welcome

Seven thousand new wind turbines may rise from land and sea by 2020

Financial packages for wind and wave energy and changes to planning procedures are among key components of the Low Carbon Transition Plan.

"Smart" meters are to be deployed in 26 million homes by 2020.

The government says the plan will create up to 400,000 "green jobs" without a major hike in energy prices.

"The strategies we are launching today outline the government's vision for achieving a low carbon future for the UK, reshaping the way we live and work in every element of our lives," said Business Secretary Lord Mandelson.

"This is a challenge that every economy is facing, and we are determined that by setting clear policy now, Britain positions itself to benefit both economically and environmentally from the transition."

The measures are designed to meet the UK target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 34% from 1990 levels by 2020, and the EU-derived target of producing 15% of energy from renewable sources by the same date.

Currently, greenhouse gas emissions are about 22% below the 1990 baseline, according to government figures, including cuts that companies have purchased through the EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS).

Every sector of the economy will be expected to cut emissions, although electricity generation and heavy industry will bear about half of the reductions.

Among the measures designed to stimulate expansion of renewable power are:

• up to £120m to advance the offshore wind industry
• up to £60m to stimulate progress in wave and tidal technologies
• £6m to explore geothermal energy potential
• a new facility to research nuclear technology
• financial incentives for home generation
• the government will exercise powers to speed up grid connection for renewable installations

While the renewables target is 30% share of the electricity sector by 2020, the low carbon target is 40% - the difference implying a 10% share for nuclear.

From 2011, the poorest households will receive mandatory help with fuel bills.

Outside energy and industry, transport emissions are to be tackled though a combination of better fuel efficiency on the road, electrification of the rail network, the use of sustainable biofuels, infrastructure for recharging electric vehicles in up to six cities, and measures designed to increase cycling.

Farmers will be asked - and encouraged - to cut emissions by changing agricultural practices, paying for the creation of woodland, and support for facilities that use farm waste for energy.

The government believes the changes will usher in a new post-recession era of sustainable green growth.

Ministers also say the plan puts the UK in a leadership role in the months leading up to December's critically important UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

But while generally welcoming the plan, campaigners suggested it did not go far enough.

"The government's plans are good news for UK energy security, jobs and progress towards a low carbon economy," said Christian Aid's climate policy expert Alison Doig.

"Our fear is that they will not achieve enough to help keep the global temperature rise below 2C (3.6F) and safeguard people in developing countries from dangerous climate change. We also question whether the government has shown enough ambition to inspire courageous commitments by other industrialised countries."

WELLINGTON, July 27, 2009 (AFP) - Developed countries need to act urgently to help vulnerable Pacific island nations cope with climate change, international aid group Oxfam said Monday.

By the year 2050, about 75 million people could be forced to leave their homes due to climate change in the Asia-Pacific region, the Oxfam report said.

“Climate change has the potential to affect almost every issue linked to poverty and development in the Pacific,” said Oxfam New Zealand executive director Barry Coates.

“Without immediate action, 50 years of development gains in poor countries will be permanently lost,” he said.

Coral atolls are particularly vulnerable, including countries such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, which consist solely of atolls that often rise only six to nine feet above sea level.

Climate change is expected to worsen storm surges, cyclones, and high tides.

“Scientists have also projected an increase in diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, together with significant soil and coastal erosion as a result of climate change,” Oxfam said.

Unless wealthy, developed countries like Australia and New Zealand take urgent action to curb emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, some island nations in the Pacific could become uninhabitable, Oxfam said.

Oxfam estimated that around $150 billion would be needed every year to fund adaptation and emissions reductions in developing countries on top of existing aid.

Wealthy, polluting countries must reduce their emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020, and at least 95 percent by 2050 to prevent potentially catastrophic climate change, Oxfam said.

The report also said Australia and New Zealand had to be prepared to take refugees from Pacific islands.

Australia, New Zealand and other developed countries are expected to face renewed calls for more help over climate change from island countries when the 16-nation Pacific Islands Forum meets in Cairns, Australia next week.

Global ocean temperatures are rising, data shows. (Photo courtesy NASA)

The combined average global land and ocean surface temperature for June was second-warmest since global recordkeeping began.

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for June 2009 was the second warmest on record, behind 2005, 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 degree C) above the 20th century average of 59.9 degrees F (15.5 degrees C).

Separately, the global ocean surface temperature for June 2009 was the warmest on record, 1.06 degrees Fahrenheit (0.59 degree C) above the 20th century average of 61.5 degrees F (16.4 degrees C).

The global land surface temperature for June 2009 was 1.26 degrees Fahrenheit (0.70 degree C) above the 20th century average of 55.9 degrees F (13.3 degrees C), and ranked as the sixth-warmest June on record.

The Pacific Ocean warming pattern known as El Niño is back after six straight months of increased sea-surface temperature anomalies. June sea surface temperatures in the region were more than 0.9 degree Fahrenheit (0.5 degree C) above average.

On land, increased warmth was most notable in Africa, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Considerable warmth also occurred in Siberia and in the lands around the Black and Mediterranean Seas.

Cooler than average land locations in June were the U.S. Northern Plains, the Canadian Prairie Provinces, and central Asia.

Arctic sea ice covered an average of 4.4 million square miles during June, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. This is 5.6 percent below the 1979-2000 average extent.

By contrast, the 2007 record for the least Arctic sea ice extent was 5.5 percent below average.

Antarctic sea ice extent in June was 3.9 percent above the 1979-2000 average.

In June, heavy rain fell over central Europe, triggering mudslides and floods. Thirteen fatalities were reported. According to reports, this was central Europe's worst natural disaster since the 2002 floods that claimed 17 lives and caused nearly $3 billion in damages.

Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City measured 2008 as the ninth warmest year since continuous instrumental records were started in 1880. The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred between 1997 and 2008.

The latest assessment report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that climate scientists link global warming to the emission of greenhouse gases emitted by cars, factories and power generation, as well as cutting down or burning forests.

Copyright Environment News Service, ENS, 2009. All rights reserved.

CHICAGO, July 20, 2009 (AFP) - Fish have lost half their average body mass and smaller species are making up a larger proportion of European fish stocks as a result of global warming, a study published Monday has found.

“It’s huge,” said study author Martin Daufresne of the Cemagref Public Agricultural and Environmental Research Institute in Lyon, France. “Size is a fundamental characteristic that is linked to a number of biological functions, such as fecundity—the capacity to reproduce.”

Smaller fish tend to produce fewer eggs. They also provide less sustenance for predators—including humans—which could have significant implications for the food chain and ecosystem.

A similar shrinking effect was recently documented in Scottish sheep and Daufresne said it is possible that global warming could have “a significant impact on organisms in general.”

Earlier research has already established that fish have shifted their geographic ranges and their migratory and breeding patterns in response to rising water temperatures. It has also been established that warmer regions tend to be inhabited by smaller fish.

Daufresne and his colleagues examined long-term surveys of fish populations in rivers, streams, and the Baltic and North Seas, and also performed experiments on bacteria and plankton.

They found the individual species lost an average of 50 percent of their body mass over the past 20 to 30 years while the average size of the overall fishing stock had shrunk by 60 percent.

This was a result of a decrease in the average size at age and an increase in the proportion of juveniles and small-sized species, Daufresne said.

“It was an effect that we observed in a number of organisms and in a number of very different environments—on fish, on plankton, on bacteria, in fresh water, in salt water—and we observed a global shrinking of size for all the organisms in all the environments,” Daufresne said in a telephone interview.

While commercial and recreational fishing did impact some of the fisheries studied, it “cannot be considered as the unique trigger” for the changes in size, the study found.

“Although not negating the role of other factors, our study provides strong evidence that temperature actually plays a major role in driving changes in the size structure of populations and communities,” the study concluded.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

PARIS, July 22, 2009 (AFP) - Another clue has been found in the Case of the Shrinking Sheep, an animal mystery in which climate change features as the principal culprit.

The tale of scientific sleuthing is unfolding on two Scottish islands, Soay and Hirta, in the remote Outer Hebrides.

Their sole inhabitants are wild sheep that probably arrived there with the first human settlers some 4,000 years ago.

The sheep’s isolation and lack of predators make them terrific candidates for studying the impact of weather, food, and genetics on a wild animal population. The flock, suffering occasional surges and crashes in numbers, has been closely scrutinized since the 1950s.

Two years ago, researchers came across a strange thing: The average size of the Soay sheep was progressively falling.

That finding ran counter to Darwinian intuition. Evolutionary theory said that, given the cold, rough winter on the islands, bigger sheep had the better chance of survival, so their genes should progressively dominate the flock.

The solution to this enigma, suggested Imperial College London scientists earlier this month, lies in global warming.

Milder winters in recent decades have enabled smaller lambs, which otherwise would have died after birth, to survive into adulthood and then reproduce, they said.

The climate whodunnit has now been backed by a trio of Australian experts, who have matched weather and population records with the color of the sheep’s coats.

The smaller sheep that now dominate the flock are also lighter-haired ones, a link that has been proven by gene analysis. Bigger sheep tend to be darker.
Why would coat color make a difference?

The answer, suggests the team led by University of Western Australia’s Shane Maloney, is that, in colder times, sheep with darker coats have an advantage. Mammals with darker coats absorb more solar radiation and thus need to expend less food energy to keep warm than do their lighter counterparts.

But, as the climate has warmed in the North Atlantic, this advantage has diminished, which gives more of a chance for lighter-haired (and smaller) rivals in the struggle to survive.

“If environmental effects are the cause of the decline, then we can expect the proportion of dark-colored Soay sheep to decrease further,” the fleece police add soberly.

The study appears on Wednesday in Biology Letters, published by the Royal Society, Britain’s de-facto academy of sciences.

"Perhaps the silver lining (of the recession) is that people are coming to realize they can live with less and their lives are richer for it," says Michael Maniates, professor of political and environmental science at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa.

A third, 32%, say they have been spending less and intend to make that their "new, normal" pattern; 27% say they are saving more and plan to continue, according to a Gallup Poll in April.

Nearly half of consumers, 47%, say they already have what they need, up from 34% in November 2006, according to the 2009 MetLife Study of the American Dream.

"People are feeling forced and inspired to get back to what is core to them," says Julie Morgenstern, author of Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life. She says they're valuing objects less and experiences and people more.

Eric Dykstra, pastor of Crossing Church in Elk River, Minn., read Morgenstern's book, then ran across a blog by Dave Bruno of San Diego. Bruno launched a "100 Thing Challenge" in November and says he pared his own possessions to fewer than that.

Dykstra began encouraging members to reduce their personal possessions to 100 items. They took on the challenge — although some counted treasures such as a shoe collection as one item.

"People have really taken this to heart," Dykstra says. They donated so much to charity — boats, furniture, snowblowers — they filled a warehouse.

"The purpose was to break the hold of materialism," he says. He went from five suits to one, from a dozen ties to two. "It was very freeing."

Other signs of change:

• Enrollment in "voluntary simplicity" courses promoted by the non-profit Northwest Earth Institute in Portland, Ore., is up 50% in the past year.

"It was a perfect time to show people they're really not giving anything up" by buying less or eating at home, says acupuncturist Deborah Waddell, who hosted a course in February in Long Valley, N.J.

• Hundreds of schools have shown a 20-minute film, The Story of Stuff, on the environmental costs of consumerism, and more than 6.6 million people have viewed it online since December 2007, according to the Tides Foundation in San Francisco.

• Websites on living close to nature are getting more traffic. The Thoreau Society, devoted to naturalist Henry Thoreau, got 400 members in its first two months this year. The non-profit Simple Living Institute in Orlando has seen online hits double in the past year, says founding member Shirley Silvasy.

Bruno says, "The recession is like a wake-up call."

The perfect lawn doesn’t require gasoline or synthetic fertilizer.Muffet via Flickr

Grass Happens.

As a former lawn care professional, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I first saw that bumper sticker on a passing pickup truck full of lawn mowers. Insert any word of your choice to replace grass - Death, Tax, Greed, Hunger, you name it - and you will be commemorating the same fundamental inevitability.

Call it twisted landscape humor, an inside joke for anyone who has spent part of his or her life trying to keep landscapes under control. Including all the various species, grasses are some of the most prolific and resilient flora on the planet. Virtually anywhere you live, chances are you will have some spiked, green plants sprouting on your property, whether or not you want them there.

Lawns have always been another matter entirely. They haven’t just happened, but have instead necessitated all manner of conflict resolution. From the earliest days of civilization, an area of short-cropped vegetation required decisive action to meet the definition of a lawn. At first, goats and sheep were put out to forage plants to the ground; in the 1700s, peasants and slaves wielded machetes and scythes.

Almost two centuries ago tinkerers and machinists in Europe and North America began competing relentlessly to be first to create devices that would make the practice of mowing more accessible to everyman. By 1871, Elwood McGuire won Round 1. The resident of Richmond, Indiana, developed a cutting machine that could be mass-produced and, in the process, unleashed a latent lawn lust that seemed to have been secretly encoded in America’s collective DNA. By the beginning of the 20th century, inventors had created a steam-powered lawn mower and then in the 1950s came the machine that almost single-handedly painted the American Dream: the gas-powered rotary mower.

“The appearance of a lawn bespeaks the personal values of the resident,” declared a trade association known as The Lawn Institute in 1953, commenting on a post-World War II boom in mower purchases. “Some feel that a person who keeps the lawn perfectly clipped is a person who can be trusted.”

We may have moved on from our grandfather’s politics, but haven’t budged a bit from our collective definition of American success: Nice home, shiny car, big green lawn. According to NASA satellite images, the United States is blanketed in approximately 50 million acres of turf, with several hundred thousand acres of grass being added each year.

All that mowing, trimming and blowing contributes up to 10 percent of our nation’s air pollution every summer in the form of hydrocarbons (a major component of smog), particulate matter (which damages respiratory systems), carbon monoxide (a poisonous gas) and carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming). Gas-powered lawn mowers, blowers and trimmers are 10 to 30 times more polluting than combustion-engine automobiles and, well, we all know where the car industry is headed.

It should come as no surprise, then, that today’s Elwood McGuires are waging a new race: to develop kinder, gentler technologies for taming America’s little green patches of paradise. Like it or not, the grass is still growing. More and more folks are mowing it with machines that are human- or electricity-powered. A new campaign co-promoted by the non-profit SafeLawns.org of Washington, D.C., and the for-profit Black & Decker company of Maryland challenges homeowners everywhere to “Get Your Grass Off Gas.”

“By choosing electric or cordless outdoor power equipment, you’re not only helping the environment, your neighborhood and your family, but you are also freeing yourself of the mess and hassles associated with gas-powered products,” said DeAnn Romjue, director for Black & Decker’s Outdoor Products division.

The statistics in support of the change are staggering. A traditional mower running for 45 minutes consumes about 50,000 BTUs of energy in the form of gasoline. An electric mower doing the same job requires just 2,500 BTUs in form of kilowatts. Some estimates put the electric mowers at 90 percent less polluting than gas models and the cost savings per season is ample. About $5 of electricity will run your electric mower for the whole season on a third-acre lawn that would otherwise require about $40 to $50 in gas and oil.

After four years of kicking the gas habit in my own yard, however, my favorite aspects of the switch to an electric mower have nothing to do with money. The machine always starts, it’s far quieter and my clothes don’t smell like fumes when I’m done. The process, believe it or not, has become kind of fun.

Grass, after all, may be inevitable. The agony of caring for it shouldn’t have to be.

LEED-certified Orchard Hotel, San Francisco

Many of the existing LEED standards had an energy reduction strategy. The new Sustainable Food strategy is considered complementary to the other strategies that aim to reduce the carbon footprint of a building. A LEED project provides incentives to purchase building materials within a 500-mile radius of the site, enhancing local economies by keeping profits in the community. The same strategy applies to building operations, and a natural extension of this policy is to include purchasing food sustainably. No matter the size of a business operation, at one time or another, food will be served at an event or a meeting.

Building owners and managers can now gain credit towards LEED certification by using sustainably harvested foods certified by pre-approved organizations including USDA Certified Organic, Food Alliance Certified, Protected Harvest Certified, The Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade, and the Marine Stewardship Council's Blue Eco Label, and/or by acquiring food from within a 100-mile radius for food service and catering functions at the building. The threshold for achieving this credit is for 25 percent of all food and beverages to meet one or more of these sustainability criteria. Double points are awarded if the food is both certified and locally harvested.

The Bay Area already boasts many certified green buildings. The Orchard Hotel is San Fra

ncisco's first hotel to be LEED-certified by the USGBC, one of just two in California and four in the world. Since 1998, the USGBC has certified over 14,000 buildings worldwide. The potential for advancing the use of sustainable food through LEED certification by adding the Sustainable Food credit is significant.

"There's no longer a question about whether the jobs and the industries of the 21st century will be centered around clean, renewable energy," he said on June 25. "The only question is: Which country will create these jobs and these industries? And I want that answer to be the United States of America."

But the leaders of India, South Korea, China and Japan may have different answers. Those Asian nations are pouring money into renewable energy industries, funding research and development and setting ambitious targets for renewable energy use. These plans could outpace the programs in Obama's economic stimulus package or in the House climate bill sponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.).

"If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is the United States' entry into the clean energy race, we'll be left in the dust by Asia's clean-tech tigers," said Jesse Jenkins, director of energy and climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland, Calif.-based think tank that favors massive government spending to address global warming.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke are visiting China this week to discuss cooperation on energy efficiency, renewable energy and climate change. But even though developing nations refused to agree to an international ceiling for greenhouse gases last week, China and other Asian nations are already devoting more attention to cutting their use of traditional fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.

South Korea recently said it plans to invest about 2 percent of its GDP annually in environment-related and renewable energy industries over the next five years, for a total of $84.5 billion. The government said it would try to boost South Korea's international market share of "green technology" products to 8 percent by expanding research and development spending and strengthening industries such as those that produce light-emitting diodes, solar batteries and hybrid cars.

China and India are kick-starting their solar industries. India aims to install 20 gigawatts of solar power by 2020, more than three times as much as the photovoltaic solar power installed by the entire world last year, the industry's best year ever. And China's new stimulus plan raises the nation's 2020 target for solar power from 1.8 gigawatts to 20 gigawatts. (A gigawatt is about what a new nuclear power plant might generate.)

"China is trying to catch up in a global race to find alternatives to fossil fuels," the official China Daily said in an article last week.

"A lot of people underestimate how focused China is on becoming a global leader in clean technology," said Brian Fan, senior director of research at the Cleantech Group, a market research firm. China now provides a $3-a-watt subsidy upfront for solar projects, he said, enough to cover about half the capital cost. Fan said it is "the most generous subsidy in the world" for solar power.

China is also expected to boost its long-term wind requirement to 150 gigawatts, up from the current 100 gigawatt target, by 2020, industry sources said. Jenkins said China could provide $44 billion to $66 billion for wind, solar, plug-in hybrid vehicles and other projects. Fan said China also plans to make sure that many of the orders go to its own firms, Gold Wind and Sinovel.

The big Asian research and investment initiatives come as U.S. policy makers boast about their own plans, giving ammunition to those who say this country needs to do more.

"That R&D represents America's chance to become the world's leader in the most important emerging economic sector: energy technology," said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) in a May 13 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "In the years to come, I hope that America will be selling clean technology to China and India and not the other way around."

Confident that the United States will develop top-notch technology, the House voted overwhelmingly on June 10 to oppose any global climate change treaty that weakens the intellectual property rights of American green technology.

"We can cede the race for the 21st century, or we can embrace the reality that our competitors already have: The nation that leads the world in creating a new clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy," Obama said on June 29.

But countries in Asia are not standing still waiting for U.S. advances.

That both excites and worries U.S. manufacturers torn between opportunity and fear of a boost for Asian competitors at a time when the world's biggest market, the United States, has slowed down sharply. "This is heavy manufacturing business. The U.S. has had a great position over the last several years," said Vic Abate, vice president of renewables at General Electric, the world's number two wind turbine company. "If it slows down and if investment doubles down in China, it will be a lot harder to catch up."

"We have already been left behind in some areas," said Mark Levine, director of the environmental energy technologies division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "But . . . there remain many opportunities," he said, adding that "the U.S. can carve out key areas in clean energy technology."

Although GE is the only U.S. company among the world's top 10 wind turbine makers (China has two, Germany has three), Levine said "there are areas in wind energy where we are likely to develop crucial technologies that we will both exploit and likely license to others." He cited advanced materials that would permit stronger rotors and techniques for taking advantage of higher wind speeds at greater heights.

Levine said the United States is unlikely to "become the or even a leading photovoltaic manufacturer. But our scientific talent . . . has a good chance of developing the next-generation PV systems which we could either manufacture in China or another country . . . or license to foreign companies. . . . Even if the manufacturing is done abroad, this will lead to very real and large benefits to the U.S. from licensing fees, not to say sales in the U.S. and elsewhere."

The Daliang Wind Station located outside of Anxi in Gansu Province. China is now building six wind farms with a capacity of 10,000 to 20,000 megawatts apiece

Calling renewable energy a strategic industry, China is trying hard to make sure that its companies dominate globally. Just as Japan and South Korea made it hard for Detroit automakers to compete in those countries — giving their own automakers time to amass economies of scale in sheltered domestic markets — China is shielding its clean energy sector while it grows to a point where it can take on the world.

Steven Chu, the American energy secretary, and Gary Locke, the commerce secretary, are coming here to discuss clean energy and global warming with Chinese leaders, and to see if progress can be made toward getting China to agree to specific targets for reductions in greenhouse gases. Agreement proved elusive during the Group of 8 summit meeting last week in Italy.

But Mr. Chu and Mr. Locke arrive as Western companies, especially Europeans, are complaining increasingly about Beijing’s green protectionism.

China has built the world’s largest solar panel manufacturing industry by exporting over 95 percent of its output to the United States and Europe. But when China authorized its first solar power plant this spring, it required that at least 80 percent of the equipment be made in China.

When the Chinese government took bids this spring for 25 large contracts to supply wind turbines, every contract was won by one of seven domestic companies. All six multinationals that submitted bids were disqualified on various technical grounds, like not providing sufficiently detailed data.

This spring, the Chinese government banned virtually any installation of wind turbines with a capacity of less than 1,000 kilowatts — excluding 850-kilowatt designs, a popular size for European manufacturers.

Lu Hong, the program officer for renewable energy in the Beijing office of the Energy Foundation, a nonprofit group seeking to support sustainable energy, said that China was willing to invest heavily in renewable energy industries, even though wind and solar energy costs are higher than for coal, precisely because it helps the Chinese economy.

“The Chinese government won’t consider such a big solar industry without considering the building up of the domestic industry,” she said, adding that China’s policies will also help address global warming.

Zhou Heliang, the president of the China Electrotechnical Society, a government entity that plays a broad role in national and provincial technology policy, predicted at the Wind Power Asia conference here on Friday that Chinese-owned companies would increase their share of the Chinese market by an additional 10 or 20 percentage points this year.

That would give them almost three-quarters of the domestic market, compared with a quarter for European and American companies — the reverse of the ratio four years ago.

This year, China passed the United States as the world’s largest market for wind energy. It is now building six wind farms with a capacity of 10,000 to 20,000 megawatts apiece, using extensive low-interest loans from state-owned banks.

By comparison, T. Boone Pickens delayed his plans to build a 4,000-megawatt wind farm in Texas, once promoted as the world’s largest.

Some foreign companies, particularly European businesses, are starting to express misgivings about China’s promotion of the local manufacturers.

European wind turbine makers have stopped even bidding for some Chinese contracts after concluding that their bids would not be seriously considered, said Jörg Wuttke, the president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.

European turbine manufacturers are especially disappointed because they built factories in China in order to comply with the country’s requirement that turbines contain 70 percent local content, Mr. Wuttke said. Yet all the multinational manufacturers were disqualified on technical grounds within three days of bidding for wind farm contracts this spring, even as Chinese companies that had never built a turbine were approved, he said.

European solar power companies are also unhappy. “This is not a level playing field,” said Boris Klebensberger, the chief operating officer of SolarWorld AG, which is based in Bonn.

Mr. Wuttke said he was encouraged that Premier Wen Jiabao of China told Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in a telephone call on June 25 that China would not discriminate against foreign enterprises, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

But no new Chinese renewable energy regulations have been issued since then on local content requirements or other rules.

American companies play a smaller role in the global renewable energy industry, but some of them are also growing exasperated with the Chinese market. “That has been a tough market for non-Chinese manufacturers,” said Victor Abate, General Electric’s vice president for wind energy.

Kevin Griffis, a Commerce Department spokesman, said that the agency had not heard from American companies about difficulties in the Chinese market for renewable energy.

“Generally speaking,” Mr. Griffis said, “we support a business environment that is open, transparent, and fair so that all companies are able to compete based on product performance, not country of origin.”

While China promised to sign the W.T.O. side agreement on government procurement “as soon as possible” when it joined the free trade group in 2001 and won low-tariff access to foreign markets, it has never actually signed the side agreement. So its huge state sector remains largely exempt from international trade rules.

Other rules are also making it hard for foreign manufacturers and investors to compete in China.

China’s renewable energy standard requires that renewable energy account for at least 3 percent of the generating capacity of each large power company, excluding hydroelectric power, by the end of next year. But the rules do not dictate how much electricity must actually be generated from that capacity.

So power companies have an incentive to buy the cheapest wind turbines available, so as to increase their renewable energy capacity — even if the turbines break down frequently and do not produce that much electricity.

Turbines from Chinese-owned companies tend to have slightly lower purchase prices than foreign-brand turbines, but have higher repair costs, so the life cycle costs are similar, according to Chinese experts. United Nations data from the trading of carbon credits shows that the Chinese-brand turbines produce less electricity because they are more frequently out of action.

Financial regulations for wind farms also make it harder for foreign-owned farms than domestic-owned farms to borrow money or to sell carbon credits. Even well-connected international funds like Nature Elements Capital have to look hard for projects, while less-connected funds have struggled to find any at all.

Mr. Zhou said that China was also working hard to develop its own capability to manufacture high-tech materials that can withstand the torque, humidity and other stresses that affect wind turbines.

Two American companies are leading suppliers of materials: PPG Industries of Pittsburgh, the leading maker of fiberglass and protective coatings for the wind turbine housings and blades, and the Zoltek Corporation of Bridgeton, Mo., the world’s dominant supplier of carbon fiber for the support struts inside the most high-tech blades.

A report last month by IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a global energy consultancy, concluded that Chinese wind turbine makers would soon start exporting. That is because Chinese wind farm installations could level off temporarily as the power grid struggles to install enough high-power lines to use all the electricity wind produces.

Asked whether European turbine manufacturers risked sharing Detroit’s overconfidence in the 1970s in the face of challenges from Japan, Mr. Wuttke said that European makers believed that their reputations for quality and reliability would protect them.

Has it all come to this?  The wars and invasions, the death and destruction, the exile and torture, the resistance and collapse?  In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway, even before the chaos and catastrophe set in:  a giant gas pump for an energy-starved planet?  Will it all end not with a bang, but with a gusher?  The latest oil news out of that country offers at least a hint of Iraq’s fate.

For modern Iraq, oil has always been at the heart of everything.  Its very existence as a unified state is largely the product of oil.

In 1920, under the aegis of the League of Nations, Britain cobbled together the Kingdom of Iraq from the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul in order to better exploit the holdings of the Turkish Petroleum Company, forerunner of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC).  Later, Iraqi nationalists and the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein nationalized the IPC, provoking unrelenting British and American hostility.  Hussein rewarded his Sunni allies in the Baath Party by giving them lucrative positions in the state company, part of a process that produced a dangerous rift with the country’s Shiite majority.  And these are but a few of the ways in which modern Iraqi history has been governed by oil.

Iraq is, of course, one of the world’s great hydrocarbon preserves.  According to oil giant BP, it harbors proven oil reserves of 115 billion barrels—more than any country except Saudi Arabia (with 264 billion barrels) and Iran (with 138 billion).  Many analysts, however, believe that Iraq has been inadequately explored, and that the utilization of modern search technologies will yield additional reserves in the range of 45 to 100 billion barrels.  If all its reserves, known and suspected, were developed to their full potential, Iraq could add as much as six to eight million barrels per day to international output, postponing the inevitable arrival of peak oil and a contraction in global energy supplies.

Nailing Down the Energy Heartland of the Planet

Iraq’s great hydrocarbon promise has been continually thwarted by war, foreign intervention, sanctions, internal disorder, corruption, and plain old ineptitude.  Saddam Hussein did succeed for a time in elevating oil output, in the process raising national income and creating a well-educated middle class.  However, his ill-conceived invasions of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 led to devastating attacks on Iraqi oil facilities, as well as trade embargoes and crippling debt, erasing much of his country’s previous economic gains.  The trade sanctions imposed by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the wake of the First Gulf War only further eroded the country’s oil-production capacity.

When President George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, his overarching goals all revolved around the geopolitics of oil.  He and his top officials were intent on replacing Saddam Hussein’s regime with one that would prove friendly to American oil interests.  They also imagined that, greeted as liberators by a grateful population, they would preside over a radical upgrading of Iraq’s petroleum capacity, thereby ensuring adequate supplies for American consumers at an affordable price.  Finally, by building and manning a constellation of major military bases in a grateful Iraq, they saw themselves ensuring continued American dominance over the oil-soaked Persian Gulf region, and so the energy heartland of the planet.

All of this, of course, proved to be a mirage.  The U.S. invasion and ensuing occupation policies provoked a bitter Sunni insurgency that quickly overshadowed all other American concerns, including oil.  As a result, no matter how much money they poured into the task, the Bush administration and its Baghdad agents found themselves incapable of boosting petroleum output even to the levels of the worst days of Saddam Hussein’s regime—and so their plans to use oil revenues to pay for the war, the occupation, and the reconstruction of the country all vanished into thin air.

The data provided by BP on yearly production tallies cannot be starker when it comes to the impact on oil output of the insurgency, rampant corruption, the loss of the nation’s oil professionals (many of whom fled into exile amid sectarian warfare), and other related factors.  Prior to the American invasion, Iraq was pumping 2.6 million barrels of oil per day, already significantly below its pre-invasion peak of 3.5 million barrels per day.  In the first year of the ill-starred U.S. occupation, production quickly plunged to a paltry 1.3 million barrels per day.  Only in 2007 did it finally top the two million mark and, with improved security, 2.4 million in 2008.  Assuming conditions continue to improve, Iraqi output could, for the first time, exceed pre-invasion levels, though barely, in 2009 or 2010—six years or more after Baghdad fell to American forces.

A Sea Change in Iraqi Oil Production?

Until recently, most analysts assumed that Iraq would continue, at best, to make modest progress in its efforts to increase daily output.  There were too many obstacles, it was argued, to achieve dramatic breakthroughs.  These included continued insurgent attacks on pipelines and production facilities; corruption in the Oil Ministry and major energy production enterprises; the failure of parliament to adopt a national hydrocarbons law; differences between the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and the central government over who has the right to award what sort of oil contracts in Kurdish-controlled territories; and the reluctance of major foreign oil firms to venture into, or invest in a major way in such a dangerous and unstable place.

Recently, however, the Oil Ministry has made noticeable progress in overcoming at least some of these obstacles.  Under the leadership of Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani, a former nuclear scientist who was jailed and tortured by Saddam Hussein for refusing to assist in the development of nuclear weapons, corruption has been substantially reduced and various production bottlenecks eliminated.  Shahristani has also won support from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for the participation of foreign firms in the development of Iraqi oil fields, even though this has alienated many in Iraq who oppose any such involvement.  Once derided for ineptitude, the Oil Ministry is beginning to be viewed as a functioning, professional operation.

As a result, there are clear indications that Iraq’s oil industry could be poised for a major turnaround.  Among the most significant recent developments:

* Late last year, Iraq’s state-owned North Oil Company signed a $3.5 billion, 20-year service contract with the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to develop the Adhab oil field in Wasit province, southeast of Baghdad.  Originally negotiated under the Saddam Hussein regime, the deal was put on hold after the 2003 invasion and only given final approval in November 2008.  This is the first major contract the government in Baghdad has signed with a foreign oil firm since the Iraq Petroleum Company was nationalized in the 1970s.  It also represents the first significant investment by a company from China in Iraq.  Under the agreement, CNPC and its partners will develop the Adhab field and deliver all resulting crude oil to state refineries; as the field’s main operator, CNPC will be paid a fee by the Iraqi government for its engineering work and all delivered petroleum.

* In May, the Oil Ministry reached an accord with the Kurdistan Regional Government that, for the first time, will allow the Kurds to export oil from fields under their control.  Previously, the Baghdad government had refused to recognize any contracts signed by the KRG with private oil firms to develop fields in their territory and had prevented the Kurds from exporting oil from these fields through pipelines controlled by the central government.  Under the accord, the KRG will initially be allowed to export 100,000 barrels per day from the Tawke and Taq Taq fields, with higher rates expected in the future; 73% of the resulting revenues will go to the central government, 15% to the Kurds, and 12% to the foreign oil companies that signed production contracts directly with the KRG, bypassing the central government in Baghdad.  This agreement paves the way for a significant increase in output from Kurdish-controlled areas, which are thought to hold substantial reserves of untapped petroleum.

* In June, the Oil Ministry conducted its first auction of rights to operate existing fields in the country’s major producing areas.  This represented a major—even staggering—shift in policy, opening the door for the first time in three decades to the participation of major international oil companies in the operation—if not the ownership—of the country’s nationalized oil fields.  Although opposed by many key groups in Iraq, ranging from the oil workers’ union to significant factions in parliament, the move was taken to secure outside expertise in modernizing and upgrading the country’s crumbling oil infrastructure, thereby boosting output in a country that still relies on oil for more than 75% of its gross domestic product and about 95% of its revenues.  In fact, many foreign companies chose not to bid in the auction’s opening round, finding the returns being offered insufficiently attractive.  Nevertheless, one Western firm, BP, won the right (in partnership with CNPC) to operate the giant Rumaila field, Iraq’s largest.  The Oil Ministry has since indicated that it will conduct additional auctions, including one for the right to explore for oil, on terms as yet unrevealed, in the country’s undeveloped south and west—possibly laying the groundwork for significantly more intrusive participation by foreign firms.

Taken together, these steps—aimed at securing the necessary external financing and expertise to achieve a significant boost in production—represent a genuine sea change in the way the Oil Ministry has been overseeing the country’s hydrocarbons industry.  If all goes as planned, it intends to increase output by 1.5 million barrels per day, and another four to five million barrels by 2017.  These efforts, if successful (and given recent history, that remains a big “if”), would place Iraq among the world’s top four or five oil producers, along with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States.

A New Petro-State Servicing the Global Economy?

No one should underestimate the potential obstacles in the way of this objective.  Any number of factors—a rise in opposition to giving away any part of the national “patrimony” to foreigners, a significant increase in insurgent violence, heightened factional fighting in Baghdad, a sharpening of tension between Baghdad and the Kurds, an increase in corruption—could prevent the realization of these ambitious goals.  Moreover, pending the passage of a national oil and gas law (a goal pursued by U.S. officials for years), the major foreign oil companies will remain reluctant to sink too much money into Iraq, fearful that their assets will not be protected.

Nevertheless, it appears that, for the first time since the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, the stars in the energy firmament are aligning in ways that may favor Iraq’s reemergence as a major oil producer.  Whereas the major powers once competed among themselves for influence in Iraq or backed one or another of Iraq’s local rivals in efforts to weaken or contain that country, all now seem inclined to invest in, and benefit from, the reconstruction of its energy infrastructure.  The Bush administration, which looked with alarm at Saddam Hussein’s growing ties to Russia and China, invaded the country in part to reassert American dominance in the Persian Gulf region and diminish the role played by Moscow and Beijing.  Today, Washington appears to welcome the growing role of Chinese and Russian firms in the rehabilitation of Iraq’s dilapidated energy infrastructure.

It’s a reasonable assumption that behind this unprecedented shift lies an acknowledgement of the inescapable reality of peak oil.  As things stand now, the world will soon reach a maximum level of sustainable daily oil output, followed by an inevitable contraction in available supplies.  Many experts believe that the peak in conventional (liquid) oil output is likely to occur in the very near future, perhaps in the 2010-2015 timeframe, with global output topping out about 5 to 10 million barrels per day higher than today’s 85 million barrels.

Hitting the peak moment in that time frame, and at that level, would prove devastating to the world economy, as global energy demand is expected to climb far higher, thanks to rising consumption patterns in China, India, and other dynamos of the developing world.  It’s not hard, then, to do the math.  An addition of perhaps six million supplemental barrels per day from Iraq would make a striking difference in the energy equation.  In fact, it might prove the difference between squeaking by and a catastrophic worldwide shortage.  Under such circumstances, it is understandable that—no matter what their governments felt about the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq—the major powers now share a common interest in facilitating that country’s recovery as a major oil exporter.

For devastated Iraq, of course, these last years were a disaster and real reconstruction of the country still remains a long way off.  For the United States, gone are expectations of converting Iraq into a model Middle Eastern democracy, or of inserting a Western-trained, pro-U.S. regime in Baghdad.  Nor is there any expectation that the state-owned Iraq National Oil Company will be completely privatized—once the dream of Bush-era neocons.  Nonetheless, the (re)emergence of a functioning Iraqi petro-state working closely with foreign energy firms to boost global oil supplies (with American troops, whether based in Iraq or neighboring countries, providing ultimate security) would be an outcome that could be sold to Congress and, presumably, a majority of the American public.

Within Iraq itself, conditions may favor such an outcome.  Although various Iraqi factions have enormous differences, all recognize that their future prosperity rests on the successful development of the nation’s hydrocarbon reserves.  While Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds may each hope to benefit disproportionately from this great treasure, they all realize that some degree of cooperation—for example, in the construction and maintenance of export facilities—is essential to their ambitions, however disparate.  While the bargaining over the terms of cooperation may seem endless, and violence may sometimes accompany these negotiations, it is likely that some sort of collaborative structure will, in the end, emerge.  A gradual drawdown, if not total departure, of American forces will, in all likelihood, only accelerate this process.

So it has finally come to this dismal possible end point:  after all the blood and tears, all the death and destruction, almost all interested parties seem to be returning to the only vision of the country, however depressing, that has demonstrated any viability.  In the future, Iraq is likely to be an oil-fueled petro-state with no function other than to service global markets and enrich local elites as well as the technocrats that assist them.  This may be not be an inspiring vision—especially for Iraqis who have suffered so much—but it might possibly be the only reality available that will circumvent the horrific bloodletting of the past 30 years.

An experimental gas turbine simulator equipped with an ultralow-emissions combustion technology called the low-swirl injector (LSI) has been tested successfully using pure hydrogen as a fuel – a milestone that indicates a potential to help eliminate millions of tons of carbon dioxide and thousands of tons of NO_x from power plants each year.

The LSI holds great promise for its near-zero emissions of nitrogen oxides, gases that are emitted during the combustion of fuels such as natural gas during the production of electricity. Nitrogen oxides, or NO_x, are greenhouse gases as well as components of smog.

The Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability initially funded the development of the LSI for use in industrial gas turbines for on-site (i.e. distributed) electricity production. The purpose of this research was to develop a natural gas-burning turbine using the LSI’s ability to substantially reduce NO_x emissions.

Cheng, Berkeley Lab colleague David Littlejohn, and Kenneth Smith and Wazeem Nazeer from Solar Turbines Inc. of San Diego adapted the low-swirl injector technology to the Taurus 70 gas turbine that produces about seven megawatts of electricity. The team’s effort garnered them the R&D 100 honor. It is continuing the LSI development for carbon-neutral renewable fuels available from landfills and other industrial processes such as petroleum refining and waste treatments.

“This is a kind of rocket science,” says Cheng, who notes that these turbines, which are being used to produce electricity by burning gaseous fuels, are similar in operating principle to turbines that propel jet airplanes.

DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy is funding another project in which the LSI is being tested for its ability to burn syngas (a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide) and hydrogen fuels in an advanced IGCC plant (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) called FutureGen, which is planned to be the world’s first near-zero-emissions coal power plant. The intention of the FutureGen plant is to produce hydrogen from gasification of coal and sequester the carbon dioxide generated by the process. The LSI is one of several combustion technologies being evaluated for use in the 200+- megawatt utility-size hydrogen turbine that is a key component of the FutureGen plant.

The collaboration between Berkeley Lab and the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, WV, recently achieved the milestone of successfully test-firing an LSI unit using pure hydrogen as its fuel.

Because the LSI is a simple and cost-effective technology that can burn a variety of fuels, it has the potential to help eliminate millions of tons of carbon dioxide and thousands of tons of NO_x from power plants each year.

In a letter of support to the R&D 100 selection committee, Leonard Angello, manager of Combustion Turbine Technology for the Electric Power Research Institute, wrote: “I am impressed by the potential of this device as a critical enabling technology for the next generation coal-based Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle power plants with CO2 capture…This application holds promise for the gas turbines in IGCC power plants that operate on high-hydrogen-content syngas fuels or pure hydrogen.”

How the LSI works

The low swirl injector is a mechanically simple device with no moving parts that imparts a mild spin to the gaseous fuel and air mixture that causes the mixture to spread out. The flame is stabilized within the spreading flow just beyond the exit of the burner. Not only is the flame stable, but it also burns at a lower temperature than that of conventional burners. The production of nitrogen oxides is highly temperature-dependent, and the lower temperature of the flame reduces emissions of nitrogen oxides to very low levels.

“The LSI principle defies conventional approaches,” says Cheng. “Combustion experts worldwide are just beginning to embrace this counter-intuitive idea. Principles from turbulent fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and flame chemistry are all required to explain the science underlying this combustion phenomenon.”

Natural gas-burning turbines with the low-swirl injector emit an order of magnitude lower levels of NO_x than conventional turbines. Tests at Berkeley Lab and Solar Turbines showed that the burners with the LSI emit 2 parts per million of NO_x (corrected to 15% oxygen), more than five times times less than conventional burners.

A more significant benefit of the LSI technology is its ability to burn a variety of different fuels from natural gas to hydrogen and the relative ease to incorporate it into current gas turbine design — extensive redesign of the turbine is not needed. The LSI is being designed as a drop-in component for gas-burning turbine power plants.

The LSI technology, developed by Robert Cheng of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, recently won a 2007 R&D 100 award from R&D magazine as one of the top 100 new technologies of the year. This technology is available for license for gas turbines and certain other fields of use.