KL slams ban on Malaysian palm oil advertisement

Stephen Then 6 Nov 09;

MIRI: The British Government’s ban on a Malaysian palm oil advertisement because of native land disputes and alleged victimisation of the Penans in Sarawak by logging and palm oil giants “is unfair”.

Deputy International Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Jacob Sagan said the federal and state authorities had put in great effort to not only protect the environment, but also the natives’ welfare.

“Any move jeopardising the export of Malaysian palm oil will inevitably affect the livelihoods of those working in the plantations,” he said.

“It is not fair to link a business issue with a native rights issue because they can be dealt with separately.

“The palm oil industry in Malaysia helps to improve the livelihood of tens of thousands of people, especially smallholders living in rural areas,” he added.

According to Survival International, the UK Advertising Standards Agency banned the advertisement placed by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council in a British business magazine because the advertisement said Malaysian palm oil was sustainable and contributed to poverty-eradication and the development of rural people.

The London-based group deals with issues involving the rights of indigenous communities across the globe.

“The UK advertisement regulator ruled that the advertisement was misleading as the palm oil industry had infringed on the rights of the natives and their land,” said the group’s director Stephen Corry in an e-mail.

“The regulator ruled that Malaysia’s claim that palm oil is green and people-friendly is not credible because the industry’s expansion into the rural areas had caused disaster to the people’s lives,” he added.

Meanwhile, Sagan said the Plantation Industries and Commodities Ministry was in a better position to try to lift the ban by explaining the true situation in the country.

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Palm oil roundtable breaks emissions logjam

WWF 5 Nov 09;

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil this week agreed to consider implementing voluntary measures to encourage producers and buyers of palm oil to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The Roundtable’s 7th annual conference came to a close Wednesday in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Titled “Moving Ahead in Challenging Times,” the three-day conference drew more than 800 people from inside and outside of the palm oil industry, including buyers and producers.

After several rounds of heated discussion this week, the Roundtable’s Executive Board reached a compromise in which some emissions reduction requirements will be directly incorporated in the Roundtable’s certification standards.

They agreed to further address the issue and hammer out emissions measures related to land use change before the next Roundtable conference in 2010. To this end, they will develop a voluntary framework within which companies will work together to reduce emissions.

This objective received considerable support by producers from outside Malaysia and Indonesia who said they will use this voluntary standard as soon as it becomes available, while committing to stop the expansion of plantations on peat lands.

“This is a move in the right direction,” said Adam Harrison, WWF’s representative on the RSPO Executive Board. “We encourage companies to embrace emissions reduction standards once they become available and do their part to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change.”

The conference also focused on the frustration by producers concerning the slow uptake of certified sustainable palm oil by buyers. The sluggish market prompted WWF to publish the Palm Oil Buyers’ Scorecard on Oct. 28, a project that assessed the performance of 59 European retailers and manufacturers buying palm oil.

The Scorecard showed that the majority of European palm oil buyers are failing to buy certified sustainable palm oil, despite its availability and the previous commitments by many companies to purchase it.

The Scorecard was presented and widely discussed at the conference. It was praised by producers and buyers alike as a positive vehicle for bringing much needed transparency to this growing market and showing companies buying palm oil that they are expected to do their part in transforming the palm oil market.

The growing demand for palm oil is adding to the already severe pressure on remaining rainforest areas of the world. The loss of forest in Indonesia is threatening the survival of species such as the orang-utan, the Sumatran tiger, rhino and elephant. Forest loss and the draining of peatlands for palm oil plantations is also contributing to climate change and displacing local people who rely on the forest for food and shelter. Palm oil is one of the world’s fastest expanding crops in Southeast Asia as well as West Africa and South America.

It is because of threats like this that WWF worked with other NGOs and the palm oil industry to set up the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2003. Since then WWF has worked with the industry to ensure that the RSPO standards contain robust social and environmental criteria, including a prohibition on the conversion of valuable forests. Certified Sustainable Palm Oil has been available since November 2008 and provides assurance that valuable tropical forests have not been cleared and that environmental and social safeguards have been met during the production of the palm oil.

WWF opted to grade palm oil buyers after releasing figures in May showing that only a small percentage of the sustainable palm oil available on the market had been bought. Since then, the situation is starting to improve. Over the last year, RSPO certified plantations have produced over 1,000,000 tonnes of certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO), and over 250,000 tonnes have been sold to date. While this still represents only 22 percent of the available supply on average, the RSPO has reported that CSPO sales have been growing in recent months.

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Cost builds up in Australia for wasted food

Australian Policy Online, Science Alert 6 Nov 09;

Australian households are throwing out more than $5 billion worth of food each year, more than Australians spend on digital equipment, and more than it costs to run the Australian Army. In addition to the direct financial costs of this waste, the environmental impact associated with excessive greenhouse gas emissions and water use is substantial. This paper examines who is wasting food and the motivations behind this behaviour. The research is based on an online survey of 1603 main grocery buyers across Australia.

The data reveal that the extent of food waste is related to both household income and the number of household occupants. The amount of food wasted increases with household income and decreases with larger household sizes. Households with four or more occupants waste the least food per person, while people living by themselves waste the most.

Most people are concerned about food waste and report feeling guilty when they throw away food. While respondents were able to identify how they could reduce food waste, they simultaneously reported behaviour that contradicted their own advice. For example, most people believe that planning their purchases in advance is the best way to avoid wasting food, but most of those same respondents admitted to making purchasing decisions on the spur of the moment.

Saving money is by far the greatest motivator for households to reduce food waste. Twice as many respondents said that financial considerations would be the main reason to avoid wasting food compared to those who cited the environmental benefits.

The data suggest that better planning by grocery shoppers is likely to play an important role in reducing food waste. However, such ‘conscious consumption’ tends to be inconsistent with the ‘convenience foods’ promoted by some food retailers. The free provision by some retailers of plastic shopping bags, for example, highlights the manner in which grocery outlets encourage customers to shop first and plan second.

In addition to the direct financial benefits to households, reducing food waste has the capacity to deliver significant environmental benefits at no cost to government. Food retailers represent a major barrier to implementing effective food waste policies, since their profits are contingent on the amount of food sold rather than the amount of food consumed. To overcome this, better public understanding of the problems associated with food waste needs to be a priority for governments at all levels. Without considerable policy change in this area, household waste is likely to grow as incomes rise and the number of occupants in each household shrinks.

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Liquid Granite and the hunt for a carbon-neutral cement

Cement is responsible for 5% of the world's carbon emissions, and the race is on to find an alternative
Alok Jha, guardian.co.uk 4 Nov 09;

What do you do with a problem like cement? Around 2bn tonnes are used every year, each tonne a source of 0.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide as it is made. The cement industry is responsible for 5% of the world's carbon emissions – more than the entire aviation industry.

Standard, or Portland, cement is made by heating limestone or clay to around 1,500C. This use of energy and the decomposition of the limestone as it cooks releases copious amounts of CO2. As the carbon reduction targets from global climate agreements begin to bite, sorting out cement will become a priority.

Engineers have been working hard on the problem in recent years, with a range of approaches to cutting the environmental impact of the construction industry: some have tried synthetic polymers that would remove the need for limestone; others have fiddled with how cement is used in buildings. The latest on the block is Liquid Granite, a binding material that, according to its inventor, could almost entirely replace cement with a powder made from recycled waste materials.

Liquid Granite replaces the need for more than two-thirds of this Portland cement when making concrete, thereby saving the associated carbon emissions. "One of the biggest culprits of carbon footprint is cement, which we use in making concrete – Liquid Granite does away with most of the use of cement. The amount used is pretty small," says Prof Pal Mangat of Sheffield Hallam University, who came up with the product. "Potentially, by the time we're finished with this developmental technology, it'll be close to zero."

Mangat is cagey about the exact formulation of Liquid Granite, and with good reason: by 2020, the French bank Credit Agricole estimates, demand for cement will be 50% greater than today, and a new carbon-free building material could reap huge rewards. All that Mangat will say is that Liquid Granite is made from an inorganic powder, 30-70% of which is recycled industrial waste materials. Using the same aggregates as normal concrete, it could be used anywhere cement is but with a fraction of the carbon footprint.

"In some applications it's more suitable than concrete. For example, one of the main areas we are currently exploiting it is fire-resistant building materials," he says. "It has good fire-resistant properties, unlike concrete, which explodes upon exposure to high temperatures."

There has already been interest from the building industry, with Liquid Granite has already been used in fire-rated lintels at the Olympic Village and Stratford Shopping Centre in east London.

Others are hot on Mangat's heels. Novacem, based in London, last year created a cement that has a negative carbon footprint over its lifetime. His invention uses magnesium silicates, which emit no CO2 when heated, and the processing is carried out at a much lower temperature than that required for Portland cement. In addition, the cement absorbs CO2 as it hardens – each tonne could remove around 0.6 tonnes of the greenhouse gas over its lifetime.

Transforming a global industry as established as construction was never going to be simple. But tackling the problem of cement seems a good place to start.

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Forests in the desert: the answer to climate change?

Climate change could be cancelled out in a staggeringly ambitious plan to plant the Sahara desert and Australian outback with trees
David Adam, guardian.co.uk 4 Nov 09;

Some talk of hoisting mirrors into space to reflect sunlight, while others want to cloud the high atmosphere with millions of tonnes of shiny sulphur dust. Now, scientists could have dreamed up the most ambitious geoengineering plan to deal with climate change yet: converting the parched Sahara desert to a lush forest. The scale of the ambition is matched only by the promised rewards – the scientists behind the plan say it could "end global warming".

The scheme has been thought up by Leonard Ornstein, a cell biologist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, together with Igor Aleinov and David Rind, climate modellers at Nasa. The trio have outlined their plan in a new paper published in the Journal of Climatic Change, and they modestly conclude it "probably provides the best, near-term route to complete control of greenhouse gas induced global warming".

Under the scheme, planted fields of fast growing trees such as eucalyptus would cover the deserts of the Sahara and Australian outback, watered by seawater treated by a string of coastal desalination plants and channelled through a vast irrigation network. The new blanket of tree cover would bring its own weather system and rainfall, while soaking up carbon dioxide from the world's atmosphere. The team's calculations suggest the forested deserts could draw down around 8bn tonnes of carbon a year, about the same as emitted from fossil fuels and deforestation today. Sounds expensive? The researchers say it could be more economic than planned global investment in carbon capture and storage technology (CCS).

"The costs are enormous but the scale of the problem is enormous," says Ornstein, who is best known for pioneering a cell biology technique called polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis in the 1950s. "It's a serious suggestion in that I believe it is the most promising and practical option in terms of current technology to solve the biggest parts of the problem."

The scheme could cost $1.9tn a year, he says. "When that's compared to figures like estimates of $800bn per year for CCS, our plan looks like a loser. But CCS can address only about 20% of the problem at the $800bn price. Mine addresses the whole thing. And CCS would involve a network of dangerous high-pressure pipelines coursing through the most developed neighbourhoods of our civilisations, compared to relatively benign water aqueducts in what are presently virtually uninhabited deserts."

Planting trees to combat rising carbon dioxide levels is controversial on a large scale, because most places where it has been suggested, such as Canada and Siberia, are in the northern hemisphere where the resulting change in surface colour, from predominantly light snow and rock to predominantly dark trees, could soak up more sunlight and cancel out the cooling benefit. Ornstein says subtropical regions, such as the Sahara and the Australian outback, do not have this problem. The areas have only minimal "human occupation, agricultural food and fibre resources and competing natural biomes" the team says. "We must bite the bullet, global warming will not go away by itself ... solar, geothermal and wind power can make modest contributions. All of these are other parts of a fix. But the quicker a forest can be grown, the more time will be available to choose among and to implement such adjustments, and perhaps to develop more attractive substitutes."

Ornstein says several desert-heavy countries are suitable, including large chunks of Saudi Arabia and a string of African nations west of Egypt. The scheme would provide jobs and investment, he says, as well as a long-term source of sustainable wood that could be used as a biofuel to replace fossil fuels. Other plans for the desert region, such as the installation of giant arrays of mirrors and solar panels to generate electricity would not be affected, he says. Tree-planters, and the resulting clouds, would stick to the flatter regions further south.

Since the paper was published a few weeks ago, Ornstein has attempted to seed serious discussions on specialist websites, with little success. Critics have pointed out that the deserts are not total wildernesses, but rich and diverse ecosystems in their own right, which would be destroyed. Ornstein says: "If sacrifices are required to stem global warming, the almost non-existent ecosystems of the central Sahara and the outback seem like reasonable candidates compared to the alternatives."

The scheme does have some support. "It is incredibly important and definitely worth taking seriously," says Rick Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. "While there are many practical and political difficulties of afforestation of regions this large, the benefits could be enormous and go well beyond carbon sequestration."

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Farmers, Experts Doubt Indonesia's Promise of Land For Rice

Arti Ekawati, The Jakarta Globe 5 Nov 09;

Farmers and agricultural experts have scoffed at the government’s latest promise to offer millions of hectares of land as part of the national goal of achieving self-sufficiency in rice production.

Shortly after his appointment last month, Agriculture Minister Suswono said he had instructed the National Land Agency (BPN) to seek ways to offer as much as six million hectares of land outside Java to rice farmers.

He said that reviving the transmigration scheme, first launched during the Suharto era, would be a priority for his ministry during its first 100 days.

But farmers have heard this before. The last government made the same promise. And nothing happened.

“[The government] didn’t implement the program during its last term, so why have they set the same target again?” said Henry Saragih, chairman of the Indonesian Farmers Federation (FSPI).

Bungaran Saragih, an agriculture analyst from the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB), said he doubted the program would be implemented.

“Where is the land for the program? Whose land will be given to farmers?” he said.

The country consumes more and more rice while the amount of farmland shrinks. According to BPN statistics, more than 140,000 hectares of farmland is being converted into commercial and industrial land every year, while only 40,000 hectares of land is converted to farmland.

Meanwhile, the population grows by 1.6 percent yearly, further straining food resources. While the country has regained rice self-sufficiency in 2008, many fear it could once again become a net importer of rice.

Henry said the government should proceed gradually rather than make big promises, beginning by declining to extend the land licenses of private plantation companies.

“Privately owned companies should return their land to the state as soon as their licenses expire,” he said, adding that this would leave the government more land to give to farmers.

Rice farmers struggle to wrest a living out of small farms — 75 percent of small-scale farmers own plots of just 0.2 hectares or less, according to data collected in 2003.

Bungaran said the government should create jobs for rice farmers outside of agriculture instead of promising them more land. He said reducing the number of farmers would increase the average size of farms, improving efficiency and returns for those still farming.

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Low-Carbon Farms Can Raise Food Output, Food Agency Says

PlanetArk 6 Nov 09;

BARCELONA - Low-carbon farming can both curb climate change and boost food output in developing nations and so must be rewarded under a global climate deal due in December, the U.N.'s food agency said on Thursday.

Steps to cut carbon emissions on farms in developing countries could also boost yields where food is shortest, the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a report published on Thursday.

More than 1 billion people are undernourished now and the world will have to feed an additional 3 billion by 2050, many in areas expected to be worst afflicted by climate change, experts say.

Certain farm practices can tackle both problems, for example conserving over-grazed pastures and caring for soils, but they involve up-front costs.

"A key part of the problem is a lack of financing," said Leslie Lipper, FAO economist and co-author of its report "Food Security and Agricultural Mitigation in Developing Countries," published on the sidelines of U.N. climate talks in Barcelona.

"If adopted by farmers, many of these practices make them better off, but in the short run they may face reduced income," Lipper said, using the example of removing cattle to allow grasslands to recover.

Agriculture has barely been mentioned in the November 2-6 Barcelona talks -- the final preparatory session before a meeting in Copenhagen in December meant to agree a global climate deal to replace or extend the Kyoto Protocol.

Farms accounts for 10-12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions directly, not including their contribution to deforestation, according to a U.N. panel of climate scientists.

An FAO study this year put the extra farm investment needed to boost food yields at $210 billion between now and 2050.

Some of the funding for low-carbon practices could come from carbon markets, whereby rich nations pay for cuts in developing countries to offset against their own emissions.

Low-carbon farming in developing nations could raise up to $30 billion annually through such carbon finance, Thursday's study said.

One difficulty is the challenge of measuring the carbon cuts, such as the extra carbon locked in the soil as a result of practices such as tilling the soil less and applying more organic fertilizers such as manure and crop waste.

The cost of soil measurement means carbon markets may only work for the most effective carbon-cutting systems, and the rest need public finance. Finding adequate funds to cut carbon emissions in developing countries has been a long-running stumbling block at the two-year U.N. talks.

(Editing by Tim Pearce)

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Friends of the Earth attacks carbon trading

An FoE report says 'cap and trade' carbon markets have done little to reduce emissions but have been plagued by corruption and inefficiency
Ashley Seager, The Guardian 5 Nov 09;

The world's carbon trading markets growing complexity threatens another "sub-prime" style financial crisis that could again destabilise the global economy, campaigners warn today.

In a new report, Friends of the Earth says that to date "cap and trade" carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions but have been plagued by inefficiency and corruption that render them unfit for purpose.

As the world heads towards the Copenhagen climate summit, Britain and other developed countries want to see carbon trading expanded worldwide. The carbon market, mainly based in Europe, was worth $126bn in 2008 and is predicted to mushroom to $3.1tn by 2020 if a global carbon market takes off.

However, FoE fears that the area has been hijacked by speculators on the financial markets. Sarah-Jayne Clifton, the report's author, said: "The majority of the trade is carried out not between polluting industries and factories covered by carbon trading schemes, but by banks and investors who profit from speculation on the carbon markets – packaging carbon credits into increasingly complex financial products similar to the 'shadow finance' around sub-prime mortgages which triggered the recent economic crash."

The FoE claims that the first phase of the European emissions trading scheme between 2005 and 2007 failed. And the second phase, from 2008-2012, is likely to fail too, it said. FoE is calling on governments to use more reliable instruments such as carbon taxes, which are harder to avoid and can be effective at changing people's behaviour and reducing emissions.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: "We agree that domestic action by developed countries as well as public finance is essential to meet the challenge of climate change and … the UK is going all-out to get an ambitious, fair and effective deal.

"But carbon trading can also play a role, making it far more likely that we tackle dangerous climate change, get cost-effective emissions reductions and get money to the poorest countries of the world."

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Is the idea of carbon trading just a lot of hot air?

Carbon trading sounds like a great idea: by putting a price on emissions, it punishes polluters and fosters green technologies. Find out if the reality matches the rhetoric
Felicia Jackson, David Robertson Times Online 5 Nov 09;

THE THEORY
By Felicia Jackson

We know we have to cut greenhouse gas emissions, but why is carbon trading the way to do it?

We have to start placing an economic value on the environment, but we can’t wait for the perfect solution. We need to act now, and that means using the market tools at our disposal to create the most flexible approach.

Changing the behaviour of governments and industry is likely to have a more immediate impact on emissions than encouraging individuals to buy low-carbon products and services. And to make countries and companies cut emissions quickly, we need to put a price on them. Doing so is not just about motivating polluters to reduce emissions; it is also about enabling politicians and bosses to keep track of the costs and benefits of emissions-cutting measures and make long-term investment decisions.

What are the chief advantages of carbon trading?

It imposes a limit on emissions, which shrinks over time. Trading in emissions — technically called “carbon offsets” — also makes sense as greenhouse gases are a global problem: it doesn’t matter where emissions are cut, as long as they come down. The cost of funding projects that result in lower emissions is immense, and we have to find a cost-effective way to manage this transition. Carbon trading fits the bill as it is economically efficient. As quotas get ever tighter, it becomes harder to generate credits and the cost of emissions becomes more onerous.

In that case, why is there so much international disagreement on tackling climate change?

The Kyoto Protocol was the first legally binding international framework to restrict greenhouse gas emissions, enshrining the concept of “common but differentiated responsibilities” for developed and developing nations. It is how these responsibilities should be enshrined in law that is causing disagreement.

The industrialised world has grown rich on the exploitation of the world’s natural resources. Developing countries are aggrieved to be told that they cannot follow the same path because of the threat of climate change. It does not help that, despite not having ratified Kyoto, the US is among countries insisting that the largest developing economies must accept binding emissions targets.

Offsets have been strongly criticised as a means for developed nations to outsource their responsibility for cutting emissions to the developed world. There is clearly a need to help the developing world to deal with the environmental impact of climate change, but there is little agreement on how this should be funded internationally.

So will carbon trading benefit the developing world?

The Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation provisions of the Kyoto Protocol should act to encourage investment in new, clean technologies and, in the case of the CDM, generate flows of global finance and knowhow from rich to poor.

What does the future hold for carbon trading?

It seems almost certain that carbon trading and carbon market mechanisms will remain central. Outside the Kyoto framework, a number of regional schemes have been or are being introduced: the European Union has its ETS, the US has several schemes of its own (with Congress debating legislation that could see the creation of a federally regulated scheme), and Australia and the UK are launching their own national schemes.

THE PRACTICE
By David Robertson

Does carbon trading work?

There are some promising signs. In the EU, for example, emissions from businesses taking part in the ETS fell by just over 3 per cent in 2008 compared with the year before, and this while economic growth was 0.8 per cent over the same period. But despite some positive statistics, carbon trading on the whole does not work.

What has gone wrong?

The defining weakness of emissions trading schemes is that they are set up, run and regulated by governments. When the EU established the ETS in 2005, member governments were desperate to ensure that their national flagships did not suffer. The resulting machinations led to industries being allocated far too many credits — 3.4 per cent more than actual emissions. When this overgenerosity became fully apparent in 2006, the embryonic carbon trading market collapsed. The price of emissions fell from €30 to €10 per tonne of CO2 almost overnight and continued to fall to just a few cents a tonne when the scheme’s first phase ended in 2007.

What is continuing to go wrong in Europe?In an attempt to correct the failings of this first phase, the EU tightened emissions caps for phase II (2008-2012). Unfortunately, it appears that once again too many credits have been allocated, a miscalculation which the global downturn has only made worse. Some industries are now awash with credits and, in a further fudge, are being allowed to bank them for phase III (2013-2020). This will make hitting carbon targets much easier during the next decade. The likely result is a trading scheme that will be largely ineffectual during its first 15 years of operation.

Who pays?

To protect their industries from foreign competitors not subject to the pressures of carbon trading, governments have overallocated credits to some and underallocated to others. Power companies, for example, have received comparatively few credits because consumers cannot easily go elsewhere to buy their energy. This allows power utilities to pass on the cost of buying carbon credits to their customers.

Meanwhile, to cut their emissions quickly, power companies are switching from coal to natural gas, which emits less CO2 than coal for a given power output. This is making Europe heavily reliant on fuel supplies from Russia and the Middle East — with all the geo-political implications that entails.

What needs to change?

The European Union needs to be more aggressive in setting targets and allocating emissions quotas if they are serious about using the ETS as the primary means of changing corporate behaviour.

The power of governments to influence the permit allocation system should be removed (Italy and various Eastern European nations are currently said to be lobbying to weaken phase III emissions targets, for example). A central regulator should determine how permits are distributed to industry to prevent favouritism.

To be truly effective the same system needs to apply in all countries, otherwise emissions trading will always be open to “permit tourism” — companies moving their activities to territories with no trading scheme or an overly generous one.

Companies should not be given all their permits for free. This is a subsidy that creates windfall trading profits if a company emits less than its quota of carbon. 

Conquering Carbon: Carbon Emissions, Carbon Markets and the Consumer, by Felicia Jackson, is published by New Holland Publishers at £9.99

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Philippines Targets $2.5 Billion Geothermal Development

Leonora Walet, PlanetArk 6 Nov 09;

HONG KONG - The Philippine government aims to approve contracts to explore and develop the country's massive geothermal energy resources, which could attract more than $2.5 billion in private investment, an official said.

The Philippines, the world's second-largest developer of geothermal energy, plans to approve 19 deals in the next five months to allow foreign and domestic companies access to geothermal projects, the division chief for geothermal energy at the Philippine Energy Department, Alejandro Oanes, told Reuters.

Philippine power producer Energy Development Corp and Envent, a unit of Geysir Green Energy, one of Iceland's biggest geothermal energy companies, were among groups vying for contracts to tap the country's geothermal resources, he said.

"Incentives for renewable projects are giving (the country's) geothermal development a much needed boost," said Oanes in a telephone interview from Manila.

Tax holidays and tariff exemptions for renewable energy projects are boosting investment in clean energy in the Philippines, with the government recently awarding 87 contracts to develop alternative energy sources.

Geothermal power accounted for 17 percent of the country's total power mix at the end of 2008, with installed capacity close to 2,000 megawatts, energy department data showed.

The government was issuing tenders for the development of 10 geothermal sites and negotiating nine more deals directly with various companies, Oanes said. Combined, the deals could harness more than 620 megawatts of geothermal energy.

Geothermal sites covered in the deals include Mount Isarog, in Camarines Sur province, where about 70 MW of geothermal power could be developed. The government is also looking at resources in Mount Labo, Camarines Norte with a potential capacity of 65 MW.

Other provinces identified with geothermal resources include Benguet, Cagayan, Palawan, Oriental Mindoro, Surigao del Norte and Laguna.

(Editing by Chris Lewis)

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'Conspiracy of silence' over climate migrants: UN official

Anne Chaon Yahoo News 5 Nov 09;

BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) – A "conspiracy of silence" is stifling debate over the future of people who become displaced through climate change, a top UN official for refugees says.

In an interview with AFP at the UN climate talks in Barcelona, Jean-Francois Durieux, in charge of climate change at the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said the question "remains taboo."

Under 1951 UN statutes, the term "refugee" applies specifically to a victim of violence or persecution, who is then entitled to help and asylum in other countries.

But no such status exists for people who are forced from their home by drought, flood, storms and rising sea levels unleashed by man-made global warming.

"There's a conspiracy of silence at the moment," Durieux said.

"The countries of origin (of displaced people) and host countries are not eager, and are even hostile, about opening up the question," he said.

"The reason is because there is no reliable way of estimating how many people could be affected."

The Stern Review, a 2006 assessment on the economics of climate change authored by British economist Sir Nicholas Stern, quoted estimates of as many as 150-200 million "permanently displaced" environmental refugees by mid-century.

An estimate put forward by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) suggests 200 to 250 million by the same date.

One of the problems, though, is that the definitition of a climate refugee is hard to pin down, say experts.

For instance, it may be impossible to say whether a single weather event, or even a string of them -- such as a run of bad harvests -- is part of a natural cycle or inflicted by longer-term human occurrence.

These events can also be amplified by human folly or bad governance, such as allowing people to settle in areas that are vulnerable to water stress, mudslides, hurricanes and so on.

Another complication is that the climate change could be the underlying cause for displacement but its role is masked by conflict or unrest, which are far more visible.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, New York, is among those who believe the war in Sudan's Darfur is an example where climate change has already driven a badly-stressed region over the brink.

At present, "there is no obligation to accept people fleeing poverty," said Durieux. "Illegal migrants can be expelled."

He said the UNHCR was treading delicately on the subject, both because of the legal complexities of how to define a climate refugee and also because of the repercussions of giving asylum to potentially millions of people.

"Member states do accept an open-ended system of this kind, but only for a small number of people," said Durieux.

"If we try to promote a requirement whereby a state would have to accept (climate refugees) for a long time, we won't get anywhere," he said.

"It could have a boomerang effect, hitting people who are already fleeing persecution and cause the current regime of protection, which is already constantly under threat, to unravel."

The UNHCR hopes to make its own proposals within the next year.

In the meantime, a new global climate pact planned under the 192-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) -- scheduled to be hammered out in Copenhagen next month -- could "build a capital of trust" to open the debate, Durieux hoped.

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Can Closing the Ozone Hole Also Help Combat Climate Change?

Finding alternatives to refrigerants such as hydrofluorocarbons will help prevent the ozone hole being healed at climate's expense

Robynne Boyd, Scientific American 5 Nov 09;

Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse culprit in human-generated global warming, most scientists agree, but CO2 itself, and a handful of other substances, are now being promoted as good alternatives to commonly used refrigerants that threaten Earth's atmosphere and climate.

To understand this paradoxical turn of events, it helps to recall the 1980s, when the world's governments banded together to fix the Antarctic ozone hole, a continent-size gap in the atmospheric layer that protects human beings, among other living things, from the sun's damaging ultraviolet radiation. Via the international treaty that entered into force in 1989 known as the Montreal Protocol, participants agreed to phase out the chemicals that harmed ozone. Closing the hole became one of the globe's greatest and most successful environmental restoration projects. But today, there is a glitch: The touted solution for the ozone predicament could in fact exacerbate our greatest environmental challenge—climate change.

The problem is that under the Montreal Protocol, which the U.S. has signed, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) were promoted as the environmental alternative to ozone-depleting hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), which had become the standard working coolant in refrigerators, air conditioners and aerosol cans. HCFCs, for their part, originally replaced the even more potent ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were used liberally until the early 1990s. Whereas HFCs do not destroy the ozone layer, they can be thousands of times more harmful to Earth's climate than carbon dioxide, posing a significant threat should they become HCFCs' main replacement.

"HCFCs and HFCs are two chemicals designed by chemists to trap heat; the fluorinated part of the compound turns what would be a normal hydrocarbon into something that is much more durable," explains Kert Davies, director of research for Greenpeace USA. "When you combine those two properties—heat trapping and durability—in the atmosphere, it creates a greenhouse gas. We created another problem by replacing the ozone depleters with chemicals that cause global warming, and now we need to replace these because they are going to be banned."

Starting January 1, under the Montreal Protocol, the world's developed nations must cut HCFC consumption and production by 75 percent. It will then become illegal to import, produce or sell Freon (HCFC-22) and HCFC-142b, the ubiquitous refrigerants, for use in new equipment. At the same time, Europe is implementing a ban on HFC-134a (a common car air-conditioning refrigerant that can trap 3,400 times more heat in the atmosphere than CO2), beginning in 2011.

The alternatives? Natural refrigerants and a new group of fluorochemicals called hydrofluoro-olefins (HFOs).

Naturally occurring refrigerants, such as hydrocarbons (propane, isobutane and cyclopentane), ammonia and even that climate culprit carbon dioxide, can be used as cooling agents in refrigerators and air conditioners. They all have relatively low or lower global warming potentials, exist in large quantities, and do not have unknown side effects.

Ironically, CO2 seems to rise above the rest. "CO2 is an excellent refrigerant with superior thermodynamic and transport properties, compared to the HFCs in use today," says
David Hinde, manager of research and development for Conyers, Ga.–based Hill Phoenix, which recently became the first company to receive EPA approval to replace HCFCs with CO2 in supermarkets. "By using CO2, refrigeration systems will be able to reduce HFC leaks as well as dramatically reduce the HFC charge (the amount used in a system)."

Like most refrigerants, CO2 can remove heat from the air. The process starts when a refrigerator's compressor condenses CO2, raising its pressure and temperature. The gas is then transferred to a gas cooler where the heat is released cooling the refrigerant, which casts off the heat from a radiator on the back or bottom of the fridge. The CO2 (now between the liquid and vapor phases) then travels through an expansion valve, instantly reducing the liquid's pressure and causing it to rapidly expand into vapor. As the CO2 evaporates it absorbs heat, thereby cooling the air inside the refrigerator compartment. CO2 must be used at a much higher pressure than HFC refrigerants, and therefore requires stronger piping.

Already, companies such as Coca-Cola have begun using CO2 as a refrigerant in vending machines and other retail refrigerators outside of the U.S., as in China during the Olympics. And PepsiCo is now testing these vending machines in Washington, D.C., including in the Capitol.

Another potential alternative is hydrocarbon-based refrigerants, such as isobutane, which has been used in household refrigerators throughout Europe and in parts of Asia for a number of years. General Electric is currently seeking U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approval for its use in the U.S. Ben & Jerry's, a division of Unilever, has applied to the EPA to use propane as a refrigerant in ice-cream freezers. Both requests are pending approval due to fears over combustibility.

Then there are the synthetic refrigerants. In response to the ban on HFC-134a in Europe, chemical industry giants DuPont and Honeywell combined their years of fluorochemical expertise to find an alternative. HFO-1234yf was their answer. It doesn't cause ozone depletion, has an extremely low global warming potential, and is predicted to be ready for commercial use midway through 2011.

Concerns have been raised, however, over possible toxic side effects to the employees working around these chemicals as well as for automobile owners should it ignite. DuPont acknowledges that though HFO-1234yf is flammable, it is no more hazardous than the chemical it is replacing.

As most of these alternatives await approval, the possibility of HFC proliferation hangs in the air. But, not if Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Environment Dan Reifsnyder has a say in the matter. Reifsnyder, as head of the U.S. delegation to the Montreal Protocol, along with Canada and Mexico, has proposed an amendment to the treaty, calling for an HFC phasedown.

"HFCs today are not yet in wide use and embedded in the world, but if you look out to 2050 without any action being taken, they will be where people go when they leave HCFCs," Reifsnyder says. "The value of this proposal is it will send a signal to the private sector for the need for alternatives that are benign in the ozone and climate sense, and give the private sector time to work on new compounds."

The amendment to the protocol will be negotiated this week in Port Ghalib, Egypt, by the United Nations. If passed, it would mark the first time that language on a greenhouse gas is incorporated into the ozone treaty. It would also mean the EPA could expand its mandate to regulate ozone-depleting substances to include a greenhouse gas, because it is the agency that implements the Montreal Protocol in the U.S.

"Before we end up with a big problem, let's avoid a big problem," Reifsnyder says.

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