In a few days’ time – 15 April to be exact – the world remembers an event 100 years ago when the “unsinkable” Titanic struck an iceberg and started its inglorious journey to the depths of the Atlantic. There were more than 1500 fatalities and around 700 survivors, making it the world’s worst maritime disaster to date. It also spawned an industry of stories, books, films and treasures – still being viewed or offered for sale today. Could there possibly be a lesson or two from this isolated century old incident that we could relate to in this climate-challenged, technology-driven age of ours?

Wasn’t there a warning issued about icebergs in the Atlantic at the time? Didn’t other passenger ships in the same area manage to avoid the dreaded obstacles and report them to shipping in the area? There’s a well-researched, scientific report of a different kind just issued by the IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – emphasising extreme weather for the planet and worse to come. The signs are there. It’s already underway. The risks are identified. Disasters are predicted. Trends, models, charts – technologically aided and science based – all show an upward movement of higher average temperatures, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and Arctic ice. Less icebergs for sure, but more dangers to watch out for.  And who would be brave or stupid enough to ignore the warnings? Which captains of our ships of state are prepared to turn things around? Surely it is not too late to set the ship – Planet Earth – on a less risky course. We do know what safe fuels we could be using – zero carbon, clean energy – for a green earth trip. We do know that we must stop the fossil fuel burning. We must cut deforestation. Use less of the earth’s resources. Consume less and waste less. The earth is not for burning; the ship is not for sinking. Full steam ahead. Solar powered, of course! – Ken Hickson

The former Marks and Spencer executive chairman and Plan A pioneer shares his thoughts on how sustainability and profit can be compatible. Sir Stuart Rose, on the changing role of business leaders, gives the example of what M&S has been doing around sustainable fish sourcing, health and nutrition, waste and recycling and sustainable livelihoods in supply chains. Read More

Stuart Rose for the Guardian Professional Network (29 March 2012):

Sir Stuart Rose, former CEO of Marks and Spencer.

There is something revolutionary and very new about the current time and business leaders are thinking differently about their role. We face a dilemma because although everybody is better off than they’ve ever been at any time in our history, we’ve also got the biggest gap between the rich and the poor that we’ve ever had, and we’ve potentially got a planet which is going to go bust any day. Our world is moving at an ever-accelerating pace, and with the advent of social media, what happens in New York now can be reported across the globe 60 seconds later.

These changes call for more open leadership. There is a definite need for more open dialogue, for more social engagement, for more social responsibility and for more accountability. I think that business leaders today have to be more rounded than they used to be, they have to be completely multi-functional and fast-moving.

Taking the sustainability agenda forward

CEOs who want to take this agenda foward in their business must use their influence to put things on the agenda and create space for others to lead – to get people thinking, talking, then acting.

To give an example, I took 100 senior people from M&S to the cinema to see An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary on Al Gore’s campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognised problem worldwide. Although nothing might have happened as a result of this, I actually had about 75 emails the following morning saying “that’s scary”, “this is amazing, we ought to be able to do something with what we do and the breadth of what we’ve got”. For me that was the green light saying these guys want to do something.

In addition to this, I also set up a committee which I chaired. Plan A was part of the drumbeat, and every week I would raise the subject – the fact that I was the person chairing it meant that the senior managers at M&S had to come.

It’s also important to build support in other places. When I talked to the board about Plan A, one-third of them probably thought I was batty, and probably only 10% or so wanted to do it. That’s usual, because when you’re slightly ahead of the field you typically have only a minority of people who believe in you.

Thinking differently about how you engage with your investors is key. One of the problems behind a lot of the issues that we’ve got is that we live in a very short-term environment where we have to have results today, tomorrow, the day after, and not in a years’ time, three years’ time, five years’ time. That’s a big issue for public limited companies. When we were working on Plan A I said to the investors: “We’re going to invest £200m over the next three years and not put a penny on to the consumer.” They all held their hands up in horror, and said: “That’s £200m margin! We don’t like that. It’s going to take longer for us to get the share price from X to Y.” But that’s what leaders should do! Blaming investors for not doing things like Plan A, and for not acting in the long-term interests of your business, is an easy excuse that chief executives use.

The changing role of the CEO

CEOs aren’t just leaders within their business any more. They also play a role leading collaboratively with others in all kinds of places such as supply chains or government regulation. M&S has been doing this around sustainable fish sourcing, health and nutrition, waste and recycling and sustainable livelihoods in supply chains.

Leading consumers is also important. If you wait for customers to tell you that you need to do something, you’re too late. Good business leaders should be half a step ahead of what customers want, ie they don’t actually quite know they want it. That’s what innovation’s about. With Plan A, we didn’t wait for the consumers to tell us. With Fairtrade, we didn’t wait for the consumers to tell us. And with charging for plastic bags, we didn’t wait for consumers to tell us. We just did it.

Setting ambitious targets and making substantial investments

Thinking about sustainability initiatives just in terms of adding cost is the wrong way to think about it. M&S has proved sustainable business can be profitable. In 2007 Plan A was a £200m investment and I said it wouldn’t make any profit in the first five years. But in the 2010 annual report the auditors said £50m of extra profit was attributable to doing the right thing. So there’s the proof. So any chief executive that says “Oh, I’m sorry, I can’t afford to do it, I haven’t got the people, it’s all too expensive, the consumers don’t want it, they haven’t asked me for it, it’s the wrong thing to do and it’s going to cost me money” is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong.

The creation of profit and running businesses sustainably are not in conflict.

Appealing to the majority

There are always chief executives who are ahead of the game, who recognise that the world is not the place it was 10 years ago and that they have to find different routes and listen to different inputs. They are in the minority. The tail end will never catch up and the rest are in the middle. The middle’s a comfortable place to be, and everybody else seems to be doing the same thing until you suddenly find, “Oops! He’s not doing that any more. Oh dear!”, and you realise you’ve been left behind. Today’s business leaders need to pay attention, because there is a group of leaders that are redefining the rules for everyone else.

Business schools need to play their part too. Executive education providers need to train leaders to be proper leaders. Top executives typically get an MBA, they stand on their heads, they do a whole pile of case studies on X, Y and Z. But who teaches them about how to behave? Leadership is not just about producing the right numbers. Leadership is about setting the right tone in the organisation. It’s about ethos, it’s about what you stand for, it’s about trust.

Sir Stuart Rose spearheaded the launch of Marks and Spencer’s Plan A in January 2007, setting out 100 commitments to achieve in 5 years. Plan A is now extended to 180 commitments to achieve by 2015, with the ultimate goal of becoming the world’s most sustainable major retailer.

On 29 March, Rose will launch a new report, Leadership in a Rapidly Changing World: How Business Leaders are Reframing Success, produced by Ashridge Business School and the International Business Leaders Forum (IBLF) on the changing role of business leaders.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Under the Climate Change Act, ministers must decide by the end of 2012 whether to include aviation and shipping emissions in the UK’s long-term targets, which require emissions to be cut by 80% by 2050. The target can be achieved at a cost of 1-2% of GDP, says David Kennedy, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, who has challenged ministers to include the sectors in order to ensure the UK is meeting international obligations in spirit as well as in the letter of the law. Read More

Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent for the guardian.co.uk (5 April 2012):

The government’s green credentials will be put to a “key test” Thursday, as ministers will be urged by their advisers to include greenhouse gas emissions from aviation and shipping in the UK’s carbon targets.

If airlines and container ships are included, the task of meeting the targets is made much harder. These two large and growing sources of emissions are currently excluded from the goals under a technicality.

David Kennedy, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, challenged ministers to include the sectors in order to ensure the UK is meeting international obligations in spirit as well as in the letter of the law. “This will be a key test for the government,” Kennedy said. “If we don’t include these sectors that would in effect be a lowering of the UK’s carbon targets.”

The issue is one of acute political sensitivity, because politicians appear reluctant to jeopardise the rise of low-cost airlines offering cheap flights. Within the Conservative party ranks, it is likely to be particularly controversial given the increasingly open climate scepticism of many Tory MPs.

Kennedy said he was aware of the potential for a political storm over his proposals, but said that if ministers chose not to accept the report’s advice, it would mean they were watering down the UK’s carbon targets.

He said that including aviation emissions need not mean fewer or more expensive flights – a key consideration as thousands of holidaymakers take budget flights over the Easter break. The aviation sector could still expand without punitive costs being passed on to consumers, as long as emissions from other sectors – such as residential buildings, energy generation and industry – are cut in line with long-term goals.

“This has no effect on aviation expansion,” said Kennedy, including plans for new airports or a third runway at Heathrow. In part, this is because the UK’s current climate targets have been drawn up with an eye to the possible inclusion of these sectors at a later date, so the targets for the rest of the economy have been made to compensate for this.

However, if the two sectors are included, it would mean that the equivalent amount of carbon emissions allowable in the period 2023-2027 would have to rise from 1950 megatonnes to 2150 megatonnes.

Under the Climate Change Act, ministers must decide by the end of 2012 whether to include aviation and shipping emissions in the UK’s long-term targets, which require emissions to be cut by 80% by 2050.

When the act was passed in 2008, aviation and shipping were excluded because they are not counted in international targets, such as those in force under the United Nations’ agreements, including the Kyoto protocol. Historically, these emissions have been ignored because of the difficulty of apportioning them to different countries, and because of the danger that transport companies could try to evade any restrictions, for instance by choosing different ports. But these sectors account for a rising proportion of global greenhouse gas emissions, as international trade increases.

The European Union has moved to include aviation emissions under its flagship emissions trading scheme, but has faced fierce opposition from airlines in the US, China, India and other countries. Plans to include shipping under the trading system were shelved, in light of the effort needed to ensure the problems over aviation can be solved.

A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said: “The government welcomes this report, which is critical to informing the decision over how to account for international aviation and shipping emissions domestically. We will consider this advice carefully in reaching our decision which is due by the end of this year as set out in the Climate Change Act 2008.”

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Committee on Climate Change Report announcement (5 April 2012):

CCC recommends formalising existing approaches to include international aviation and shipping emissions in carbon budgets

There is no longer any reason to exclude international aviation and shipping emissions from carbon budgets according to the Committee on Climate Change. This was the conclusion in the Committee’s report “Scope of carbon budgets – Statutory advice on inclusion of international aviation and shipping”.

Emissions from international aviation and shipping were initially left out of carbon budgets and the 2050 target when the Climate Change Act became Law in 2008, with the decision on inclusion delayed to 2012.

In the meantime, the Committee and the Government have acted as though international aviation and shipping emissions are in the 2050 target, based on a certain interpretation of the legislation. The risk is that a new Government would not adopt the same interpretation.

In order to mitigate this risk, the Committee recommends that the current approach should be formalised through including international aviation and shipping emissions in carbon budgets and the 2050 target, therefore providing more certainty that it will be continued in future. Moreover, inclusion would provide the most transparent, comprehensive and flexible accounting framework under the Climate Change Act.

To implement the new approach the Committee recommends that currently legislated budgets are increased to allow for international aviation and shipping emissions:

International aviation emissions should be added to currently legislated budgets budgets based on the UK share of the EU ETS cap (i.e. 31 MtCO2e per year).

International shipping emissions should be added at around 9 MtCO2e per year, based on a projection of UK emissions which reflects current international policy (i.e. the Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI) adopted by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO)).

The implication of inclusion on this basis is that there would be no new commitments or costs in aviation, shipping or other sectors of the economy. For example, commitments and costs relating to aviation have already been made in the EU context, and would simply be reflected in carbon budgets.

The Committee’s report also shows how a 2050 target including aviation and shipping emissions could be achieved, building on its own previous work and that of the Government in the November 2011 Carbon Plan.

The analysis in the report reinforces other studies which suggest the 2050 target can be achieved at a cost of 1-2% of GDP. This cost was previously accepted by Parliament when the Climate Change Act was first legislated, given the much higher costs and consequences from not acting to reduce emissions.

The long-term emissions pathways in the report highlight the need for deep cuts in emissions from the power, surface transport, and buildings sectors. They justify the current policy approach which is aimed at developing and deploying a range of low-carbon power technologies (i.e. nuclear, renewables, CCS), improving energy efficiency in buildings and supporting renewable heat investment, improving fuel efficiency of conventional vehicles and catalysing development of the electric vehicle market.

On the long-term path for aviation emissions, the Committee recommends that the aim should be for emissions in 2050 that are no higher than 2005 levels. Given scope for increased fuel and carbon efficiency of flying, this would allow some demand growth over the next four decades. The Committee suggests that this path should be delivered through EU and global policies rather than a unilateral UK approach, in order to avoid competitiveness impacts that could otherwise ensue.

Lord Adair Turner, Chair of the CCC said:

“Including international aviation and shipping emissions in UK carbon budgets has an importance which goes beyond the specific issue of international aviation and shipping. This report makes a recommendation which, if now accepted by government and Parliament, will complete the UK statutory framework.”

Source: www.theccc.org.uk

Imagine being able to use electricity to power your car — even if it’s not an electric vehicle. Currently, electrical energy generated by various methods is still difficult to store efficiently. Chemical batteries, hydraulic pumping and water splitting suffer from low-energy-density storage or incompatibility with current transportation infrastructure.  Researchers have demonstrated a method for converting CO2 into liquid fuel using electricity. Read More

Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have for the first time demonstrated a method for converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuel isobutanol using electricity.

The study was funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

Report from the Engineer (2 April 2012):

Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have demonstrated a method for converting CO2 into liquid fuel isobutanol using electricity.

Currently, electrical energy generated by various methods is still difficult to store efficiently. Chemical batteries, hydraulic pumping and water splitting suffer from low-energy-density storage or incompatibility with current transportation infrastructure.

In a study published on 30 March in the journal Science, James Liao, UCLA’s Ralph M Parsons Foundation Chair in Chemical Engineering, and his team report a method for storing electrical energy as chemical energy in higher alcohols, which can be used as liquid transportation fuels.

‘The current way to store electricity is with lithium-ion batteries, in which the density is low, but when you store it in liquid fuel the density could actually be very high,’ Liao said in a statement. ‘In addition, we have the potential to use electricity as transportation fuel without needing to change current infrastructure.’

Liao and his team are said to have genetically engineered a lithoautotrophic micro-organism (Ralstonia eutropha H16) to produce isobutanol and 3-methyl-1-butanol in an electro-bioreactor using CO2 as the sole carbon source and electricity as the sole energy input.

Photosynthesis is the process of converting light energy into chemical energy and storing it in the bonds of sugar. It involves two steps: a light reaction and a dark reaction. The light reaction converts light energy into chemical energy and must take place in the light. The dark reaction converts CO2 to sugar and doesn’t need light to occur.

‘We’ve been able to separate the light reaction from the dark reaction and, instead of using biological photosynthesis, we are using solar panels to convert the sunlight to electrical energy, then to a chemical intermediate, and using that to power CO2 fixation to produce the fuel,’ Liao said. ‘This method could be more efficient than the biological system.’

Liao said that with biological systems the plants used require large areas of agricultural land. However, because Liao’s method does not require the light and dark reactions to take place together, solar panels, for example, can be built in the desert or on rooftops.

Theoretically, the hydrogen generated by solar electricity can drive CO2 conversion in lithoautotrophic micro-organisms engineered to synthesise high-energy-density liquid fuels. But the low solubility, the low mass-transfer rate and the safety issues surrounding hydrogen limit the efficiency and scalability of such processes. Instead, Liao’s team reportedly found formic acid to be a favourable substitute and efficient energy carrier.

‘Instead of using hydrogen, we use formic acid as the intermediary,’ Liao said. ‘We use electricity to generate formic acid and then use the formic acid to power the CO2 fixation in bacteria in the dark to produce isobutanol and higher alcohols.’

The electrochemical formate production and the biological CO2 fixation and higher alcohol synthesis now open up the possibility of the electricity-driven bioconversion of CO2 to a variety of chemicals. In addition, the transformation of formate into liquid fuel will also play an important role in the biomass refinery process, according to Liao.

‘We’ve demonstrated the principle, and now we think we can scale up,’ he said.

Source: www.theengineer.co.uk

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states that global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat-waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of dangerous and costly weather disasters. Not news to many who have seen this coming for a long while, but Australian climate commissioner Will Steffen says it’s one of the most important papers released in the past decade. Read More

By Julian Drape (AAP) in The Australian (29 March 2012):

ONE of the Federal Government’s leading climate change experts says a United Nations report is an early warning that the world will face more deadly extreme weather events unless it tackles global warming.

An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released overnight states that global warming is leading to such severe storms, droughts and heat waves that nations should prepare for an unprecedented onslaught of dangerous and costly weather disasters.

In the past, the IPCC, founded in 1988 by the UN, has focused on the slow inexorable rise of temperatures and oceans as part of global warming.

For the policy makers summary of the report go to:

http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/images/uploads/SREX-SPMbrocure_FINAL.pdf

The latest report is the first to look at the less common but far more noticeable extreme weather changes which recently have cost on average about $77 billion a year in damage.

Government climate commissioner Will Steffen says it’s one of the most important papers released in the past decade.

“It’s showing us, for the first time, that we can see the fingerprints of the human-driven warming in some of the extreme events that we’ve seen,” Professor Steffen said via a phone hook-up from London where he is attending a sustainability conference.

“This is an early warning sign that if we don’t get this underlying warming trend under control there’s going to be a lot more heatwaves, droughts and intense rainfall events.”

Prof Steffen, a climate scientist at the Australian National University, says Australia is one of the most vulnerable continents when it comes to extreme weather events.

The IPCC report suggests that in Australia there will almost certainly be an increase in days over 35 or 40 degrees Celsius. Heatwaves are likely to become more frequent and last longer.

Dry spells also are likely to last longer in southern Australia, and when it does rain there’ll be more extreme precipitation.

The strength of cyclones will probably increase and they may come further south, even if there are fewer of them.

“The rather modest changes in average temperature and average rainfall that we’ve seen so far really manifest themselves in terms of things that matter for people in terms of these extreme events,” Prof Steffen said.

Examples include killer heatwaves in central Europe in 2003 and southern Australia in 2009 “that led to more deaths in Melbourne than the Black Saturday bushfires”.

There was also “little doubt” that recent flooding in southeastern Australia was made worse by sea temperature warming and higher evaporation rates.

The 594-page IPCC report blames the scale of recent and future disasters on a combination of man-made climate change, population shifts and poverty.

Prof Steffen is one of six members of Labor’s climate commission that was established in early 2011 to provide information and expert advice to the government and the Australian public.

Earlier in March, the commission warned Australians not to fooled into thinking the world wasn’t warming just because much of the country experienced a relatively wet and cool summer.

A commission report stated it was wrong to be blinded to the long-term trend by year-to-year variability and suggested recent heavy rainfall and flooding could have been caused by climate change.

Source: www.theaustralian.com.au

The man who has managed Australia’s multi-billion dollar Future Fund for six years has delivered a stinging broadside to the Government’s carbon pricing scheme, calling it “the worst piece of economic reform” he has ever seen. Mr David Murray has previously said there is no link between CO2 and global warming. The carbon pricing scheme will come into force on 1 July and will charge the country’s biggest 500 companies A$23 for each tonne of carbon they produce. Read More

By chief political correspondent Emma Griffiths ABC News (30 March 2012):

The man who has managed the Australia’s multi-billion dollar Future Fund for six years has delivered a stinging broadside to the Government’s carbon pricing scheme, calling it “the worst piece of economic reform” he has ever seen. David Murray ends his term as chairman of the fund’s board on Monday.

The former Commonwealth Bank CEO has this morning told Radio National that the carbon tax is “very bad” for the Australian economy.

“If you want me to tell you my view, it is the worst piece of economic reform I have ever seen in my life in this country,” he said.

“The consequence of introducing that tax at that level in Australia today is very, very bad for this economy, particularly in terms of its international competitiveness.

“It raises costs further within Australia, it reduces our competitiveness for export of energy-related commodities, and it therefore renders us less competitive in the future.”

Mr Murray has previously said there is no link between carbon dioxide and global warming.

The carbon pricing scheme will come into force on July 1 and will charge the country’s biggest 500 companies $23 for each tonne of carbon they produce.

After three years that fixed amount will give way to a price determined by the market.

Treasurer Wayne Swan says the carbon pricing scheme is “world’s best practice”.

“Mr Murray is a well-known opponent of the science of climate change,” he told ABC News 24.

“I just reject what Mr Murray has had to say about this fundamental economic reform which goes to the core of our future economic prosperity.

“Big reforms like this are tough reforms, they’re never easy, and you will get vested interests and people like Mr Murray out there opposing them.”

“It’s not a surprise to me that Mr Murray might oppose a policy of this government.”

It is not the first time Mr Murray has criticised government policy.

He has previously revealed he was not in favour of the mining tax – an opinion he restated this morning.

“It was very clumsily introduced, it was very clumsily designed and the timing at the top of the terms of trade was not a good timing,” he said.

He has also been critical of the Government’s attack on big banks, particularly over raising interest rates.

Mr Murray says the banks have an important role in the economy.

“By jawboning their interest rates down when the international cost of funds and the domestic cost of funds has been behaving the way it is, is to render the banks less able to perform their very important role,” he said.

Mr Murray would not give his view of the Government’s ability to manage the economy overall.

The subject of Mr Murray’s replacement recently caused a furore when the government overlooked the board’s choice of former treasurer Peter Costello, appointing chairman of the Australian Securities Exchange David Gonski instead.

Source: www.abc.net.au

“Let’s not simply reduce the CO2 emissions going up into the atmosphere. Let’s draw them down,” says engineering professor Robert Brown at a two-day workshop on biochar — the term used for the charcoal created when biomass is decomposed at high heat – which was part of the Carbon War Room‘s Creating Climate Wealth Summit. But many obstacles remain to taking biochar to scale as a climate solution. Read More

By Marc Gunther in GreenBiz.com (29 March 2012):

“Let’s not simply reduce the CO2 emissions going up into the atmosphere. Let’s draw them down.”

So says Robert Brown, a professor of engineering at Iowa State University and a leader of the university’s Initiative for a Carbon Negative Economy and its Bioeconomy Institute. Those are interdisciplinary campus efforts to develop ways to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by growing plants or algae, making them into fuels and burying their carbon residues in soil — and make money doing it.

The notion that we can generate wealth and remove CO2 from the air is obviously appealing. As atmospheric concentrations of CO2 rise and climate risks grow, so does the need for carbon-negative technologies that pull CO2 from the air, as plants do, and then store it underground or deep in the ocean.

But is this practical or a pipe dream? That’s what Brown and his colleagues at Iowa State and its Bioeconomy Institute want to find out, as they explained this week at a two-day workshop on biochar — that’s the term used for the charcoal created when biomass is decomposed at high heat, in a process called pyrolysis. The workshop was part of the Carbon War Room‘s Creating Climate Wealth Summit in Washington, D.C..

The Carbon War Room, as you may know, is a nonprofit created by Richard Branson of Virgin fame to unlock gigaton-scale, market-driven solutions to climate change. Its new president will be Jose Maria Figueres, the former president of Costa Rica. The group is also tackling projects around energy efficiency, renewable jet fuel, low-carbon ocean shipping and sustainable livestock.

Biochar has been around for a long time, but it’s getting new attention from government and business. The Iowa State researchers last fall were awarded a $25 million research grant from USDA to see if they can find ways to use marginal farmlands to grow perennial grasses and turn them into biofuels and biochar. Local firms like ADM, the agribusiness giant, have expressed support.

This week’s biochar workshop attracted an interesting crowd. USDA was there, as were executives from Conoco Phillips (they are interested in biofuels), Tenaska Energy (also biofuels), Phycal (which makes fuels from cassava and algae), Cool Planet Biofuels (a California startup funded by Google that is working on negative-carbon fuels, using miscanthus, among other feedstocks) and Biochar Solutions (which makes machinery to make biochar.) It’s very, very small but a biochar industry seems to be taking root.

Biochar, as I wrote last summer, can be traced back to Brazil, where dark soils in the Amazon region are known as “Terra Preta.” Some scientists believe they were created as long as 4,500 years ago, and that they helped support a complex, farm-based civilization in the Amazon, despite the region’s poor soil.

Biochar isn’t just one thing, as Brown explained. It can be made using different processes from cellulosic feedstocks including wood chips, switch grass or corn stover, or from lipid-rich biomass such as rapeseed, soybeans or micro-algae. Essentially, through, the idea is to speed up and optimize the natural process in which plants (carbohydrates) decompose into fuels (hydrocarbons).

Here’s how the Carbon War Room explains it:

High-yielding varieties of terrestrial plants or aquatic species are used to fix carbon in the form of biomass. The biomass is collected and through an oxygen-starved process known as pyrolysis, is converted to an energy-rich liquid called bio-oil and a carbon-rich solid called biochar.

The bio-oil is upgraded to transportation fuels or used to generate electric power, thus providing high-value products to the economy. The biochar is incorporated into farmland where it serves the triple purposes of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere for millenia, building soil carbon and recycling nutrients removed with harvested biomass.

Iowa State has a small processing unit that can process about 1/4 ton per day of biomass, Brown told me. The researchers are feeding it switchgrass, wood chips and corn stover (the non-edible parts of corn plants, which, needless to say, are plentiful in Iowa.)

Many obstacles remain to taking biochar to scale as a climate solution. For one thing, Iowa farmers aren’t particularly interested in biochar, at least not in paying for it — perhaps because their soils are among the richest in the world. The agricultural benefits of biochar — its ability to retain water or nutrients — remain largely unproven.

David Laird, an Iowa State soil scientist who is working on the project, said that in a dry year, soil enriched with biochar “could have a significant positive impact on crop yields” by retaining water. “But in a wet year, that’s meaningless,” he noted. Biochar would probably have a far greater value if it could be used to enrich poor quality soil, where it could not only increase crop yields but drive up land values. In Africa, for instance, some people say biochar could have a big impact on agriculture.

The USDA grant and other funding will enable the Iowa State team to better understand both the science and economics of biochar and biofuels. They’ll have to wrestle with some tradeoffs: So-called fast pyrolysis processes biomass at high heat, which makes more fuel and less biochar; that’s good for the business model, not so good for climate impact. By contrast, slow pyrolysis generates more biochar to sequester but less fuel to take to market.

Meanwhile, Brown and Laird are experimenting with biochar in their own backyards. Brown says he grew six-foot-tall pepper plants, and Laird has been growing tomato plants.

How are the tomatoes doing? I asked him. “They’re great,” he replied. “But it has nothing to do with me, and a lot to do with my wife.”

Source: www.greenbiz.com

Singapore recycling firm Wah & Hua is looking to convert waste plastic into biofuel, utilising Japanese technology already used in the city of Kitakyushu.  Meanwhile, in the UK, Cynar has developed a process to turn waste plastics into fuel and has awarded a US$11 million contract to Rockwell Automation to design and build a new end-of-life plastic to fuel conversion plant in Bristol. Singapore hosts Clean Enviro Summit and WasteMET as part of International Water Week in the first week of July this year. Read More

Clean Enviro Summit and WasteMET Asia will be held in association with Singapore International Water Week at Marina Bay Sands 1-4 July 2012) For more info go to http://cleanenvirosummit.sg

By Leonard Lim in The Straits Times (2 April 2012):

A Singapore delegation that visited Kitakyushu, a Japanese city known for its eco-friendly ways, has come back with ideas that could be applied here.

Among the 22-strong group is Ms Melissa Tan, a senior business manager at recycling firm Wah & Hua, who said: ‘Kitakyushu is already able to convert waste plastic into biofuel, and my company is now doing research and development into it.’

‘We exchanged pointers, and I’m getting a representative to come to my plant to see what other opportunities we can explore,’ she added.

‘Over there, they even recycle things like home appliances, whereas in other parts of the world, you would throw them away.’

Associate Professor Wang Jing-Yuan, director of the Residues and Resource Reclamation Centre in NTU

Led by Singapore Environment Institute director Ong Eng Kian, the delegation – comprising recycling industry representatives, academics, and National Environment Agency (NEA) and Spring Singapore staff – spent a week in Kitakyushu early last month.

Kitakyushu is one of 11 ‘Future City Model Projects’ in Japan, and a leader in using next-generation technologies and promoting eco-industry. In 2006, Time magazine called it a model city for environmental improvement.

Apart from discussions with city officials, the delegation also visited plants that recycle waste, from television sets to plastic drink bottles to paper.

The group held an industry forum and reunion last Friday at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to discuss business opportunities from that trip.

Many of the industry techniques remain trade secrets, but through conversations with the Japanese, friendships were forged and follow-up meetings arranged.

Other technologies that impressed the delegation: a Kitakyushu firm’s ability to separate industrial waste, analyse the moisture content and blend it into an ingredient for cement-making.

Ms Tan said Singapore does not recycle all of its industrial waste, with some portions that may be contaminated with, say, food, sent to the incinerator.

Mr Ong, who had contacted the Japanese to arrange the trip, stressed that any adoption of technology had to fit the Singapore context.

For instance, he was impressed with a waste-treatment gasification plasma plant that, unlike Singapore’s incineration plants, does not produce any bottom ash and is hence seen as cleaner.

But there is one drawback. It can handle only 900 tonnes of waste a day, compared with the Tuas South Incineration Plant’s 3,000 tonnes.

Japan’s strong recycling culture – an area Singapore is trying to build up – also impressed the delegation.

In 2010, Japan’s plastic recycling rate was 77 per cent.

Singapore’s national recycling rate was 59 per cent last year, and 57 per cent in 2009. The NEA has set targets of 65 per cent by 2020, and 70 per cent by 2030.

‘Over there, they even recycle things like home appliances, whereas in other parts of the world, you would throw them away,’ said Associate Professor Wang Jing-Yuan, director of the Residues and Resource Reclamation Centre in NTU, and a member of the delegation.

It boils down to continuing to instil in people that recycling is a basic social duty, said industry experts, though they admitted this would take time.

Mr Ong said: ‘I asked someone there how come he recycles and he replied simply, ‘My mother told me to.”

Source: www.straitstimes.com

Waste Plastic to Fuel Facility to be Built for SITA in Bristol

Waste Management World (28 March 2012):

London, UK based Cynar, which has developed a process to turn waste plastics into fuel, has awarded an $11 million contract to Rockwell Automation (to design and build a new end-of-life plastic to fuel conversion plant in Bristol, UK.

Rockwell said that the project is being carried out on behalf of SITA UK, Cynar’s customer and partner in the development.

According to Cynar its technology uses liquefaction, pyrolysis and distillation of plastics, and can handle almost all the End-of-Life-Plastic (ELP) that is currently being sent to landfill.

The company claimed that a major advantage of the process is its high efficiency, with each facility able to produce up to 19,000 litres of fuel from 20 tonnes of ELP.

Cynar said that the system consists of stock in-feed system, pyrolysis chambers, contactors, distillation, oil recovery line and syngas.

ELP is loaded via a hot-melt infeed system directly into main pyrolysis chamber and agitation commences to even the temperature and homogenise the feedstocks. Pyrolysis then begins and the plastic becomes a vapour. Non-plastic materials fall to the bottom of the chamber.

The vapour is converted into the various fractions in the distillation column and the distillates then pass into the recovery tanks. The Syngas is then diverted through a Scrubber before being sent back into the furnaces to heat the pyrolysis chambers.

The cleaned distillates are pumped to the storage tanks.

“Our technology represents a unique and profitable way to significantly decrease the amount of end-of-life plastics that are disposed in landfills and incinerators,” claimed Michael Murray, Cynar CEO and chairman.

Rockwell’s role in the project is to strengthen the technology by providing complete design, engineering life cycle maintenance, and local support.

“This agreement with Cynar demonstrates Rockwell Automation’s ability to deliver scalable, complex solutions on a global level. We’re pleased to work with Cynar in an industry that’s making the world more sustainable,” said Hedwig Maes, president of Rockwell Automation Europe, Middle East and Africa region.

“This win is significant for us in the waste to energy market,” explained Terry Gebert, vice president and general manager, Rockwell Automation Global Solutions.

“It includes the design and build of process skids, automation architecture, software, power control and engineering/startup services in one fully integrated solution, using the Rockwell Automation PlantPAx? process automation system,” he added.

Rockwell said that its team has worked with Cynar over the past two years developing the engineering, modularisation and process improvements of Cynar’s plastics to fuel conversion plant.

Cynar said that its first full scale plastic waste to fuel facility is operating in Ireland and that it has agreed an exclusive contract with SITA/Suez for a total of 10 plants.

Source: www.waste-management-world.com

So far, conventional solutions to global warming — new government policies and changes in individual behaviour — haven’t delivered. But we can deliberately alter ourselves, three researchers suggest. Human engineering poses less danger than altering our planet through geo-engineering, and it could augment changes to personal behaviour or policies to mitigate climate change, they write in an article to be published in the journal Ethics, Policy and the Environment. Read More

By Wynne Parry, LiveScience Senior Writer (30 March 2012):

So far, conventional solutions to global warming — new government policies and changes in individual behavior — haven’t delivered. And more radical options, such as pumping sulfur into the atmosphere to counteract warming, pose a great deal of risk.

There may be another route to avoid the potentially disastrous effects of climate change: We can deliberately alter ourselves, three researchers suggest.

Human engineering, as they call it, poses less danger than altering our planet through geoengineering, and it could augment changes to personal behavior or policies to mitigate climate change, they write in an article to be published in the journal Ethics, Policy and the Environment.

“We are serious philosophers, but we might not be entirely serious that people should be doing this,” said Anders Sandberg, one of the authors and an ethicist at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. “What we are arguing is we should be taking a look at this, at the very least.” [Save the Planet? 10 Bizarre Solutions]

Their suggestions

In their article, they put forward a series of suggestions, intended as examples of the sorts of human engineering measures that people could voluntarily adopt. These include:

-Induce intolerance to red meat (think lactose intolerance), since livestock farming accounts for a significant portion of greenhouse gas emissions.

-Make humans smaller to reduce the amount of energy we each need to consume. This could be done by selecting smaller embryos through preimplantation genetic diagnosis, a technique already in use to screen for genetic diseases. “Human engineering could therefore give people the choice between having a greater number of smaller children or a smaller number of larger children,” they write.

-Reduce birthrates by making people smarter, since higher cognitive ability appears linked to lower birthrates. This could be achieved through a variety of means, including better schooling, electrical stimulation of the brain and drugs designed to improve cognitive ability, they propose.

-Treat people with hormones, such as oxytocin, to make us more altruistic and empathetic. As a result, people would be more willing to act as a group and more sensitive to the suffering of animals and other people caused by climate change.

Engineering the Earth

Frustration with the gap between measures to address climate change and rising greenhouse gas emissions has prompted a colorful array of geoengineering, or planet-altering, solutions. These include pumping sulfur particles or other aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect the sun’s warmth back out into space; seeding the oceans with iron to prompt algal blooms that would, in theory, suck carbon out of the atmosphere and eventually tuck it away in the seafloor; and perhaps most realistically, pumping the excess carbon into reservoirs and storing it there.

In general, these solutions are problematic because they cannot be ground-tested before being implemented, and once implemented, the effects would be global, according to Sandberg

“If I want to test out one of those brain-enhancing devices, I can test it on medical students. If something goes wrong, I might get a lawsuit, but it is a localized problem. How do you test geoengineering?” Sandberg said. “How many Earths do we have to test on?”

What’s more, a change that benefits one country may hurt another, he said.

Changing ourselves

The concept of human engineering isn’t new. Sandberg studies the ethics of human enhancement, or “all the tools we have to mess with ourselves to improve our performance,” as he puts it. “A lot of them are quite controversial, except the ones we don’t recognize,” he told LiveScience.

Someone will tell you, “‘I think it’s horrible people take pills to become smarter,’ but they are saying it over coffee,” he said alluding to the alertness-enhancing effects of caffeine in the coffee. Supplementing salt with iodine is credited with preventing brain damage in infants, and as a result, boosting intelligence around the world.

Fluoride is put into water systems to protect our teeth, and we receive vaccines to protect against disease. Both measures — just like human engineering measures that could address climate change — carry risk, but they have been widely adopted, Sandberg and his colleagues point out.

“Now, we are not that interested in saying the government should impose any of this stuff. … It is more interesting to think about what can people actually do to modify themselves that might be green,” he said. “I am mildly skeptical if anything we propose is going to happen. I think it’s most likely green changes to human nature aren’t anything we have thought of.”

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

After getting called out by an environmental group, General Motors has pulled support from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based non-profit well-known for attacking the science behind global warming and climate change. The automaker said it won’t be making further donations. GM CEO Dan Akerson said his company is running its business under the assumption that climate change is real. Read More

Sharon Silke Carty in Huffington Post (30 March 2012):

After getting called out by an environmental group, General Motors has pulled support from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit well-known for attacking the science behind global warming and climate change.

The automaker told the Heartland Institute last week that it won’t be making further donations, spokesman Greg Martin said. At a speech earlier this month, GM CEO Dan Akerson said his company is running its business under the assumption that climate change is real.

“We applaud GM’s decision and the message it sends — that it is no longer acceptable for corporations to promote the denial of climate change and that support for an organization like Heartland is not in line with GM’s values,” said Daniel Souweine, campaign director for Forecast the Facts, a group that urges meteorologists to talk more openly about climate change.

Internal documents leaked in February showed that the General Motors Foundation — which the automaker runs separately from its business — donated to the institute $15,000 in 2010 and again in 2011, with another $15,000 expected to be gifted this year.

Heartland, which identifies itself as a free-market think tank, has questioned the ideas on global warming through its newsletters, web site and associated scientists. Last year, the tagline for its annual conference on the subject was “Global Warming: Was It Ever Really a Crisis?”

Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute, said GM had been a Heartland supporter for 20 years. “We regret the loss of their support, particularly since it was prompted by false claims contained in a fake memo circulated by disgraced climate scientist Peter Gleick,” he said in a statement. “We once again respectfully ask liberal advocacy groups such as Huffington Post, the Center for American Progress, 350.org and Greenpeace to stop attacking scientists who question the theory of man-made global warming and corporations and foundations that are willing to fund open debate on this important public policy issue.”

The Heartland Institute said the internal documents were stolen by someone posing as a member of the board, who asked for the material to be sent to a new email account. Since then, Peter Gleick, president and co-founder of climate research group the Pacific Institute, has confessed to the stunt and noted that he regrets his actions.

The bulk of Heartland’s funding comes from one anonymous donor, who has given the group $11 million since 2007.

Nonprofit groups are not legally obligated to reveal their donors. Previously Heartland was transparent about its funding, even posting a list of contributors on its website, but removed it in 2004.

“Critics who couldn’t or wouldn’t engage in fair debate over our ideas found the donor list a convenient place to find the names of unpopular companies or foundations, which they used in ad hominem attacks against us,” institute representatives wrote after taking down the list. “After much deliberation and with some regret, we now keep confidential the identities of all our donors.”

GM was not the only automaker to fund the Heartland Institute: Ford and Chrysler also contributed to it in the past. Ford and Chrysler told The Huffington Post that they had stopped funding the organization over the past decade, but neither automaker had records detailing reasons for pulling that support.

Greenpeace has pressured companies to stop funding Heartland, said Kert Davies, Greenpeace’s research director. “Their brand of intervention on the climate discussion, bending the information, is noxious,” he said. “GM doesn’t want to be associated with this kind of nonsense on climate change, which is great.”

Jamie Henn of 350.org said Heartland has been spreading misinformation to confuse people.

The Center for American Progress did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This story has been updated to include comments from the Heartland Institute, Greenpeace and 350.org, as well as details about the role of the Pacific Institute’s Peter Gleick in obtaining institute materials.

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com