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GENEVA, CH -- The building sector and governments have made progress but are not doing enough to improve energy efficiency in the built environment -- and will not meet targets to address global climate change unless sweeping action is taken immediately to slash energy use, according to a new report by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

"The building sector must radically cut energy consumption -- starting now -- if countries are to achieve energy security and manage climate change," the report says.

The report, "Transforming the Market: Energy Efficiency in Buildings" was released Monday in Geneva, Washington, D.C., Beijing and Paris, where it was presented at the Alliance to Save Energy's EE Global Forum and Exposition.

The 69-page report is the product of a four-year, $15-million study by WBCSD. It is the first to inventory current building stock and projected future building stock -- and to provide an analysis based on that information and the modeled effects of consumer preferences and behaviors, design, technology and policy on energy consumption in six major markets: Brazil, China, Europe, India, Japan and the U.S. The markets represent almost two-thirds of the world's energy use.

The study is the broadest and most comprehensive of three recently issued research findings on different aspects of energy efficiency and buildings. The report is also the most emphatic in stating the need for urgent improvement.

"False optimism breeds complacency" and key players must avoid "sleepwalking into crises" as well as doing too little too late, the report says.

"Our analysis clearly shows the scale of the challenge and the impossibility of meeting it at current rates of progress," says the report. "Our conclusion: Under current financial and policy conditions, building decisionmakers will not spend sufficiently on energy efficiency, even on investments that pay off over a project lifetime. Financial timescales for owners of both residential and commercial buildings are generally too short to allow improvements that would save energy and pay off over the lifetime of the investments."

In addition to the warnings, the WBCSD report provides a roadmap on how to address the problem by achieving a worldwide average of a 55 percent reduction in building energy use by 2050.

The report says its recommendations would help shrink the world's energy related carbon footprint by 77 percent, or 48 gigatons, which would in turn help stabilize CO2 levels at the threshold called for by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report notes, however, that some developed countries -- the U.S. among them -- will have to drive energy use in buildings down so that it is at least 80 percent below "business-as-usual" levels.

Potential barriers to progress include market and policy failures, inadequate knowledge and understanding among building professionals in the building industry and poor behavior of building users.

The report adds, however, that the situation can be turned around with the right financial mechanisms and relationships, holistic building design and a wholesale change in the behavior by building professionals and building occupants.

The study recommends the following actions with the first four measures to be taken by policymakers and government:

• Strengthen codes and labeling for increased transparency
• Provide incentives for energy efficient investments
• Encourage integrated design approaches and innovations
• Develop and use advanced technology to enable energy-saving
behaviors
• Develop workforce capacity for energy saving
• Mobilize for an energy aware culture

"We must start now to aggressively reduce energy use in new and existing buildings," the WBCSD report says.

Research on the Market for Commercial Retrofits

In the U.S., cleantech market intelligence firm Pike Research also released a report on building energy efficiency this week as a result of a study that looked at the market for retrofits in the public and private commercial building sector.

The findings released Tuesday project the total opportunity for major green renovations in the sector at "approximately $400 billion over the coming years." The report from Pike Research also forecasts that the annual revenue from comprehensive efficiency retrofits will more than triple and reach $6.6 billion by 2013.

"High-performance green building space experiences lower vacancy rates and commands a premium price, compared to conventional space," Pike Research Managing Director Clint Wheelock said in a statement. "Because of this, commercial building owners are adopting green retrofits as a market differentiator. The favorable retrofit business model will fuel steady momentum until most commercial building space has been retrofitted for energy efficiency."

Although green retrofits can produce significant energy savings, Pike Research's study indicates that "most major projects will not be driven by cost savings, but instead will be initiated to meet broader policy and business objectives such as lower carbon footprints, higher employee productivity and higher property values," the company said.

Financial Study on Ultra Green Living Buildings

Earlier this month, the Cascadia Region Green Building Council in Seattle, Washington, released a study concluding that when it comes to new construction, the smartest move is investment in an "ultra green living building," which generates its own power and cleans and reuses its water.

"A building that is only slightly green may end up costing more in 10 years than a building that is designed and built as high performance as is currently possible," the organization said in issuing its findings on April 14.

In conducting the study, researchers looked at nine structures that received a LEED Gold green building rating and are located in four U.S. cities.

Although initial costs for a living building are higher, the outlay has significant economic impact, with less than a 10 year payback in many instances, according to the study. A living building can cost as little 5 percent more to no more than 49 percent more, depending on the type of building and its location, the research found. Payback period for the range of investment was less than seven years to as many as 15 years, a timespan that usually is less than the period that companies and owners hold their real property as an asset.

Researchers noted that living buildings are not likely to be considered the best option for investors who want to put their money into spec buildings with an eye to flipping them on the market fairly quickly.

The study team for the green building council's research was led by SERA Architects with Skanska USA Building, Gerding Edlen Development, New Buildings Institute, and Interface Engineering.

What will the energy-efficient house of the future look like?

It could have gardens on its walls or a pond stocked with fish for dinner. It might mimic a tree, turning sunlight into energy and carbon dioxide into oxygen. Or perhaps it will be more like a lizard, changing its color to suit the weather and healing itself when it gets damaged.

Those are just a handful of the possibilities that emerged from an exercise in futurism. The Wall Street Journal asked four architects to design an energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable house without regard to cost, technology, aesthetics or the way we are used to living.

The idea was not to dream up anything impossible or unlikely -- in other words, no antigravity living rooms. Instead, we asked the architects to think of what technology might make possible in the next few decades. They in turn asked us to rethink the way we live.

"This is a time of re-examining values, re-examining what we need," says one of our architects, Rick Cook, of the New York firm Cook + Fox. "We are re-examining the idea of home."

A fresh look may be long overdue, given the amount of damage that homes can do to the environment. It's easy to envision a power plant spewing pollution or a highway full of cars burning billions of gallons of petroleum. But buildings -- silent and unmoving -- are the quiet users of much of our energy, through electricity, heating and water consumption. The U.S. Energy Department estimates buildings are responsible for 39% of our energy consumption and a similar percentage of greenhouse-gas emissions.

The growing awareness of that fact helps explain why green building is one of the most pervasive trends in the construction industry -- even as the economy struggles and home-building is at its lowest level in a generation.

So, how will the green homes of tomorrow help solve the energy puzzle? Here's a gander into the future.

Out on a Limb

"I'd love to build a house like a tree," says architect William McDonough of the Charlottesville, Va., firm William McDonough + Partners. And that's what he set out to do here.

The surface of his house, like a leaf, contains a photosynthetic layer that captures sunlight. Unlike today's solar panels, which are often pasted above a roofline, these are woven into the fabric of the exterior. They heat water and generate electricity for the home -- and create oxygen for the atmosphere, to offset carbon produced in other areas of the home.

The appeal of ultrathin, integrated solar panels goes beyond convenience. Today's solar is plain ugly and off-putting to many homeowners, something Mr. McDonough calls the "potpourri of miscellany stuck on our roofs." Unseen solar arrays, especially ones that create hot water, will be a "breakthrough from aesthetic perspective, which is a huge issue," he says.

As for the rest of the design, Mr. McDonough envisions a sleek, curved roof with generous eaves to provide shade, which lowers the heat load in summer, thereby reducing the need for energy-hogging air conditioning. The roof also insulates and provides an outdoor garden. (Mr. McDonough designed a similar "green roof" for a Ford Motor Co. factory -- one of the first large U.S. buildings with that design.)

The "bark" of the treelike house would be thin, insulating films that would self-clean and self-heal, Mr. McDonough says, thus avoiding the need to replace them after years of exposure to the elements.

It sounds far-fetched, but some of these technologies already exist. Self-cleaning glass, for instance, has a special coating that uses ultraviolet sunlight to break down organic dirt; rainwater then washes the filth away.

Self-healing paints that contain microscopic capsules of color are in use on some car paint, for instance. These vessels break open when the surface of the paint is scratched to repair the damage. Similar ideas could expand to repair other materials such as glass or cladding.

The "trunk" -- or the frame of the home -- would eschew wood or metals. Instead, lightweight, "resource efficient" carbon tubes would keep the structure standing upright.

Finally, the "roots" of the home would be a ground-source heat-pump exchange system buried in the yard. It would take advantage of the relatively constant temperature of the soil to control the home's climate -- bringing in heat in winter, when the ground is warmer than the surrounding air, and cool in the summer, when the ground's temperature is lower. Such systems exist today, but cost puts them out of the reach of most homeowners.

Other technological advances in the home include cement that would absorb carbon dioxide as it cures, offsetting the heavy loads of energy used to make the material. What's more, special surfaces on the house would capture condensation for water use, avoiding the need for wells or faraway sources.

The design also takes into account what happens to the building when its useful life is over -- something most builders never consider, Mr. McDonough says.

Today's buildings are often filled with chemical insulators and films on windows. While there have been major advances in these areas, such as the use of low-chemical-emitting paints and carpets, most insulating windows today still contain mercury and other heavy metals.

Mr. McDonough envisions a building industry in which everything that goes into a house eventually breaks down harmlessly, much as a tree falls and biodegrades on the forest floor. So, in his house, building materials from the cladding to the floors would be easily disassembled and reused, or, as he says, "return to the Earth."

The Reptile House

If Mr. McDonough's house is a tree, then this one is a lizard -- whose skin is among its most important features for survival.

Cook + Fox's house has a "biomorphic" skin that reacts to the weather, turning dark in the bright sun to insulate the house from heat and turning clear on dark days to absorb as much light and heat as possible.

The façade also captures rain and condensation to fill the household's water needs -- much like a desert-dwelling horny lizard rolls drops of dew from its nose to its mouth.

Mr. Cook sees the house of the future looking toward nature's way of solving problems as much as it looks to technology, a concept called biomimicry. "You need to view a house as a surface area for life, as opposed to a thing to be power-washed," Mr. Cook says.

Cook + Fox is well known for its green designs. Its biggest green project is the New York headquarters of Bank of America, which is known as One Bryant Park.

The sculpted white-glass tower, Manhattan's second-tallest after the Empire State Building, creates massive ice blocks in the evening when electricity is cheapest. As the "ice batteries" melt, they are used to cool the building during times of peak electricity loads during the day.

The Cook + Fox house has a modern look, but it's designed to fit into a traditional neighborhood setting.

Inside, rooms are easily configurable for lounging or work. Walls and furniture are on rollers, for instance, to take advantage of the fact that some spaces, such as bedrooms, are underutilized most of the day.

What's more, toilets and washrooms are separated, serving more people with less space. Making a house that's more conducive to work is important for energy efficiency because it eliminates driving -- and thus reduces energy consumption.

A key feature of the house is perhaps its most traditional: a front stoop, which enables the home dweller to look out on neighbors and observe the area.

Noting an idea from scientist E.O. Wilson, Mr. Cook says, "No matter how advanced we get with technologies, there are things that make the human feel good no matter what. People like to see a horizon view and feel safe."

Meals at Home

Rios Clementi Hale Studios cheekily calls their concept the "Incredible Edible House."

This somewhat fantastical design seems to be as much about the future of food production as architecture. The façade of the three-story abode is slathered in a vertical garden that includes chickpeas, tomatoes, arugula and green tea. Step outside in the morning and harvest your meals.

The plants both nourish the inhabitants and provide shade and cooling, absorbing heat better than a wall made of wood, brick, stucco or glass.

Rios Clementi Hale, based in Los Angeles, has a reputation for playful and innovative designs. Its best-known works include the angular red, ochre and green-striped campus of the California Endowment in downtown Los Angeles. It has also done designs for Hollywood powers such as Walt Disney's Robert Iger and movie and music impresario David Geffen.

But the plants aren't the only striking feature of the design. At three stories, the edible house is also more vertical than the typical suburban home, a nod to the importance of building dense, urban-style houses in order to reduce energy use. A rooftop reservoir collects water and keeps the building cool; rooftop windmills generate energy.

The house is also put together in an intriguing way: It's made of three prefabricated containers stacked on top of each other that can be moved on a trailer if the mood fits. This method exists today, but it's not used very much, since homeowners associate prefabrication with lower-end homes.

But the benefits for lowering energy use are substantial. The standardized construction in prefabricated homes reduces defects that can hamper energy conservation. And it's easier to ship prefabricated parts, which means reduced fuel use for deliveries.

Learning From the Past

Looking to the future isn't the only way to be innovative. The house from architect Steve Mouzon, of Mouzon Design in Miami Beach, Fla., uses tomorrow's technologies while mining ancient techniques to reduce energy use.

For instance, solar paneling built directly into the roof and façade provides electricity and hot water. But the house also employs a "breeze chimney," an architectural tool used by the ancients, as a kind of old-school air conditioning.

The difference between the air pressure in the chimney and outside causes hot air to flow out of the chimney stack and cooler air to enter through windows and doors.

"It must make sense first," says Mr. Mouzon, a so-called New Urbanist architect who believes in traditional designs that emphasize pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods. His house "isn't trying to do wild and wacky things with roof shapes or wall shapes but a good sensible building that is highly lovable. It is inventive where it needs to be."

Like Rios Clementi Hale, Mr. Mouzon sees the house as a source of food. He would add "melon cradles," an invention he says he thought up for this project, to allow heavy melons and other vegetables to grow vertically up the sides of his house.

Another of his innovative ideas would require Americans to do more than just feed the goldfish bowl: He would install tilapia pools in a "kitchen garden" to provide fresh fish to the homeowner. It's among the most energy-efficient ways to raise animal protein, Mr. Mouzon says.

But the most important order for Mr. Mouzon is to make the house compact. "The smaller thing you can create, the more sustainable it is."

In fact, that's something that all four of our architects agree on: Americans need to learn to live in smaller spaces if we are going to make an impact on the environment.

—Mr. Frangos is a Wall Street Journal staff reporter in New York.

FRANKFURT, DE -- Financial services giant Citi announced today that it had acheived a milestone for green buildings and green IT: the company's new data center, located in Frankfurt, Germany, is the first facility of its kind to achieve the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Platinum rating.

The 230,000-square-foot data center earned the rating through a combination of energy- and resource-efficient designs, both on the facility side and the IT side. Among the notable achievements: the data center uses just 30 percent of the power that a similarly sized data center would require; 72 percent of the roof is a vegetative "green" roof, which keeps the building cooler in summer and warmer in winter, as well as absorbing rainwater and reducing summer "heat island" effect; the building will use free outside-air cooling 63 percent of the time; 27 percent of the materials were recycled, while 40 percent were locally sourced; and by virtualizing a high number of the computers in the data center, the company needed to use 250 kilometers (155 miles) less cabling to wire the facility.

“Close cooperation between our Real Estate and Technology groups has been important to achieving major advances in the way in which we manage technology energy demand in Citi,” said Stephen Ellis, Citi's Head of Technology Infrastructure in Europe. “The energy efficient design of the data center, coupled with extensive use of new, energy efficient virtualized technology, housed in innovative modular cabinets has optimized energy use and reduced the data cabling needs.”

In addition, the data center is highly water efficient: it uses reverse osmosis water treatment for cooling, which saves 50 million liters (13 million gallons) of water use per year; the water-efficient fixtures installed reduce indoor water use by 41 percent; and irrigation on-site uses 100 percent harvested rainwater.

Overall, Citi expects the facility to save 11,750 tonnes of CO2 per year.

LEED-certified data centers have been springing up in increasing numbers of late: In August 2008, Advanced Data Centers achieved LEED Platinum pre-certification for their Sacramento facility, but Citi's data center was completed and thus certified first. In Septemer 2008, Emerson Network Power unveiled designs for a new data center that aimed at LEED Silver certification, and back in November 2007 Digital Realty Trust earned the first-ever LEED Gold certification for a data center.

As of now, data center facilities use the same LEED ratings as other commercial facilities, but in February of this year, a group of industry leaders submitted to the USGBC a draft LEED rating for data centers that aims to customize elements of the certification process for high-tech facilities.

No new nuclear or coal plants may ever be needed in the United States, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said today.

"We may not need any, ever," Jon Wellinghoff told reporters at a U.S. Energy Association forum.

The FERC chairman's comments go beyond those of other Obama administration officials, who have strongly endorsed greater efficiency and renewables deployment but also say nuclear and fossil energies will continue playing a major role.

Wellinghoff's view also goes beyond the consensus outlook in the electric power industry about future sources of electricity. The industry has assumed that more baseload generation would provide part of an increasing demand for power, along with a rapid deployment of renewable generation, smart grid technologies and demand reduction strategies.

Jay Apt, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Electricity Industry Center, expressed skepticism about the feasibility of relying so heavily on renewable energy. "I don't think we're where Chairman Wellinghoff would like us to be," Apt said. "You need firm power to fill in when the wind doesn't blow. There is just no getting around that."

Some combination of more gas- or coal-fired generation, or nuclear power, will be needed, he said. "Demand response can provide a significant buffering of the power fluctuations coming from wind. Interacting widely scattered wind farms cannot provide smooth power."

Wellinghoff said renewables like wind, solar and biomass will provide enough energy to meet baseload capacity and future energy demands. Nuclear and coal plants are too expensive, he added.

"I think baseload capacity is going to become an anachronism," he said. "Baseload capacity really used to only mean in an economic dispatch, which you dispatch first, what would be the cheapest thing to do. Well, ultimately wind's going to be the cheapest thing to do, so you'll dispatch that first."

He added, "People talk about, 'Oh, we need baseload.' It's like people saying we need more computing power, we need mainframes. We don't need mainframes, we have distributed computing."

The technology for renewable energies has come far enough to allow his vision to move forward, he said. For instance, there are systems now available for concentrated solar plants that can provide 15 hours of storage.

"What you have to do, is you have to be able to shape it," he added. "And if you can shape wind and you can effectively get capacity available for you for all your loads.

"So if you can shape your renewables, you don't need fossil fuel or nuclear plants to run all the time. And, in fact, most plants running all the time in your system are an impediment because they're very inflexible. You can't ramp up and ramp down a nuclear plant. And if you have instead the ability to ramp up and ramp down loads in ways that can shape the entire system, then the old concept of baseload becomes an anachronism."
'A lot that is still not understood'

Asked whether his ideas need detailed studies, given the complexity of the grid, Wellinghoff said the technology is already moving that way.

"I think it's being settled by the digital grid moving forward," he said. "We are going to have to go to a smart grid to get to this point I'm talking about. But if we don't go to that digital grid, we're not going to be able to move these renewables, anyway. So it's all going to be an integral part of operating that grid efficiently."

In response to Wellinghoff's comments, James Owens, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, an association of shareholder-owned utilities, issued this statement: “While our industry is making very major strides in expanding energy efficiency and the use of renewables, we’ll still have to add new baseload generation capacity to help meet the growth in demand for electricity. As we intensify the transition to a low-carbon future, we will need to have all generation options on the table, including advanced new nuclear, advanced clean coal with carbon capture and storage, as well as natural gas.”

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. reported last week on challenges in integrating a twentyfold expansion of renewable power into the nation's electricity networks but did not specifically address whether additional baseload generation would be needed. A spokesperson for NERC did not have an immediate response to Wellinghoff's comments.

Revis James, who directs energy technology assessment for the Electric Power Research Institute, said recently that it is not clear how fast renewable energy can be added without creating reliability issues. "No one knows what the magic number is," he said. "Are we moving too fast? On the policymakers' side, there's a lot that is not still understood about the implications of a large share of renewables."

Impact on nuclear power

Wellinghoff's statement – if it reflects Obama administration policy – would be a huge blow to the U.S. nuclear power industry, which has been hoping for a nuclear "renaissance" based on the capacity of nuclear reactors to generate power without greenhouse gas emissions.

Congress created significant financial incentives to encourage the construction of perhaps a half-dozen nuclear plants with innovative designs, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu has promised Congress to accelerate awards of federal loan guarantees for some of these proposals.

But a major expansion in U.S. nuclear energy would require a high effective tax on carbon emissions from coal plants, or an extended loan guarantee and tax incentive policy, according to the Congressional Research Service and outside consultants. The leading energy bills before Congress do not provide more loan guarantees.

"If expansion of nuclear plants is the nation's policy, then Congress has to recognize that the U.S. energy companies cannot afford to do this alone," said Paul Genoa, policy director for the Nuclear Energy Institute, in a recent interview.

"The president needs to show his cards on nuclear energy," said energy consultant Joseph Stanislaw, a Duke University professor. "He cannot keep this industry, which must make investments with a 50-year or longer horizon, in limbo for much longer."

"I think [new nuclear expansion] is kind of a theoretical question, because I don't see anybody building these things, I don't see anybody having one under construction," Wellington said.

Building nuclear plants is cost-prohibitive, he said, adding that the last price he saw was more than $7,000 a kilowatt – more expensive than solar energy. "Until costs get to some reasonable cost, I don't think anybody's going to [talk] that seriously," he said. "Coal plants are sort of in the same boat, they're not quite as expensive."

Can renewables meet demand?

There's enough renewable energy to meet energy demand, Wellinghoff said. "There's 500 to 700 gigawatts of developable wind throughout the Midwest, all the way to Texas. There's probably another 200 to 300 gigawatts in Montana and Wyoming that can go West."

He also cited tremendous solar power in the Southwest and hydrokinetic and biomass energy, and said the United States can reduce energy usage by 50 percent. "You combine all those things together ... I think we have great resources in this country, and we just need to start using them," he said.

Problems with unsteady power generation from wind will be overcome, he said.

"That's exactly what all the load response will do, the load response will provide that leveling ability, number one," he said. "Number two, if you have wide interconnections across the entire interconnect, you're going to have a lot of diversity with that wind. Not all the wind is going to stop at once. You'll have some of it stop, some of it start, and all of that diversity is going to help you, as well."

Push for grid modifications

But planning for modifying the grid to integrate renewables must take place in the next three to five years, he said.

"If we don't do that, then we miss the boat, "Wellinghoff said. "That planning has to take place so you don't strand a lot of assets, a lot of supply assets."

Unlike coal and nuclear, natural gas will continue to play a role in generating electricity, he said.

"Natural gas is going to be there for a while, because it's going to be there to get us through this transition that's going to take 30 or more years."

Chu reiterated before the House Energy and Commerce Committee today that he supports loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants and is working with the White House on the issue.

"I believe nuclear power has to be part of the energy mix in this century," Chu said.

Chu also noted today that nuclear technology, along with renewables, is an area where the United States has lost its lead. "We are trying to start the American nuclear industry again," he said.

Coal currently provides half of U.S. power, while nuclear energy accounts for about 20 percent.

Senior reporter Ben Geman contributed.

Reprinted from Greenwire with permission from Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC. www.eenews.net, 202-628-6500

"What do you think was happening here?"

Jon Fenn, electricity operations manager for National Grid, is standing pointing at a jagged graph projected on to the wall of his ofice in the grid's electricity control centre in Berkshire.

The graph shows the nation's total electricity demand during the first round 2006 World Cup match between England and Sweden. Demand steadily falls throughout the first half, followed by a sudden spike at half-time, followed by another steady fall, then another spike and a plateau at the end of the match. Fenn is pointing to the lowest point of demand, right at the end of the game's first half.

He asks: "What do you think we were looking for?"

I look blank. "We were looking to see if there was going to be any extra time played," he explains patiently.

For the controllers who staff the National Grid's control room 24 hours a day, extra time in a national football match means something very significant. They are waiting for hundreds of thousands of kettles to be boiled at half-time, countless fridge doors to be opened and a multitude of kitchen lights to be flicked on. At half-time in 2006, electricity demand soared by almost two gigawatts in a matter of minutes – equivalent to suddenly needing the combined output of nearly two Dungeness B nuclear power plants. Twenty minutes later, as everyone sat back down in front of the TV, the demand had disappeared.

To anticipate this sort of spike in demand, the grid engineers quickly need to bring extra power plants online. Extra time played in the game could mean they bring the power on too early, risking tripping fuses on the grid. Bring it online too late, however, and blackouts could result.

It's a fine balancing act, and also highly expensive and polluting. A key component of being able to match these sudden spikes in demand is what is known as 'spinning reserve' – essentially keeping a power station running but only using a part of its output, ready to ramp up to full power at a moment's notice.

Because this kind of use is unsuited to nuclear power plants, which take days to come on- or offline, and can potentially damage the more modern and sensitive natural gas plants, it tends to be the workhorse coal power stations that fulfil this 'balancing' role. One estimate suggests that more than 2.1 million tonnes of CO₂ are produced every year simply keeping these power stations 'ticking over', waiting for us to flip the kettle on.

It's not just football matches that generate these spikes in demand, however. In fact, every winter's day our demand for electricity soars from a night-time low of around 35 to almost 60 gigawatts during the evening rush hour. In the summer, that profile is different still – flatter, but with different peaks when air conditioning equipment is switched on in the heat of the day. Fenn can point to little spikes in our electricity demand during the middle of the night when night storage heaters suddenly trip into life.

"We're students of collective public behaviour," he admits.

A cool innovation

Endearing as it may be, however, our electrical behaviour is becoming increasingly problematic. The current reliance on coal power plants to balance out demand will come to end as a result of the 2007 Large Combustion Plant Directive – legislation that regulates the non-CO₂ emissions from coal and oil plants, and which will force several to close by 2015. And on the flip-side, as more wind energy is brought online the variability of the grid will increase. Although wind energy is not 'unpredictable' as some critics suggest – it can be accurately forecast hours in advance – it does prove a problem for the current grid setup, where supply has to be matched to demand at all costs. Wind may blow strongly in the middle of the night, when the demand is low, but slacken off during the evening rush hour.

What's clearly needed is some way of matching not only supply to demand, but also demand to supply – some sort of what the industry likes to call 'demand management'.

"Don't say demand management!" hisses David Hirst when we first meet. "Say demand. Only the electricity companies would be so arrogant as to talk about "managing" their customers."

A former IT expert and the inventor of a technology that might help even out the variability on the grid, Hirst has developed a small, cheap piece of electronics that could be built into all new home fridges and freezers. Currently being marketed by British company RLtec, the device would constantly 'listen' to the frequency of the grid – a direct indication of whether the grid is over- or underpowered. If the grid frequency drops then the fridge would know that lots of consumers had suddenly increased their electricity demand – perhaps for the half-time cuppa – and that operators in the grid control room would be about to open the throttle on a series of coal-fired power plants. In response, the fridge could switch its cooling unit off until the grid frequency had returned to a normal level – in effect reducing 'non-essential' demand until the grid operators had managed to balance the system again, hopefully without resorting to too much coal.

"The fridges would only remain off for between 15 and 30 minutes," Hirst says. "Any longer than half an hour, and the fridges would say to themselves, "stuff this for a laugh", and start working again. Food preservation is paramount."

Some good scientific modelling work has been done on this, which suggests that if each of the three million domestic fridges sold in the UK every year were fitted with this technology (known as 'dynamic demand'), then the equivalent electrical response of all these units would be 35 megawatts – the size of a small wind farm. If, however, all of the UK's 40 million fridges were eventually replaced with dynamic demand units, then the response level would rise to between 728 and 1,174 megawatts – a level that RLtec claims would make an entire spinning reserve power plant obsolete.

It's an attractive idea, and one that National Grid welcomes.

"Evening-out demand would make things very much simpler for us," Fenn says. "There's a great opportunity for technology here."

There is, however, also a great shrugging of shoulders when it comes to deciding who will pay for installing the dynamic demand equipment in the fridges. In theory, the rapid-response service provided by the fridges is worth a fair amount of money to National Grid – between £4.40 and £34.10 per fridge, in fact, according to Government commissioned research. This is because it offsets expensive charges made by coal power plant operators for their usual balancing services. National Grid, though, is reluctant to commit to funding the fridges without knowing exactly how effective they will be in aggregate. There is also talk of using money from the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) energy eficiency levy on the power companies – the tax that explains why your utility is throwing energy-saving light bulbs at you and offering to lag your loft. As yet, everyone is waiting for the result of a larger smart fridge trial, due to report back in 2010.

Fridges are only the tip of dynamic demand iceberg, however. For a start, Hirst says, they essentially only allow the grid to 'borrow' power for half an hour – after that, they all need cooling back down again. Where things get more exciting, though, is when you look at the possibility of shifting the 'on' times of other appliances, such as dishwashers.

Hirst calculates that if the UK's 10 million dishwasher owners were to load up the machines with crockery and then, rather than switch them on immediately after dinner, set the machines simply to have the load washed between 11pm and 7am, then the grid would effectively have 10 gigawatt hours (Gwh) of flexible storage. This vast amount is equivalent to the capacity of the Dinorwig pumped storage plant in Wales, which pumps water up into a huge reservoir when electricity is cheap and then lets it roar through turbines when demand surges in the evening. It could also save a considerable amount of CO₂ often produced during the evening peak by gas power stations.

As electric-car ownership increases, so will electricity demand. It makes sense to charge cars at night when demand is low, but linked into smart meters, cars could charge whenever electricity is cheap – when the wind is strong, for example. They could also feed power back to the grid at times of high demand, like a giant battery.

The list goes on. Immersion heaters in our hot water tanks are, like fridges, currently a law unto themselves, tripping on when their thermostats tell them to. As long as water is hot for morning showers or evening baths, however, the exact time at which these devices run is not especially important to us – but very important in terms of running a low-carbon electricity system. Similarly, certain spaceheating systems, such as storage heaters or underfloor heating could become more flexible. What's needed is a way of bringing these appliances together so that they know when is the most eficient time to power up.

Enter the smart meter – the only part of the much-vaunted 'smart grid' that the householder will ever see. A smart meter is essentially a meter that allows two-way communication: the electricity company can read the meter remotely and the householder can see both how much power they are using, and how much it costs. Unfortunately, that's about where consensus on smart meters stops. Some would like the meters simply to give customers information on energy usage; others see the display part of the meters – sited in the house – as a tool to discourage householders from using energy at peak times; still others would like to see the meter communicate remotely with appliances in the house, allowing them to operate at the most efficient times of day.

Joe Short, an expert in the field and founder of the charity Dynamic Demand, warns that a mistake with smart meters at this early stage could spell disaster for developing truly energy efficient ways of running our homes.

"We need to be very careful that the smart meter agenda is not driven by the agenda of the large energy suppliers," he says. "The big players are interested in smart metering because of the automatic meter-reading element, but we need a signal to get into the house – either a carbon or price signal. We need not to miss the opportunity of all these smart meters."

David Hirst is worried about the influence of the energy companies on smart metering for a different reason.

"Do you really want someone to be able to control the appliances in your house? Least of all the electricity companies?" he asks, voicing a concern already raised by consumer groups.

Hirst has a different model for smart meters, one that explains why he insists on referring to demand 'participation' rather than 'management'. He wants to see smart meters tune into future price broadcasts from the electricity companies, sent out every few minutes. A high electricity price would indicate high demand on the grid (and hence, high CO₂ emissions), while a low price would indicate either low demand or an abundance of wind or solar energy. Appliances – laundry machines, dishwashers and even electric cars – would calculate when would be cheapest to run and plan to wait until the best time to switch themselves on.

"It would mean you, and your appliances, would have a choice," Hirst says. "Occasionally, you may simply say, 'I need it urgently – I'll pay the extra'. That's participation."

The future of smart meters – and smart appliances – is yet to be written. A recent trial in the District of Columbia, US, saw 1,400 customers fitted with smart meters coupled to their air conditioning units. With the householder's day-to-day permission, the electricity company was able to deactivate the home's air conditioning system at times of peak electricity demand, and give customers a rebate on their bill as a result. The UK's own trials, conducted by Ofgem, have been disappointing, dogged by equipment problems. But elsewhere in Europe – notably in Italy, where almost 30 million meters have been installed – the response has been positive.

'Smart' appliances and demand-responsive fridges are, of course, only bits of kit. If householders and tenants fail to engage with the new devices – and in one of the UK trials a quarter of those using energy monitors didn't even bother to replace the batteries when they ran out – then no amount of technical wizardry will help. The purpose of all these devices is simple: in the words of Jessica Strömbäck of the VaasaETT Global Energy Think Tank at a 'demand response' conference in January: "It is important in the long run that customers change their view of electricity from a natural human right to the costly resource that it is".

(04-14) 04:00 PDT Sacramento

California state regulators, who have limited automobile emissions and required large utilities to increase use of renewable energy, now are taking aim at a ubiquitous household item - the television.

Consumer demand for bigger, flatter and fancier TVs has dramatically increased the amount of energy needed to watch the tube, officials say. The California Energy Commission says a 42-inch plasma television uses more energy than a large refrigerator.

To reduce the electrical draw from TVs, the commission has proposed the nation's first mandatory energy limits on televisions - limits that many large LCD and plasma TVs on the market do not meet.

"We want to get rid of energy-guzzling televisions," said Adam Gottlieb, spokesman for the state energy commission.

The proposed rules would take effect from 2011 to 2013, eventually cutting the use of power by 50 percent.

But only one-fourth of TVs now sold in the state meet the standard, and a leading manufacturers group predicts that the rules will cost consumers and the state money, stifle innovation and result in fewer choices on store shelves.

The energy commission wants to place "artificial energy-use limits on televisions," said Doug Johnson, senior director of technology policy for the Consumer Electronics Association, which represents most television-makers.

Johnson said the group's goal is "not to create harmful and unnecessary regulations. We have to recognize what is already working and think of ways to promote that in California."

The association paid for a study that predicts California will lose $50 million a year in tax revenue and 4,600 jobs, mostly at retail outlets that will cut back on their merchandise, if the plan is adopted. Johnson said simple changes such as reducing brightness settings and promoting the voluntary Energy Star program backed by the federal government would be better goals.

But the energy commission said those efforts will not go far enough and that technology exists that makes the agency's goal possible at a savings to consumers.

That position is backed by Vizio, the second-largest flat-panel television manufacturer in North America.

Vizio supports the standards and "would also support earlier implementations" than the dates set by the commission, Kenneth Lowe, vice president and co-founder of Vizio, wrote in a letter to the commission.

This year the Irvine TV maker is selling a line of televisions, known as EcoHD, that meet the 2013 standards. The new rules would increase manufacturing costs by a "few tens of dollars," Lowe said. The commission estimates those costs will be offset by savings in energy costs from $104 to $164 over the lifetime of the television.

The proposed regulations also are supported by the LCD TV Association, which represents manufacturers and suppliers for TVs.

Bruce Berkoff, who chairs the group, told the commission that its proposal will encourage innovation and added that concerns over availability of televisions are "clearly at odds with industry practices of improvements and TV product cycles."

Environmental groups back the changes and dismiss the concerns of some industry groups. The changes also could result in energy savings nationwide, said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"History has shown that once manufacturers make changes to meet California standards, over time that is how they produce all their televisions," he said.

The state commission is expected to vote on the proposal during the summer, although no date has been scheduled. A workshop on the plan will be held before the vote and will include public comment.

Insurance companies might not come to mind as key environmental advocates, but they have a vested interest in climate change: billions—if not trillions—of dollars. As sea levels rise, storms gain force and even as agricultural patterns change, insurance companies will have to shell out more and more cash to cover losses. Hurricane Ike, which struck the Texas coast in 2008, cost insurers in that state $6.6 billion, according to a report by The New York Times. Hefty price tags get passed along to consumers, taxpayers and investors alike.

But a new industry survey by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), a nationwide advisory organization, aims to ensure that insurers are taking a long, hard look at climate change and what it means for their bottom line.

"Once they're aware of the risk," says Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario, "they'll mitigate it." Mitigation in this case doesn't just mean upping premiums or dropping coverage, but actually working to reduce climate change overall. Just as insurance companies helped to make workplaces safer (not because they're altruistic, rather because it makes good business sense—lower risk cuts costs), they "can help foster improvements in global warming," says Peter Kochenburger, executive director of the Insurance Law Center at the University of Connecticut School of Law.

The survey covers eight topics—from what insurance companies are doing to decrease their own emissions to what computer modeling they're using to assess climate-related risk. "These are legitimately good questions to ask," says Kochenburger. The deadline for the first round of surveys from major insurers (those with more than $500 million in premiums) is May 1, 2010; the NAIC plans to expand the survey annually. Responses will be made available to the public by summer 2010.

What will a better picture of climate change risk mean for consumers? "It will mean higher premiums, possibly, depending on new risks," says Ario, also chair of the NAIC's Climate Change and Global Warming Task Force who spearheaded the survey. But he adds that some of the changes "will create new opportunities for possibly better rates."

And money talks. "Insurance can make a really big difference in how people act," Kochenburger says. Because rates and policies seep into so many facets of life—from health to business—the insurance sector actually acts as a quasi-regulator, he says. Insurance companies can, for example, offer incentives for drivers who drive less and who own cars that get better mileage. The industry will also begin favoring businesses that use alternative energy and "buildings that are less susceptible to power outages and [therefore] business disruption," Ario explains.

The NAIC develops model laws and regulations, which states can choose to enforce. Kochenburger believes most insurance companies will participate in the survey, which doesn't require hard figures or terribly detailed reports. In the meantime, he notes, "You can look at insurance companies as a useful tool and a useful ally in climate change" because a greener, more stable global climate will mean more green for them.

BOSTON, Mass. -- Insurers are steadily taking climate change into account when developing or adding to insurance offerings. A new report from Ceres outlines the 640-plus climate-related insurance initiatives worldwide. But while that number has jumped drastically in recent years, Ceres said it's not increasing fast enough.

Ceres, a U.S. coalition of investors and environmental groups, released it's latest report looking at climate-focused insurance, "From Risk to Opportunity: Insurer Responses to Climate Change," (PDF) this month.

It looks at 643 products and services from 244 insurers, reinsurers, brokers and insurance organizations in 29 countries. Almost 40 percent of all the activities are from U.S. companies.

Among the hundreds of new offerings are coverage for green buildings, renewable energy shortfalls, carbon capture and storage, lower vehicle emissions and humanitarian emergencies prompted by drought.

There are 24 companies offering pay-as-you-drive insurance, giving discounts up to 60 percent for those who drive less than average drivers. Fireman's Fund developed the first replacement-upgrade product for hybrid cars, and numerous others offer incentives or discounts for hybrid, fuel efficient and low-emission vehicles.

Green building-related insurance now comes from 22 companies, and their 39 products cover both new buildings and upgrades related to losses or regular renovations. They cover a range of green building features, including credits and discounts related to recycled materials, energy-efficient products, green roofs and business interruption.

Five companies have introduced coverage for renewable energy providers that face shortfalls in solar, wind, or geothermal energy production, which would help companies attract investment and financing.

And last year saw the first products developed to manage risks related specifically to carbon capture and storage.

Although a wider swath of offerings covering numerous areas and industries is a positive advance, the report says it still has a long way to go.

"The scope and breadth of the insurer response fails to match the scale and urgency of the risks-or the opportunities-facing the industry," said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres. “Insurer attention to climate change is hugely important because the insurance industry underlies every aspect of the economy and has the power to transform the global energy system to one that is cleaner and more sustainable."

Climate concerns are being ingrained into insurers in other ways as well. Just in March the National Association of Insurance Commissioners decided it will require insurance companies to disclose financial risks they face from climate change, and what they are doing in response to thise risks, to regulators and investors.

Read the Green Rich List here

THE global rich are going green as never before. This first Sunday Times Green Rich List shows that the enthusiasm among the world’s wealthiest for investments in areas as diverse as electric cars, solar power and geothermal energy is unaffected by the recession.

The Green List has unearthed 100 tycoons or wealthy families worth £200m or more who have made either serious investments in green technology and businesses or hefty financial commitments to environmental causes. In total, the Green 100 are worth nearly £267 billion.

This enormous sum demonstrates that many of the world’s richest tycoons and entrepreneurs have embraced environmentalism. Indeed, our list is dominated by America’s wealthiest financiers and entrepreneurs such as Warren Buffett (worth £27 billion) and Bill Gates (worth £26 billion).

These two canny investors, who regularly swap places at the top of Forbes magazine’s annual list of world billionaires, have spent some of their financial firepower on areas such as wind power and electric cars in Buffett’s case, while Gates has backed alternative fuels such as oil from algae. We are not talking trifling sums here. Buffett has invested $230m in the Hong Kong battery-maker BYD.

Many of the 35 Americans in the Top 100 are drawn from Silicon Valley. Having made their first fortunes in microchips, the internet or software, the likes of Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin (each worth £7.5 billion) are turning to green investments with all the entrepreneurial zeal that made their first fortunes.

It helps that the Obama administration is committed to a huge stimulus package involving the very technologies that investors are focusing on.

Even tycoons who are not in President Barack Obama’s camp have moved into alternative energy, none more so than T Boone Pickens, oil explorer, corporate raider and a Texan Republican to his core. He is using part of his £1.8 billion fortune on filling the huge and windy Texas Panhandle with turbines as part of his Pickens Plan to wean America off its dependence on foreign energy.

American money may be chasing smarter and greener technologies, while the Chinese rich on our list are definitely about mass production of green technologies.

The 17 Chinese tycoons in the Top 100 are concentrated at the bottom end of the list and they are almost exclusively involved in solar and electric-car technology. It is a ferociously competitive market with unremitting pressure to cut costs and gain market share.

As such, all the Chinese fortunes have been hammered as share prices have fallen sharply. A year ago, many would have been in the Top 50, but not now. Indeed, some of them will not survive the steep downturn they are now battling through. But out of it will emerge winners selling much cheaper and more technically advanced products to a huge market worldwide.

There are 10 British or British-based tycoons on the list. None is going head-to-head with the Chinese in mass production. And they are not taking the German route. The seven German tycoons are largely involved in wind turbines and the like. This is a bespoke market — meat and drink to the German industrial sector.

The pity is that aside from Sir Richard Branson, who is investing in alternative fuels, there are no real British equivalents of Aloys Wobben. A German engineering graduate, Wobben started Enercon in 1984, building his first wind turbine in his back garden. Today the company employs 6,000 staff and exports sophisticated turbines all over the world.

German entrepreneurs who have made their fortunes elsewhere are also moving into green technology in a serious way, defying the prevailing economic gloom.

Twins Andreas and Thomas Strungmann built a £6.8 billion pharmaceutical fortune. Having sold their pharma business, they put many millions into saving a German solar company early last year just as the economic outlook worsened.

America’s wealthy are not just investing in new technology, they are also spending their fortunes on direct environmental activism, saving large tracts of wilderness from developers, endowing university research into green energy, climate change and the like.

This can have a huge impact in changing the mood in favour of more green activism on the political front, making the climate right for Obama to push through radical green initiatives that would not have been contemplated in George Bush’s presidency.

There is little evidence of any appetite among Britain’s super-rich for this approach. Firmly rooted in property, finance or retailing, they have little time or surplus wealth for anything other than lip service to green issues.

They are also involved in firefighting to keep their businesses afloat. When the recession is over, there are precious few forecasters who think the City and the like will return to its glory days.

With traditional factories and industries closing in record numbers, where will Britain’s future prosperity come from? It is a sobering thought.

One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis.

For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would not find it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire—and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos—and Earth might collide with an asteroid, too!

For many years I have studied global agricultural, population, environmental and economic trends and their interactions. The combined effects of those trends and the political tensions they generate point to the breakdown of governments and societies. Yet I, too, have resisted the idea that food shortages could bring down not only individual governments but also our global civilization.

I can no longer ignore that risk. Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy—most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures—forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible.

The Problem of Failed States
Even a cursory look at the vital signs of our current world order lends unwelcome support to my conclusion. And those of us in the environmental field are well into our third de­­cade of charting trends of environmental decline without seeing any significant effort to reverse a single one.

In six of the past nine years world grain production has fallen short of consumption, forcing a steady drawdown in stocks. When the 2008 harvest began, world carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) were at 62 days of consumption, a near record low. In response, world grain prices in the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever.

As demand for food rises faster than supplies are growing, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on the governments of countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. Unable to buy grain or grow their own, hungry people take to the streets. Indeed, even before the steep climb in grain prices in 2008, the number of failing states was expanding [Purchase the digital edition to see related sidebar]. Many of their problems stem from a failure to slow the growth of their populations. But if the food situation continues to deteriorate, entire nations will break down at an ever increasing rate. We have entered a new era in geopolitics. In the 20th century the main threat to international security was superpower conflict; today it is failing states. It is not the concentration of power but its absence that puts us at risk.

States fail when national governments can no longer provide personal security, food security and basic social services such as education and health care. They often lose control of part or all of their territory. When governments lose their monopoly on power, law and order begin to disintegrate. After a point, countries can become so dangerous that food relief workers are no longer safe and their programs are halted; in Somalia and Afghanistan, deteriorating conditions have already put such programs in jeopardy.

Failing states are of international concern because they are a source of terrorists, drugs, weapons and refugees, threatening political stability everywhere. Somalia, number one on the 2008 list of failing states, has become a base for piracy. Iraq, number five, is a hotbed for terrorist training. Afghanistan, number seven, is the world’s leading supplier of heroin. Following the massive genocide of 1994 in Rwanda, refugees from that troubled state, thousands of armed soldiers among them, helped to destabilize neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (number six).

 

 

Our global civilization depends on a functioning network of politically healthy nation-states to control the spread of infectious disease, to manage the international monetary system, to control international terrorism and to reach scores of other common goals. If the system for controlling infectious diseases—such as polio, SARS or avian flu—breaks down, humanity will be in trouble. Once states fail, no one assumes responsibility for their debt to outside lenders. If enough states disintegrate, their fall will threaten the stability of global civilization itself.

A New Kind of Food Shortage
The surge in world grain prices in 2007 and 2008—and the threat they pose to food security—has a different, more troubling quality than the increases of the past. During the second half of the 20th century, grain prices rose dramatically several times. In 1972, for instance, the Soviets, recognizing their poor harvest early, quietly cornered the world wheat market. As a result, wheat prices elsewhere more than doubled, pulling rice and corn prices up with them. But this and other price shocks were event-driven—drought in the Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, crop-shrinking heat in the U.S. Corn Belt. And the rises were short-lived: prices typically returned to normal with the next harvest.

In contrast, the recent surge in world grain prices is trend-driven, making it unlikely to reverse without a reversal in the trends themselves. On the demand side, those trends include the ongoing addition of more than 70 million people a year; a growing number of people wanting to move up the food chain to consume highly grain-intensive livestock products [see “The Greenhouse Hamburger,” by Nathan Fiala; Scientific American, February 2009]; and the massive diversion of U.S. grain to ethanol-fuel distilleries.

The extra demand for grain associated with rising affluence varies widely among countries. People in low-income countries where grain supplies 60 percent of calories, such as India, directly consume a bit more than a pound of grain a day. In affluent countries such as the U.S. and Canada, grain consumption per person is nearly four times that much, though perhaps 90 percent of it is consumed indirectly as meat, milk and eggs from grain-fed animals.

The potential for further grain consumption as incomes rise among low-income consumers is huge. But that potential pales beside the insatiable demand for crop-based automotive fuels. A fourth of this year’s U.S. grain harvest—enough to feed 125 million Americans or half a billion Indians at current consumption levels—will go to fuel cars. Yet even if the entire U.S. grain harvest were diverted into making ethanol, it would meet at most 18 percent of U.S. automotive fuel needs. The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank with ethanol could feed one person for a year.

The recent merging of the food and energy economies implies that if the food value of grain is less than its fuel value, the market will move the grain into the energy economy. That double demand is leading to an epic competition between cars and people for the grain supply and to a political and moral issue of unprecedented dimensions. The U.S., in a misguided effort to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by substituting grain-based fuels, is generating global food insecurity on a scale not seen before.

Water Shortages Mean Food Shortages
What about supply? The three environmental trends I mentioned earlier—the shortage of freshwater, the loss of topsoil and the rising temperatures (and other effects) of global warming—are making it increasingly hard to expand the world’s grain supply fast enough to keep up with demand. Of all those trends, however, the spread of water shortages poses the most immediate threat. The biggest challenge here is irrigation, which consumes 70 percent of the world’s freshwater. Millions of irrigation wells in many countries are now pumping water out of underground sources faster than rainfall can recharge them. The result is falling water tables in countries populated by half the world’s people, including the three big grain producers—China, India and the U.S.

Usually aquifers are replenishable, but some of the most important ones are not: the “fossil” aquifers, so called because they store ancient water and are not recharged by precipitation. For these—including the vast Ogallala Aquifer that underlies the U.S. Great Plains, the Saudi aquifer and the deep aquifer under the North China Plain—depletion would spell the end of pumping. In arid regions such a loss could also bring an end to agriculture altogether.

In China the water table under the North China Plain, an area that produces more than half of the country’s wheat and a third of its corn, is falling fast. Overpumping has used up most of the water in a shallow aquifer there, forcing well drillers to turn to the region’s deep aquifer, which is not replenishable. A report by the World Bank foresees “catastrophic consequences for future generations” unless water use and supply can quickly be brought back into balance.

As water tables have fallen and irrigation wells have gone dry, China’s wheat crop, the world’s largest, has declined by 8 percent since it peaked at 123 million tons in 1997. In that same period China’s rice production dropped 4 percent. The world’s most populous nation may soon be importing massive quantities of grain.

But water shortages are even more worrying in India. There the margin between food consumption and survival is more precarious. Millions of irrigation wells have dropped water tables in almost every state. As Fred Pearce reported in New Scientist:

Half of India’s traditional hand-dug wells and millions of shallower tube wells have already dried up, bringing a spate of suicides among those who rely on them. Electricity blackouts are reaching epidemic proportions in states where half of the electricity is used to pump water from depths of up to a kilometer [3,300 feet].

A World Bank study reports that 15 percent of India’s food supply is produced by mining groundwater. Stated otherwise, 175 million

Indians consume grain produced with water from irrigation wells that will soon be exhausted. The continued shrinking of water supplies could lead to unmanageable food shortages and social conflict.

Less Soil, More Hunger
The scope of the second worrisome trend—the loss of topsoil—is also startling. Topsoil is eroding faster than new soil forms on perhaps a third of the world’s cropland. This thin layer of essential plant nutrients, the very foundation of civilization, took long stretches of geologic time to build up, yet it is typically only about six inches deep. Its loss from wind and water erosion doomed earlier civilizations.

In 2002 a U.N. team assessed the food situation in Lesotho, the small, landlocked home of two million people embedded within South Africa. The team’s finding was straightforward: “Agriculture in Lesotho faces a catastrophic future; crop production is declining and could cease altogether over large tracts of the country if steps are not taken to reverse soil erosion, degradation and the decline in soil fertility.”

In the Western Hemisphere, Haiti—one of the first states to be recognized as failing—was largely self-sufficient in grain 40 years ago. In the years since, though, it has lost nearly all its forests and much of its topsoil, forcing the country to import more than half of its grain.

The third and perhaps most pervasive environmental threat to food security—rising surface temperature—can affect crop yields everywhere. In many countries crops are grown at or near their thermal optimum, so even a minor temperature rise during the growing season can shrink the harvest. A study published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences has confirmed a rule of thumb among crop ecologists: for every rise of one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above the norm, wheat, rice and corn yields fall by 10 percent.

In the past, most famously when the innovations in the use of fertilizer, irrigation and high-yield varieties of wheat and rice created the “green revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s, the response to the growing demand for food was the successful application of scientific agriculture: the technological fix. This time, regrettably, many of the most productive advances in agricultural technology have already been put into practice, and so the long-term rise in land productivity is slowing down. Between 1950 and 1990 the world’s farmers increased the grain yield per acre by more than 2 percent a year, exceeding the growth of population. But since then, the annual growth in yield has slowed to slightly more than 1 percent. In some countries the yields appear to be near their practical limits, including rice yields in Japan and China.

Some commentators point to genetically modified crop strains as a way out of our predicament. Unfortunately, however, no genetically modified crops have led to dramatically higher yields, comparable to the doubling or tripling of wheat and rice yields that took place during the green revolution. Nor do they seem likely to do so, simply because conventional plant-breeding techniques have already tapped most of the potential for raising crop yields.

Jockeying for Food
As the world’s food security unravels, a dangerous politics of food scarcity is coming into play: individual countries acting in their narrowly defined self-interest are actually worsening the plight of the many. The trend began in 2007, when leading wheat-exporting countries such as Russia and Argentina limited or banned their exports, in hopes of increasing locally available food supplies and thereby bringing down food prices domestically. Vietnam, the world’s second-biggest rice exporter after Thailand, banned its exports for several months for the same reason. Such moves may reassure those living in the exporting countries, but they are creating panic in importing countries that must rely on what is then left of the world’s exportable grain.

In response to those restrictions, grain importers are trying to nail down long-term bilateral trade agreements that would lock up future grain supplies. The Philippines, no longer able to count on getting rice from the world market, recently negotiated a three-year deal with Vietnam for a guaranteed 1.5 million tons of rice each year. Food-import anxiety is even spawning entirely new efforts by food-importing countries to buy or lease farmland in other countries [Purchase the digital edition to see related sidebar].

In spite of such stopgap measures, soaring food prices and spreading hunger in many other countries are beginning to break down the social order. In several provinces of Thailand the predations of “rice rustlers” have forced villagers to guard their rice fields at night with loaded shotguns. In Pakistan an armed soldier escorts each grain truck. During the first half of 2008, 83 trucks carrying grain in Sudan were hijacked before reaching the Darfur relief camps.

No country is immune to the effects of tightening food supplies, not even the U.S., the world’s breadbasket. If China turns to the world market for massive quantities of grain, as it has recently done for soybeans, it will have to buy from the U.S. For U.S. consumers, that would mean competing for the U.S. grain harvest with 1.3 billion Chinese consumers with fast-rising incomes—a nightmare scenario. In such circumstances, it would be tempting for the U.S. to restrict exports, as it did, for instance, with grain and soybeans in the 1970s when domestic prices soared. But that is not an option with China. Chinese investors now hold well over a trillion U.S. dollars, and they have often been the leading international buyers of U.S. Treasury securities issued to finance the fiscal deficit. Like it or not, U.S. consumers will share their grain with Chinese consumers, no matter how high food prices rise.

Plan B: Our Only Option
Since the current world food shortage is trend-driven, the environmental trends that cause it must be reversed. To do so requires extraordinarily demanding measures, a monumental shift away from business as usual—what we at the Earth Policy Institute call Plan A—to a civilization-saving Plan B. [see "Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization," at www.earthpoli cy.org/Books/PB3/]

Similar in scale and urgency to the U.S. mobilization for World War II, Plan B has four components: a massive effort to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent from their 2006 levels by 2020; the stabilization of the world’s population at eight billion by 2040; the eradication of poverty; and the restoration of forests, soils and aquifers.

Net carbon dioxide emissions can be cut by systematically raising energy efficiency and investing massively in the development of renewable sources of energy. We must also ban deforestation worldwide, as several countries already have done, and plant billions of trees to sequester carbon. The transition from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy can be driven by imposing a tax on carbon, while offsetting it with a reduction in income taxes.

Stabilizing population and eradicating poverty go hand in hand. In fact, the key to accelerating the shift to smaller families is eradicating poverty—and vice versa. One way is to ensure at least a primary school education for all children, girls as well as boys. Another is to provide rudimentary, village-level health care, so that people can be confident that their children will survive to adulthood. Women everywhere need access to reproductive health care and family-planning services.

The fourth component, restoring the earth’s natural systems and resources, incorporates a worldwide initiative to arrest the fall in water tables by raising water productivity: the useful activity that can be wrung from each drop. That implies shifting to more efficient irrigation systems and to more water-efficient crops. In some countries, it implies growing (and eating) more wheat and less rice, a water-intensive crop. And for industries and cities, it implies doing what some are doing already, namely, continuously recycling water.

At the same time, we must launch a worldwide effort to conserve soil, similar to the U.S. response to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Terracing the ground, planting trees as shelterbelts against windblown soil erosion, and practicing minimum tillage—in which the soil is not plowed and crop residues are left on the field—are among the most important soil-conservation measures.

There is nothing new about our four interrelated objectives. They have been discussed individually for years. Indeed, we have created entire institutions intended to tackle some of them, such as the World Bank to alleviate poverty. And we have made substantial progress in some parts of the world on at least one of them—the distribution of family-planning services and the associated shift to smaller families that brings population stability.

For many in the development community, the four objectives of Plan B were seen as positive, promoting development as long as they did not cost too much. Others saw them as humanitarian goals—politically correct and morally appropriate. Now a third and far more momentous rationale presents itself: meeting these goals may be necessary to prevent the collapse of our civilization. Yet the cost we project for saving civilization would amount to less than $200 billion a year, a sixth of current global military spending. In effect, Plan B is the new security budget.

Time: Our Scarcest Resource
Our challenge is not only to implement Plan B but also to do it quickly. The world is in a race between political tipping points and natural ones. Can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to prevent the Greenland ice sheet from slipping into the sea and inundating our coastlines? Can we cut carbon emissions fast enough to save the mountain glaciers of Asia? During the dry season their meltwaters sustain the major rivers of India and China—and by extension, hundreds of millions of people. Can we stabilize population before countries such as India, Pakistan and Yemen are overwhelmed by shortages of the water they need to irrigate their crops?

It is hard to overstate the urgency of our predicament. [For the most thorough and authoritative scientific assessment of global climate change, see "Climate Change 2007. Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," available at www.ipcc.ch] Every day counts. Unfortunately, we do not know how long we can light our cities with coal, for instance, before Greenland’s ice sheet can no longer be saved. Nature sets the deadlines; nature is the timekeeper. But we human beings cannot see the clock.

We desperately need a new way of thinking, a new mind-set. The thinking that got us into this bind will not get us out. When Elizabeth Kolbert, a writer for the New Yorker, asked energy guru Amory Lovins about thinking outside the box, Lovins responded: “There is no box.”

There is no box. That is the mind-set we need if civilization is to survive. 

n the early years of the last century, a new generation of scientists was inspired by the mysteries of the world around them. Einstein, Bohr and others spent the rest of their lives engaged in a debate about the nature of the atom.

In the latter part of the 20^th century, budding scientists had it far easier. They had Star Trek for inspiration. From warp fields to flat-screen TVs, Star Trek boldly took its viewers where no programme had taken us before. Among those fans, of course, were the inventors, scientists and all-round boffins of today.

As the new Star Trek film prepares to land at a cinema near you, it’s time to take stock of some of those “far-fetched” ideas that we now take for granted.

 
Now, could someone get to work on synthehol, please?

 

 

1  The flip-top mobile phone
For a generation that grew up flicking imaginary communicators and saying “Beam me up, Scotty”, the now near-ubiquitous flip-top mobile phone was the answer to our prayers.

2 The sound of automatic doors
The first electrically operated sliding automatic doors were fitted in Texas in 1960. They ran on noisy rubber wheels. Fifty years later, all of the world’s sliding doors open with a swooooosh. Where do you suppose that idea came from?

3. Flat-screen TVs, touch-screen computers, video-conferencing          
We laughed when we saw them. Television sets could never be that small, computers could never be that responsive. In 2009, we’re all fighting over the latest half-inch thick Sony and Samsung LCDs, then wondering how we plug our iPhones into them. Business types, meanwhile, are conducting transglobal negotiations in much the same manner as Kirk did with the Klingons.

4. The first space shuttle
Nasa called its first space shuttle (above) the Enterprise, following a letter-writing campaign by fans in 1976. The ship was used in test flights but was never truly spaceworthy.

 

5. The transporter beam
Although the original owes its existence to the show’s minuscule budget, that hasn’t stopped real scientists from trying to make one. In 2007, a new record was set for quantum teleportation, when data was beamed 89 miles from the island of La Palma to Tenerife.

 

6. The tricorder
Dr McCoy’s original all-in-one medical diagnostic tool was designed by one of the unsung heroes of Star Trek, Wah Ming Chang, who also came up with the look for the Communicator. Although no such thing yet exists, we take heart from the fact that every single PDA on the planet looks like a Tricorder, and from this news article, which claims that PDAs can now be made to work as full-on medical scanners.

7. The Hypospray
You try and tell me that there’s no Star Trek influence in the final design of jet injectors, the special hypodermics used for mass immunisation programmes. Go on, try.

 

8. Warp drive
On the face of it, this is one of Star Trek’s most unlikely technologies. However, it does have roots in quantum physics, in which components of an atom do hop from place to place without, seemingly, touching a point in between (see the excellent book Quantum by Manjit Kumar for details). Yes, I know. It puzzled Einstein, too. And it seems to have defeated NASA, whose six-year Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program was cancelled in 2002. Unless, of course, they succeeded. And fell through into a parallel universe.

http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/906366/blu_ray_laser_phaser.swf
Yep, it’s the US military again, and they've got a big laser gun. 

 

If you have more classic tastes, then you can take apart your PlayStation 3 and turn a plastic toy phaser into the real thing. Just like the man in the video above.

 

10. The cloaking device
According to a 2007 report at Networkworld.com, Purdue University engineers have created something that looks like a spiky hairbrush that has the ability to “bend” light around any object being cloaked. We are told to expect an invisible tank by 2012. Above is how we imagine it will look in the dark.  

 

For more on the new Star Trek film, head to the Blockbuster Buzz, or read the full Times review.