How a Man-Made Tornado Could Power the Future

Michael Schirber, LiveScience.com Yahoo News 25 Jun 08;

Editor's Note: Each Wednesday LiveScience examines the viability of emerging energy technologies - the power of the future.

Coiled up in a tornado is as much energy as an entire power plant. So a Canadian engineer has a plan to spin up his own twister and extract energy from its tethered tail.

It all depends on heating the air near the surface so that it is much warmer than the air above.

"You can generate energy whenever you have a temperature gradient," said Louis Michaud. "The source of the energy here is the natural movement of warm and cold air currents."

These so-called convective air currents are only useful if they can be channeled in some way. That is why Michaud proposes using a tornado as a kind of drinking straw between the warm ground below and the cold sky above. Wind turbines placed at the bottom could generate electricity from the sucked-up air.

Whirlwind tour

Tornadoes and hurricanes form when sun-heated air near the surface rises and displaces cooler air above. As outside air rushes in to replace the rising air, the whole mass begins to rotate.

Michaud got the notion of a man-made tornado - what he calls the Atmospheric Vortex Engine (AVE) - while working as an engineer on gas turbines.

"When I looked further into it, I didn't run into anything that was impossible," Michaud told LiveScience.

The AVE structure is a 200-meter-wide arena with 100-meter-high walls. Warm humid air enters at the sides, directed to flow in a circular fashion. As the air whirls around at speeds up to 200 mph, a vacuum forms in the center, which holds the vortex together as it extends several miles into the sky.

The concept is similar to a solar chimney with the swirling walls of the vortex replacing the brick walls of the tower. But the AVE can reach much higher into the sky where the air is colder.

With wind turbines at the inlets to the arena, Michaud calculates that as much as 200 megawatts of electricity (enough for a small city) could be extracted without draining the vortex of its power.

"Look at natural tornadoes that destroy a house or carry off a car and still have plenty of energy left over," he said.

Waste heat

Michaud imagines the AVE could get its warm air from the exhaust of a power plant.

"Most power plants reject more than half of the heat that they make," he said.

The AVE could generate energy from this waste heat because it connects the ground to the upper atmosphere where the temperature gets as low as negative 60 degrees Celsius (80 degrees below zero Fahrenheit). This cold reservoir draws the warm air up fast enough to turn turbines.

"All you have to do is send the heat up there," Michaud said, and the extra energy from the AVE could increase the output of a power plant by 40 percent.

Making the tornado dependent on a waste heat supply would also be a built-in safety feature. "If it came off the base, there would be nothing to sustain the vortex," Michaud said.

He said the vortex might produce a little extra precipitation in the surrounding area.

To build a 200 megawatt AVE facility would cost $60 million, Michaud estimates. This implies a cost per megawatt that is lower than all existing power generation technologies.

Michaud has tested many small prototypes and is currently working on a 4-meter wide AVE near his home in Ontario. The research comes mostly out his own pocket book, as he has not found an investor yet.

"Utility companies are risk-adverse," he said. "They prefer to buy from established vendors."

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Billion Acres of Fallow Farmland Could Grow Biofuels

LiveScience.com Yahoo News 25 Jun 08;

A billion acres of farmland around the world have been abandoned and could now be used to grow biofuel crops, a new study suggests.

One of the criticisms of biofuels such as ethanol from corn or rice is that the crops eat into land that could be used to grow food, which is increasingly in short supply globally, causing frustration and hunger that have led to protests and riots. The alternative of clearing forests to grow biofuel crops is unacceptable to many.

Yet somewhere between 1 billion and 1.2 billion acres of agricultural land is lying fallow, the study finds. That compares to about 3.8 billion acres that are currently in use.

The researchers caution, however, that biofuels will be no magic bullet to resolving possible energy crises in the future.

"Our results showed that if you used all these abandoned agricultural lands, you might obtain up to 8 percent of current energy needs," said Elliott Campbell, a postdoctoral fellow in biology at Stanford University and lead author of the report. "So this result is basically showing us that biofuels could be a meaningful, but a small portion of our total energy future."

The study, based on satellite imagery and historical maps, is detailed today in the online edition of the journal Environmental Science &Technology. It was funded by the Carnegie Institution and the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford.

Land has fallen out of agricultural production for a variety of reasons. In some instances, new technologies or infrastructure have made land with better soil available, as when farmers in the eastern United States left their farms for the richer prairie soils of the Midwest. Elsewhere, soil erosion or depleted soil nutrients have forced farmers away from plots that could still support other crops such as switchgrass that could be used for biofuel.

"These abandoned agricultural lands are distributed throughout the world, in places with a variety of different climates," Campbell said. "So the type of plant species that might give you the most biomass per year would probably depend on the local climate."

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Biofuels Pushing 30 Million Into Poverty - Oxfam

Pete Harrison, PlanetArk 26 Jun 08;

BRUSSELS - Biofuels are responsible for 30 percent of the increase in global food prices, pushing 30 million people worldwide into poverty, aid agency Oxfam said in a report on Wednesday.

The use of biofuels is soaring as developed countries try to reduce their dependence on imported oil and cut emissions of carbon dioxide, but critics say they have led to a shortage of grain, pushing up commodity prices.

"Rich countries' demands for more biofuels in their transport fuels are causing spiralling production and food inflation," said Oxfam biofuel policy adviser Rob Bailey, who wrote the report. "Grain reserves are now at an all-time low."

Oxfam called on rich countries to dismantle subsidies for biofuels and reduce import tariffs.

"Rich countries spent up to US$15 billion last year supporting biofuels while blocking cheaper Brazilian ethanol, which is far less damaging for global food security," the report said.

The aid agency also urged rich countries to scrap biofuels targets, including European Union plans to get 10 percent of its transport fuel from renewable sources like biofuels by 2020.

The EU plans strict criteria to ensure biofuels do not do more harm than good. Some member states want targets to be conditional on the commercial availability of second-generation biofuels from farm waste, timber waste and domestic waste.

Oxfam estimates that by 2020, CO2 emissions from land-use change in the palm oil sector may have reached over 3.1 billion tonnes, largely as a result of the EU target -- and it would take over 46 years of biofuel use at 2020 levels to repay this "carbon debt".

"Biofuels are taking over agricultural land and forcing farming to expand into lands that are important carbon sinks, like forests and wetlands," the report said. "This triggers the release of carbon from soil and vegetation that will take decades to repay."

(Reporting by Pete Harrison; editing by Christopher Johnson)

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Study Highlights Need to Adjust Climate Models

Michael Kahn, PlanetArk 26 Jun 08;

LONDON - Sea spray and microscopic plants from the tropical Atlantic are destroying greenhouse gases in the lower atmosphere at a faster pace than scientists had thought, British researchers said on Wednesday.

The findings published in the journal Nature mean current climate models may need adjusting and they underscore the difficulties in trying to predict future temperature changes, the researchers said.

"One of the key things we need to do in the future is reduce uncertainty around the natural processes that destroy greenhouse gases," said Alastair Lewis of Britain's National Centre for Atmospheric Science, who helped lead the study.

"This is one of the first times we have been able to go and see how those models were doing at predicting the rate of destruction of some greenhouse gases."

Year-round measurements from an observatory on the Cape Verde island of Sao Vicente allowed the team to measure how fast the chemicals bromine and iodine oxide -- produced from sea spray and phytoplankton -- attack and break down ozone.

They found that the chemicals were gobbling up 50 percent more ozone in the part of the lower atmosphere -- about 1 kilometre above the Earth's surface -- than current climate models suggest. Ozone in the lower atmosphere acts as a greenhouse gas, and its destruction sets off a chain of chemical reactions that leads to the removal of methane, the third most abundant greenhouse gas. In the upper atmosphere it helps shield the planet from harmful solar rays.

The study was also the first to take such readings from the ozone above the open ocean. Researchers say they believe the findings are likely typical of other similar tropical waters.

But the findings also has their worrying aspect, the researchers said.

While the results indicate the atmosphere will clean itself faster in response to decreases in human-generated emissions, they also mean climate models slightly underestimate these greenhouse gases, said Lucy Carpenter, who worked on the study.

"At the moment climate models get the amount of ozone right but they haven't got the destruction rates right," said Carpenter, an atmospheric chemist at York University in Britain.

"It also means the models haven't got the balance between production and destruction; because if methane is being destroyed more rapidly it means there must be more emmissions than we had thought." (Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Maggie Fox and Ralph Boulton)

Tropical oceans expose riddle over global-warming equation
Marlowe Hood, Yahoo News 26 Jun 08;

A probe into levels of an important greenhouse gas above the tropical Atlantic has challenged assumptions about key sources of global warming, scientists said on Wednesday.

Researchers found that natural chemicals in the atmosphere west of equatorial Africa destroyed 50 percent more ozone in that region than expected.

This process also reduced concentrations of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas.

It may well apply in oceans around the world and if so, it would pose major questions about how Earth's inventory of global warming gases is calculated, they said.

Ozone, a naturally-occurring molecule composed of three oxygen atoms, can be beneficial or harmful to human life, depending on where it is.

In the stratosphere, 10 to 50 kilometres (17 to 31 miles) above Earth's surface, ozone protects living things by filtering out the Sun's damaging ultraviolet light.

But in the troposphere, or lower atmosphere, ozone is a noxious pollutant and the most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and water vapour, which thus makes it a driver of global warming.

Scientists led by John Plane at the University of Leeds, northern England, analysed a year of ozone and methane measurements taken at the Cape Verde Atmospheric Observatory on Sao Vicente, an island some 500 kilometres (380 miles) west of Senegal.

Ozone, a short-lived molecule with a lifetime ranging from a few days to a week, was disappearing at a rate far above what theoretical calculations would have forecast.

Using new instruments developed for their study, the researchers gave the credit to two atmospheric chemicals produced by sea spray and emissions from microscopic sea organisms called phytoplankton: bromine and iodine oxide.

These chemicals attack ozone and break it down, said the study, published in the British journal Nature.

They also boost the atmospheric levels of another compound called the hydroxyl radical, which in turn destroys methane.

This unexpected discovery implies that the mathematical model for calculating the various sources of global warming could be flawed, although global warming itself is not being contested, one of its authors said.

"Global models get levels of ozone in the troposphere about right. So if destruction rates are much higher than thought that means it must be coming from somewhere else," University of York scientist Lucy Carpenter told AFP.

Whether the findings are good news or bad is a matter of interpretation, Carpenter said.

"These gases are being destroyed more rapidly than we supposed," she said.

"That is good because if humans produce less methane, then it might settle at a lower level."

At the same time, however, that would expose a worrying gap in knowledge -- a hole in the balance sheet of greenhouse gases that needed to be explained.

Further work is needed to see whether the phenomenon observed in the tropical Atlantic applies elsewhere, and also to find whether bromine and iodine oxide levels are on the increase.

If they are -- and it would take five years to find out -- the world's oceans could play a bigger role in reducing at least two of the greenhouse gases driving climate change, she said.

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Shell Says World Can Stabilise Greenhouse Gas Level

Robin Pomeroy PlanetArk 26 Jun 08;

ROME - Thirst for energy will double in the first half of the century, but increased biofuel production and carbon storage could help the world stabilise greenhouse gas levels by the 2020s, oil giant Shell said on Wednesday.

In a study of energy trends to 2050, Royal Dutch Shell illustrated two scenarios of how the world may deal with an energy supply squeeze -- one where governments and industry plan for change and another where they react late, leading to higher demand and greenhouse gas emissions.

"We have a taken a very clear position that we are in favour of the 'blueprints' (scenario with better planning) and we are working actively to promote that," said Shell's Chief Economist Steven Fries, presenting the report in Rome.

In its less controlled scenario, called 'scramble', where countries react late to an energy supply squeeze, the report predicts a "dash for coal" in the coming decade, along with a sharp increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

In its 'blueprints' scenario, which includes global greenhouse gas reduction policies after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012, a focus on energy efficiency and carbon sequestration means emission peak after 2020 and begin to fall.

The scramble scenario sees global energy demand more than doubling from 417 exajoules in 2000 to 880 in 2050. The blueprints scenario sees 13 percent lower energy demand in 2050 of 769 exajoules.

Fries said the blueprints scenario would allow CO2 levels to stabilise at 500-550 parts per million, limiting global warming to a 2 degree Celsius rise.

But that would require a massive takeup of carbon sequestration technology -- capturing the CO2 produced when burning fossil fuels and storing it, for example by pumping it underground.

The blueprints scenario envisages 90 percent of fossil fuel power plants in the developed world fitted with carbon capture and storage (CSS) ability and 50 percent of those in developing countries.

Some environmentalists oppose CCS, which has yet to be tested on a commercial scale, saying it may not be reliable and could divert investment from truly green sources of power.

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China to Lead 50 Pct Jump in World CO2 Output - EIA

PlanetArk 26 Jun 08;

NEW YORK - The world's emissions of the main planet-warming gas carbon dioxide will rise over 50 percent to more than 42 billion tonnes per year from 2005 to 2030 as China leads a rise in burning coal, the US government forecast on Wednesday.

China's coal demand will rise 3.2 percent annually from 2005 to 2030, the Energy Information Administration said in its International Energy Outlook 2008.

US coal use will rise 1.1 percent during the same period, the statistical arm of the Department of Energy projected.

EIA economist Nasir Khilji said China's coal demand will likely rise steeply because it is the cheapest fuel to feed its surging manufacturing industry and demand for electricity as much of the population moves to urban areas.

In the United States a move to more nuclear power should help slow emissions growth, he said.

EIA raised its forecast of annual Chinese carbon emissions in 2030 by 6.8 percent from its outlook released last year, while cutting its forecast for 2030 carbon emissions in the United States by 13.8 percent.

"Coal's share of world energy use has increased sharply over the past few years, and without significant changes in existing laws and policies, particularly those related to greenhouse gas emissions, robust growth is likely to continue," the agency stated.

Not everyone agreed the forecast was accurate. Trevor Houser, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the EIA forecast was based on the past five years of China's manufacturing rise, as it became an exporter of steel.

"This is not necessarily where China will be decades from now," he said, adding that the country has already taken steps to balance its exports of emissions-intensive goods.

China's annual carbon emissions should hit slightly more than 12 billion tonnes per year in 2030, up from more than 5.3 billion tonnes per year in 2005. US carbon emissions should hit 6.9 billion tonnes per year in 2030, up from nearly 6 billion tonnes per year in 2005, EIA said.

In India, another rapidly growing economy, coal consumption was forecast to rise an average 2.4 percent per year to 15.5 quadrillion British thermal units per year.

Coal use in China was forecast to hit 103.4 quadrillion Btu a year in 2030, while in the United States it was expected to hit 29.9 quadrillion Btu. (Reporting by Timothy Gardner, editing by John Picinich)

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Best of our wild blogs: 25 Jun 08

At EnviroFest 2008
The Hantu Bloggers will be there to feature our reefs, with Toh Chay Hoon giving a talk about the shores, while the Naked Hermit Crabs will also host a poster exhibition of our shores and the Toddycats share about their preparations for the event.

Star tracking at Cyrene
stunning finds and amazing results on the nature scouter blog

Discover the not-so-oftenly seen part of Singapore
and some reasons why our shores are special, on the discovery blog

Frogfish and other low tide highlights
a roundup of the last week of exploration on the singapore celebrates our reefs blog

Bee-eaters and comfort behaviour
on the Bird Ecology Study Group blog

Intertidal at St John's
on the urban forest blog

Semakau walk
on the tidechaser blog

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Singapore is getting greener

Arti Mulchand, Straits Times 25 Jun 08;

'The battle to protect biodiversity - and life on earth - will be won or lost in cities. But it is not just species in danger - the jobs of three million people are at risk, for example, if marine life is lost" Dr Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity

CLEAN and green Singapore is getting greener.

The area of the island covered by greenery has gone up from 36 per cent in 1986 to 47 per cent last year, despite the country's population shooting up from 2.7 million to 4.6 million during this period.

This was among the findings of a study by the Centre for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing (Crisp), the National University of Singapore and the National Parks Board (NParks).

One reason: 10 per cent of the land here is set aside for nature reserves and parks, allowing for biodiversity in habitats including lowland rainforests, freshwater swamp forests and coastal forests to be conserved, said NParks chief executive Ng Lang.

Over the years, a network of park connectors, streetscape and waterfront greenery has also added to the shades of green.

This means Singapore's rich biodiversity has been able to flourish as well - the island is now home to over 2,900 species of plants, 360 species of birds and 270 species of butterflies, with more species of flora and fauna yet to be identified.

It means that despite rapid population growth, Singapore has been able to recover from the loss of species to an extent that there is a balance, Mr Ng added.

Singapore's greening even got the nod from Dr Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity, who gave a presentation on cities and biodiversity at the World Cities Summit yesterday,

'Unsound urban management is not the unavoidable destiny of cities. Sound urbanisation and ecologically managed cities can exist. Singapore, the garden in the city, is indeed living testimony of this reality,' he said.

The country is also taking a step forward in the global protection of biodiversity.

Early next year, a panel of experts and policymakers will meet in Singapore to craft a 'Cities Biodiversity Index', so cities can better manage biodiversity and integrate it into urban planning.

The idea for it came from Minister for National Development Mah Bow Tan at the Bonn Diversity Summit in Germany last month, to assist cities in benchmarking their biodiversity conservation efforts.

Commenting on it, Mr Ng said: 'You can't manage what you can't measure. So it will create a more scientific approach to helping countries know where they stand relative to others.'

The index will be ready before the next UN biodiversity conference, to be held in Nagoya, Japan in 2010. Countries will then assess their progress in achieving previously set biodiversity targets.

Their progress is crucial, said Dr Djoghlaf, who added that the rapid urbanisation of the world has led to an unprecedented loss of biodiversity, and that as the population of city dwellers balloons, the level of urgency escalates.

'The battle to protect biodiversity - and life on earth - will be won or lost in cities,' he said.

But it is not just species in danger - the jobs of three million people are at risk, for example, if marine life is lost, he added.

'We need to re-engineer our approach to development...People must realise that the loss of biodiversity will also have an economic impact and threaten livelihoods. We are conserving the economy of tomorrow,' he said.

Related articles

Bringing wildlife back to the city: Singapore’s idea
Sheralyn Tay, Today Online 30 May 08

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Where’s the ‘heart’ in heartland?

Town Councils shouldaccord cat caregiversthe same respect asthey do other residents
Letter from Helen Gamp, Today Online 25 Jun 08;

IN MY estate and the adjacent one, several residents like myself go beyond just ad hoc inter-racial harmony events, to forge a bond through a common goal of managing the cats in our community humanely. We trap cats, most of whom are abandoned, for sterilisation and offer assistance to the Town Council to resolve feedback about cats.

In the neighbouring estate — that is under another Town Council :— we started sterilising the cats about two years ago and the Town Council has agreed to let us, the caregivers, look into complaints and not engage pest controllers to round up the cats to be killed at the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority.

Based on our knowledge about “community cats” and from talking to complainants as well as residents who may need to be educated on responsible pet ownership, we can resolve problems without the need to kill. This is important to us as we feel this is what the “heart” is about in a “heartland”.

However, we are disheartened by our recent discovery that a particular Town Council officer instructed the estate cleaning supervisor to direct his workers to trap cats and release them elsewhere. This came to light when a resident found a sterilised cat, bearing a left tipped ear, in a trap. We spoke to several workers, who admitted that they had trapped cats and released them in parks elsewhere.

This perhaps accounted for some of the missing cats over the last few months.

All we ask of the Town Council is to accord us the same respect as every other resident but we find that residents who complain seem to be accorded more rights especially if they complain aggressively.

When the Prime Minister was sworn in, he said that Singaporeans, through ;hard work and dedication, have built a cohesive and progressive nation that is founded on the principles of meritocracy, social justice and compassion.

We hope this inspiration can be translated in the paradigm shift of Town Councils and others as well. Instead of according due respect to residents such as ourselves, who are in fact following the Government’s repeated appeal for active citizenry, we are instead treated with disdain.

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Sembawang, Woodlands to get cycling paths

7.4km of tracks will run alongside existing footpaths and cost $2.8m
He Zongying & Daryl Tan, Straits Times 25 Jun 08;

CYCLISTS and pedestrians in Sembawang and Woodlands will each get their own space from May next year.

These two estates will be provided with 7.4km of cycling tracks. They will run parallel to the existing footpaths linking residential areas to the Sembawang and Admiralty MRT stations.

The cycling tracks will be between 1.5m and 2m wide and cost $2.8 million.

Keeping cyclists on a separate path is a step up from what the Land Transport Authority, the Traffic Police and the Tampines grassroots organisations have been contemplating in the past year.


A trial letting cyclists and pedestrians share footpath space in Tampines has recently ended and a decision on whether separate cycle paths should be built in the estate is expected soon.

Surveys have indicated that both cyclists and pedestrians there seemed generally in favour of the idea of sharing the footpaths in order to get cyclists off the busy roads.

The initiative in Sembawang and Woodlands was the result of feedback from residents, who wanted to minimise accidents and conflict between cyclists and pedestrians.

Mr Hawazi Daipi, an MP for Sembawang GRC, said that the two estates were going ahead with building the cycling tracks because a 'considerable' number of their residents got around the neighbourhood on bicycles. This includes foreign workers living in the dormitories there.

Three in four cyclists killed on the roads in the first three months of this year were foreigners. The Traffic Police have stepped up a safety education programme targeting them.

The committee coordinating the facilities in Sembawang, Woodlands and Yishun has lined up talks and seminars for residents and foreign workers on the responsible use of the cycling tracks.

Signs and speed-regulating strips will also be installed.

Besides those who commute on wheels, recreational cyclists will also be provided for. A park connector running along Sembawang Way will be built by 2010.

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Urban planners look to Lion City for inspiration

Liaw Wy-Cin & Shobana Kesava, Straits Times 25 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE was very much under the microscope yesterday from city planners keen to strike a balance between developing the urban landscape and not undermining nature.

This included its ability to manage congestion, preserve biodiversity in the midst of urbanisation and manage waste.

Its success in developing a vibrant city and green environment within an area of 700 sq km was cited by delegates at various sessions of the World Cities Summit.

One reason for successful urban planning here is the willingness of those involved to seek constructive criticism, said planning expert Marilyn Taylor, former head of the United States' Urban Land Institute.

'Singapore has a willingness to offer itself up to go under the microscope for others to scrutinise, and that has helped it to develop successfully,' she said after a session on planning for a distinctive and vibrant city.

It also has an ability to invest ahead of demand, she said, noting that this boiled down to having a responsible government.

Others also underlined this point, noting that an attractive city needed a public sector that took responsibility for using resources effectively, and building infrastructure that was sustainable.

Dr Ahmed Djoghlaf, executive secretary of the United Nations' Convention on Biological Diversity, said at a separate discussion on biodiversity that cities like Singapore and Busan in South Korea showed it was possible 'to grow at breakneck speed without undermining nature'.

This was due in large part to a partnership between government and 'green' groups who are on the same wavelength and develop workable solutions.

Cities such as Philadelphia, Dublin, Bilbao and Barcelona were also cited for their model urban planning.

Underlining why this was important, Dr Alfonso Vegara, president of Fundacion Metropolis, a Spanish foundation, said competition today 'is not between countries but cities, and they are competing for talent'.

At a session where speakers shared ideas on road congestion, Singapore was again cited for its good public transport system.

This was being emulated, for example, in fast-growing Indian cities that are working with Singapore's Land Transport Authority.

'Cities have to be returned to the people,' said Mr Sanjeev Kumar Lohia of India's Urban Development Ministry, which has implemented some of Singapore's best practices in bus and rail systems.

Dr Vukan Vuchic, Professor of Transportation Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, said many of the world's best practices have been pioneered here.

'Electronic Road Pricing preceded such measures in other countries by at least 20 years,' he said.

Singapore's approach has been to encourage people to use public transport. Shops, for instance, are sited close to MRT stations. Work is also being done to double the rail network by 2020.

International Association of Public Transport secretary-general Hans Rat said the efficient transport system can now be enhanced so it appeals to those who rarely use it. Design and other changes to France's light rail system, for instance, have seen more of its wealthier citizens now using it.

Other cities also cited for their outstanding public transport systems were Munich, Portland, Vancouver and Perth.

On waste management, participants at one session heard of Singapore's aim to become a 'zero landfill' nation - where nearly all waste will be recycled.

While no timeframe has been set, National Environment Agency director-general Joseph Hui believed if landfill here could be brought down to a 'very low level', it would be a significant achievement.

And the future looks promising.

Total domestic waste disposed per capita has dropped from 0.89kg to 0.88kg a day per person. The recycling rate has gone up from 49 per cent in 2005 to 54 per cent last year. The goal is to hit 60 per cent by 2012.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY JESSICA CHEAM AND SHEFALI REKHI

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Singapore, 'living lab' for cities

PM Lee unveils two institutes to help promote sustainable growth
Warren Fernandez, Straits Times 25 Jun 08;

SINGAPORE could be a 'living laboratory' for solutions to challenges that the rapidly growing number of cities around the world face, as they strive to develop economically while safeguarding the environment.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said this to more than 5,000 delegates at the first World Cities Summit and International Water Week, which he opened at Suntec City yesterday.

As part of its effort to be a global centre for practical policy ideas on sustainable economic development, he announced the setting up of two new institutes here.

The Institute of Water Policy, part of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, will undertake research on water policies, as well as advisory and consultancy projects, and act as a forum for discussion of water issues.

The Centre for Liveable Cities will bring together the expertise Singapore has built up in government, industry and academia on sustainable urban development.

It will initially be part of the National Development Ministry and focus on research on urban planning and policy, and help share Singapore's development experience with the world.

Mr Lee also called on the private sector to play its part, urging companies to experiment with new solutions to urban problems in Singapore, which could then be adapted for export.

The German firm, Siemens, for example, had set up its Global Centre of Competence for City Management here to test and launch new IT solutions in city management.

Other companies were also investing in urban research projects to test ideas for emerging markets in China, India, Vietnam and the Middle East.

'Some of Singapore's solutions may be relevant to other emerging cities in Asia and the world,' he said.

'But no single city or country will have all the answers. Instead, we need closer collaboration to share expertise and experiences, pursue joint research and develop pragmatic, workable solutions.'

He said cities faced the common challenge of delivering clean air and water, good living environments and efficient use of resources.

This called for proper pricing of energy instead of subsidising it, managing water resources well, and enforcing air standards rigorously. Underlying all this: sound urban planning and good policies.

The government officials, businessmen and academics attending the conference put Singapore's experience under the microscope at panel discussions through the day.

Of special interest were the efforts led by the PUB to turn resource adversity to advantage and strive for water self-sufficiency, by collecting water run-off in reservoirs, desalination and recycling water.

Several speakers noted how Singapore had been a trailblazer of sorts by charging motorists for using roads, leading to the electronic road pricing system in the 1990s.

Said Professor Sir Peter Hall, from University College London: 'Singapore's experience shows the importance of political leadership, of governments sometimes getting ahead of the public and saying yes, let's try this.'

A similar system of congestion charging introduced in London had helped cut traffic jams and was now 'generally recognised as a success'.

To see first-hand how Singapore put water and waste-management policies into practice, some delegates spent the afternoon visiting the Newater plants in Bedok and Ulu Pandan, the Tuas incineration plant and the Semakau landfill.

Creating liveable cities: One-stop centre set up
Straits Times 25 Jun 08;

A NEW policy institute aims to study all aspects of urban development - from 'hard' aspects like security and land use to 'soft' aspects like creating buzz.

The Centre For Liveable Cities has been established by the National Development and the Environment and Water Resources ministries.

It will be headed by Mr Andrew Tan, who is a deputy secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He will hold both positions concurrently.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced the centre's formation yesterday at the opening of the inaugural World Cities Summit and International Water Week.

Mr Tan, 40, said the centre will receive initial funding of $5 million from its two parent ministries. The amount will go mainly towards hiring staff.

The centre will be housed at the URA Centre in Maxwell Road, and will be fully staffed by the year's end.

It aims to be a one-stop source of urban and environmental management expertise and will forge links with other cities and international organisations.

A 'timely initiative', the centre is a 'confluence of two factors', one of which is Singapore's experiences of urban planning over the last few decades, explained Mr Tan.

'This is one area we want to develop further and tap on best practices elsewhere, seeing how in the coming years we'll see the entire skyline of Singapore change with the Marina Sands resort, Gardens by the Bay and the new downtown (in the Marina area),' he added.

The gardens are a series of three waterfront parks currently being constructed in Marina Bay.

The other push for setting up the Centre For Liveable Cities is the need among Asian cities for ideas on how to manage growing pollution and congestion.

'I have to add a caveat: There's no one single formula for cities and the problems they face.'

Nevertheless, Mr Tan believes it is worth sharing experiences, especially with the surge in issues like climate change and transboundary pollution which require regional and even international cooperation.

CLARISSA OON

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