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CHICAGO, IL., and WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Thinking of curbing or curtailing sustainability efforts because of the troubled economy? Think again, says a new study by global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney, whose research indicates that firms with "true commitment to sustainability" outperform industry peers in the financial markets.

"The most sustainability focused companies may well emerge from the current crisis stronger than ever," said the authors of the analysis, "Green Winners: The Performance of Sustainability-Focused Companies in the Financial Crisis," A.T. Kearney released Monday.

The report is the latest that backs the assertion that green products and services as well as the firms that produce them will show resilience through the economic downtown. The new research goes a step further and provides data on market performance for firms whose business approach emphasizes sustainability.

The authors of the A.T. Kearney analysis are four partners of the firm — the company's global coordinator for sustainability practices and the heads of the sustainability practices in Australia, France and Germany.

Their analysis looked at 99 firms on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the Goldman Sachs SUSTAIN focus list of green companies and tracked stock price performance for six months through November last year.

In 16 of 18 industries included in the review, businesses deemed "sustainability focused" outperformed industry peers over three- and six-month periods and were "well protected from value erosion," the paper's authors said.

During the three-month period, September through November, the performance differential across the 99 firms tracked was 10 percent; over six months, it was 15 percent. "This performance differential translates to an average of $650 million in market capitalization per company," the report said.

This chart shows the performance of sustainability focused companies in comparison with that of their peers in each industry.

Click here for a full-size view of the chart. Data sources: Bloomberg, A.T. Kearney analysis. Chart courtesy of A.T. Kearney.

The authors stressed throughout their report the distinction between companies that consider sustainability as fundamental to their business strategy and firms whose commitments and practices are not as deeply engrained.

"Our findings suggest," the authors said, "investors may reward 'true' sustainability focused companies" that demonstrate an emphasis on "long-term health rather than short-term gains, strong corporate governance, sound risk management practices (and) a history of investing in green innovations."

The report cited as an example a global consumer packaged goods company that began its sustainability efforts more than 10 years ago and has since changed its business model so that it incorporates sustainability practices in every link of the value chain.

The firm has increased production volume by 76 percent since 1998, and over the same period reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 16 percent, water consumption by 28 percent and energy use by 3 percent, according to the report. In 2007, improvements in energy efficiency led to a $30 million savings. Over a 16-year period, the company saved more than $500 million by optimizing packaging volume.

The report acknowledged that many corporate drives to reduce waste and emissions, use renewable energy and produce goods that have less of an impact on the environment have seemingly become "me too" efforts in recent years. "Yet companies with a history in green innovations have reaped the most benefits," the authors wrote. "And those that continue to make meaningful investments will continue to prosper, both in terms of business results achieved and public perception."

The report recommended that firms review their sustainability practices, the corporate commitment to them and the apparent payback resulting from those efforts. If commitments are largely exercises to improve image, or play catch up, and the returns are slim, "it might make sense to reduce or eliminate sustainability investments and redeploy this capital to area that will help the company weather the current crisis," report said.

"However, if sustainability is transforming the business, it makes sense to maintain this commitment and, where possible, even consider increasing investments to improve future positioning," the report urged.

Dr Vicky Pope claims losses of Arctic ice could be due to natural fluctuations in the weather. Photograph: MARCEL MOCHET/AFP/Getty Images

Experts at Britain's top climate research centre have launched a blistering attack on scientific colleagues and journalists who exaggerate the effects of global warming.

The Met Office Hadley Centre, one of the most prestigious research facilities in the world, says recent "apocalyptic predictions" about Arctic ice melt and soaring temperatures are as bad as claims that global warming does not exist. Such statements, however well-intentioned, distort the science and could undermine efforts to tackle carbon emissions, it says.

In an article published on the Guardian website, Dr Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Met Office, calls on scientists and journalists to stop misleading the public with "claim and counter-claim".

She writes: "Having to rein in extraordinary claims that the latest extreme [event] is all due to climate change is at best hugely frustrating and at worse enormously distracting. Overplaying natural variations in the weather as climate change is just as much a distortion of science as underplaying them to claim that climate change has stopped or is not happening."

She adds: "Both undermine the basic facts that the implications of climate change are profound and will be severe if greenhouse gas emissions are not cut drastically."

Dr Peter Stott, a climate researcher at the Met Office, said a common misrepresentation was to take a few years data and extrapolate to what would happen if it continues. "You just can't do that. You have to look at the long-term trend and then at the natural variability on top." Dramatic predictions of accelerating temperature rise and sea ice decline, based on a few readings, could backfire when natural variability swings the other way and the trends seem to reverse, he says. "It just confuses people."

Pope says there is little evidence to support claims that Arctic ice has reached a tipping point and could disappear within a decade or so, as some reports have suggested. Summer ice extent in the Arctic, formed by frozen sea water, has collapsed in recent years, with ice extent in September last year 34% lower than the average since satellite measurements began in 1979.

"The record-breaking losses in the past couple of years could easily be due to natural fluctuations in the weather, with summer ice increasing again over the next few years," she says.

"It is easy for scientists to grab attention by linking climate change to the latest extreme weather event or apocalyptic prediction. But in doing so, the public perception of climate change can be distorted. The reality is that extreme events arise when natural variations in the weather and climate combine with long-term climate change."

"This message is more difficult to get heard. Scientists and journalists need to find ways to help to make this clear without the wider audience switching off."

The criticism reflects mounting concern at the Met Office that the global warming debate risks being hijacked by people on both sides who push their own agendas and interests. It comes ahead of a key year of political discussions on climate, which climax in December with high-level political negotiations in Copenhagen, when officials will try to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto protocol.

Adam Fier recently sold his home, got rid of his car and pulled his twin 6-year-old girls out of elementary school in Montgomery County. He and his wife packed the family's belongings and moved to New Zealand -- a place they had never visited or seen before, and where they have no family or professional connections. Among the top reasons: global warming.

Adam Fier, wife Misbah Sadat and daughters Maya and Maha moved to New Zealand partly out of climate concerns. (By Leah L. Jones For The Washington Post)

Halfway around the world, the president of Kiribati, a Pacific nation of low-lying islands, said last week that his country is exploring ways to move all its 100,000 citizens to a new homeland because of fears that a steadily rising ocean will make the islands uninhabitable.

The two men are at contrasting poles of a phenomenon that threatens to reshape economies, politics and cultures across the planet. By choice or necessity, millions of "ecomigrants" -- most of them poor and desperate -- are on the move in search of more habitable living space.

There were about 25 million ecomigrants in the world a little more than a decade ago, said Norman Myers, a respected British environmental researcher at Oxford University. That number is now "a good deal higher," he added. "It's plain that sea-level rise in the wake of climate change will inundate the homelands of huge numbers of people."

In Bangladesh, about 12 million to 17 million people have fled their homes in recent decades because of environmental disasters -- and the low-lying country is likely to experience more intense flooding in the future. In several countries in Africa's Sahel region, bordering the Sahara, about 10 million people have been driven to move by droughts and famines.

In the Philippines, upwards of 4 million people have moved from lowlands to highlands as a result of deforestation. And in an earlier era, about 2.5 million Americans became ecomigrants after droughts and land degradation during the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s.

President Anote Tong of Kiribati asked the international community this month to start thinking of ways to help entire nations relocate to higher ground. He called for an international fund to buy land for such mass migrations and said his nation's citizens are prepared to pay for a new homeland. Many citizens of Kiribati are attempting to migrate to New Zealand, and Tong said he is arming his people with skills in vocations such as plumbing that would be valuable in other countries.

A variety of forecasts suggest that environmental disasters are likely to grow in number and intensity in coming decades. Conflicts and war often follow migrations of large numbers of people across international borders. But as the Fier family shows, ecomigration is not just the province of the desperate -- or a phenomenon that involves only people in faraway lands.

"The guy who moves from here to New Zealand is no different than the guy who moves from the lowland in the Philippines to the highland, or from El Salvador to Honduras," said Rafael Reuveny, a political economist who studies ecomigration at Indiana University at Bloomington. "Down the road, probably sooner than we think, we are facing major environmental changes. These changes have started to occur and are moving relatively slowly, but the pace of change will accelerate in our lifetime."

Fier, 38, a computer security professional who used to work at NASA, said he thought hard about the risks of global climate change. He knew moving to a new country would be difficult but thought that the dangers of staying in the United States were worse. Several years ago, he drew up a list of countries and studied how they might fare over the next century. He examined their environmental policies, access to natural resources and whether they would be safe from conflict. He decided that New Zealand would offer a comparable quality of life, has an excellent environmental record and is isolated from global conflicts by large tracts of the Pacific Ocean. Its tropical, subtropical, temperate and arctic zones also offer a variety of "bioenvironments" as a hedge against the vagaries of climate change.

New Zealand's environmental credentials are no secret: Nearly half of all skilled migrants to the country cite its "climate or the clean, green environment to be a main reason" for moving there, according to a survey conducted by the nation's Department of Labor.

Although the nation of 4.3 million produces only one-fifth of 1 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, it is ramping up production of energy from renewable sources, said Roy Ferguson, New Zealand's ambassador to the United States.

"I am not going to predict how the climate might change and how it might affect New Zealand," Fier said. "But quite honestly, I feel in 100 years, one of my daughters is still going to be alive and this planet is going to be a mess. If I didn't have two daughters, I would not be doing this."

There are lots of reasons Fier might be wrong. Broad prediction is notoriously difficult, and humans have long proved adept at devising technological solutions for major problems.

But he argued that people who do nothing in the face of risk are the ones who are being irrational: If even a fraction of the consequences of global climate change that scientists are forecasting come true, disasters such as Hurricane Katrina might become the norm, not the exception. In a world afflicted by overpopulation and environmental degradation, he asked, is the irrational person the one who acts or the one who says the future will look after itself?

"This is an absolutely rational way to do things," agreed Reuveny, who moved from Israel to Indiana with an eye on environmental concerns. "When it comes to climate change, we tend to forget about it being better to be safe than sorry and say it is not going to be a problem."

"I would not deny that more than once, a thought has gone through my mind on the fourth floor in my office, when everything is green and tranquil and the sky is blue and everything is clean, and I say, 'Yeah, it is different than the Middle East,' " Reuveny said. "Do I want to go back and live in a little town in Israel, where everything is yellow and dry and there are only three months of rain a year and there is pollution?"

Within the United States, regions that are vulnerable to hurricanes appear to be producing the greatest number of domestic ecomigrants.

Lynn Lightfoot was briefly displaced from New Orleans ahead of Katrina, but the hurricane did not do much damage to her law practice. The general devastation, however, prompted her to look for a new life elsewhere -- she knew that Katrina would not be the last storm. Within weeks, she had a job offer in northern Louisiana.

"I laughed at it because I had never been to Shreveport -- it is a different cultural world from the unique culture of New Orleans," she said. But she took the job as an assistant state attorney general.

Last year, New Orleans was ordered to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Gustav. "Viewing all of that on TV and reading about it online and seeing images of this impending doom, I was very happy that I had made the decision not to return to New Orleans," Lightfoot said.

Thomas Hoff, 50, of Lakeland, Fla., may soon be an ecomigrant. He said he has come to regret moving to the Sunshine State from Michigan a quarter-century ago and is exploring his options.

"The snow is looking better every cotton-picking hurricane that comes through now," Hoff said. "I am constantly watching the tropics every hurricane season. You don't know what is going to happen."

"The risks have gotten worse in recent years because of global warming," Hoff said, adding that even if a hurricane does not hurt him in the next few years, the rising cost of hurricane insurance will. "I have watched movies like "The Day After Tomorrow," when the Earth has a deep freeze that suddenly comes over and there are these giant tidal waves -- I don't think they are so far-fetched."

WASHINGTON — Steven Chu, the new secretary of energy, said Wednesday that solving the world’s energy and environment problems would require Nobel-level breakthroughs in three areas: electric batteries, solar power and the development of new crops that can be turned into fuel.

Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times Energy Secretary Steven Chu called for Nobel-level work.

Dr. Chu, a physicist, spoke during a wide-ranging interview in his office, where his own framed Nobel Prize lay flat on a bookcase, a Post-it note indicating where it should be hung on the wall.

He addressed topics that included global warming, renewable energy sources like solar and wind power, the use of coal and a proposed repository for nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Dr. Chu said a “revolution” in science and technology would be required if the world is to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and curb the emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases linked to global warming.

Solar technology, he said, will have to get five times better than it is today, and scientists will need to find new types of plants that require little energy to grow and that can be converted to clean and cheap alternatives to fossil fuels.

Dr. Chu, who once called coal “a nightmare” in the way it is currently used, said the United States must also lead the world in finding a way to burn the fuel cleanly, because other countries with big coal reserves, like India and China, will not turn away from coal.

But Dr. Chu said such developments were not impossible. At the turn of the last century, he noted, scientists like Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch made Nobel-winning discoveries that allowed the development of cheap nitrogen fertilizers, saving Europe from starvation.

“I think science and technology can generate much better choices,” Dr. Chu said. “It has, consistently, over hundreds and hundreds of years.”

Dr. Chu said members of Congress who are drafting legislation to limit emissions of global warming gases had not yet sought his advice, although he added, “I would expect that they might.”

He said that while President Obama and Congressional Democratic leaders had endorsed a so-called cap-and-trade system to control global warming pollutants, there were alternatives that could emerge, including a tax on carbon emissions or a modified version of cap-and-trade.

Dr. Chu said reaching agreement on legislation to combat climate change would be difficult in the current recession because any scheme to regulate greenhouse gas emissions would probably cause energy prices to rise and drive manufacturing jobs to countries where energy is cheaper.

“The concern about cap-and-trade in today’s economic climate,” Dr. Chu said, “is that a lot of money might flow to developing countries in a way that might not be completely politically sellable.”

But, he said, he supports putting a price on carbon emissions to begin to address climate change.

The Energy Department is involved with efforts as varied as developing nuclear weapons and sequencing the human genome. Dr. Chu said the department’s nuclear weapons program, which the White House is considering moving to the Defense Department, should be more tightly coupled to science in critical tasks like safeguarding nuclear materials and detecting nuclear proliferation.

One major decision facing his department is what to do about Yucca Mountain, a site 100 miles from Las Vegas chosen by Congress for burial of high-level radioactive waste. Mr. Obama and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, have opposed the project.

Dr. Chu said the political difficulties in trying to obtain a license for the Yucca Mountain site should serve as a guide in searching for other nuclear waste repositories in the future. “There are political realities,” he said.

Last year, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has the final say, began work on an application from the Energy Department for a license for the project. Dr. Chu said the Energy Department should continue to answer questions from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the application and then let the commission make a decision.

Dr. Chu would not say whether the department would open the site if allowed to do so. But, he said, “you can put a hold on” preparation.

The electric utilities, he noted, expected the department to live up to contracts signed in the 1980s for it to dispose of the nuclear waste.

Dr. Chu said he was still adjusting to his surroundings and title after most of a career spent as an academic scientist. Asked whether he preferred to be called “Dr. Chu” or “Mr. Secretary,” he answered, “Steve is fine.”

By

MICHAEL TOTTY

It's time the U.S. got a lot smarter.

Federal, state and local governments are about to pour tens of billions of dollars into the nation's infrastructure. The big question: Will we simply spend the money the way we've been doing for decades -- on more concrete and steel? Or will we use it to make our roads, bridges and other assets much more intelligent?

Imagine highways that alert motorists of a traffic jam before it forms. Or bridges that report when they're at risk of collapse. Or an electric grid that fixes itself when blackouts hit.

This vision -- known as "smart" infrastructure -- promises to make the nation more productive and competitive, while helping the environment and saving lives. Not to mention saving money by making what we've got work better and break down less often.

But fail to upgrade, advocates warn, and the country may be locked into the old way of building for decades to come.

"The goal is not just funding projects for short-term job gains," says Paul Feenstra, vice president of government affairs at the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, a group that promotes smart-road technologies. "It should be to create systems that are intelligent and improve productivity in the long run."

Powering the smart infrastructure are the latest advances in sensors, wireless communications and computing power, all tied together by the Internet. Not surprising, then, that the giants of the technology world -- International Business Machines Corp., General Electric Co., and others -- are leading the push for smarter infrastructure, joined by a host of civic planners and researchers.

Still, despite the big names behind the projects, immediate results are unlikely. Some smart-technology projects are "shovel ready" and could be deployed fairly quickly, but a lot of the technologies are still in the test or development phase and might not be available for five years or more.

With that in mind, here's a look at the kinds of technology leaps that could take our decades-old infrastructure to new levels of intelligence.

SMART TRANSPORTATION

Traffic congestion cuts into worker productivity, delays deliveries, eats up gasoline and boosts air pollution. And it's annoying.

For decades, experts have argued that the best way to fight congestion is intelligent transportation systems, such as roadside sensors to measure traffic and synchronized traffic lights to control the flow of vehicles. But the spread of these technologies has been limited by cost. Now stimulus money could change all that.

One promising avenue: real-time information about road conditions, traffic jams and other events. People can increasingly find that data on the Web with services such as Google Maps. But the next generation of technologies promises to get that news -- and even more detailed information -- directly to drivers in their cars. Armed with that information, drivers can make better decisions about which routes to take -- which can have a big effect on traffic.

SMART MOVES Freeway signs give estimated travel times and other information on Interstate Highway 80 in the San Francisco Bay area.

The first step is collecting better data about traffic flows. The California Department of Transportation, or Caltrans, has installed radio receivers along several freeways in the San Francisco Bay area that read the electronic toll tags in passing cars. Using that information, Caltrans can track the speed of individual vehicles and determine the travel time from one point to another. Then those times are posted on electronic road signs. (Caltrans officials say they don't keep track of personally identifiable information from the tags, to protect privacy.)

Eventually, the data from the roadside sensors could help traffic controllers guide drivers to other travel alternatives: Is a bus or a train faster than the freeway? To that end, Caltrans and the Bay area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission are testing three electronic signs south of San Francisco. Along with freeway travel times, the signs show scheduled travel and arrival times on Caltrain. Drivers can see if they'd be better off getting out of heavy traffic, heading to a station and catching a train.

In the future, planners intend to show real-time train travel and arrival times, as well as the number of available parking places at the nearest station.

SMART MOVES The control room at the California Department of Transportation's Traffic Management Center for the San Francisco Bay area.

Another way to ease congestion is to predict traffic jams before they form. IBM has developed software that can examine current traffic patterns and foresee congestion up to 45 minutes ahead. The system, being tested in Singapore, has proved to be about 90% accurate in predicting the volume and speed of drivers in the central business district. The information is then used to adjust 1,700 sets of traffic lights to smooth the flow of traffic.

"We say that real time is too late," says Naveen Lamba, leader of IBM's global intelligent-transportation efforts. "You have to see into the future to minimize the impact of what's going to happen."

Some researchers are attacking another source of traffic backups: accidents. Trimming the time it takes to clear the roadway after a crash would help ease congestion. Reducing the number of accidents would be even better -- lowering injuries and fatalities, as well as costs associated with accidents.

Enter a concept called vehicle infrastructure integration, or VII. These systems would let roads, traffic signals and vehicles talk to each other, and share crucial information automatically, by using a range of technologies -- GPS navigation, wireless communications, advanced sensors and onboard computers. For instance, a car in an accident could send out an automatic message about the time, location and severity of the crash to receivers along the roadside, which would then automatically dispatch emergency vehicles.

Lane and traffic signals are being tested that can warn drivers of dangerous situations, such as approaching a curve or stoplight too fast. The signs would communicate wirelessly with the vehicle and deliver warnings through an in-dash display, like those used in GPS navigation systems, or use radio signals to send warnings to a vehicle's sound system.

Caltrans is testing a left-turn signal that flashes a big red arrow with a slash through it when it detects a vehicle is approaching rapidly from the opposite direction. For now, the arrow flashes on the signal itself; the goal is to have the warning beamed directly into the turning vehicles.

Even the ultimate science-fiction vision -- roadways that control vehicles and make "driving" unnecessary -- isn't that far in the future. Mr. Lamba says IBM is in discussions with a small city to build a completely automated transportation system that would include 3,000 remote-controlled vehicles. The company won't identify the city or give any other details.

A SMART GRID

The U.S. electricity grid is arguably one of the most important technological achievements of the 20th century. And yet, it's pretty dumb. Power flows one way, but the utility gets back very little information about how it's being used. And the grid is poorly set up to handle power coming in from alternative-energy sources, such as wind farms.

New technologies could add much more intelligence to the system.

Robert Allred

The first step is installing advanced electric meters that send a steady stream of information back to the utility. They make it possible to read meters remotely and to determine more precisely the location of power outages. And they can give customers a more detailed view of their electricity use.

Beginning next month, Houston-based CenterPoint Energy Inc. is preparing to install more than two million smart meters over five years. During a two-year test of the technology, consumers were able to call up a Web portal showing the energy consumption of the home's major appliances. Consumers also could calculate energy bills in different situations: What would be the effect of keeping the house at 75 degrees in the summer instead of 65? What adjustments would be necessary to keep summer electric bills under $200?

Next, a new generation of smarter appliances could help consumers curtail energy use and help utilities reduce pressure on the grid.

In a test by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, 75 homes in Washington and Oregon were given water heaters or clothes dryers that could respond to tiny fluctuations in electricity. The appliances would reduce their power consumption automatically if they detected a drop in current frequency -- an early warning of potential power outages. For instance, the clothes dryer -- a special model built for the project by Whirlpool Corp. -- would continue spinning but without heat. Most homeowners in the test said they didn't notice the brief power drops.

"If we could get every appliance in America doing this, we could have a major safety net for the grid," says Rob Pratt, a staff scientist who manages smart-grid research at the lab.

A smarter grid could also help manage the increased use of wind and solar power. Since these alternative-energy sources can rise or fall abruptly, utility operators are forced to ramp up other power sources or reduce demand quickly to make up for the loss.

The University of Hawaii, in partnership with local utilities and GE, recently launched a research project to test how various smart-grid technologies handle the use of wind power. The island of Maui has one large wind farm; when the wind drops suddenly, as much as 15% of the island's total amount of power consumed can drop off the grid and has to be replaced by power from fossil-fuel plants.

Robert Allred Electric meters give utilities and consumers detailed data on energy consumption.

GE will deploy rechargeable batteries that can store power when winds are high and can automatically send power back to the grid when the wind drops. Researchers will also test smart meters and appliances that can be controlled remotely by the utility to reduce demand if necessary.

A smart grid would even be able to partly heal itself. Today, when a storm drops a tree branch on a power line, utilities typically have to rely on customer calls to locate the damage and assess the scope of the outage. CenterPoint is testing special sensors and switches that sit alongside power lines and detect sudden changes in the amount of current through the wire. The utility then can quickly route power around the break, restoring electricity within seconds to a large part of the blacked-out area and limiting the number of households affected.

SMART BRIDGES

Looking for structural problems with the nation's 600,000 bridges mostly still requires a visual inspection, which can be inconsistent and expensive. A better alternative, engineers say, would be continuous electronic monitoring of bridge structures using a network of sensors at critical points. These devices can deliver data about how a bridge behaves under heavy traffic, in high winds or other conditions. And they can spot potentially serious problems long before they might be apparent to a human inspector.

"No matter what we do, there are limits to human sensing capabilities," says Mohammed Ettouney, a principal in Weidlinger Associates Inc., a New York engineering firm. "We can't see hidden cracks, we can't feel the erosion after a flood." Automatic detection, he says, "can make the difference between a major disaster, a costly retrofit or a minor retrofit."

Consider the bridge in Minneapolis that replaced the I-35 structure that collapsed in 2007. The new bridge holds more than 300 sensors that measure the effects of corrosion, temperature changes and winter de-icing. In addition to helping transportation officials monitor the health of the bridge, researchers at the University of Minnesota are analyzing the data to help design bridges better able to handle all the stresses.

Ted Kawalerski for Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries A sensor platform deployed in the Hudson River as part of a test by the Beacon Institute to monitor chemical, biological and physical changes in the river.

"We have a long way to go before we get to the point where we have true smart-bridge technology -- where the bridge can tell you there are problems" rather than simply collect data for analysis, says Catherine French, a civil-engineering professor at the University of Minnesota.

To get closer to that goal, the National Institute of Standards and Technology last month awarded grants to programs researching and developing smart-bridge technologies, including sensors that can report back instantly if a problem appears.

The University of Texas at Austin received a grant to create wireless networks of sensors to monitor cracks in existing bridges where the failure of a single piece could bring down the entire structure. Because getting power to the sensors can be a problem, the group is studying how to use the vibrations of the bridge to generate electricity for the devices. It's also working on devices with enough computing power to analyze the stream of data and send alerts when potentially serious damage occurs.

Looking beyond traditional sensor technologies, another grant went to a group led by the University of Michigan. The group is developing smart materials that can be built into or applied to key bridge components to detect and measure changes. For instance, researchers are working on a sensing "skin" that can carry electrical or magnetic signals to give a two-dimensional picture of how the structure responds to different stresses, says Jerome Lynch, an assistant professor at the university.

SMART WATER SYSTEMS

Harry Campbell

The world's fresh-water supplies -- and the pipes, levees and other systems for handling it -- are under pressure from growing populations, expanding demands from agriculture and environmental changes wrought by global warming. But knowledge about those systems isn't as thorough or timely as it could be.

Take leak detection. In the U.S., about 15% of municipal water is lost to leaks, accounting errors or other unbilled consumption. While technology for detecting and then pinpointing leaks has become more sophisticated, it's still largely a manual, time-consuming process. Checking an entire water system can take weeks.

What's on the horizon? Sensors from U.K. start-up Syrinix Ltd. can continuously monitor for leaks on major trunk lines used to carry water from reservoirs and water-treatment plants. The company's sensors measure subtle changes in sound waves through the water and the pipe itself. When they detect the sound of a small leak -- which can lead to bigger line failures -- the information is carried over high-speed phone lines, and the system automatically sends out an email or text-message alert. The system is currently deployed on about 16 miles of lines in London and Birmingham. There haven't yet been any leaks in the portions being monitored.

Another big area of research is protecting levees, particularly in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. As part of an initiative by the Dutch government to prepare for rising ocean levels and an increase in severe storms, a handful of government agencies and businesses created a test site with a smart levee -- one loaded with dozens of sensors that measure water levels, pressure changes, ground movements and the condition of the dike. When researchers intentionally caused the levee to fail, it produced a wealth of data that eventually could be used to predict a failure well before it occurs.

"If you can build smart infrastructure on top of the physical infrastructure, you could have some level of advanced knowledge about the levees [and] a better indication of whether you need to evacuate people or whatever," says Sharon Nunes, vice president of Big Green Innovations at IBM, which participated in the Netherlands test.

The company is part of another water-management project with the Beacon Institute, an environmental research organization in upstate New York. Researchers there are working on a network of sensors to collect and monitor data about the Hudson River. The project tested its first floating platform of sensors late last summer and plans eventually to have devices scattered along the entire 300-mile length of the river.

One of the big challenges for the project is making sense of the huge stream of data produced by the sensor network. So IBM is providing software that can process all this information and quickly generate conclusions, allowing officials to respond immediately to developments on the river, rather than wait for hours or days to analyze data.

For instance, says John Cronin, the Beacon Institute's chief executive, power plants along the Hudson take in huge amounts of water for cooling, but in the process they can kill millions of young striped-bass larvae. So, the plants are under pressure to install expensive new cooling systems that don't pull in as much river water.

With a sensor network, officials could spot the tide of tiny bass larvae and notify the utility to shift power production to another plant until the creatures pass. The system would thus protect the fish -- and make the purchase of new equipment unnecessary.

"This is a version of smart ecosystem management that we don't have the technological capability for now," Mr. Cronin says. With the sensor network, "we're on the doorstep of a whole new world of understanding and protecting ecosystems."

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Los Angeles' 140,000 streetlight fixtures will be replaced with LED units over the next five years with help from the Clinton Climate Initiative in the most extensive municipal green lighting retrofit thus far.

Former president Bill Clinton announced the project this week in Los Angeles, where the city's Bureau of Street Lighting will work with the initiative's Outdoor Lighting Program.

The upgraded lighting system is expected to save the city $48 million in energy and maintenance costs and cut carbon emissions by 197,000 tons over a seven-year period. The cost savings accrued during that time are to pay for a loan that will fund the project, according to the initiative. The actual price tag for the retrofit was not disclosed, however.

After paying back the loan, the city is expect to save about $10 million a year in costs, reduce electricity consumption for lighting by at least 40 percent and cut carbon emissions by about 40,500 tons a year. The initiative estimates the effect is the equivalent of taking 6,700 passenger vehicles off the road annually.

As part of the project, monitoring units will be installed in each of the new streetlights to enable immediate reporting of service failures.

LEDs have a longer lifespan than traditional streetlights and generally last 10 to 12 years, compared to the four to six years for conventional lights.

Los Angeles' broader green lighting and energy efficiency program includes a giveaway of two compact fluorescent light bulbs to each of the 1.2 million households in the city.

The free light bulb program is projected to save up to 240 GWh of energy and prevent the release of 131,000 metric tons of CO2 each year -- the equivalent of taking 24,000 cars off the road or enough energy to power 40,000 homes for a year.

Replacing two traditional incandescent bulbs with the CFLs is also expected to prevent the burning of 800 pounds of coal and the emissions resulting from that expenditure, as well as saving $61.3 million in fuel costs for generating electricity. Each household is expected to save $68 in energy charges over the life of the bulbs.

By Aaron Ricadela

When it comes to green technology, for years it's been computer makers and chip manufacturers that dominated headlines with announcements of purportedly eco-friendly products. Now software vendors including Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), and IBM (IBM) want their day in the sun.

As IT spending slumps, software vendors are stepping up emphasis on features they say help customers trim power usage, meet regulatory requirements, and design more efficient buildings. The new capabilities are arriving as companies keep a closer eye on climbing electricity budgets from their data centers and other operations. The products are also a way for software makers—and their customers—to position themselves as environmentally friendly at a time when being green makes good PR sense.

Analyzing Energy and Emissions Data

Microsoft is the latest software company to throw its hat into the ring. On Feb. 9 the company released a free "environmental dashboard" for its Dynamics AX business applications, which help midsize companies track financial data, orders, and manufacturing schedules. The new software aggregates information from meter readings and energy bills to give companies reports on their fuel and power consumption, and it provides them with estimates of their carbon dioxide emissions. About 2% of carbon emissions come from the computers, cell phones, and telecom equipment used by consumers and businesses, according to Rob Bernard, Microsoft's chief environmental strategist. "We spend a lot of time thinking about how software can affect the other 98%," he says.

Software is a relatively new entrant in the rush to sell technology products designed to reduce environmental damage and help companies slice energy costs. For several years computer makers and chip companies including Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), and Intel (INTC) have emphasized the power-sipping nature of their products.

Software makers say their products, too, can help cut energy usage and keep electricity grids healthy by analyzing consumption and underpinning incentives to draw power during off-peak times. "Carbon auditing is a hot spot in the software and services market at the moment," says Stephen Stokes, an analyst at tech-industry consultant AMR Research. AMR estimates that the market for software and consulting services that let companies collect and report data about carbon emissions has already reached $3.6 billion.

Competing for Scarce IT Dollars

That could be good news for the software industry at a time when businesses have curtailed technology spending. Forrester Research (FORR) expects worldwide software spending by businesses and governments to be flat in 2009, at $388 billion. Overall IT spending is expected to decline 3%.

Companies in such heavily regulated segments as oil and gas production and electrical utilities may be the biggest buyers of such products. But even businesses that don't need to meet government requirements or engage in emissions credit-trading programs may find that marketing their eco-credentials can give them a competitive edge, AMR's Stokes says.

Microsoft is also tuning Windows 7—the version of its flagship operating system due later this year—to conserve PC power by reducing the amount of system software running in the background, adjusting a processor's performance to meet the user's computing requirements at any given time.

Green Building Design

In the past year, engineering and design software maker Autodesk (ADSK) has acquired three software companies whose programs help architects design eco-friendly buildings. Autodesk's Green Building Studio software can analyze a planned building's energy and water usage and carbon emissions. Its Ecotect tool lets architects and engineers see how sunlight, shade, and airflow will effect energy consumption by a building's occupants. And Autodesk bought Carmel Software, whose product computes cooling and heating requirements to help design efficient heating and air-conditioning systems. Autodesk is betting the new products will continue to drive growth of its 3D design tools, even though "some people think sustainable design is a fad," CEO Carl Bass said in an interview last year.

Other software vendors are looking at ways to make energy supplies more efficient. German business applications maker SAP (SAP) sells software called Advanced Metering Infrastructure, which lets utilities keep customers up to date on their meter readings and charge variable rates to move loads to off-peak hours. SAP is consulting with European utilities on such "smart metering" projects, and is said to be developing an application—due out this year—to help companies better track energy usage across their operations. The company's chief competitor, Oracle (ORCL), is also touting its applications' ability to help companies cut waste from their purchasing and shipping operations.

IBMis taking a different approach, emphasizing how governments and businesses can invest together in powerful computer systems and data analysis software to address problems like climate change and food supply safety. Big Blue has several projects underway in the U.S., Europe, and Asia as part of its "smarter planet" initiative, which it announced in November. In Stockholm, IBM software and computers predicted traffic flows and rewrote the city's bus schedule to cut traffic by one-fifth and reduce carbon emissions from vehicles by 12%, according to IBM. "It's a big bet, controlling the traffic for the entire city," says vice-president Bob Sutor. "But this is what IBM does well."

It's not just business software that's getting the green treatment. Google (GOOG) on Feb. 2 released a new version of its Google Earth visualization software, emphasizing features that let scientists add their own data to the virtual globe, for instance by displaying the effect of climate change on temperatures. "It's not just a fun demo," CEO Eric Schmidt said at a San Francisco press conference announcing the product. "It really is a platform for science."

A raft of software companies are hoping customers take their new green products as seriously.

The Government hopes the plan can play 'a critical role' in meeting obligations to cut carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2020

Robin Pagnamenta, Energy and Environment Editor

National Grid is drawing up plans for a new business unit that will pipe carbon dioxide emissions from UK power stations for storage in geological formations beneath the North Sea, The Times has learnt.

National Grid believes the business, dubbed National Grid Carbon, can play a major role in the company's long-term growth by serving UK power plants fitted with carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment.

Chris Train, the director of network operations, said that the group is developing plans to construct a £2 billion carbon transport and storage network around the Humber estuary in Yorkshire, where five of Britain's largest coal and gas-fired power stations are located.

“National Grid would provide the gathering system to collect the carbon and store it offshore,” he said. “Our expertise is very much in running safe and effective pipeline networks, so the transport and storage of carbon fits in very well with that.”

He said that National Grid, operates Britain’s high-voltage electricity transmission and gas distribution networks, planned investment in the long term that could amount to “several billion pounds”. He added that the system could be operational within three years.

“When you look at the UK's carbon emission targets and the need for future power generation, this could play a huge part of the UK's plans to have a competitive energy industry,” Mr Train said.

The Government hopes that CCS, which remains an untested technology on a commercial scale, can play “a critical role in helping the UK” to meet legally binding obligations to cut carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2020.

Mr Train said the proposed Humber network would handle gaseous carbon dioxide emitted from coal and gas-fired stations such as Drax, Eggborough, Ferrybridge and Killingholme.

The captured carbon would be fed through National Grid's pipeline network and pumped to storage sites in old gasfields in the North Sea, where permeable rocks which originally contained gas are well suited to the permanent storage of carbon.

He said National Grid planned to be ready to operate its first carbon pipeline system within three years, in time to meet a Government deadline of having Britain's first commercial-scale CCS-equipped power plant operational by 2012.

National Grid is thought to be in talks with the major generators in the Humber region, including E.ON, Drax Power and Scottish & Southern Energy, as well as Yorkshire Forward, the regional development agency, about the plan, which Mr Train said could be replicated at other locations around the UK where clusters of coal-fired power stations exist, including Scotland and East Anglia.

About 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year are emitted from power plants and other industrial sites around the Humber estuary - making it the region with the biggest carbon dioxide (CO2) output in Europe.

Mr Train said that capturing and storing all that carbon would be equivalent to taking 20 million cars off the road.

He said that a technical team from National Grid was working with academics at Newcastle University to study methods of storing and moving carbon by pipe while a commercial business development team was examining different ways that the new unit could be structured and financed.

Where possible, National Grid plans to use existing pipes and North Sea infrastructure formerly used to transport natural gas.

“CO2 is a very different gas from methane,” said Mr Train. “If you compress it, it becomes solid very quickly. But this is a great opportunity to reuse existing infrastructure. We are using the investments we have already made to develop the energy industry of the future.”

CHICAGO -- The stores of seeds in a "doomsday" vault in the Norwegian Arctic are growing as researchers rush to preserve 100,000 crop varieties from potential extinction.

The imperiled seeds are going to be critical for protecting the global food supply against devastating crop losses as a result of climate change, said Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

"These resources stand between us and catastrophic starvation," Fowler said. "You can't imagine a solution to climate change without crop diversity."

That's because the crops currently being used by farmers will not be able to evolve quickly enough on their own to adjust to predicted drought, rising temperatures and new pests and diseases, he said.

One recent study found that corn yields in Africa will fall by 30 percent by 2030 unless heat-resistant varieties are developed, Fowler noted.

"Evolution is in our control," he said in an interview. "It's in our seed bank. You take traits form different varieties and make new ones."

That process currently takes about 10 years. But Fowler said his organization is hoping to speed up the development of new varieties by cataloguing the genetic traits of the seeds that it stores.

Their gene bank -- dug into a mountainside near Longyearbyen, in the Svalbard islands in the far north of Norway -- will be made public to help spur research, which Fowler says is woefully inadequate.

"Six people in the world are breeding bananas. Ditto for yams, a major crop in Africa," Fowler said ahead of a presentation Sunday to the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Fowler said the Global Crop Diversity Trust has agreements with 49 institutes in 46 countries to rescue some 53,000 of the 100,000 crop samples identified as endangered.

Agreements for preserving the remaining varieties are expected to be completed soon.

They include rare varieties of barley, wheat, rice, banana, plantain, potato, cassava, chickpea, maize, lentil, bean, sorghum, millet, coconut, breadfruit, cowpea, and yam.

The varieties most at risk are being stored in poorly funded seed banks in Africa and Asia where varieties are being lost due to inadequate refrigeration and the destruction of the facilities as a result of civil strife and natural disasters.

Researchers do not know how many varieties of crops have already been lost.

But the industrialization of farming has had a major impact on crop diversity.

In 1903, U.S. farmers planted 578 varieties of beans. By 1983 just 32 varieties remained in seedbanks.

"When you lose one of these samples you're losing something you can't find in a farmer's field," Fowler said.

"We can't afford to lose this diversity when it's so easy and cheap to conserve it."

It might not be famed for its sunshine, but Ireland last week became home to what its developers claim is the most efficient solar panel ever produced.

County Mayo-based Surface Power last week launched the commercial version of its solar hot water panel, following independent certification from testing firm TUV Rhineland which found that when compared to other solar hot water panels, the vacuum collector design was in one case 131 per cent more efficient during the morning and evening and 76 per cent more efficient at midday.

Surface Power estimates that the new panel, which was designed to withstand Irish climatic conditions, could cut commercial and domestic hot water bills by up to 70 per cent.

It added that it was now seeking to create 20 new jobs to support the international distribution of the product, following early interest from the US and Europe.

Company founder John Quinn said that the solar hot water panel would address a fast-growing international market.

“The market for the solar collector was worth in excess of $1bn (£678m) in 2008 and has grown by 300 per cent since 1998," he said. "We received more than 400 enquiries from the US alone last month after the specifications were released during the Christmas period."

He added that the company also expected the international home renovation market to be "very strong during the next three years, as our collector is the only pre-packaged vacuum collector on the world market".

Vacuum collector solar panels typically feature glass tubes containing a vacuum that proves the most efficient means of insulating the heat captured by the technology. Advocates of the approach argue that it enhances the efficiency of solar water heater systems and leads to quicker, simpler and cheaper installations.

CHANGCHUN, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- Seventy electric buses with double the maximum range of conventional electric cars will go into use in June in northeast China's Jilin Province, a researcher said Friday.

    The bus, driven by a Lithium-ion battery, can travel more than 300 km on a 20-minute battery recharge, compared with 100-150 km for conventional electric cars that usually take more time to recharge, said Xie Haiming, a researcher with the Lithium-ion Battery Material S&T Innovation Center of Jilin Province.

    Xie said the increased range was gained by using the advance LiFeP04 battery, which was safer and had a longer life than the widely-used lead acid cell.

    The government of Liaoyuan was buying 20 of the 24-seat buses and the Changchun city government had ordered 50.

    The 24-seat buses are being made jointly by the Tongkun New Energy Technologies Co., Ltd and FAW Bus and Coach Company and will run on the roads in the provincial capital of Changchun City, and Liaoyuan, about 200 km to the south of Changchun, as of June.

    Xie said such a bus would sell 500,000 yuan (73,145 U.S. dollars).

    "The cost for every 100 km of travel by the new bus is 35 yuan, much lower than 120 yuan by petrol-driven buses," Xie said.

    The battery on the new bus can be recharged up to 2,000 times for just 20 minutes each time, making it a good power supply for buses and taxies, Xie said.

Algae may be the scourge of aquarium owners worldwide, but their ability to reproduce and spread quickly obsesses biofuels enthusiasts, from Bill Gates to Boeing.

But nobody has yet figured out how to squeeze oil from these micro-organisms in a cost-effective manner. Proposals range from genetically-modified super-pond scum to algae farms that suck up the CO2 emanating from power plants and mining operations.

A Seattle-area dotcom millionaire, who just wanted cleaner fuel to propel his boat through the Puget Sound, may have stumbled upon a deceptively simple piece of the puzzle: luminescent rods.

Michael Weaver’s company, Bionavitas, has come up with transparent, pencil-shaped acrylic tubes that capture sunlight and spread it evenly without the aid of electricity. Throw a few hundred of these cheap, eerie-looking devices into a pond, and algae density could increase, says Weaver. He hopes an acre of the green stuff with tubes could yield about 4,000 gallons of oil from algae per year.

Weaver, who made his fortune after selling his legal software firm to Lexis Nexis, launched the firm in 2005 after finding corn and soybean fuels unappetizing.

It’s still unclear whether Bionavitas’ approach will work. The company just unveiled the technology, and is seeking money at a time when investors are more skittish than ever, and the rods need to be field-tested.

But the venture illustrates the idea that it could take many small efforts to pave the way to scalable biofuels – especially at a time when it’s hard to find money for large-scale experiments.

If algae emerge as a cost-competitive fuel source, it’s likely that it will be the result of many simultaneous improvements in areas ranging from harvesting processes to biotechnology.