Set Top Boxes Set to Consume more Energy than Air Conditioning

Those little boxes that connect you to the world of cable TV and allow you to record your favourite shows could be eating up a lot more electricity than you think. The latest ‘set-top boxes’, together with high-definition TV sets and high-tech digital video recorders (DVRs), have been shown to consume more power than some new refrigerators and central air-conditioning systems, according to a new study by the US Natural Resources Defence Council, with some typical home entertainment configurations the single largest electricity drain in many American homes.

New York Times and  Straits Times, (27June 2011):

US study finds they use more power than some fridges, central air-con

NEW YORK: Those little boxes that connect you to the world of cable TV and allow you to record your favourite shows could be eating up a lot more electricity than you think. In the United States, the latest ‘set-top boxes’, together with high-definition TV sets and high-tech digital video recorders (DVRs), have been shown to consume more power than some new refrigerators and central air-conditioning systems. According to a new study by the US Natural Resources Defence Council, some typical home entertainment configurations have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes.

This is because many homes have multiple cable boxes for different providers, with add-on DVRs. The study shows that a DVR and a cable box made for high-definition TV use an average of 446 kilowatt hours (kwh) a year – about 10 per cent more than a 0.6 cubic m energy-efficient refrigerator. The set-top boxes and DVRs are energy hogs mostly because their hard disk drives, tuners and other components are generally running full tilt, or nearly so, 24 hours a day even when not in active use.

So, while these devices have lower power ratings than, say, the air-conditioner or a ceiling fan, they draw more power per year because they are always left on. The study concluded that the boxes consumed US$3 billion (S$3.7 billion) in electricity per year in the US – 66 per cent of which is wasted because no one is watching and shows are not being recorded.

There are about 160 million set-top boxes in the US, or one for every two people. The study is likely to focus attention on the design of set-top boxes, and raise pressure on manufacturers as well as media providers to cut the energy consumption of these devices. ‘People in the energy-efficiency community worry a lot about these boxes, since they will make it more difficult to lower home energy use,’ said Mr John Wilson of the Energy Foundation, a partnership of foundations that promotes energy efficiency and renewable energy.

‘Companies say it can’t be done, or it’s too expensive. But in my experience, neither one is true. It can be done, and it often doesn’t cost much, if anything.’ One simple solution is to have these devices switch off or draw less power when they are not needed. Analysts note that the perpetually ‘powered on’ state of set-top boxes is largely a function of design and programming choices made by electronics companies and cable and Internet providers.

Cable boxes are generally not designed to be turned completely off, as programme schedules and other information have to be downloaded even when they are not being actively used. But the Natural Resources Defence Council noted in its report that pressing the so-called power button on many set-top boxes to put them into ‘standby’ mode has minimal impact on power consumption.

‘Box manufacturers and pay-TV system operators maintain that set-top boxes need to remain operational even when the user presses the ‘off’ button because they need to stay connected to the network to receive programme guide and software updates,’ the report noted.

‘This means that in most set-top boxes, the difference between ‘on’ and ‘off’ power may just be a watt or two.’ In some European countries, set-top boxes can not only automatically go into standby mode when not in use, but also enter an optional ‘deep sleep’, reducing energy consumption by about 95 per cent.

Some device manufacturers say that some media providers in the US do not take advantage of these reduced energy options because of worries that the lowest energy states could disrupt service. Cable companies counter that customers will not tolerate the time it takes to reboot the system once the system has been shut down or put to sleep.

Energy-efficiency experts say, however, that technical fixes could eliminate or minimise the waiting time. Pace, a British manufacturer, makes set-top boxes that use less power while not in active use, and says that energy consumption can be cut by remotely adjusting software over a cable.

Pace engineer Robert Turner believes that the biggest challenge could be maintaining the rapid response time that users now expect of home entertainment systems. ‘People are used to the idea that computers take some time to boot up,’ he said, ‘but they expect the TV to turn on instantly.’

Source: www.ytlcommunity.com

Green Light Changes in Europe for Urban Mobility and Liveability

In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving, says Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency.  But in Europe there has been more movement to make cities more liveable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.

By Elisabeth Rosenthal in New York Times (26 June 2011):

Zurich – Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.

Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into “walkers’ paradises,” said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation.

“In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”

To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city’s ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.

Around Löwenplatz, one of Zurich’s busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail’s pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time.

As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. “Driving is a stop-and-go experience,” he said. “That’s what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.”

While some American cities — notably San Francisco, which has “pedestrianized” parts of Market Street — have made similar efforts, they are still the exception in the United States, where it has been difficult to get people to imagine a life where cars are not entrenched, Dr. Schipper said.

Europe’s cities generally have stronger incentives to act. Built for the most part before the advent of cars, their narrow roads are poor at handling heavy traffic. Public transportation is generally better in Europe than in the United States, and gas often costs over $8 a gallon, contributing to driving costs that are two to three times greater per mile than in the United States, Dr. Schipper said.

What is more, European Union countries probably cannot meet a commitment under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions unless they curb driving. The United States never ratified that pact.

Globally, emissions from transportation continue a relentless rise, with half of them coming from personal cars. Yet an important impulse behind Europe’s traffic reforms will be familiar to mayors in Los Angeles and Vienna alike: to make cities more inviting, with cleaner air and less traffic.

Michael Kodransky, global research manager at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy in New York, which works with cities to reduce transport emissions, said that Europe was previously “on the same trajectory as the United States, with more people wanting to own more cars.” But in the past decade, there had been “a conscious shift in thinking, and firm policy,” he said. And it is having an effect.

After two decades of car ownership, Hans Von Matt, 52, who works in the insurance industry, sold his vehicle and now gets around Zurich by tram or bicycle, using a car-sharing service for trips out of the city. Carless households have increased from 40 to 45 percent in the last decade, and car owners use their vehicles less, city statistics show.

“There were big fights over whether to close this road or not — but now it is closed, and people got used to it,” he said, alighting from his bicycle on Limmatquai, a riverside pedestrian zone lined with cafes that used to be two lanes of gridlock. Each major road closing has to be approved in a referendum.

Today 91 percent of the delegates to the Swiss Parliament take the tram to work.

Still, there is grumbling. “There are all these zones where you can only drive 20 or 30 kilometers per hour [about 12 to 18 miles an hour], which is rather stressful,” Thomas Rickli, a consultant, said as he parked his Jaguar in a lot at the edge of town. “It’s useless.”

Urban planners generally agree that a rise in car commuting is not desirable for cities anywhere.

Mr. Fellmann calculated that a person using a car took up 115 cubic meters (roughly 4,000 cubic feet) of urban space in Zurich while a pedestrian took three. “So it’s not really fair to everyone else if you take the car,” he said.

European cities also realized they could not meet increasingly strict World Health Organization guidelines for fine-particulate air pollution if cars continued to reign. Many American cities are likewise in “nonattainment” of their Clean Air Act requirements, but that fact “is just accepted here,” said Mr. Kodransky of the New York-based transportation institute.

It often takes extreme measures to get people out of their cars, and providing good public transportation is a crucial first step. One novel strategy in Europe is intentionally making it harder and more costly to park. “Parking is everywhere in the United States, but it’s disappearing from the urban space in Europe,” said Mr. Kodransky, whose recent report “Europe’s Parking U-Turn” surveys the shift.

Sihl City, a new Zurich mall, is three times the size of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Mall but has only half the number of parking spaces, and as a result, 70 percent of visitors get there by public transport, Mr. Kodransky said.

In Copenhagen, Mr. Jensen, at the European Environment Agency, said that his office building had more than 150 spaces for bicycles and only one for a car, to accommodate a disabled person.

While many building codes in Europe cap the number of parking spaces in new buildings to discourage car ownership, American codes conversely tend to stipulate a minimum number. New apartment complexes built along the light rail line in Denver devote their bottom eight floors to parking, making it “too easy” to get in the car rather than take advantage of rail transit, Mr. Kodransky said.

While Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has generated controversy in New York by “pedestrianizing” a few areas like Times Square, many European cities have already closed vast areas to car traffic. Store owners in Zurich had worried that the closings would mean a drop in business, but that fear has proved unfounded, Mr. Fellmann said, because pedestrian traffic increased 30 to 40 percent where cars were banned.

With politicians and most citizens still largely behind them, Zurich’s planners continue their traffic-taming quest, shortening the green-light periods and lengthening the red with the goal that pedestrians wait no more than 20 seconds to cross.

“We would never synchronize green lights for cars with our philosophy,” said Pio Marzolini, a city official. “When I’m in other cities, I feel like I’m always waiting to cross a street. I can’t get used to the idea that I am worth less than a car.”

Source: www.nytimes.com

Electric Car Test Run & Sustainable Funding Flagged

The Energy Market Authority (EMA) and Land Transport Authority (LTA) flagged off nine battery-powered cars: four Smart two-seaters from Daimler and five Mitsubishi iMiEVs, the first test fleet which will eventually have about 90 vehicles, comprising 25 iMiEVs and 20 Smarts, plus an assortment of models from Renault, Nissan and possibly other manufacturers. And the Government has committed S$400 million to spearhead research and development for a sustainable Singapore, with three-quarters of the amount to go towards energy solutions.

By Christopher Tan, Senior Correspondent, Straits Times (26 June 2011):

A long-awaited trial to test the durability, running cost and long-term performance of all-electric cars here was plugged in and switched on yesterday.

That was when the Energy Market Authority (EMA) and Land Transport Authority (LTA) flagged off nine battery-powered cars: four Smart two-seaters from Daimler and five Mitsubishi iMiEVs.

All in, the EV (electric vehicle) test fleet will have about 90 vehicles, comprising 25 iMiEVs and 20 Smarts, plus an assortment of models from Renault, Nissan and possibly other manufacturers.

Most of these cars will be arriving from next month to next year.

The $20 million, three-year trial is open only to companies and organisations, not individuals.

For now, the cars will juice up at five charging stations set up by Bosch. It will expand its network as more such vehicles arrive.

Cost-wise, it is just as well that this test is a restricted one. Despite the tax-free status of the electric test fleet, the all-in costs – compared to those for similar-size petrol-driven cars – will not appeal to common folk, even if they are environmentally conscious.

First off, the cars are costly, even without the taxes and levies that conventional cars attract here. A Mitsubishi iMiEV test car, for instance, is around $90,000 – about the price of a slightly bigger petrol-driven Honda Jazz.

The Smart two-seater, which is not for sale, leases for $1,400 a month. The rate is similar to that of a full-size Korean family sedan.

Next, unlike most cars here, electric cars are not entitled to any scrap rebate.

Also, there is a $1,600-a-year special fee that users have to pay, which is more than the road tax of many mid-size cars.

As for running costs, a flat monthly charge of $180 is levied for using Bosch’s electric stations; that is equivalent to what many small petrol cars incur monthly at the pumps.

Insurance rates are also slightly higher than the coverage for normal cars.

Still, the LTA and EMA seemed optimistic at yesterday’s flag-off. LTA chief executive Chew Hock Yong said: ‘We are encouraged by the support of the business community for this test-bed.’

Firms that signed up for the cars are Clean Mobility Singapore, Daimler South East Asia, GP Batteries, Mitsubishi Corp, Mitsubishi Electric Asia, Mitsubishi Elevator Asia, Senoko Energy Supply, and Vestas Asia Pacific Wind Technology.

The LTA and the Ministry of Manpower also signed up.

EMA chief executive Chee Hong Tat said: ‘The purpose of the electric vehicle test-bed is to gain a better understanding of EV technologies, business models and user preferences which will give us more information to determine the feasibility of using EVs in Singapore.’

At the end of the three years, the Government will decide if it is worthwhile to incentivise the use of EVs, and if so, how sizeable its incentives should be.

Observers feel that electric vehicles are non-starters without government carrots, as they cost twice the price of normal cars or more.

Motorist Shreejit Changaroth, 54, added that makers of electric vehicles need to overcome two other hurdles: their range and charging time.

Right now, most can cover only 200km or less on a full recharge, which takes around eight hours at a normal charging point and 45 minutes at a high-voltage quick-charger.

‘I often clock over 100km a day,’ the engineer said. ‘I come home late, and sometimes, I even forget to charge my cellphone.’

Most drivers here clock less than 60km a day. But the main proposition of electric cars is their relative ‘greenness’.

The EMA reckons electric cars charged by electricity generated from natural gas power stations (as is the case in Singapore) will account for 66 per cent less carbon dioxide than petrol equivalents.

After all, electric motors are more efficient than fossil fuel-driven engines.

Source: www.app.nccs.gov.sg

By Vimita Mohandas for Today (28 June 2011):

In the search for urban sustainability here, energy resilience looks set to be the key focus.

Of the S$400 million the Government has committed to spearhead research and development for a sustainable Singapore, three-quarters of the amount will go towards energy solutions that can be deployed within 20 years.

The announcement yesterday at the inaugural Urban Sustainability R&D Congress highlighted five priority areas of sustainable urban living, urban mobility, green building, urban ecology and food.

Already, projects could soon be underway to meet Singapore’s future food demands, with proposals now under evaluation by the National Research Foundation under a S$50-million programme set aside for this.

Another S$50 million will come from the National Development Ministry, which is doubling its research fund to cover other aspects of urban sustainability for the nearer term.

But long-term cost competitive energy solutions that can improve efficiency, reduce carbon emissions and increase energy options will get the most resources.

And yesterday’s R&D congress kicks off a new platform for government, research institutes and the private sector to discuss which R&D responses can best overcome Singapore’s urban sustainability challenges.

Some 800 participants, including from 12 government agencies, participated yesterday.

Opening the congress, Minister of State (National Development) Tan Chuan-Jin said space constraint was another key challenge.

“Every year, we have many young Singaporeans going into the workforce, setting up families. We need to house them and we need to find a creative way to organize ourselves from an infrastructural perspective,” he told reporters.

“But it’s not just the building space, it’s really about the living space — how do you integrate everything together.”

The set-up of the congress will allow for collaboration on some specific projects, such as Punggol Eco-Town, CleanTech Park, Jurong Lake District and Marina Bay.

These “living labs” present different opportunities: Punggol is a residential test-bed, CleanTech Park is an industrial test-bed, while Marina Bay and Jurong Lake District are mixed-use settings.

And as these sites undergo development, the Government wants companies and researchers to focus on applying cutting- edge technologies that can come onstream in the near term.

“The next chapter of the Singapore Story must be about us confronting these challenges with the same human ingenuity as we did before,” said Brigadier-General (NS) Tan.

“Because there are few city states in the world that will feel the pressures of urbanization more keenly than us, Singapore cannot rely on ready solutions from others and must lead the way to find innovative solutions.”

To recognise and support such efforts, he presented the Minister for National Development R&D awards yesterday for three technological innovations.

The Housing and Development Board’s Treelodge@Punggol and the Building and Construction Authority’s Zero Energy Building received the Distinguished Award, while the Vertical Farming project by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority won the Merit Award.

Source: www.app.nccs.gov.sg

Leadership for a Sustainable & Clean Technlogy Future

Singapore will host the World Leadership Conference 2011 and the CleanTechnology Investment Conference from 13-15 July in Singapore, taking action to move towards a green sustainable future for Planet Earth. Key speakers include Park Young-Woo, Regional Director, UNEP and TV/film star Denise Keller, advisor to the Climate Project in Asia. ABC Carbon’s Ken Hickson will also be on hand to conduct a seminar.  Read More

Clean Technology Investment World Asia is strategic platform that brings together private equity, venture & corporate venture capitalists, clean technology innovators, financiers & fund players investors to identify investment opportunities, raise capital, access licensing rights to new innovative technologies and form strategic partnerships in Asia. See www.terrapinn.com

The World Leadership Conference 2011 is a platform for youth all over Asia Pacific to come together to learn, voice out and take action to move towards a green sustainable future for Planet Earth.

One of the key speakers is Park Young-Woo, Regional Director, UNEP. He has served as the UNEP’s Regional Director of the Regional Office  for Asia and the Pacific since 2008. He has a PhD in Natural Resource and  Environmental Economics from Iowa State University and holds a Master’s degree in  Economics from Southern Illinois University. Prior to joining the UNEP, he was the  President of the Business Institute of Sustainable Development of the Korean  Chamber of Commerce and Industry, before being appointed as the Director-General  of International Cooperation in the Ministry of Environment of Korea. Mr Park has served in a number of environmental committees including the Presidential  Commission on Sustainable Development. He has also headed the Industrial  Environment Department at the Hyundai Institute of Eco-Management.

Another keynote speaker who will be on the platform at the World leadership Conference: Denise Keller, The Climate Project Council Advisor (Youth)

Denise Keller shot to fame after winning Ford Model of the World Singapore in 2000. Subsequently, she appeared on the covers of the international editions of Vogue, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar, amongst other magazines. Ms Keller then served as one of MTV Asia’s VJs, a position which she held on to for almost a decade. She has hosted numerous award-winning television programmes including ‘Passage to Malaysia’, which earned many nominations and won the Best Lifestyle Program award at the 2010 Asia TV Awards. Ms Keller has been an ambassador for several brands including Longines, Olay, Shiseido, and Nokia. She is an advisory council member for The Climate Project, a non-profit social enterprise led by former US Vice-President Al Gore.

And our very own Ken Hickson, Chairman and CEO of Sustain Ability Showcase Asia; Director ABC Carbon, editor of abc carbon express and author of The ABC of Carbon.

For the full programme and details of the World leadership conference go to the website: www.worldleadershipconference.org

by Feng Zengkun The Strait Times (10 June 2011):  

Student leaders step up to organise top events

YOUNG people here are stepping up and taking charge of organising nationwide events.

Last month, the Biomedical Engineering Society’s (BES) 5th Scientific Meeting was organised entirely by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) students. Next month’s World Leadership Conference for the environment is also being put together by student volunteers from schools nationwide.

The events are likely to be organised by student volunteers in the future. The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) and Science Centre Singapore are also accepting applications for their weekly programme, called the Singapore Academy of Young Engineers and Scientists, which will eventually be directed by student leaders.

Students say taking charge of these events has many benefits. Miss Pansy Wang, 22, co-chair of the BES event’s student committee, said she met many industry professionals and made valuable contacts in the course of planning the conference. ‘You put your name out there, and it’s almost like a job interview even before you graduate,’ she said.

Miss Dianne Goh, 22, part of the World Leadership Conference team, said her fellow students’ and her tender years have led many professionals to offer their network of friends and free advice.

‘There’s a lot of goodwill because we’re putting time and effort into these events even though we don’t have many resources or contacts,’ she said.

Mr James Hosking, 37, managing director of green website Eco-Business, has met the team three times since they started planning the conference.

‘Their initial document for sponsors was seven pages long. I took away a lot of words, added charts and helped them cut it down to five pages,’ he said.

Students can also learn from the hard-won experience of those who have gone before them, said Mr Cai Li, 25, a student at the National University of Singapore and a member of the World Leadership Conference committee.

With plans to set up his own green business selling recycled plastic T-shirts, Mr Cai said he was struck by the words of the owner of an organic-clothing company, who is a guest speaker at the conference.

‘He said it’s not enough that the product is green. It also has to be value for money or people won’t buy it,’ Mr Cai said.

Students The Straits Time spoke to said organising the conference has given them a clearer sense of the working world and its meetings and conferences. Another bonus was learning how to manage large sums of money. For the BES conference, the students were given a budget of $12,000. The World Leadership Conference budget is $100,000.

To allay the concerns of sponsors and advisers, the students had to draw up a detailed budget of where the money would go.

‘We borrowed everything we could, right down to tables, chairs and poster boards,’ said Miss Leow Jiamin, 22, co-chair of the BES conference.

Paper fliers were adapted to digital copies that could be broadcast on campus televisions. A committee member also learnt programming languages to create and maintain the conference’s website.

‘The students were creative and made every dollar count,’ said Dr Sierin Lim, 34, an assistant professor of bioengineering at NTU and the students’ adviser.

Experts The Straits Times spoke to said having student organisers benefited the events.

Dr Lim said students are better at getting their peers to participate in the conferences.

Two months after the NTU team approached student groups and teachers in schools here, more than 200 people signed up for the conference, double the number in the previous conference.

Miss Leow said this is partly because students are more comfortable confiding their worries to peers. She said the committee was initially puzzled by the lack of submissions from junior colleges for the oral presentation section of the conference.

It was only after they went to the schools that they found the students had little experience in public speaking, which ‘made them shy about giving oral presentations’.

Miss Goh also noted that professionals were often more willing to help or participate because her team is not affiliated with any political or corporate body. ‘There’s less baggage and distrust when it comes to student organisations,’ she said.

Scientists who attended the BES conference last month said the students did a good job.

Professor Jackie Ying, a guest speaker from A*Star, said the conference was indistinguishable from one organised by professionals.

NTU’s Dr Lim said the organising committee of the BES conference is likely to be rotated among tertiary institutions here in the future, but students from other schools would be welcome to volunteer.

For the student committee of the World Leadership Conference, the event next month will be the culmination of their labours.

‘I’m sleeping at 2am every day and checking my phone every other minute,’ said Miss Goh. ‘But I don’t resent a single moment of it.’

Source www.biotechsingapore.com  and www.worldleadershipconference.org

Back to the Future: On Track for a Green Corridor

 In Singapore, the Malaysian Railway service has been stopped in its tracks! But many hope the tracks deserve to be kept not only as a green belt, but also a moving museum. Everyone, especially those who grew up spoilt by the comforts of today’s MRT, needs a glimpse into how we used to travel, and how, as commuters, we got to where we are today. To keep a perspective of where we are headed, we need to keep looking out the windows of our rides, both past and present, says the Straits Times Eisen Teo.

By Eisen Teo, The Straits Times, 25 Jun 2011.

If Singapore’s MRT system is a symbol of a thriving young nation, the elder railway system is its cranky grandparent.

Yet this cantankerous relic was Singapore’s brave new world in 1903, just as the MRT would be eight decades later.

Both were firsts. Before they rolled out, this nation had never before had a vehicle carry so many passengers (and goods) as far or as fast. The history of both systems, too, has become a part of this nation’s narrative.

The tale begins with the older railway, constructed between 1900 and 1902 to foster greater commerce between the port of Singapore and the vast agricultural and mining hinterland of Malaya – both of them then colonies of the British.

Its completed tracks spanned the breadth of the country, starting at Tank Road near Fort Canning Hill, passing the shophouses of Orchard Road and Cairnhill and through the forests of Bukit Timah, before terminating at Woodlands.

In length, its tracks matched the longest roads in Singapore then, and the locomotives – nicknamed ‘iron horses’ – promised speeds of up to 50kmh, faster than any vehicle in Singapore at the time. (The first car, imported in 1896, clocked only 30kmh tops.)

Today, however, it has long outlived its purpose. It gave way to the MRT on Nov 7, 1987, which opened with five stations over 6km of track.

Then, 120,000 people bought first-day tickets. I was three.

I have grown as the MRT has matured, and it today boasts 79 stations over about 130km of track. Ridership breached the two-million-a-day mark last year, and the system is still growing.

It represents what we want of 21st-century Singapore – fast, clean, efficient, precision-timed. We moan when a train stalls or pulls into the station a minute late, as if it is a crime because our lives hinge on how well it runs.

On the flip side, the railway train is a reminder of what Singapore once was, still invisibly tethering us to our northern neighbour years after the painful childbirth that was our independence.

As a population mainly made of MRT commuters, we cannot imagine getting around our island via other means.

As I compare the two systems, I cannot help feeling an unspoken link with our ancestors, railway passengers from decades past who saw the tracks as their main link to loved ones up north.

Much of the Singapore segment of that railway will soon be gone. Next Friday, following an agreement between the governments of Malaysia and Singapore, operations to and from the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, built in 1932 to replace the Tank Road terminus, will cease.

The southern terminus of Malaysia’s main railway operator will be shifted to Woodlands, just shy of the Causeway.

The rustic rail

For millennials, the loss of that bit of our transport heritage could be more than just a closure of these aged tracks.

After a lifetime of riding the MRT, taking the railway can be a jarring, otherworldly experience, as I found out earlier this week when I boarded it for a ride from Tanjong Pagar to Segamat, Johor.

I wanted to pay my dues, especially as a history buff, before Tanjong Pagar ceased operations.

As I stepped into the cavernous hall of the station with its beautiful murals, my first thought was: Wow, it’s really hot. No swanky air-conditioned hangout, just a stifling stillness. The air was thick with humidity, and each breath came tinged with a faint but persistent smell of sweat and unwashed clothes.

At the ticket counter stood a queue of more than 40 Singaporeans, Malaysians and tourists waiting patiently. Nowhere was there the mad rush of the daily MRT commute; harrying these languid ticket officials, the general consensus seemed, would get you nowhere.

My train pulled out of the station half an hour behind schedule, enough time for me to contemplate the station’s departure gate – literally a metal gate – and a platform floor smooth from nearly 80 years of polishing by untold numbers of shoes. Everyone waited for the train to move, accepting the tardiness as a given.

My world-weary train, at least, promised no more than it could deliver. It was a contraption that was ancient, loud, rumbling, rickety and dirty.

Upon the suggestion of a friend, I opened a carriage door while the train was at full throttle and stuck my head out. The feeling of wind and dust in my face as the world rushed by was priceless. While a conductor immediately turned up to tell us to shut the door, we just waited until he walked off before doing it again.

Even the train and station officials seemed to have stepped out of a poetic page from history – the rhythms of their waved flags and blown whistles at every stop were an almost orchestral display compared with the regulated automation of the MRT.

Outside the train was a different world, too. In the half-hour it took to rumble from Tanjong Pagar to Woodlands, I observed narrow strips of land on either side of the tracks, still undeveloped and laced with lalang. While rides on the MRT depict the present and future of my country, rides on the granddaddy of trains took me back into its past.

Any conservation of the tracks between Tanjong Pagar and Woodlands surely would be a way of paying homage to the Singapore we all came from, the same way we might honour the contributions of our grandparents to this nation.

The tracks deserve to be kept not only as a green belt, but also a moving museum. Everyone, especially those who grew up spoilt by the comforts of today’s MRT, needs a glimpse into how we used to travel, and how, as commuters, we got to where we are today.

To keep a perspective of where we are headed, we need to keep looking out the windows of our rides, both past and present.

Source: www.thegreencorridor.org

The Biofuels Association of Australia (BAA) has congratulated all sides of the Australian parliament for working together to ensure the passage of the four Alternative Fuels Bills, allowing for alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel to play a growing role in Australia’s transition towards low emission fuels and domestic energy security. BAA says this recognises that locally produced, environmentally sustainable and economically viable transport fuels will be necessary in order to meet fuel demands in the future.

Release from BAA 21 June 2011:

The Biofuels Association of Australia has congratulated all sides of the Australian parliament for working together to ensure the passage of the four Alternative Fuels Bills.

“This legislation brings about the certainty for industry which has been absent for some time” said Heather Brodie, CEO of the BAA.  “The bipartisan support for the passage of the biofuels bills is welcomed and results in assurance for legislation which was first announced back in 2004”.

“Reflecting extensive negotiations with stakeholders, the Greens, the Coalition and crossbench MPs alike, this legislation will ensure that alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel play a growing role in Australia’s transition towards low emission fuels and domestic energy security.

The legislation sees the current taxation arrangements for ethanol and biodiesel continue for the next ten years with a review of the grant arrangements after 30 June 2021.  The Government will also consider the emissions of alternative fuels as part of its consideration of fuel under a carbon price.

“Importantly as well the legislation reflects the Government’s support of the BAA’s plans to introduce sustainability certification processes for the industry” said Ms Brodie.  “Establishing sustainability criteria for biofuels will provide reassurance for users of alternative fuels that the biofuels they purchase will continue to be produced using sustainable practices which do not contribute to food security concerns or result in other adverse impacts”. 

Through both self-regulatory mechanisms and a more formal process with Standards Australia and the International Standards Organisation (ISO) the industry believes that this work will provide the most robust and practical sustainability criteria, consistent with international standards, which ensures consumer confidence in the biofuels industry.

“We need to recognise that locally produced, environmentally sustainable and economically viable transport fuels will be necessary in order to meet fuel demands in the future” Ms Brodie said.

The Biofuels Association of Australia Incorporated is the peak industry body representing ethanol and biodiesel producers, feedstock suppliers, technology providers, independent and major oil companies, equipment manufacturers, mining and construction companies and others.

The Alternative Fuels Summit will be held in Brisbane, Australia from 29 – 31 August this year.

Source: www.biofuelsassociation.com.au

“Deplorable” Debate on Climate Action, so Who is to Blame?

 There is a striking contrast between the ease with which the international community and the corporate sector accepted the argument that CFCs were depleting the ozone layer, although their volume as a percentage of the atmosphere is tiny compared to CO2 and methane, and the combination of fury, hysteria and mendacity against evidence of global warming.

The central difference is that in the case of CFCs every chemical company was convinced that there were economic advantages in getting in first with an alternative propellant (HFCs), while to much of the fossil fuel industries the global warming issue is a fight to the death.

In Australia, the quality of public debate – Ross Garnaut, Will Steffen, David Karoly, Tim Flannery aside – has been deplorable: soporific on one side and hysterical on the other, ugly, dumb and bullying, marked by a ”Gotcha!” approach in sections of the media, with relentless emphasis on fear, the short term, vested interests and a mindless populism. At a government level, failure to explain a very strong case has been a cause of profound disquiet under the Rudd/Gillard prime ministerships.

There has been some hesitancy by both Kevin Rudd and the present prime minister to acknowledge that as the world’s highest per capita emitter of CO2 and a huge coal exporter, Australia should be leading international debate on the climate change problem. There has been an obvious unwillingness to even utter the ”C” word – ”coal”. We rarely talk about the moral dimension of reducing our energy footprint, nor do we promote energy efficiency.

Barry Jones, a former minister for science (1983-90), and a Fellow of all four of Australia’s learned academies, speaks his mind. Read More

Barry Jones  in The Age and National Times (1 July 2011):

Labor has not explained the climate change problem with conviction.

The science behind the climate change controversy – despite recent hysterical attacks on scientific integrity – is robust, and not particularly recent. And yet, despite the heat (without depth) of the controversy about the proposed carbon tax, politicians on both sides fail to address the scientific evidence for human contribution to climate change. They say ”I believe” or ”I reject” without examination or analysis. There has been a spectacular failure to distinguish between genuine expertise and strongly held opinions, and an excessive deference to vested interests.

In 1824, the French mathematician Joseph Fourier anticipated what we came to call ”the greenhouse effect”, arguing that surface heat on Earth was maintained by the atmosphere – otherwise the planet’s orbit was too remote from the sun for a temperature that could support life.

In 1859, the Irish physicist John Tyndall identified the role of water vapour, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) as key factors in maintaining temperature despite their tiny percentage of the total atmosphere.

In 1896, the Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius named ”the greenhouse effect” and calculated the relationship between changes in CO2 levels and atmospheric temperature with astonishing accuracy.

In 1925, the prodigious American statistician Alfred James Lotka (1880-1949) described what we now call ”anthropogenic climate change”, a century after Fourier’s work.

Economically, we are living on our capital; biologically, we are changing radically the complexion of our share in the carbon cycle by throwing into the atmosphere, from coal fires and metallurgical furnaces, 10 times as much carbon dioxide as in the natural process of breathing.

Lotka referred to ”the present regime of ‘evaporating’ our coal mines . . . into the air”. World population has increased by 350 per cent since Lotka wrote, and per capita fuel usage has increased exponentially.

Each tonne of coal produces three tonnes of CO2 on burning. At present, the consumer pays for the coal but takes no responsibility for the cost of disposing of the exponentially increased residue. As Sir Nicholas (later Lord) Stern argued in his review for the British government, The Economics of Climate Change (2006), this is treated as a ”free good” by the purchaser/user, a spectacular market failure. The downstream impact of consumption of coal and oil, dug up and put into the air, is a long-term contribution to atmospheric pollution taking decades (perhaps centuries – the issue is deeply controversial) to disperse.

There is a striking contrast between the ease with which the international community and the corporate sector accepted the argument that CFCs were depleting the ozone layer, although their volume as a percentage of the atmosphere is tiny compared to CO2 and methane, and the combination of fury, hysteria and mendacity against evidence of global warming. The central difference is that in the case of CFCs every chemical company was convinced that there were economic advantages in getting in first with an alternative propellant (HFCs), while to much of the fossil fuel industries the global warming issue is a fight to the death.

Scientists arguing for the mainstream view have been subject to strong attack (even, it is reported, death threats) by denialists/confusionists who assert that they are quasi-religious zealots who are missionaries for a green religion. In reality, it was the denialist/ confusionist position to rely on faith, the conviction that there were many complex reasons for climate change but only one could be confidently rejected: the role of human activity.

The basic attack was on scientific research and scientific method, and the illusion was created that scientists are corrupt while lobbyists are pure. One of the false assertions is that scientists who take the mainstream position are rewarded while dissenters are punished (similar to Galileo and the Inquisition). In the past decade in the United States and Australia, the contrary was true.

Oddly, denialists rarely refer to observed phenomena (disappearance of Arctic ice, thinning of Greenland’s glaciers, fractures at the edge of the West Antarctic ice shelf, ocean acidification, thawing of Siberian tundra, changes in bird migration, earlier flowering of plants) – and there is generally no analysis of risk, either.

In Australia, the quality of public debate – Ross Garnaut, Will Steffen, David Karoly, Tim Flannery aside – has been deplorable: soporific on one side and hysterical on the other, ugly, dumb and bullying, marked by a ”Gotcha!” approach in sections of the media, with relentless emphasis on fear, the short term, vested interests and a mindless populism. At a government level, failure to explain a very strong case has been a cause of profound disquiet under the Rudd/Gillard prime ministerships.

There has been some hesitancy by both Kevin Rudd and the present prime minister to acknowledge that as the world’s highest per capita emitter of CO2 and a huge coal exporter, Australia should be leading international debate on the climate change problem. There has been an obvious unwillingness to even utter the ”C” word – ”coal”. We rarely talk about the moral dimension of reducing our energy footprint, nor do we promote energy efficiency.

These subjects may have been thoroughly examined in the Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change. I hope so, but the issues need to be explained, with conviction, to the community generally. The failure of the opposition (Greg Hunt and Malcolm Turnbull excepted) to play a meaningful role in discussions on mitigating climate change is a profound historic misjudgment.

W.B. Yeats was right: ”The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” (The Second Coming, 1919.)

Barry Jones was minister for science 1983-90 and is a Fellow of all four of Australia’s learned academies.

Source: www.theage.com.au