretary Greg Clark welcomed what he called the government's "Damascene conversion" to CCS adding: "This statement is urgently needed because after 12 years Britain's energy policy is as much of a horror show as our public finances."

For the Lib Dems, Martin Horwood was concerned that by only insisting on 100% CCS use when the technology was deemed ready, Mr Miliband had inserted a "dirty great loophole big enough for some of the dirtiest power stations possible to fit into".

The announcement was welcomed by trade unions who said it could create thousands of jobs, avoid energy shortages and put the UK at the forefront of a technology that could cut carbon emissions across the world.

But while environmental groups welcomed an end to unabated coal fired stations - there were concerns about increased emissions.

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven said that for every tonne of carbon captured before 2020, three would be released into the atmosphere.

Some concerns were raised that billions of pounds of taxpayers' money was being spent on technology that remains unproven.

WWF-UK's Keith Allott said the taxpayer should not have to "shoulder the full brunt of the costs" and the "polluter" should make significant financial contributions.

Clean coal push marks reversal of UK energy policy
Decision not to allow any new coal-powered plants to be built in Britain without carbon capture represents a major victory for the new Department for Energy and Climate Change and green pressure groups
John Vidal, guardian.co.uk 23 Apr 09;

No new coal-fired power stations will be built in Britain from now on unless they capture and bury at least 25% of greenhouse gases immediately and 100% by 2025, the climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, announced today.

In a reversal of energy policy which represents a major victory for the new Department for Energy and Climate Change and green pressure groups, the government will direct the building of four energy "clusters", generating a total of 2.5GW of electricity, on the east coast of Britain.

Each cluster will have at least one major new coal-fired power station able to collect carbon emissions and transport them out to sea, where they will be buried in redundant oil or gas fields.

The new power stations, the first to be built in over 30 years, are not expected to come onstream until 2015. They will be sited in the Thames Gateway, on the rivers Humber and Tees and in the Firth of Forth in Scotland, with a possible fifth on Merseyside. The government envisages oil and coal companies linking to reduce emissions from coal-powered electricity generation by up to 60% by 2025.

Demanding carbon capture and storage (CCS) on all new coal plants is expected to cost around £1bn for each plant and increase energy bills. Government and energy companies are in talks over how these will be funded but it is expected to come from a levy on all fossil fuel electricity generation in Britain. This could put 2%, or roughly £8 per household a year, on a consumer's electricity bills by 2020. Other funding alternatives being considered are to pay the energy companies according to how much carbon they store underground.

Earlier today, Ed Miliband said that Britain planned to lead the world in clean coal technology. This is expected to become a global industry in the next 50 years as countries commit to reducing carbon emissions to combat global warming. Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels but provides at least one-third of the world's electricity.

"There is a massive gain we can benefit from by being in the front of this revolution. We need to signal a move away from the building of unabated coal-fired power stations because it is right for our country to drive us towards a low-carbon [economy]. The change starts now," he said.

Environmental groups found themselves in the unusual position of joining the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) in hailing a government initiative.

"At last Ed Miliband is demonstrating welcome signs of climate leadership in the face of resistance from Whitehall officials and cabinet colleagues. He is the first minister to throw down the gauntlet to the energy companies and demand they start taking climate change seriously," said John Sauven, Greenpeace UK's director.

"This time last year energy issues were being decided by tired ministers in thrall to regressive civil servants. Now we see hints of real climate leadership."

But he added: "Very significant questions remain unanswered, with environmentalists concerned that emissions from coal could still be undermining Britain's climate efforts for years to come. For every tonne of carbon captured and buried from new coal plants before the 2020s, the government seems happy to see three tonnes released into the atmosphere. Until there is a cast-iron guarantee that new coal plants won't be allowed to pump out massive amounts of CO2 from day one, our campaign continues."

The announcement will have the effect of delaying a decision on the go-ahead for a major new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent for at least another year, but it is not expected to stop major climate change protests over coming months.

Miliband said it was technically not possible to insist on 100% carbon capture and storage immediately. "Some people will say that Britain needs 100% carbon capture and storage from day one, but this is not practical, affordable or right. The technology must be shown to work on a large scale. If it leads to no new coal-fired power stations going ahead it would be a dramatic failure of leadership. 2025 is a practical."

Environmentalists have run a two-year campaign against new highly polluting coal plants, with attention focusing on E.ON's plans to build the new plant at Kingsnorth. The German utility submitted plans for a normal "unabated" plant, and came within weeks of being given permission by energy secretary John Hutton.

The announcement follows this week's budget which pledged £1.4bn towards home energy saving and other climate change reduction initiatives.

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China Carbon Credits A Boon Amid Market Slump: Camco

PlanetArk 24 Apr 09;

BEIJING - China should be praised for its lead role in a U.N.-backed scheme to cut carbon emissions and efforts to cap its flow of credits should be resisted, a leading British-based clean-energy project development firm said.

China and its big state-owned firms have been accused of exploiting the United Nations' Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to boost earnings from clean-energy projects that were already viable, thus flooding the market with cheap and dubious carbon credits.

Proposals have been made in Europe to cap the volume of offsets supplied from China.

But China is effectively being singled out for the successful way it has adapted to the CDM, Anders Brendstrup, managing director for China for Camco, told Reuters.

"They should be praised, not criticized, for this success," he said. Camco is one of the larger CDM project developers and advisers in China.

The CDM, part of the Kyoto Protocol, was set up to allow rich countries meet mandated U.N. emissions targets by investing in clean-energy projects in the developing world in return for tradable offsets called certified emission reductions (CERs).

Projects in China have produced more than 40 percent of all CERs issued under the scheme to date.

Each CER represents a ton of greenhouse gas emissions saved from being emitted and the offsets are given by the United Nations to projects provided they meet strict criteria and pass a rigorous verification process.

China has a third of the 1,593 CDM projects registered by the United Nations to date and hundreds more Chinese projects are in the CDM pipeline. Only registered projects can eventually be issued with CERs.

Several thousand other CDM projects from developing nations are in the process of being validated or seeking registration. Not all applications will succeed and earn CERs, leading to fears that the total flow of U.N. offsets will be less than the official forecast of 2.9 billion by 2012.

TURMOIL

The flow of credits has been hit by turmoil on financial markets along with worries about whether the CDM will even exist after 2012, when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol ends, Brendstrup said.

"It is clear project developers are finding it very difficult to finance their projects, and therefore there are many that are not being built," he said.

"Only eight months ago now, they had initial agreements with banks but many of these agreements are not being re-evaluated or even withdrawn and this is when they stop happening. There will be a huge slowdown in the supply of credits."

CERs, currently trading around 11 euros ($14.3) a ton on the European Climate Exchange, are mostly bought by European companies such as power firms, steel and cement makers to meet emissions targets under the EU's emissions trading scheme. Japanese firms are also buyers.

Brendstrup noted that most of the projects now getting underway are the ones backed by state-owned or big private firms, and the smaller companies are the ones struggling the most.

Critics of the CDM have focused on the key concept of "additionality," which ensures that carbon trading revenues are allocated only to projects that would otherwise have been unprofitable.

The brutal impact of the financial crisis showed that the principle has been applied with rigor, he said.

Negotiations are now underway to draw up a broader replacement for the Kyoto Protocol. World leaders gather in Copenhagen in December to try to agree the outline of what a post-Kyoto pact might look like.

If the talks stall, that will throw the CDM into uncertainty since the scheme only runs up to 2012, although a number of projects will continue to issue CERs well beyond that.

"We do believe that all the projects that have been started before will continue to receive CDM revenue after 2012, and most investors expect them to continue. But of course, it is an uncertainty for both the developers and the financiers," he said.

(Editing by David Fogarty)

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Pollution in Chinese cities 'extremely severe'

Yahoo News 23 Apr 09;

BEIJING (AFP) – Air pollution in China's cities remains very serious, state media on Thursday quoted a minister as saying, amid an ongoing battle to clean up the skies in the world's largest coal-consuming nation.

"There is the potential for serious air pollution incidents to happen, and the air environment situation is extremely severe," environmental protection minister Zhou Shengxian told parliament, the official People's Daily said.

"The difficulties in managing air pollution are intensifying, and environmental regulations as well as protection systems need to be further strengthened," he said Wednesday.

China is the world's largest producer and consumer of coal and its appetite for the cheap fuel is growing as its economy expands, according to the Energy Bulletin, a website that monitors global energy supplies.

In 2006, the World Bank said that 16 out of 20 of the world's worst polluted cities were in China.

A recent report by the state Xinhua news agency, citing a survey conducted in November last year in 320 cities, said the average air quality in two out of five Chinese cities ranged from "polluted" to "hazardous".

Zhou said car exhaust fumes also played a large role in air pollution in the country's big and medium-sized cities, the report said.

China's worst air pollution was concentrated in the Yangtze River delta, which includes Shanghai, and the Pearl River delta -- the manufacturing hub in the south of the country that is home to Guangzhou and Hong Kong.

Air pollution in the capital Beijing, nearby Tianjin and surrounding Hebei province is also bad, he said.

But Zhou said there had been improvement in some cities in China, without listing any specific locations.

The China Daily reported at the start of the month that Beijing's air quality was improving as a result of post-Olympics traffic control measures that had seen about 900,000 cars taken off the roads every weekday.

China To Meet 2010 Pollution Targets: Minister
PlanetArk 24 Apr 09;

BEIJING - China is on track to meet its pollution targets by 2010 even though it is still struggling to deal with its coal-dependent energy sector, the country's environment minister has reported to parliament.

By the end of 2010, China aims to cut the emissions of major pollutants by 10 percent compared with 2005 levels.

In a report delivered to China's parliament on Wednesday, minister Zhou Shengxian said annual sulfur dioxide emissions are projected to hit 22 million tons by 2010, 10 percent lower than the 2005 baseline, but with 70 percent of China's energy needs still met by coal, the challenges remain daunting.

"We cannot bring down the high level of atmospheric pollution, which has been brought about by an energy structure dominated by coal," he said in the report posted on the ministry's website.

Zhou noted that pollution continued to blight China's urban areas, with particulate matter and sulfur dioxide emissions still "at a relatively high level," and eastern coastal cities also suffering heavy amounts of ash haze and ozone pollution.

Pollution also remains a serious problem in the Yangtze and Pearl river delta regions, as well as in the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan area of northern China.

The regions cover only 6.3 percent of China's total land area but are responsible for 40 percent of the country's total coal consumption and produce 50 percent of the its steel, Zhou said.

He said that China would continue to eliminate obsolete steel smelters, power plants and paper mills over the course of 2009, and was currently drawing up new emission reduction targets for the 2011-2015 period.

(Editing by Ken Wills)

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Rich Nation Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rise In 2007

Michael Szabo and Alister Doyle, PlanetArk 24 Apr 09;

LONDON/OSLO - Greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized nations rose by nearly one percent in 2007, led by strong gains in the United States, official data showed.

Carbon emissions from countries signed up to the Kyoto Protocol climate pact edged up by 0.1 percent in 2007, mainly due to rises in Japan and Canada.

"The numbers are ... a bit depressing," said Knut Alfsen, research director at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, saying they showed a failure to shift away from fossil fuels. "It shows that we are not able to de-link economic growth from emissions."

Although 2007 carbon dioxide (CO2) figures from a few economies including Australia and Ukraine were not yet available, comparing like-for-like figures showed emissions from countries with targets under Kyoto were 14 percent below 1990 levels, exceeding their goal of a 5 percent reduction by 2012.

The full 2007 data including the U.S. and Turkey, which do not have targets under Kyoto, showed that industrialized emissions were 2.1 percent below 1990 levels.

Under Kyoto, 40 or so developed countries committed in 1997 to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels between 2008-2012. Since then, the U.S., historically the world's biggest emitter, has decided not to ratify the treaty.

U.N. climate scientists warn that rising atmospheric CO2 levels will cause global temperatures to increase, which in turn could trigger widespread disease, famine, flooding and drought.

Experts said global emissions are likely to fall in 2008 and 2009 due to lower industrial production and fossil fuel consumption as a result of the economic downturn, but they stressed that more needs to be done to prevent world temperatures from rising by over 2 degrees Celsius, a dangerous threshold according to scientists.

Barry Brook, a climate change professor at the University of Adelaide in Australia, said that even if the recession cuts emissions in developed nations, global atmospheric CO2 levels will continue to be high and "probably still higher in 2009 than in any other year before."

"The Chinese and Indian economies, for instance, are not contracting -- they're just not growing as fast. It would take a massive and sustained global recession to noticeably curb emissions growth without directed energy policy," he added.

Brook said most nations "have virtually no chance" of meeting cuts of 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 that UN scientists say are needed to avert the worst of global warming.

RESULTS

The U.N. data showed that like-for-like industrialized emissions grew by 145 million tonnes in 2007, with the U.S. accounting for over 100 million tonnes of that. The U.S. emitted 7.1 billion tonnes of CO2 in 2007.

The biggest percentage increases came from Estonia and Turkey, with emissions up by 14.8 and 12.0 percent respectively.

Germany saw the largest net decrease, cutting its CO2 by 23.9 million tonnes or 2.4 percent, while tiny nation state Liechtenstein and renewable energy leader Denmark made the deepest percentage cuts, chopping CO2 by 10.8 and 6.2 percent.

The 27-nation European Union cut its emissions by 1.4 percent to 5.03 billion in 2007, 12.3 percent below 1990 levels.

Nearly half of signatory nations have already hit their Kyoto goals, though much of this can be attributed to economic restructuring and the closure of industry in eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union, rather than through investment in cleaner energy or energy efficiency.

Canada's emissions have grown alongside its economy, boosted by stronger energy prices, though Ottawa has said it is unlikely to reach its 6 percent Kyoto reduction target. Canada's emissions rose by 4 percent in 2007, putting the country's CO2 at 29 percent over 1990 levels.

With a rise of 2.3 percent in 2007, Japan is also significantly above its own 6 percent reduction target, but is buying emissions rights from other nations that have cut CO2.

(Editing by William Hardy)

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Geoengineering could dim lights on solar power

New Scientist 23 Apr 09;

PUMPING aerosol particles into the atmosphere to create a sunshade could take a heavier toll on solar power generation than expected.

For every 1 per cent of the sun's rays deflected into space, the average output of solar systems that rely on direct sunlight would drop by 4 to 5 per cent, says Daniel Murphy at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. Geoengineers propose scattering 1 to 2 per cent of sunlight.

Aerosols scatter the light that hits them, but only 20 to 25 per cent of that is reflected into space. The rest reaches the ground as diffuse light. Since this light doesn't come directly from the sun, it isn't collected by solar systems that concentrate sunlight onto thermal power generators or high-efficiency solar cells. Their optics track the sun during the day and focus an image of it onto the power-generating elements, so they can produce much more power than flat solar cells.

Losses could reach 20 per cent in the late afternoon during summer, Murphy warns, because more light is scattered when the sun is lower (Environmental Science and Technology, vol 43, p 2784).

Research has previously shown a sunshade could also trigger droughts in some regions.

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Europe’s new buildings get welcome push to produce as much energy as they use

WWF 23 Apr 09;

Brussels, Belgium – WWF has welcomed a European Parliament vote today that proposes a 2019 deadline for all new houses, offices and shops built in the European Union to produce the same amount of energy they consume. The deadline will be 2016 for all new public buildings.

“We commend the vision of the legislators in making zero net energy buildings the cornerstone of the revised directive,” said Arianna Vitali Roscini, WWF’s Policy Officer for energy conservation in buildings.

“Technically and economically there is nothing standing in the way of an earlier deadline for all new constructions, which could help the EU achieve the 2020 emissions reduction targets.”

The vote, revising a law aiming at improving energy performance in buildings, needs to be confirmed by the Council of the Ministers later this year.

“There is huge potential for buildings to consume less energy and produce renewable energy on site” Vitali Roscini said.

“Promotion of energy efficiency is a winning strategy for Europe. It improves energy security, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, encourages technology development and creates new jobs. This is a structural change within reach, it is up to political will to make it happen.”

WWF is also satisfied that energy efficiency standards will apply to all major renovations, not only to those of surfaces above 1,000 square meters, as it was in the previous law. This is particularly relevant because existing constructions represent the majority of the European building stock (approximately 25% of residential buildings in Europe were built before 1945).

In Europe buildings use 40 per cent of energy and are linked to 36 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. Much of that energy and CO2 can be saved with better insulation, improved heating and cooling systems, double glazing, efficient lighting and smart meters.

This week WWF has organised an exhibition at the European Parliament in Strasbourg to showcase the new generation of efficient buildings in France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Romania and the United Kingdom.

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