Mid-day on the 24th of March was a significant time for Germany. At that moment, more than half of its electricity output came from renewable sources – wind and solar. With plans to double production within the next decade, Germany could soon be mostly powered by renewable sources, with fossil fuel power plants acting only as backups. However, not all renewable sources are created equal. Environmental impact of some sources – like wind and hydro – will have to be balanced against gains. Read more

Graph of the Day: Wind, solar provide half Germany’s energy output

By Giles Parkinson in Reneweconomy (25 March 2013):

Today’s Graph of the Day will tell a story that will be repeated more regularly in coming months and years – the growing impact of solar and wind energy in countries such as Germany.

This comes from Sunday (March 24) and shows that in the middle of the day, more than half of Germany’s electricity output came from wind and solar. Two things are striking – one is the amount of solar capacity produced on a day in early spring, with nearly 20GW at its peak. The second is the consistent contribution of wind energy, which accounted for more than 25 per cent of the overall output throughout the day.

Imagine, then, what will happen when Germany doubles the amount of wind and solar production, as it plans to do within the next decade. On days like this, there will simply be no room for fossil fuel production – the so-called “base load”. Any coal or gas fired generation that remains will need to be capable of being switched on and off on demand. The base load/peakload model will be turned on its head – to be replaced by dispatchable and non dispatchable generation. Fossil fuels will be required just to fill in the gaps.

The original graph can be found here. Notice, too, the difference between what was delivered by wind and solar, and what was planned (graph below). There’s little difference. For all the talk about “intermittent” renewables, their output is actually quite predictable – more so than swings in demand ever were.

Source: www.reneweconomy.com.au

The Price of Green Energy: Is Germany Killing the Environment to Save It?

By SPIEGEL Staff

The German government is carrying out a rapid expansion of renewable energies like wind, solar and biogas, yet the process is taking a toll on nature conservation. The issue is causing a rift in the environmental movement, pitting “green energy” supporters against ecologists.

The Bagpipe, a woody knoll in northern Hesse, can only be recommended to hikers with reservations. This here is lumberjack country. Broad, clear-cut lanes crisscross the area. The tracks of heavy vehicles can be seen in the snow. And there is a vast clearing full of the stumps of recently felled trees.

Martin Kaiser, a forest expert with Greenpeace, gets up on a thick stump and points in a circle. “Mighty, old beech trees used to stand all over here,” he says. Now the branches of the felled giants lie in large piles on the ground. Here and there, lone bare-branch survivors project into the sky.

Kaiser says this is “a climate-policy disaster” and estimates that this clear-cutting alone will release more than 1,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Forests are important for lowering levels of greenhouse gases, as large quantities of carbon dioxide are trapped in wood — especially the wood of ancient beech trees like these. Less than two years ago, UNESCO added the “Ancient Beech Forests of Germany” to its list of World Natural Heritage Sites.

It wasn’t any private forest magnate who cleared these woods out. Rather, it was Hessen-Forst, a forestry company owned by the western German state of Hesse. For some years now, wood has enjoyed a reputation for being an excellent source of energy — one that is eco-friendly and presumably climate neutral. At the moment, more than half of the lumber felled in Germany makes into way into biomass power plants or wood-pellet heating systems. The result has been an increase in prices for wood and the related profit expectations. The prospect of making a quick buck, Kaiser says, “has led to a downright brutalization of the forestry business.”

The Costs of Going Green

One would assume that ecology and the Energiewende, Germany’s plans to phase out nuclear energy and increase its reliance on renewable sources, were natural allies. But in reality, the two goals have been coming into greater and greater conflict. “With the use of wood, especially,” Kaiser says, “the limits of sustainability have already been exceeded several times.” To understand what this really means, one needs to know Kaiser’s background: For several years, he has been the head of the climate division at Greenpeace Germany’s headquarters in Hamburg.

Things have changed in Germany since Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government launched its energy transition policy in June 2011, prompted by the Fukushima nuclear power plant catastrophe in Japan. The decision to hastily shut down all German nuclear power plants by 2022 has shifted the political fronts. Old coalitions have been shattered and replaced by new ones. In an ironic twist, members of the environmentalist Green Party have suddenly mutated into advocates of an unprecedented industrialization of large areas of land, while Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats have been advocating for more measures to protect nature.

Merkel’s energy policies have driven a deep wedge into the environmental movement. While it celebrates the success of renewable energies as one of its greatest victories, it is profoundly unsettled by the effects of the energy transition, which can be seen everywhere across the country.

Indeed, this is not just about cleared forests. Grasslands and fields are being transformed into oceans of energy-producing corn that stretch beyond the horizon. Farmers are using digestate, a by-product of biogas production, to fertilize their fields as soon as they thaw from the winter. And entire tracts of land are being put to industrial use — converted into enormous solar power plants, wind farms or highways of power lines, which will soon stretch from northern to southern Germany.

The public discourse about the energy transition plan is still dominated by its supporters, including many environmentalists who want to see the expansion of renewable energies at any price. They set the tone in government agencies, functioning as advisors to renewable energy firms and policymakers alike. But then there are those feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the way things are going. Out of fear of environmental destruction, they no longer want to remain silent.

Greens in Awkward Position

Although this conflict touches all political parties, none is more affected than the Greens. Since the party’s founding in 1980, it has championed a nuclear phaseout and fought for clean energy. But now that this phaseout is underway, the Greens are realizing a large part of their dream — the utopian idea of a society operating on “good” power — is vanishing into thin air. Green energy, they have found, comes at an enormous cost. And the environment will also pay a price if things keep going as they have been.

Within the Greens’ parliamentary group in the Bundestag, politicians focused on energy policy are facing off against those who champion environmental conservation, fighting over how much support the party should throw behind Merkel’s energy transition. Those who prioritize the environment face a stiff challenge, given that Jürgen Trittin — co-chairman of the parliamentary group who long served as environment minister — is clearly more concerned with energy issues.

In debates, members of the pro-environmental camp have occasionally even been hissed at for supposedly playing into the hands of the nuclear lobby. “We should overcome the temptation to sacrifice environmental protection for the sake of fighting climate change,” says Undine Kurth, a Green parliamentarian from the eastern city of Magdeburg. “Preserving a stable natural environment is just as important.”

“Of course there is friction between environment and climate protection advocates, even in my party,” says Robert Habeck, a leader of the Greens in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein who became its “Energiewende minister” in June 2012 — the first person in Germany to hold that title. “We Greens have suddenly also become an infrastructure party that pushes energy projects forward, while on the other side the classic CDU clientele is taking to the barricades. It’s just like it was 30 years ago, only with reversed roles.”

This role is an unfamiliar one for environmentalists. For a long time, they were the good guys, and the others were the bad guys. But now they’re suddenly on the defensive. They used to be the ones who stood before administrative courts to fight highway and railway projects to protect Northern Shoveler ducks, Great Bustards or rare frog species. But now they are forced to defend massive high-voltage power lines while being careful not to scare off their core environmentalist clientele.

Bärbel Höhn, a former environment minister of the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, has a reputation for being a bridge-builder between the blocs. She concedes that there have been mistakes, like with using corn for energy. But these are just teething problems that must be overcome, she adds reassuringly.

Encroaching on Nature Reserves

The opposition in Berlin has so far contented itself with criticizing Merkel, believing that her climate policies have failed and that she has steered Germany’s most important infrastructure project into a wall. Granted, neither the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) nor the Greens are part of the ruling coalition at the federal level, but they do jointly govern a number of Germany’s 16 federal states. And, when forced to choose between nature and renewable energies, it is usually nature that take a back seat in those states.

It was in this way that, in 2009, Germany’s largest solar park to date arose right in the middle of the Lieberoser Heide, a bird sanctuary about a 100 kilometers (62 miles) southeast of Berlin. Since German reunification in 1990, more than 200 endangered species have settled in the former military training grounds. But that didn’t seem to matter. In spite of all the protests by environmentalists, huge areas of ancient pine trees were clear cut in order to make room for solar collectors bigger than soccer fields.

A similar thing happened in Baden-Württemberg, even though the southwestern state has been led for almost two years by Winfried Kretschmann, the first state governor in Germany belonging to the Green Party. In 2012, it was the Greens there who passed a wind-energy decree that aims to boost the number of wind turbines in the state from 400 to roughly 2,500 by 2020. And in the party’s reckoning, nature is standing in the way.

The decree includes an exemption that makes it easier to erect huge windmills in nature conservations areas, where they are otherwise forbidden. But now this exception threatens to become the rule: In many regions of the state, including Stuttgart, Esslingen and Göppingen, district administrators are reporting that they plan to permit wind farms to be erected in several nature reserves.

But apparently even that isn’t enough for Claus Schmiedel, the SPD leader in the state parliament. Two weeks ago, he wrote a letter to Kretschmann recommending that he put the bothersome conservationists back into line. Schmiedel claimed that investors in renewable energies were being “serially harassed by the low-level regional nature-conservation authorities” — and complained that the state government wasn’t doing enough to combat this.

Fears of Magnetic Fields

Just as controversial as the wind farms are the massive electricity masts of the power lines, which bring wind energy from the north to large urban areas in the south. This has led the Greens to favor cables laid underground over the huge overhead lines for some time now. Trittin, the party’s co-leader, believes that using buried cables offers an opportunity “to expand the grid with the backing of the people.”

Ironically, however, there is growing resistance to this supposedly eco- and citizen-friendly form of power transition on the western edge of Göttingen, a university town in central Germany that lies in Trittin’s electoral district.

Harald Wiedemann, of the local citizens’ initiative opposed to underground cables, has already sent to the printers a poster that reads: “Stop! You are now leaving the radiation-free sector.” Plans call for laying 12 cables as thick as an arm 1.5 meters (5 feet) below ground. Wiedemann warns that the planned high-voltage lines will create dangerous magnetic fields.

He and some other locals have marked out the planned course of the lines with barrier tape. It veers away from the highway north of the village, cuts through the fields, runs right next to an elementary school and through a drinking water protection area.

Wiedemann is also the head of the city organization of the Greens, who are generally known as Energiewende backers. “But why do things have to be done so slapdash?” he asks. The planning seems “fragmented,” he says, and those behind them have forgotten “nature conservation, health and agriculture.”

Indeed, underground cables are anything but gentle on the landscape. Twelve thick metal cables laid out in a path 20 meters wide are required to transmit 380,000 volts. No trees are allowed to grow above this strip lest the roots interfere with the cables. The cables warm the earth, and the magnetic fields created by the alternating current power cables also terrify many.

Nature Suffers

Many nature conservationists believe that Germany’s Energiewende is throwing the baby out with the bath water. For example, last week, Germany’s Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) hosted a meeting of scientists and representatives from nature conservation organizations and energy associations in the eastern city of Leipzig.

Kathrin Ammermann, who heads the organization’s unit responsible for renewable energy, is troubled by recent developments. “Increased production of biogas, in particular, has intensified corn monoculture,” she says, noting that this has harmed numerous plant and animal species. Wind turbines also kill birds and bats. “The expansion of renewable energies must not only be carried out in a way that makes the most economic sense, but also in a way that is as friendly as possible to nature and the environment,” she says.

As Germany’s environment minister, it is Peter Altmaier’s job to balance the interests of both sides. But the CDU politician spent his first months in office singing the praises of renewable energies only to then turn around and warn with increasingly grim forecasts of an explosion in electricity prices that can no longer be controlled. Indeed, nature conservation doesn’t exactly top his list of priorities.

Last summer, when he presented his personal 10-point renewable-energy plan, it occurred to him, just in knick of time, that he was also responsible for environmental protection. He then pulled out a few meager words on nature and water protection, which have yet to be followed up with deeds. Nor has any progress been made on a noise-control plan relating to the building of offshore wind farms that had been announced with much fanfare.

At least Norbert Röttgen, Altmaier’s predecessor and fellow CDU member, conceded during his time in office that nature protection might ultimately risk getting put on the back burner as a result of the nuclear phaseout. He even set up a Nature Conservation and Energy division within the ministry to address the issue. Nevertheless, it is the champions of renewable energies who are increasingly dominating the ministry’s policy line, with the traditional advocates of nature and environmental protection just standing back and watching in astonishment. “In decision-making processes, we either get listened to too late or not at all,” says one ministry official. “Nature protection just isn’t an issue the minister has taken up.”

Source: www.spiegel.de

Carrying about 90% of goods moved internationally, marine ships are finding themselves targets of increasing fuel efficiency in the effort to reduce the environmental impact of the industry. Eco-ships, with their fuel-efficient, low-emissions features, are gaining increasing market share due to growing awareness amongst ship owners of doing the right thing. One such owner is Singapore’s NOL Group which took delivery recently of its largest and most environmentally-friendly vessel in its fleet as part of its modernising effort. Read more

NOL names 14,000-TEU newbuilding, biggest Singaporean boxship ever

In JŪRA MOPE SEA (28 March 2013):

SINGAPORE’s NOL Group has taken delivery of its newest, largest and most environmentally friendly vessel in its fleet, the 14,000-TEU APL Temasek.

To celebrate the event, the company held a naming ceremony for the ship whose name was inspired by the old name for Singapore, meaning ‘Sea Town.’

It is the first in a series of ten 14,000-TEU vessels on order by the Singapore-based shipping and logistics group and also the biggest containership registered in Singapore.

The newbuilding follows the delivery of ten new 10,000-TEU ships that joined the fleet between 2011 and 2012. These newbuildings are part of a US$4 billion fleet renewal programme aimed at improving the shipping line’s slot cost. They are replacing older, less efficient ships that are either sold or returned to charter owners.

Group chairman Kwa Chong Seng said, “We are modernising our fleet, improving our cost structure, and investing in the future. To compete successfully in today’s marketplace, we must ensure that we have the most competitive product with the latest technology, design and sustainability features.”

The 14,000-TEU ships have been designed to boost operating efficiency at various speeds. The company estimates the new design will improve fuel efficiency by about 20-30 per cent per TEU for a (slow steaming) speed range of 15-18 knots, compared to previous designs.

The APL Temasek is being deployed on the Asia-Europe Loop 4 service.

A statement from the group added that the newbuilding’s sister ships will likewise be named after icons of the island state.

Shipping Gazette – Daily Shipping News

Source: www.jura.lt/

A Greener Blueprint: The Evolving Market for Eco-Ships

ctech is created by Fathom, the maritime market intelligence company, and supported by BIMCO, the world’s largest shipping organisation.

22 March 2013:

Holistic “eco-ship” designs are starting to gain traction in the merchant shipping industry. In the last few years, concepts such as the Grontmij Seahorse Series, the Delta Marin B Delta range, the Hyundai HMD Eco 40 and the Ulstein X-BOW have all seen increases in orders. The market is starting to respond positively to these vessels.

However, the term “eco-ship” extends beyond these concept vessels. It could equally be use to refer to any sea-going craft that incorporates a package of the ever-growing range of energy and emission-saving technology for marine applications. The picture for this much wider range of vessels is much less clear: how is the market responding?

This week, Fathom explores an article recently published by The Baltic that reviews opinions by leading shipping commentators on where the market for eco-ships is at and short to medium-term developments.

Disregarding any debate over what actually qualifies as an ‘eco-ship’, we’re given to believe that there is a huge push to put them on the water.  But is that necessarily the case and, if it is, what are the driving factors? Felicity Landon reports.

“From meeting legal requirements at the ‘minimum’ end of the scale to being virtuously ‘green’ at the other, there can be few shipowners that are not looking for solutions to save fuel and reduce emissions. But often the middle ground is misunderstood”, says Alison Jarabo-Martin, managing director of Fathom Shipping.

“There is a growing understanding that moving towards eco-ships is important and people do want to do the right thing – but we are also struggling in tough financial times, so it needs to have some business benefits, and not everyone understands all the business benefits of eco-efficiency,” she says.

“It is about understanding what the business case is, and implementing it better. I don’t think there should be a ‘green wash’ for the sake of it because that doesn’t get anyone anywhere. We went through a phase of that in the industry and to an extent we still are – with all the eco-ships being marketed, apparently every ship coming out of the Far East is an eco-ship.”

There is obviously awareness that ‘eco’ is good and there is also increasing consumer pressure – operators need to be transparent to their end users, who are seeking ‘greener’ supply chains, says Jarabo-Martin. “And there have been some really interesting developments,” she adds.

KfW Bank worked with classification society Germanischer Lloyd (GL) to benchmark the bank’s whole loan portfolio against the Energy Efficiency Design Index, to see where the vessels sat in terms of fuel efficiency, emissions, etc.

“And what they found was that those with a very bad energy efficiency profile were the loans performing particularly badly as well. It wasn’t what they expected to see; but it showed that the more responsible operators were better in terms of risk.”

There are always going to be the front-runners, of course, and at the opposite extreme there are shipowners not even meeting the legislation, says Jarabo-Martin. “Then there is a whole host in between the two extremes.”

Clarifying the Advantages

But remove the virtuous bit, and what are the advantages? Clearly, less fuel means less expense. There is a view that more efficient ships will have a better lifecycle, so owners could gain better lending terms. As to whether eco-ships will gain better charter rates, this is unclear.

“I keep hearing talk that there will be better charter rates but I don’t know that this is happening,” she says. “However, I do believe eco-ships are more ‘charterable’. It makes more sense to charter the best vessel to get the most fuel efficiency.”

However, one of the big issues is establishing the actual fuel savings, she says. “There has been this fuel saving technologies band wagon people have jumped on and it has made owners and operators very suspicious. Fuel savings claims are made but there is no way realistically for them to check – that lack of information is almost creating a barrier to the uptake of the technology.”

Three years ago Fathom Shipping compiled a book of ship information giving details of the different fuel savings options – “That was very successful because no one had done it before, but then it was out of date within six months.”

Fathom has now moved the concept online. Its CTech website provides a platform for collating and reviewing maritime clean technologies and providers – giving overviews of products and attached savings claims, and supplying cost, ROI, maturity and case study data where possible. Shipowners and operators have free access to the site and are encouraged to input their own information.

“We carry out case studies of the technologies available and now developing in order to give a wider and wider profile of what is really useful,” says Jarabo-Martin. “CTech has been founded on wide industry support and an extensive contact network to give the most up-to-the-minute knowledge and insight on maritime eco-efficiency providers.”

Capital Constraints

At a time of severe shortage of available capital, do eco-ships have the added virtue of being more attractive to the ship finance sector? Opinion seems divided. Phil Cowan, head of corporate finance at Moore Stephens, says: “I wouldn’t say having an eco-ship was a magic wand in terms of getting finance. I think the market is still looking at eco-ships and whether they will or not make a different in the market in a few years.

“Potentially eco-ships, if proved to work and provide an advantage, will become a significant factor in lending decisions – but, having said that, our approach would need to be ‘stand the test of due diligence’ and it may b e other ships may well stand on their own merits if prices reflect the fact that a ship isn’t, relatively speaking, an eco-ship compared to another one.”

Lawyers at Norton Rose believe that the squeeze on capital is slowing the move to eco-ships.

“I think if there was the capital, there would be an even greater push towards eco-ships, of course, with their added benefits,” says banking lawyer Richard Howley.

Eco-ships have certainly become an issue, he says, “and you could see a position in a few years’ time where, in certain sectors, shipping assets may be trading at a significant discount if they are burning bunker fuel too heavily. Eco-ships will become an increasingly important subject in view of emission control areas (ECAs) and also the cost of expensive scrubbing technology, or vessel not being, technically, able to burn LNG, for example.

“I think operators understand the risk that their vessels may not be competitive in the future – but they are looking at bigger problems at the moment; changes in environmental requirements may not be in the forefront of financiers’ minds at the moment, although they will be keeping an eye on these risks too.”

Norton Rose asset finance lawyer Simon Lew adds: “The problems associated with the lack of capital in the industry mean that proposals to re-fleet with eco-ships are generally being forced on to the back burner. It isn’t good for the industry as a whole, and that is a direct result of the lack of capital.”

Article recently published by The Baltic – 19th Mar 2013, Felicity Landon

Source: www.fathom-ctech.com

Commercial beekeepers in the United States have grappled with crippling die-offs of their honeybee colonies, due to seemingly mysterious causes. Colony collapse disorder has decimated the population of commercial hives, crucial for the pollination of many of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, with the die-off this year particularly bad. Growing evidence points to a powerful new class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids which have particularly crippling effect on honeybees. Read more

Mystery Malady Kills More Bees, Heightening Worry on Farms

A Disastrous Year for Bees: For America’s beekeepers, who have struggled for nearly a decade with a mysterious malady called colony collapse disorder that kills honeybees en masse, this past year was particularly bad.

By MICHAEL WINES in New York Times (28 March 2013):

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — A mysterious malady that has been killing honeybees en masse for several years appears to have expanded drastically in the last year, commercial beekeepers say, wiping out 40 percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation’s fruits and vegetables.

A conclusive explanation so far has escaped scientists studying the ailment, colony collapse disorder, since it first surfaced around 2005. But beekeepers and some researchers say there is growing evidence that a powerful new class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, incorporated into the plants themselves, could be an important factor.

The pesticide industry disputes that. But its representatives also say they are open to further studies to clarify what, if anything, is happening.

“They looked so healthy last spring,” said Bill Dahle, 50, who owns Big Sky Honey in Fairview, Mont. “We were so proud of them. Then, about the first of September, they started to fall on their face, to die like crazy. We’ve been doing this 30 years, and we’ve never experienced this kind of loss before.”

In a show of concern, the Environmental Protection Agency recently sent its acting assistant administrator for chemical safety and two top chemical experts here, to the San Joaquin Valley of California, for discussions.

In the valley, where 1.6 million hives of bees just finished pollinating an endless expanse of almond groves, commercial beekeepers who only recently were losing a third of their bees to the disorder say the past year has brought far greater losses.

The federal Agriculture Department is to issue its own assessment in May. But in an interview, the research leader at its Beltsville, Md., bee research laboratory, Jeff Pettis, said he was confident that the death rate would be “much higher than it’s ever been.”

Following a now-familiar pattern, bee deaths rose swiftly last autumn and dwindled as operators moved colonies to faraway farms for the pollination season. Beekeepers say the latest string of deaths has dealt them a heavy blow.

Bret Adee, who is an owner, with his father and brother, of Adee Honey Farms of South Dakota, the nation’s largest beekeeper, described mounting losses.

“We lost 42 percent over the winter. But by the time we came around to pollinate almonds, it was a 55 percent loss,” he said in an interview here this week.

“They looked beautiful in October,” Mr. Adee said, “and in December, they started falling apart, when it got cold.”

Mr. Dahle said he had planned to bring 13,000 beehives from Montana — 31 tractor-trailers full — to work the California almond groves. But by the start of pollination last month, only 3,000 healthy hives remained.

Annual bee losses of 5 percent to 10 percent once were the norm for beekeepers. But after colony collapse disorder surfaced around 2005, the losses approached one-third of all bees, despite beekeepers’ best efforts to ensure their health.

Nor is the impact limited to beekeepers. The Agriculture Department says a quarter of the American diet, from apples to cherries to watermelons to onions, depends on pollination by honeybees. Fewer bees means smaller harvests and higher food prices.

Almonds are a bellwether. Eighty percent of the nation’s almonds grow here, and 80 percent of those are exported, a multibillion-dollar crop crucial to California agriculture. Pollinating up to 800,000 acres, with at least two hives per acre, takes as many as two-thirds of all commercial hives.

This past winter’s die-off sent growers scrambling for enough hives to guarantee a harvest. Chris Moore, a beekeeper in Kountze, Tex., said he had planned to skip the groves after sickness killed 40 percent of his bees and left survivors weakened.

“But California was short, and I got a call in the middle of February that they were desperate for just about anything,” he said. So he sent two truckloads of hives that he normally would not have put to work.

Bee shortages pushed the cost to farmers of renting bees to $200 per hive at times, 20 percent above normal. That, too, may translate into higher prices for food.

Precisely why last year’s deaths were so great is unclear. Some blame drought in the Midwest, though Mr. Dahle lost nearly 80 percent of his bees despite excellent summer conditions. Others cite bee mites that have become increasingly resistant to pesticides. Still others blame viruses.

But many beekeepers suspect the biggest culprit is the growing soup of pesticides, fungicides and herbicides that are used to control pests.

While each substance has been certified, there has been less study of their combined effects. Nor, many critics say, have scientists sufficiently studied the impact of neonicotinoids, the nicotine-derived pesticide that European regulators implicate in bee deaths.

The explosive growth of neonicotinoids since 2005 has roughly tracked rising bee deaths.

Neonics, as farmers call them, are applied in smaller doses than older pesticides. They are systemic pesticides, often embedded in seeds so that the plant itself carries the chemical that kills insects that feed on it.

Older pesticides could kill bees and other beneficial insects. But while they quickly degraded — often in a matter of days — neonicotinoids persist for weeks and even months. Beekeepers worry that bees carry a summer’s worth of contaminated pollen to hives, where ensuing generations dine on a steady dose of pesticide that, eaten once or twice, might not be dangerous.

“Soybean fields or canola fields or sunflower fields, they all have this systemic insecticide,” Mr. Adee said. “If you have one shot of whiskey on Thanksgiving and one on the Fourth of July, it’s not going to make any difference. But if you have whiskey every night, 365 days a year, your liver’s gone. It’s the same thing.”

Research to date on neonicotinoids “supports the notion that the products are safe and are not contributing in any measurable way to pollinator health concerns,” the president of CropLife America, Jay Vroom, said Wednesday. The group represents more than 90 pesticide producers.

He said the group nevertheless supported further research. “We stand with science and will let science take the regulation of our products in whatever direction science will guide it,” Mr. Vroom said.

A coalition of beekeepers and environmental and consumer groups sued the E.P.A. last week, saying it exceeded its authority by conditionally approving some neonicotinoids. The agency has begun an accelerated review of their impact on bees and other wildlife.

The European Union has proposed to ban their use on crops frequented by bees. Some researchers have concluded that neonicotinoids caused extensive die-offs in Germany and France.

Neonicotinoids are hardly the beekeepers’ only concern. Herbicide use has grown as farmers have adopted crop varieties, from corn to sunflowers, that are genetically modified to survive spraying with weedkillers. Experts say some fungicides have been laced with regulators that keep insects from maturing, a problem some beekeepers have reported.

Eric Mussen, an apiculturist at the University of California, Davis, said analysts had documented about 150 chemical residues in pollen and wax gathered from beehives.

“Where do you start?” Dr. Mussen said. “When you have all these chemicals at a sublethal level, how do they react with each other? What are the consequences?”

Experts say nobody knows. But Mr. Adee, who said he had long scorned environmentalists’ hand-wringing about such issues, said he was starting to wonder whether they had a point.

Of the “environmentalist” label, Mr. Adee said: “I would have been insulted if you had called me that a few years ago. But what you would have called extreme — a light comes on, and you think, ‘These guys really have something. Maybe they were just ahead of the bell curve.’”

A version of this article appeared in print on March 29, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Mystery Malady Kills More Bees, Heightening Worry on Farms.

Source: www.nytimes.com

Water – or the lack of it or misuse of it – is in the news, again.  The all too real scenario in the face of potential water shortages and water stress. In a recent white paper on Tourism and Water, the implications of water shortages for the tourism industry, and the role played by tourism in Asia-Pacific in water management were professionally explored. Managing water well is a strong suit of Singapore, though future water supply will be heavily dependent on energy supply – and using less energy to produce more water – as pointed out by Singapore’s Minister for the Environment and Water Resources at a recent World Water Day event. Read more

Water White Paper Gives Tourism Industry Call-To-Action

In eGlobal travel media (25 March 2013):

Potential water shortages and water stress will present a significant threat to the future growth and development of the tourism industry in the Asia Pacific region states a white paper on Tourism and Water released in Singapore.

The international white paper was prepared by a leading research consortium supported by the EarthCheck Research Institute based in Australia, together with Ecolab, the global leader in water, hygiene and energy technologies.

Dr. Susanne Becken, professor of Sustainable Tourism at Griffith University, together with Dr. Raj Rajan, vice president of Global Sustainability for Ecolab, presented the findings of the white paper at a special World Water Day and International Year of Water Cooperation Distinguished Lecture coordinated by the Banyan Tree Global Foundation.

The white paper provides a global context on water stress, availability and stewardship, and discusses the implications for the tourism industry along the three dimensions of cost, availability and quality.

“The cost of water is likely to increase, and legislation that will initiate some form of water footprint is conceivable, if not inevitable,” says Professor Becken. “Businesses that are prepared to audit and manage their water consumption will have a competitive business advantage for the expected changes in water regulation and control.”

Increasing water scarcity, Professor Becken explained, not only increases regional risk to climate change, but also often leads to conflict. According to UNDCWS (2012), there were more than 120,000 water-related disputes since 1990 in China alone.

The white paper explains that with the ongoing growth in tourism visitation, the Asia-Pacific tourism region must increase understanding of the role it needs to play in water management issues.  PATA predicts more than a half billion international visitors to the region in in 2014.

“Forward-looking hospitality businesses are working to address water consumption and minimize impacts to local communities,” said Dr. Raj Rajan, vice president of Research, Development and Engineering for Ecolab, and a prominent contributor to the white paper.  “The white paper encourages hospitality businesses in the Asia Pacific region to take a holistic systems approach to identifying and implementing water efficiency and conservation measures.”

The paper outlines how water efficiency can be achieved and undertakes a benchmarking review of hotels in the Asia Pacific using EarthCheck data. The benchmarks highlight important geographic, behavioural and operational differences across the region, which require further investigation.

The EarthCheck Research Institute will follow this white paper with two further research reports that will address water use benchmarks and baselines for hotels together with models to guide operational best practice.

Source: www.eglobaltravelmedia.com.au and  www.earthcheck.org/science

S’pore’s next challenge: ‘Treating more seawater with less energy’

By David Ee in The Straits Times (23 March 2013):

EVEN if Singapore realises its quest to supply all of its own water, it faces another challenge: acquiring the energy it takes to produce the water.

That was the point raised by Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan at yesterday’s book launch of The Singapore Water Story, which chronicles the country’s rise to becoming a world leader in water management.

“Singapore has to realise that, in fact, we have translated a dependence on water to a dependence on energy…as long as you’ve got energy, you’ve got water,” said the minister at the National University of Singapore’s Bukit Timah campus.

The technologies employed in water treatment here today, for example, reverse osmosis, require substantial amounts of energy.

The Minister explained that as the country becomes more water self-sufficient, this “simply substitutes one strategic vulnerability for another”.

To meet its energy challenge, Singapore will have rely on the same things that worked in its water story – political resolve, a clear vision, the right pricing, and a commitment to technology.

Today, Singapore produces at least 40 per cent of its own water needs – with three quarters coming from reclaimed Newater, and the rest from treated seawater.

National water agency PUB wants this to double to 80 per cent by 2060.

Reverse osmosis, the most common method to treat seawater here, typically uses up to 4.5 kilowatt hours to produce 1,000 litres of desalinated water.

That is enough energy to power an HDB flat for several hours.

But PUB is seeking to reduce these levels with new technologies. For example, it is working with Keppel Seghers to develop Memstill technology, which uses waste heat to treat seawater. The process can reduce energy use by up to two-thirds.

It is also exploring longer term solutions such as bio-mimicry, which copies the way some plants and animals treat seawater for their survival, using negligible amounts of energy.

By 2060, Singapore’s water usage could double to almost 800 million gallons a day, enough to fill more than 1,200 Olympic-size swimming pools each day.

Source: www.heresthenews.blogspot.sg

Rice does not just provide energy for our bodies; it can also power a nation’s electricity grid. In Thailand where there is a push for more renewable sources of energy, agricultural wastes have been put to good use. With government support and incentives, more than 300 small plants using renewable sources supplement a power generation system straining under growing demand, while solving the problem of agricultural wastes. Read more

Thailand: Power from waste; 300 plants feed into grid running on renewable sources like sun and wind

By Tan Hui Yee, Thailand Correspondent, in The Straits Times (22 March 2013:

NAKHON RATCHASIMA – From its nondescript entrance, Tong Hua in north-eastern Thailand looks just like any other rice mill in the country.

Walk about 100m into its sprawling compound, however, and you notice something different: A smokestack nudges an otherwise clear skyline, part of a small power plant that turns rice husks into electricity on the spot.

Tong Hua, incidentally, supplies the grain that goes into the SongHe brand of rice sold in Singapore. Its energy production is a testament to the growth of Thailand’s electricity sector, which analysts tout as the most progressive in the region.

Incentives and loans allow small operators to run more than 300 small plants using renewable sources like the sun, wind or agricultural waste. These plants in turn feed electricity back into the main grid, helping to supplement a power generation system that is straining under growing demand.

“It is an example for the region,” says Dr Chris Greacen, founder of non-profit renewable energy group Palang Thai.

Just last month, however, Thailand’s Energy Minister Pongsak Raktapongpaisarn warned a routine gas pipeline maintenance in April may cause partial blackouts. While some bemoaned official ineptitude for the possible disruption, others alleged it was a ploy to fast-track approval for controversial coal or hydropower plants.

Former energy minister Piyasvasti Amranand argues it is time to put the focus back on growing the alternative energy sector and moving away from natural gas, which accounted for some 68 per cent of power generated last year.

According to the Energy Policy and Planning Office, about 5 per cent of Thailand’s electricity is currently generated from renewable resources, if hydropower is not taken into account.

Thailand’s farms and factories seem to have tapped just about every type of waste to produce power. Rice mills burn husks for energy. Sugar mills do the same with bagasse, the fibre left over after sugar cane is crushed. Pig farms use the biogas generated by manure to create electricity.

These developments were nurtured through the gradual liberalisation of the energy sector from the 1990s, allowing small power producers to be paid premiums on top of fixed rates for their power.

At Tong Hua, a conveyor system transports about 200 tonnes of husk daily from its rice mill to a furnace, which burns it at 950 deg C to produce electricity. The firm uses 60 per cent of the electricity generated by its 7.7MW plant and sells the rest to the Provincial Electricity Authority. It sells electricity to the authorities at 2.9 baht (12 Singapore cents) per kilowatt hour but gets another 0.3 baht as part of the incentive scheme.

But its managing director Suthep Wiroadpaisit says it was motivated more by the need to fix an unstable power supply about 10 years ago and for an outlet for the husks. “We had no electricity, nowhere to put our own rice husks. We had to solve our own problem,” he tells The Straits Times.

These alternative energy plants have, in turn, pushed up the prices of agricultural waste. Rice husk, for example, now costs 1,300 baht a tonne compared to just 50 baht eight years ago, says Mr Suthep.

Although Thailand aims to have renewable energy account for a quarter of total energy consumed by the next decade, officials say it has to keep a lid on the premiums paid for alternative energy production so consumers do not end up paying more. It also has to calibrate the amounts of energy from different sources to reduce supply disruption chances.

“What will happen if it is not sunny, or if there is no wind’” Energy Ministry permanent secretary Norkhun Sitthipong points out. “This is not just about capacity, but reliability as well.”

Source: www.power-eng.com

Arts and science will have to go hand-in-hand in promoting understanding of climate change. While getting the facts and science behind climate change right is an essential part of climate change communication, an increasing focus has been placed on how they are presented. Cultural and creative resources are important tools for public engagement that have found utilisation in educational posters, conferences, and theatre and film. All these points towards the importance of engaging the people’s imagination when communicating on climate change. Read more

The ‘art’ of climate change communication

Mobilising cultural practitioners to promote understanding of climate change is important for public engagement

Adam Corner in The Guardian (18 March 2013):

Over the past decade, interest in the ‘science’ of communicating climate change has flourished. Psychologists, social marketers and campaigners have been united in the quest for systematic, reliable evidence with which to promote sustainable behaviour.

But while the science of climate change communication is clearly an essential piece of the puzzle, might there not be an ‘art’ to it too?

For individuals and organisations communicating climate change, it is easy to forget that most people don’t live their lives in a series of dislocated behaviours that can be influenced or nudged in a more sustainable direction. Ask yourself: what are the things that make you laugh, inspire you, or fill your conversations with friends? For most of us, the answer will involve culture, not cognition.

It follows that mobilising our cultural and creative resources might be as important for public engagement with climate change as technological or political changes – and there is evidence that this is starting to happen. To take one topical example, the charity Do The Green Thing (a reliably creative and unpredictable group) are publishing a series of posters by a leading artist throughout March, under the heading of “creativity versus climate change”. These are not po-faced posters, but playful provocations – and they stick in your mind for that reason.

A conference planned for June in Aberystwyth will focus on the potential for syntheses between science and art in responding to climate change. Uncivilisation, a music, literature and storytelling festival (organised by a network of writers, artists and thinkers in search of “new stories for troubled times”) is now in its fourth year. The campaign group Platform continues to oppose BP’s links with the Tate Gallery by using innovative methods like alternative audio tours, which challenge the legitimacy of oil-sponsored culture.

And organisations like Artists Project Earth (a group of artists, scientists, journalists, environmentalists, film makers and authors) have been working for many years to support climate change and environmental campaigning.

But given the importance of the issue, it is surprising how little overlap there has been between the social science of climate change communication and the creative world.

That art provides a vehicle for bringing dry political sentiment to life is certainly not a new observation – but save for a few notable exceptions, there has been a gaping hole where creative energy should be.

Climate change theatre and films are thin on the ground. The situation is barely any different in the world of literature and storytelling. While there are a handful of examples of climate change-oriented novels, it does not seem to have fired the imagination of authors. But while the potential for storytelling to make the invisible, often abstract concept of climate change tangible has so far evaded novelists, some climate change communication projects are starting to explore the territory.

A set of beautifully shot films telling the stories of people’s lives affected by the changing climate in the US state of Wisconsin are an eye-catching entry point to a set of educational materials designed to aid teaching about climate change.

And closer to home, a project aimed specifically at overcoming the limitations of conventional climate change communication strategies (ie that they tend to reach only a very narrow group of the population) offers an exciting blend of art and social science.

Named the Aspects project, it represents an attempt to connect discussion about climate change to people’s everyday lives through the medium of digital storytelling.

The Aspects website hosts a series of short films, featuring people who have a story to tell about their lives, about the weather, about their local communities – and indirectly about climate change.

What’s interesting about the Aspects approach is that while the medium appeals on a cultural level – films, storytelling, and anecdotes about the world around us – the films are also putting into practice good principles of climate change communication. The abstract, invisible nature of climate change is rendered real through everyday stories, while the fact that the storytellers are members of the public, rather than activists or campaigners, creates a positive social norm.

Typically, the challenge of climate change communication is thought to require systematic evidence about public attitudes, sophisticated models of behaviour change and the rigorous application of social scientific research. All of this is true, but it is human stories, not carbon targets, that capture people’s attention.

The science of climate change communication is essential to engage people’s minds, but the art of engaging people’s imaginations may be just as important.

Adam Corner is a researcher and writer whose work focuses on the psychology of communicating climate change. He leads the Talking Climate programme for the Climate Outreach and Information Network and is a research associate in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk