welcome

As the climate change summit meeting moves forward in Copenhagen, it is increasingly clear that more than just the environment is at stake. The global environmental crisis is at the heart of practically all the problems now confronting us, including the need to create a global economic model grounded in the public good.

It is directly linked to security issues and to increasingly dangerous ethnic and international conflicts; to mass migrations and displacements of people, which are already destabilizing politics and economics; to growing poverty and social inequality; to the water crisis and energy and food shortages.

Excuses and pretexts for not taking action on the environment, and assertions that there are more important problems, are simply no longer credible. If we fail on this problem, we’ll fail on all the others.

Saving our planet should be a task shared by governments, the business and scientific communities, and civil society. Each stakeholder in this noble cause has a role to play. The main burden of responsibility, however, lies with governments and their institutions.

Governments can set firm standards and norms that are indispensable to fighting climate change. Only the state is capable of mobilizing the resources and incentives to implement cutting-edge technologies. Only the state can help those who are the most vulnerable to climate change.

Representatives of governments are meeting in Copenhagen to open a new stage in international cooperation on climate change. Whether it will be a strong and convincing start or a weak, disappointing one is up to them.

The latest scientific research on climate change is extremely disturbing. We have a real emergency. Yet the gap between science and policy keeps widening, as does the gap between the negotiations and the urgency of the issue.

Science indicates that the global temperature increase should be limited to 1 or 2 degrees Celsius. World leaders endorsed this view at the G-8 meeting in Italy in July. Even with that limit, major destruction, including the disappearance of most of the world’s coral reefs, is likely.

Yet policy compromises agreed to by negotiators involved in the Copenhagen talks virtually guarantee a temperature increase of around 4 degrees Celsius — well into the catastrophic risk range.

Why is this happening? For several reasons, including the inertia of the existing economic model, one based on hyperprofits and excessive consumption; political and business leaders’ failure to think long term; and concern that reducing carbon emissions will undercut economic growth. Those who don’t want any change are exploiting that concern.

As the global financial crisis has made abundantly clear, efforts to make the world sustainable for present and future generations do not undermine the economy. The culprit is something quite different: reckless pursuit of profit at any price, blind faith in the “invisible hand of the market,” and government inaction.

What’s needed is a search for new engines of growth and incentives to economic development. Transitioning to a low-carbon, low-waste economy will create qualitatively new, green industries, technologies and jobs.

A low-carbon economy is just part of a new economic model, one the world needs as badly as the air we breathe.

Overnight changes to the economic model that has prevailed for a half century are not realistic. The transition to a new model requires a shift in values.

The global economy must be reoriented toward the public good. It must emphasize issues like a sustainable environment, healthcare, education, culture, equal opportunities and social cohesion — including reducing the glaring gaps between wealth and poverty.

Society needs this, and not just as a moral imperative. The economic efficiency of emphasizing the public good is enormous, even though economists have not yet learned how to measure it. We need an intellectual breakthrough if we are to build a new economic model.

We also need a moral realignment of the business community. Companies and their C.E.O.s tend to define their positions on environmental issues according to the short-term or at best medium-term bottom line. Socially and environmentally responsible business is still the exception rather than the rule. Change is needed in the entire system of taxes, subsidies and incentives.

Civil society must also play a larger role. It must become not just a stakeholder but a full participant in making decisions that will shape the environment and the economy for decades to come.

In Copenhagen, we will closely watch the political leaders. More than 60 heads of state will take a personal leadership test there. We have seen how easy it would be to fail. The weeks and months ahead offer them a chance to show that they can truly lead.

Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, is founding president of Green Cross International and head of the Climate Change Task Force (CCTF).

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/opinion/10iht-edgorbachev.html?_r=3

Syncrude Oil Sands, Mine and Refinery, the world's largest oil sand operation producing crude oil at Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, October 20, 2001. Photograph: Greg Smith/Corbis

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind? The world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party. So amazingly destructive has Canada become, and so insistent have my Canadian friends been that I weigh into this fight, that I've broken my self-imposed ban on flying and come to Toronto.

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada. Unless we can stop it, the harm done by Canada in December 2009 will outweigh a century of good works.

In 2006 the new Canadian government announced it was abandoning its targets to cut greenhouse gases under the Kyoto protocol. No other country that had ratified the treaty has done this. Canada was meant to have cut emissions by 6% between 1990 and 2012. Instead they have already risen by 26%.

It is now clear that Canada will refuse to be sanctioned for abandoning its legal obligations. The Kyoto protocol can be enforced only through goodwill: countries must agree to accept punitive future obligations if they miss their current targets. But the future cut Canada has volunteered is smaller than that of any other rich nation. Never mind special measures; it won't accept even an equal share. The Canadian government is testing the international process to destruction and finding that it breaks all too easily. By demonstrating that climate sanctions aren't worth the paper they're written on, it threatens to render any treaty struck at Copenhagen void.

After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007, it singlehandedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country that had done most to disrupt the talks. The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world's 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th.

In June this year the media obtained Canadian briefing documents which showed the government was scheming to divide the Europeans. During the meeting in Bangkok in October, almost the entire developing world bloc walked out when the Canadian delegate was speaking, as they were so revolted by his bullying. Last week the Commonwealth heads of government battled for hours (and eventually won) against Canada's obstructions. A concerted campaign has now begun to expel Canada from the Commonwealth.

In Copenhagen next week, this country will do everything in its power to wreck the talks. The rest of the world must do everything in its power to stop it. But such is the fragile nature of climate agreements that one rich nation – especially a member of the G8, the Commonwealth and the Kyoto group of industrialised countries – could scupper the treaty. Canada now threatens the wellbeing of the world.

Why? There's a simple answer: Canada is developing the world's second largest reserve of oil. Did I say oil? It's actually a filthy mixture of bitumen, sand, heavy metals and toxic organic chemicals. The tar sands, most of which occur in Alberta, are being extracted by the biggest opencast mining operation on earth. An area the size of England, comprising pristine forests and marshes, will be be dug up – unless the Canadians can stop this madness. Already it looks like a scene from the end of the world: the strip-miners are creating a churned black hell on an unimaginable scale.

To extract oil from this mess, it needs to be heated and washed. Three barrels of water are used to process one barrel of oil. The contaminated water is held in vast tailings ponds, some so toxic that the tar companies employ people to scoop dead birds off the surface. Most are unlined. They leak organic poisons, arsenic and mercury into the rivers. The First Nations people living downstream have developed a range of exotic cancers and auto-immune diseases.

Refining tar sands requires two to three times as much energy as refining crude oil. The companies exploiting them burn enough natural gas to heat six million homes. Alberta's tar sands operation is the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon emissions. By 2020, if the current growth continues, it will produce more greenhouse gases than Ireland or Denmark. Already, thanks in part to the tar mining, Canadians have almost the highest per capita emissions on earth, and the stripping of Alberta has scarcely begun.

Canada hasn't acted alone. The biggest leaseholder in the tar sands is Shell, a company that has spent millions persuading the public that it respects the environment. The other great greenwasher, BP, initially decided to stay out of tar. Now it has invested in plants built to process it. The British bank RBS, 70% of which belongs to you and me (the government's share will soon rise to 84%), has lent or underwritten £8bn for mining the tar sands.

The purpose of Canada's assault on the international talks is to protect this industry. This is not a poor nation. It does not depend for its economic survival on exploiting this resource. But the tar barons of Alberta have been able to hold the whole country to ransom. They have captured Canada's politics and are turning this lovely country into a cruel and thuggish place.

Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of Neanderthals to trample over it. Timber firms were licensed to log the old-growth forest in Clayaquot Sound; fishing companies were permitted to destroy the Grand Banks: in both cases these get-rich-quick schemes impoverished Canada and its reputation. But this is much worse, as it affects the whole world. The government's scheming at the climate talks is doing for its national image what whaling has done for Japan.

I will not pretend that this country is the only obstacle to an agreement at Copenhagen. But it is the major one. It feels odd to be writing this. The immediate threat to the global effort to sustain a peaceful and stable world comes not from Saudi Arabia or Iran or China. It comes from Canada. How could that be true?

Many Australians are increasingly distracted by the political agenda and lamenting the demise of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) legislation.

Regardless of the policy debate going on in Australia today, the need to take concerted global action is critical. And let’s be clear, it will take place with or without Australia, and will eventually have an impact. Rather than concentrate on the science, the scheme or the scenarios, let’s consider the numbers.

Targets: Many believe that Copenhagen will not result in a binding global agreement, but most nations have already agreed to take action and have set targets for 2020:

• Europe: 20% from 1990 levels and 30% if there is international agreement;
• USA: 17% from 2005 levels;
• China: a 45% reduction in carbon intensity;
• India: 25% reduction by 2030;
• Japan: 25% from 1990 levels;
• Russia: 25% from 1990 levels and
• Brazil: up to 38.9% reduction by 2020.

The discussion is likely to be one of abatement equity between developing and developed nations. To date, Australia’s commitment is a target of 5% below 2000 levels by 2020 and up to 25% if there is international agreement. Either way the challenge is not trivial and provides significant risks and opportunities for all companies in Australia, not just electricity generators or miners. The numbers are compelling:

Notwithstanding the CPRS, the government predicts that with the current policies and emission reduction measures, including the 20% renewable energy target (RET), emissions will reach 664 Mt p.a.

Australia’s Total CO2-e emissions and targets
Financial Year 1990-2020

With targets of either 5% or 25% the absolute abatement challenge facing Australia is between 140 or 250 MtCO2-e pa. This is equivalent to improvements in energy intensity of 40% to over 60% when accounting for GDP growth of 2.5% p.a.

This means that every GDP dollar must be generated with between 40% and 60% less emissions. When Australia hasn’t even begun to curb its carbon intensity growth let alone reduce its emissions, this task is substantial.

Australia has also articulated targets of 60-80% below 2000 levels by 2050. With the expected growth in GDP this means carbon intensity must drop by up to 90% by 2050.

The later we start, the harder it will be.

A key feature of developed nation’s mitigation strategies is energy efficiency. The United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union all have comprehensive energy efficiency targets and proven programs. So what happened to Australia’s bi-partisan support for energy efficiency?

The “second plank” that was energy efficiency seems to have been forgotten. On the 19th August 2008, shortly after his election victory, our Prime Minister said: "...in order to make an overall longer term impact on drawing down carbon emissions...energy efficiency [is the] second plank."

The fact is that despite any debates around targets and the CPRS, corporate Australia will certainly be impacted by rising energy prices – by 20% to 40%.

Immediate action on energy efficiency measures reduces business exposure to volatile energy markets and price shocks.

Energy costs have increased due to a fundamental shift in prices for primary fuels, a shortage of water and the cost of maintaining an ageing infrastructure. World demand for energy is also pushing up the cost of our primary fuels, especially natural gas and coal.

Australia is still heavily reliant on these existing fossil fuel stocks and without a long-term price signal on carbon, investment in cleaner technology and the transition to a low carbon economy will be further delayed. A lack of investment in new generation may make us more vulnerable to energy price shocks post 2014.

The disadvantages of not passing a scheme soon are clear:

• The lack of a clear pricing signal for investment in renewable sources means that the demand for generation will surpass the supply. Right now large wind and solar farm developers are waiting for a definitive position on which to make further investments;
• A lack of a national plan for energy efficiency, and funding for taking proactive action, means that we are planning for increased growth on a substandard network. NSW has already increased network charges by 50% this year in order to invest in what ultimately may become a stranded asset,
• Any delay in taking action on climate change and, in particular energy efficiency and abatement, means that when an ETS is ultimately passed demand for permits will exceed availability.

Where does this leave corporate Australia? Forget the debate about which mechanism will be used to implement change, the long-term global trend is clear and companies need to act now. Our delay in taking concrete action is unlikely to result in a smaller abatement target. We will simply be required to do the same amount within a shorter timeframe. Our delay places Australia at risk of a competitive disadvantage to proactive nations for decades to come.

AT the international climate talks in Copenhagen, President Obama is expected to announce that the United States wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to about 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. But at the heart of his plan is cap and trade, a market-based approach that has been widely praised but does little to slow global warming or reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. It merely allows polluters and Wall Street traders to fleece the public out of billions of dollars.

Supporters of cap and trade point to the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments that capped sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from coal-burning power plants — the main pollutants in acid rain — at levels below what they were in 1980. This legislation allowed power plants that reduced emissions to levels below the cap to sell the credit for these excess reductions to other utilities whose emissions were too high, thus giving plant owners a financial incentive to cut back their pollution. Sulfur emissions have been reduced by 43 percent in the two decades since. Great success? Hardly.

Because cap and trade is enforced through the selling and trading of permits, it actually perpetuates the pollution it is supposed to eliminate. If every polluter’s emissions fell below the incrementally lowered cap, then the price of pollution credits would collapse and the economic rationale to keep reducing pollution would disappear.

Worse yet, polluters’ lobbyists ensured that the clean air amendments allowed existing power plants to be “grandfathered,” avoiding many pollution regulations. These old plants would soon be retired anyway, the utilities claimed. That’s hardly been the case: Two-thirds of today’s coal-fired power plants were constructed before 1975.

Cap and trade also did little to improve public health. Coal emissions are still significant contributing factors in four of the five leading causes of mortality in the United States — and mercury, arsenic and various coal pollutants also cause birth defects, asthma and other ailments.

Yet cap-and-trade schemes are still being pursued in Copenhagen and Washington. (Though I head the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, I’m speaking only for myself.)

To compound matters, the Congressional carbon cap would also encourage “offsets” — alternatives to emission reductions, like planting trees on degraded land or avoiding deforestation in Brazil. Caps would be raised by the offset amount, even if such offsets are imaginary or unverifiable. Stopping deforestation in one area does not reduce demand for lumber or food-growing land, so deforestation simply moves elsewhere.

Once again, lobbyists are providing the real leadership on climate change legislation. Under the proposed law, some permits to pollute would be handed out free; and much of the money actually collected from permits would be used to pay for boondoggles like “clean coal” research. The House and Senate energy bills would only assure continued coal use, making it implausible that carbon dioxide emissions would decline sharply.

If that isn’t bad enough, Wall Street is poised to make billions of dollars in the “trade” part of cap-and-trade. The market for trading permits to emit carbon appears likely to be loosely regulated, to be open to speculators and to include derivatives. All the profits of this pollution trading system would be extracted from the public via increased energy prices.

There is a better alternative, one that would be more efficient and less costly than cap and trade: “fee and dividend.” Under this approach, a gradually rising carbon fee would be collected at the mine or port of entry for each fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas). The fee would be uniform, a certain number of dollars per ton of carbon dioxide in the fuel. The public would not directly pay any fee, but the price of goods would rise in proportion to how much carbon-emitting fuel is used in their production.

All of the collected fees would then be distributed to the public. Prudent people would use their dividend wisely, adjusting their lifestyle, choice of vehicle and so on. Those who do better than average in choosing less-polluting goods would receive more in the dividend than they pay in added costs.

For example, when the fee reached $115 per ton of carbon dioxide it would add $1 per gallon to the price of gasoline and 5 to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour to the price of electricity. Given the amount of oil, gas and coal used in the United States in 2007, that carbon fee would yield about $600 billion per year. The resulting dividend for each adult American would be as much as $3,000 per year. As the fee rose, tipping points would be reached at which various carbon-free energies and carbon-saving technologies would become cheaper than fossil fuels plus their fees. As time goes on, fossil fuel use would collapse.

Still need more convincing? Consider the perverse effect cap and trade has on altruistic actions. Say you decide to buy a small, high-efficiency car. That reduces your emissions, but not your country’s. Instead it allows somebody else to buy a bigger S.U.V. — because the total emissions are set by the cap.

In a fee-and-dividend system, every action to reduce emissions — and to keep reducing emissions — would be rewarded. Indeed, knowing that you were saving money by buying a small car might inspire your neighbor to follow suit. Popular demand for efficient vehicles could drive gas guzzlers off the market. Such snowballing effects could speed us toward a pollution-free world.

The plans in Copenhagen and Washington have not been finalized. It is not too late to trade cap and trade for an approach that actually works.

James Hansen is the author of the forthcoming “Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/opinion/07hansen.html?_r=4

Does Russia hold hostage the future of a carbon cap-and-trade system that many experts see as a critical tool for curbing global greenhouse gases? Improbable as it may seem, the answer appears to be yes.

That is because Russia, as a result of the collapse of much of its heavy industry in the 1990s, owns one of the largest stocks of credits to offset carbon emissions.

The unearned windfall, a legacy of the Kyoto agreement that tried to deal with the threat of climate change, is worth several billion dollars. If abruptly sold abroad, those credits could send the price of carbon on the world’s fragile emissions markets plunging toward zero.

Without a predictable and reasonably high price for carbon emissions, most economists say, there is little prospect of setting in motion the many investments needed to shift from a carbon-intensive industrial economy to a more sustainable energy base in developed and developing countries alike.

Carbon trading is mainly based on permits that are issued or sold by governments to companies that emit carbon dioxide and other gases that are believed to affect the climate. The companies are required to buy permits, or seek credits elsewhere, if they emit more than a specified amount of carbon. They can profit by selling their permits for cash if they come in below their cap.

As governments lower the overall caps, the prices for permits and credits should rise. Supporters of carbon trading say that the system is working when companies facing high-cost permits cut their output, invest in cleaner technology or buy emissions credits from a company or organization that has taken actions to reduce emissions or absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

The main model for such a system already operates in the European Union, which has called on all industrialized countries to have systems in place by 2015 and for rapidly emerging economies like China and India to adopt them by 2020. A similar system is being debated in the United States.

But even if a global market develops, many experts warn that carbon trading should not be relied on to deliver the scale of emissions cuts needed to keep the rise in global temperatures within a range that scientists say would prevent dangerous changes.

Environmental groups warn that carbon markets may end up providing only a fraction of the money some poor countries expect, largely because wealthy countries are not willing to set their caps stringently enough. Tougher caps would push up demand for more offsetting in the developing world. That, the theory goes, should raise the price of carbon, so that governments selling permits would have more money to redirect to a future global climate protection fund.

The prospect of Russia dumping its credits is just the latest challenge facing emissions trading, the expected financial backbone to any global agreement that may emerge from the talks taking place in Copenhagen over the next two weeks. The hoard of Russian credits is a “gorilla sitting in the background” that “nobody dares to touch,” said Peter Zapfel, a senior official who helps to oversee the European Union’s four-year-old emissions trading system.

Russia could “fundamentally affect the environmental integrity of what we agree to at Copenhagen,” he said.

Industrialized countries, including the United States, are counting on trading as the most inexpensive and efficient way to help meet future emissions targets intended to limit the carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

European leaders, meanwhile, have emphasized the role any trading project should play in channeling the large sums of money that poorer countries have demanded as a condition for a deal at Copenhagen.

Henry Derwent, the president of the International Emissions Trading Association, an industry group based in Geneva, predicted that an emissions market could be worth $3 trillion by the end of the next decade, compared with about $130 billion a year now.

In a number of countries, however, powerful lobbies, often backed by the coal industry, have blocked efforts to pass legislation to cap emissions. And where such systems have come into existence, particularly in Europe, the low prices and volatility in carbon markets have spooked investors rather than encouraged them to invest in clean energy.

There are also serious doubts about the way reductions in greenhouse gases can be earned, traded and managed, reinforcing the view that carbon markets may turn out to be just another Wall Street gambit.

“I do think that carbon markets have an important role to play,” said Nicholas Stern, a professor at London School of Economics and one of the world’s leading climate economists. But “all markets have to have some kind of regulation and rules in order to function properly,” he added. “We’ve surely seen that in the last few years — and this surely is one of them.”

The technology behind solar energy is constantly evolving. Portable devices that charge up gadgets from the sun are becoming smaller and more powerful.

A new generation of portable solar chargers can plug straight into a laptop and provide up to a quarter of its power needs while in use.

The Solargorilla charger by Powertraveller, for instance, can also level out the electrical spikes caused when clouds obscure the sun.

Jerry Ranger, head of Powertraveller, says the charger is able to convert a high percentage of the sunlight's energy in a more compact way than previous devices.

"You can get the power output if you get a massive great big panel but clearly that's impractical so we've needed to get it down to a size that's portable," he told BBC Click.

"So previously we had around 15% efficiencies, we're now on the verge of getting 20%, and within the next 18 months we expect to deliver around 22% efficiencies," he explained.

Consumers can currently use portable panels only for charging up small devices such as phones or music players.

Powertraveller plans to launch a portable four-panel folding array that can run a laptop and charge the battery at the same time.

Planned for spring 2010, it will be the first commercial device to offer AC or DC outputs.

Solar roofing tiles are a new way to exploit solar energy in the home

Consumers are also increasingly exploiting the sun's energy in the home.

Panel power

There has been a steady growth in small-scale electricity production at home in recent years. In 2008 there was a considerable jump - the number of people looking to generate their own electricity doubled in just 12 months.

Traditionally, homes have harnessed power from the sun through conventional solar panels, but an American company has developed what it hopes is the next generation of panel power.

SRS Energy has created "sole power" tiles, which are coated with thin-film flexible photovoltaic cells. The roof tiles are a dark blue colour to maximise the absorption of sunlight, and will be available from spring 2010.

The tiles are an example of how technology, in the form of new polymers and coatings, has the potential to increase the amount of energy that can be adapted from the sun.

For years most solar cells struggled to harness just one sixth of the sun's energy.

But newer materials are helping solar panels become more efficient, according to Professor Tony Day, director of the Centre for Efficient and Renewable Energy in Building, London South Bank University.

"Laboratory tests are showing we can get to module efficiencies of about 22-23%, with traditional materials," he said.

"The next generation of materials it looks in the laboratory to be moving towards 30%, and in some specialist applications even 40%," he added.

A Canadian university is using the sun to light one of its buildings

Light tunnels

The British Columbia Institute of Technology decided to dispense with expensive solar panels and test out a new system in one of its buildings.

The Canadian university installed sun canopies in the roof to direct light through tunnels in the ceilings above every floor.

Each tunnel has a highly reflective coating to bounce the light round the building. When a cloud goes over, the fluorescent lights kick in to maintain brightness until the sun returns.

Allen Upward, a research engineer at the University of British Columbia (UBC) said the system is seven times more effective than traditional solar methods.

"As a system for lighting a building, it's far more effective than using solar panels to generate electricity and then turning that electricity back into light," he explained.

The sun's potential remains under-exploited - the Earth gets 5,000 times more energy from the sun than we use in electricity. Solar farms have been popping up all over the world in an attempt to harness the green power on a mass scale.

One solar farm in southern Spain has swapped panels for mirrors and is using the sun's heat rather than brightness to create electricity.

Heat power

Just outside Seville, hundreds of mirrors track the sun as it crosses the sky and reflect their beams to a single point at the top of a tower.

This Spanish solar farm uses the heat from mirrors to create electricity

The intense heat is used to boil water and create steam to power a turbine - which creates electricity.

Engineer Valerio Fernandez, at Abengoa which runs the solar farm, says the resulting heat is the equivalent of 4,000 times the power of direct sunlight.

"With this amount of energy we can generate very high temperatures, about 2,000 degrees Celsius," he said.

A consortium of 12 European businesses plans to build a huge solar project in the Sahara desert.

Desertec Industrial Initiative plans to produce solar-generated electricity with a vast network of power plants and transmission grids across North Africa and the Middle East. It aims to supply Europe with 15% of its energy needs by 2050.

The plan has the backing of huge companies including Deutsche Bank, Siemens - and needs $500bn (£303bn) of investment.

But some solar experts are sceptical.

"Part of the problem with the Desertec project is that we are asking somebody else if we can lease their land so we can generate electricity to keep the lights on in Europe," said Prof Tony Day.

"I think that there are political issues and ethical issues that we need to think about," he said.

TAIPEI, Taiwan — AU Optronics Corp., Taiwan's largest manufacturer of thin film transistor liquid crystal display panels, has helped craft a “Solar Frisbee Roof” to canopy playground equipment at a Taipei schoolyard.

The project at the Taipei European School was co-financed by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology through the German Energy Agency (dena) Solar Roof Program. Abakus Solar AG and a2peak power also were project partners.

The goal was to create a canopy for playground equipment that would provide shade, a windbreak and shelter from poor weather for children during recess -- and, in doing so, also provide a green option for the school.

“AUO is devoted to being a global leader in green solutions,” AUO President and CEO Dr. L. J. Chen said in a statement  on Tuesday to announce that the solar roof is ready go.

The firm formally founded its solar photovoltaic business unit in October, a move that also involved restructuring its energy office.

Although the company describes the structure as a “Solar Frisbee Roof,” it looks more like a three-sided shield with rounded edges

The roof was constructed from 32  21W photovoltaic modules, with an output of 6.8 kWp (kilo Watt peak). It can generate 6,205 kWh (kilowatt-hours) annually, which would result in an estimated reduction of 3.95 tons of carbon emissions, the firm said.

Images courtesy of AU Optronics.

Switzerland's Solar Impulse solar plane has finally taken flight.

The first plane designed to fly day and night without fuel, the Solar Impulse HB-SIA lifted off for the first time on Thursday at 13:11 Swiss time, reported its promoters and co-founders Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg. The plane took to the air from its home at Dubendorf Airfield, near Zurich, Switzerland, traveling 1 meter (3.2 feet) off the ground and landing successfully after flying 350 meters (1,148 feet).

The first flight of the Solar Impulse prototype evoked a huge wave of applause from its team, who had spent the past several weeks running ground tests to check acceleration, braking, and engine power. After those tests passed with flying colors, the word was given for pilot Markus Scherdel to man the plane for the test trip.

The flight came after years of research, testing, and labor to design and construct the Solar Impulse.

"This is the culmination of six years of intense work by a very experienced team of professionals," said Borschberg in a statement. "This first "flea hop" successfully completes the first phase of Solar Impulse, confirming our technical choices."

As part of its initial test flight, the Solar Impulse's solar panels were not yet connected or used. Following this positive outcome, the plane is set to be dismantled and moved to an airfield at Payerne, almost two hours away. Early next year, the team plans to launch the Impulse on its first solar test flights, slowly increasing the distance each time until the craft is ready to take its first night flight using solar energy.

Though the Impulse is as wide as a Boeing 747, it weighs only around 1.7 tons. The 12,000 solar cells mounted on the wing are designed to provide renewal solar power to the plane's four electric motors. The solar panels also charge the craft's batteries by day, allowing it to fly at night.

For now, the team is basking in the success of this small but critical first step, yet is thinking of the future and the challenge ahead.

"For over 10 years now, I have dreamt of a solar aircraft capable of flying day and night without fuel--and promoting renewable energy," said Piccard in a statement. "Today, our plane took off and was airborne for the very first time. This is an unbelievable and unforgettable moment! On the other hand, I remain humble in the face of the difficult journey still to be accomplished--it's a long way between these initial tests and a circumnavigation of the world."

The bio-crude from wastewater algae system is a technology for the future - it enables renewable fuel production while achieving low-cost, energy-efficient wastewater treatment, nutrient recovery and greenhouse gas abatement.

The project combines NIWA’s scientific expertise on advanced wastewater treatment and algal production pond technology with Solray’s bio-crude oil conversion technology and is hosted by Christchurch City Council at the Christchurch Wastewater Treatment Plant.

“The reality is that no one in the world has done anything on this scale. Our trial aims to show that this complete process can be cost effective and efficient,” says pioneering NIWA Algal Pond Scientist Dr Rupert Craggs.

The process creates value at every step - it treats wastewater, recovers wastewater nutrients as fertiliser, removes carbon dioxide from flue gas and creates biofuel.

The Christchurch wastewater treatment plant has 230 hectares of polishing ponds that are currently used to provide disinfection of the treated wastewater prior to discharge.

It is in one of these ponds that five hectares have been cordoned off by NIWA and converted into a series of specially designed high rate algal ponds with carbon dioxide (CO₂) addition.

“Adding CO₂ into the ponds enhances wastewater treatment and doubles algal production - biofuel production could be a great co-benefit for the community from its wastewater treatment,” says Dr Craggs.

Another advantage of high rate algal ponds is that the algae growing in these systems can be easily harvested by simple gravity settling - the harvested algal biomass can then be used as either a fertiliser or feed for livestock and aquaculture, or, as is this case with this demonstration, be converted to biofuel and the residue used as fertiliser.

The algae is collected from the harvesters and pumped to Solray’s specially designed ‘Super Critical Water Reactor’ where pressure and heat converts it to bio-crude oil. The bio-crude, like fossil crude oil, can then be refined into LPG, petrol, kerosene, diesel, bitumen and other oil-based products.

“This process is essentially the same as nature used many millions of years ago to create the oilfields of the world we are currently rapidly depleting,” says Chris Bathurst, Solray Energy Ltd.

The Foundation for Research Science and Technology-funded, three-year trial is in its first year and may in time generate fuel that the Christchurch City Council can use to power facilities in the city.

The aim of the project is for NIWA to produce between 150 and 300 tonnes of algae per year from the 5 hectares of wastewater treatment high rate algal ponds. After harvesting and dewatering, this algae could potentially be converted into 45,000-90,000 L (275-550 barrels) of bio-crude oil by Solray.

This bio-crude oil would normally be converted into a variety of products such as LPG, petrol, kerosene, diesel and bitumen, but if this amount were completely converted to petrol, it would power between 22 and 45 cars per year.

Christchurch City Council, Unit Manager City Water and Waste, Mark Christison says, “The city council is very interested in the project, both in terms of how the high rate algal ponds can remove nutrients from the wastewater and the energy efficiency of super critical water reactor conversion of algal biomass into bio-crude oil.”

This trial is the culmination of over 12 years of research into high rate algal pond wastewater treatment by NIWA and will demonstrate the commercial feasibility of algal biofuel production from these advanced wastewater treatment ponds which are a cost-effective way to upgrade the oxidation ponds currently used to treat the wastewater from many New Zealand communities.

MBD Energy has partnered with a research team based at James Cook University (JCU) in Queensland to develop a 5,000 square metre test facility expect to cost-effectively produce 14,000 litres of oil and 25,000 kg of algal meal from every 100 tonnes of CO2 consumed.

“MBD Energy expects to deliver one of the viable 20 large scale carbon capture and storage projects called for by G8 leaders and the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute by 2020,” said MBD MD, Andrew Lawson.

The new algal synthesiser technology aimed at rapid, large scale CO2 emissions reduction from existing high emitting coal and gas fired power stations, smelters and refineries was unveiled today, along with the plans to roll out three major trial installations along the east coast of Australia next year.

MBD will shortly commence construction of a one-hectare fully commercial algal synthesiser at SE Queensland’s Tarong Power Station.

The plant will have potential to grow in 2011 to an 80-hectare demonstration plant producing 11 million litres of oil for plastics and transport fuel and 25,000 tonnes of drought proof stockfeed for a private and government sector outlay of $25 million.

The facility is intended to be progressively expanded over the following 5-10 years to daily consume more than half of all of Tarong’s problem flue gas emissions.

The other two power stations to get algal facilities are Eraring in the NSW Hunter Valley and Loy Yang in the Latrobe Valley of Victoria.

The algal synthesiser technology captures flue emissions at the source, harnessing waste greenhouse gases as growth promoting feedstock for conversion into oil rich algal biomass for the production of oils suitable for plastics, transport fuel and for nutritious, protein rich stock feed for farm animals.

In addition to converting waste gases into algal biomass, an algal synthesiser also has the potential to consume sewage, leaving behind recycled clean water.

In December 2007, Annie Leonard released the online video The Story of Stuff, which, in a lively graphic style, sums up her past 20 years in global pursuit of the truth about the things we buy, use, and throw away. Written by Leonard, and filmed in partnership with Free Range Studios, The Story of Stuff has been viewed by millions. The video’s Web site averages 10,000 hits per day, and Leonard gets close to 300 e-mails daily in response to her message about the planetary impact of a consumption-based lifestyle.

Employed as a teaching tool in thousands of schools and shown in public meetings and at private parties in homes across the globe, the film has also generated controversy that continues to grow. Early in 2009, a teacher in Missoula, Montana was threatened with dismissal for incorporating The Story of Stuff in her curriculum. In September 2009, conservative pundit Glenn Beck took aim, accusing the filmmaker of indoctrinating America’s children with an anti-consumption, anti-American agenda.

Leonard, whose new book The Story of Stuff (Simon & Schuster) is scheduled for release in March 2010, is happy to challenge her attackers with her vision for a sustainable future.

– Noelle Robbins

Is the message in The Story of Stuff – a critique of the impact of consumer lifestyles on the global environment – only for American audiences?

We were planning a film that included a more international look at the issues, but it was too long, at 40 minutes. The experts at Free Range Studios felt audiences would only watch online for 20 minutes, max. So the international portion was cut. But the message resonates internationally. Many people I’ve heard from – from 200 countries and territories – are getting the same message, the same pressure to consume and buy to help boost their economies.

Are there also those in other countries who are saying, “It’s our turn. We want to consume. Don’t tell us we can’t. Don’t put your value system on us just because you’ve overdone it”?

You see that playing out in the climate debate for sure. China and India are saying, “Who are you to tell us not to build our coal-fired powered plants?” To me that says, all the more reason we have to reduce our consumption, here in the over-consumptive regions. Right now, in the US, we are five percent of the world’s population and are consuming 30 percent of the world’s resources. We as a nation have no moral credibility to go around saying everybody else needs to tighten their belts.

The Story of Stuff stirred controversy this past year – there seems to be a real fear of people being told our way of life is not good, and you have been called un-American.

That really fascinated me because I feel like I was being pro-American in the film. I said that I believe in government for the people, by the people, and of the people. I have strong faith in the potential of government. I also think our country has gone astray.

If you look at the quality-of-life indicators for countries around the world, we are doing very poorly on health, on environmental impact, on literacy, on so many indicators of a high quality of life. The Happy Planet Index by the New Economics Foundation in London crunches two different kinds of numbers. One is about quality of life and happiness. The data they use is about life satisfaction and life expectancy. Then they look at the quality of life over amount of resources consumed. So it is a measure of how effective a country is at converting resources into well-being. It’s your nation’s life happiness over your national footprint. And the US rates frighteningly low; the only industrialized country lower than us in 2009 was Luxembourg. All of Asia, all of Latin America, all of the Pacific, all of the Caribbean, all of Europe is doing much, much better than us at converting natural resources into happiness.

In our country, we have a dual crisis. There’s the environmental crisis: We are absolutely trashing the planet, we’re using up our water, we’re releasing all this carbon. But we also have this social crisis – communities are eroding, income inequality is up, obesity is up, diabetes is up. It seems to me, to not raise these issues and say we could do better, that would be anti-American. True patriotism and true loyalty to this country require standing up and pointing out when we’re going astray. If you’re in a ship, and it’s sinking, and pointing out that it’s sinking is considered disloyal, then you’re going to sink.

Do people feel personally threatened by your message? They seem so angry.

I was giving a talk last year about the digital television conversion deadline. We had to switch over, so tens of millions of televisions were thrown away. They each contain four to seven pounds of lead. They were perfectly good, working televisions. But you had to buy this small converter box. The box cost $50 (although coupons made them practically free), and you had to go to Best Buy and buy a converter box. So a lot of people just said, “Oh what the heck, I’ll buy a new television.” It was a good excuse to buy one anyway. There were organizations pushing converter boxes, and trying to get places like Best Buy to push them, rather than a new TV.

So I was giving this talk, and one person in the audience said, “The problem is, the way our entertainment centers are built, there isn’t a convenient place to put the converter box. So what do you have to say about that?”

And I said, “Quit your goddamn whining. There isn’t a place in your entertainment center to put your converter box? In other communities that I see, their problems are that they have to walk ten kilometers to get fresh water; their problems are that they can’t get a doctor once a year for their kid.” I mean, we’ve got to get some perspective on the extreme privilege and wastefulness we have in our society. I am not saying we have to live like people in Bangladesh, or in caves, or anything like that, but the amount of wastefulness is so extreme.

Overall, does Western Europe consume less and know how to do better with less, than the US?

Oh, they do, it’s not just my opinion. If you look at the data, the per capita waste production, energy consumption, everything is so much lower in Western Europe. And when you go there, they’re not having a bad time. I’ve lived in Bangladesh and I loved it there, but I am not going to compare that to here, because most people in the US don’t want to live in Bangladesh. But in Western Europe, they’re sitting in cafes, eating good sandwiches, and taking six-week vacations. There are two big differences there: Culturally they just aren’t as wasteful as we are. They have clotheslines and carry their own bags to the store. Those things are just not a big deal. And structurally, they have great public transportation, they don’t all need cars. Homes are smaller; and neighborhoods are more condensed, so they can easily walk to their local market each day. They don’t have to drive to Costco once a week. The public transportation is so good there that people routinely take trains. Taking a train in the US is expensive and inconvenient. So it is cultural stuff, and structural stuff, and the government really takes the lead in facilitating a more ecological lifestyle.

Would you say there is a role for government to promote the ecological message?

I think there is a huge role for government to do that. I was asking some Europeans why they were so willing and welcoming of the government to take the lead, and here’s what someone told me that I thought was interesting: Because they had been through the post-war experience, and they were so devastated, there is just a more socially oriented awareness that they really had to pitch in and help each other. You see it in everything. There are more food co-ops, nationalized healthcare.

Maybe what is happening in the United States with communities becoming so disconnected means people are just less aware of what’s going on with other people?

As the community is broken down, the kinds of services the community has historically provided – help with childcare; recreational opportunities that don’t cost money; help moving; watching your house when you’re on a trip; bringing in your mail – as our communities have been eroded, these services have been privatized, so rich people can still afford them. Rich people can pay people to walk their dogs and bring in their mail. They can go to private schools and buy books. So it’s creating a two-tier society here. I have to call it resource apartheid.

You’ve said we shouldn’t be measuring the economy; we should be measuring the ecology? How do we do that?

There are so many ways. It’s so fascinating to me that we don’t. We think that what we need to survive is the economy, but we forget that what we actually need is the environment.

The Global Footprint Network is a great resource for looking at the footprint of different countries. Their data tracks our resource consumption, and, right now, we are using 1.4 planets’ worth of resources every year globally. That’s a problem. We only have one planet, and a lot more people need to use a lot more just to get up to their basic needs. We have more people hungry on the planet right now than any time in history. If we’re using 1.4 planets that means we’re eating into the natural capital that’s been stored up all these years. Not only are we using more than the planet is producing, we’re undermining the ecological systems that will be producing in the future.

They also calculate a day every year, called Earth Overshoot Day, that’s the day by which we have used that year’s worth of the planet’s productive capacity. So from Earth Overshoot Day until the end of the year, we are consuming on credit. In 2009, it was September 25^th.

That is a huge crisis, and it’s not getting press. Another great indicator is the Genuine Progress Index. One of the problems with the GDP [Gross Domestic Product] as a metric is that all it’s measuring is economic activity. It doesn’t differentiate between economic activity that makes life better, and economic activity that makes life worse. So for example, a car crash adds to the GDP, the Exxon Valdez oil spill adds to the GDP. Getting cancer adds to the GDP. Getting divorced adds to the GDP.

Volunteering, or having clean air don’t add to the GDP. But they add to the quality of life. So there are some other metrics that people have been trying to develop that take a more comprehensive view of how we’re doing. And the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) is a good one.

There’s a chart in The Story of Stuff book that shows for a long time GDP and GPI rose together, but after a point they diverged. A lot of stuff that adds to the GDP is undermining our health and well-being. We need to pay attention to what we measure. And right now what we are measuring is not what makes life better.

I like to remind people that economic activity should be in service of making life better. It’s not an end in itself, it’s a tool, and in many places it is a very effective tool to make life better, but not always.

Tell me more about your book.

The book looks in more detail at the extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal of all our stuff, with a lot of personal stories – it puts the meat on the skeleton of the film, with more analysis and recommendations on ways we can turn things around.

Do you have plans to put out the other 20 minutes of The Story of Stuff geared toward international communities?

First we’re making a bunch of little films that I am really excited about. The Story of Stuff Web page is still getting about 10,000 hits per day from all over the world, and we’re doing no outreach. Since we’re getting so many views per day, and it’s not slowing down, we felt like we should continue to provide information. Now we’re working with a whole spectrum of environmental and health groups to make new minifilms. So when you watch The Story of Stuff these little icons will pop up that say there is more to the story, and a viewer can click on it, and go deeper. We’re going to make a story of bottled water, story of electronics, story of cosmetics and personal care products. This should all be online when the book comes out (March 2010). I do want to make another 20-minute film about solutions. We’re thinking of calling it The Story of Change.

Batteries made from plain copier paper could make for future energy storage that is truly paper thin.

The approach relies on the use of carbon nanotubes - tiny cylinders of carbon - to collect electric charge.

While small-scale nanotube batteries have been demonstrated before, the plain paper approach lends itself to making larger devices more cheaply.

The work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to "paintable" energy storage.

Because of its structure of millions of tiny, interconnected fibres, paper is a good candidate to hold on to carbon nanotubes, providing a scaffold on which to build devices.

However, paper is also mechanically tough, and can be bent, curled or folded, more than the metal or plastic surfaces that are currently used or under development.

Good on paper

A team of researchers at Stanford University started with off-the-shelf copier paper, painting it with an "ink" made of carbon nanotubes.

The coated paper is then dipped in lithium-containing solutions and an electrolyte to provide the chemical reaction that generates a battery's electric current.

Electric cars could benefit from the batteries' quick energy bursts

The paper acts to collect the electric charge from the reaction. Using paper in this way could reduce the weight of batteries, typically made with metal current collectors, by 20%.

The team's batteries are also capable of releasing their stored energy quickly. That is a valuable characteristic for applications that need quick bursts of energy, such as electric vehicles - although the team has no immediate plans to develop vehicle batteries.

Liangbing Hu, lead author on the research, said the most important aspect of the demonstration was that paper is an inexpensive and well-understood material - making wider usage of the technology more likely.

"Standard copier paper used in our everyday life can be a solution in storing energy in a more efficient and cheap way," Dr Hu told BBC News.

"The experienced technology developed in the paper industry over a century can be transferred to improve the process and performance of these paper-based devices."

The team says that adaptations to the technique in the future could allow for simply painting the nanotube ink and active materials onto surfaces such as walls.

They have even experimented with a number of textiles, paving the way for batteries made largely of cloth.