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This Reuters video shows, Earthrace, a futuristic-looking bio-diesel powered boat with a net zero carbon footprint, will attempt to break the round the world speed record.

The project aims to promote awareness of the environment and the sustainable use of resources. More at Reuters.

Excerpts from Wired article “Around the World in a Boat Fueled by Human Fat“:
“This Wired article writes in detail about an engineer and sailor from New Zealand still hopes to circumnavigate the globe in world-record time at the helm of a boat powered in part by the ultimate renewable fuel - human fat.

Pete Bethune, a former oil exploration engineer, is so committed to proving bio-diesel is a viable alternative to fossil fuel that he and two other Earthrace crew members underwent liposuction. Together they stripped more than 2.5 gallons of fat from their bodies, which produced almost two gallons of fuel - enough to go 9 miles under optimum conditions.

Circumnavigating the world - a 27,600-mile journey - is the ultimate maritime challenge, and this is the second time Bethune and his crew will attempt it. The first ended disastrously in March when Earthrace collided with a fishing vessel off the coast of Guatamala. One fisherman was injured and another lost at sea; Earthrace’s insurance carrier paid the families a settlement. Earlier voyages have ended with propeller failures and when the Colombian navy fired upon the boat.” More at Wired.

Commission proposal to limit the CO2 emissions from cars to help fight climate change, reduce fuel costs and increase European competitiveness.

Brussels — Dec 19, `07 — The European Commission today proposed legislation to reduce the average CO2 emissions of new passenger cars to 120 grams per kilometre by 2012.

The proposed legislation is the cornerstone of the EU’s strategy to improve the fuel economy of cars, which account for about 12% of the European Union’s carbon emissions. The proposal further underlines the EU’s leadership and determination to deliver on its greenhouse gas commitments under the Kyoto Protocol and beyond.

President of the Commission José Manuel Barroso stated: “This proposal demonstrates that the European Union is committed to being a world leader in cutting CO2 emissions and the development of a low carbon economy. At the same time, we are committed to promote the competitiveness of our industry and its global technological leadership.”

Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said: “The aim of the legislation is to reduce CO2 emissions from cars in order to help fight climate change. The legislation will also ensure important fuel savings which will translate into considerable benefits for consumers. Moreover, it will encourage the car industry to invest in new technologies and actively promote eco-innovation, which is a driver for more and high-quality jobs.”

Emissions reductions
The proposal will be a major step in lowering CO2 emissions in the EU. It will reduce the average emissions of CO2 from new passenger cars in the EU from around 160 grams per kilometre to 130 grams per kilometre in 2012 as part of the EU’s integrated approach to achieve overall 120 grams per kilometre. That will translate into a 19% reduction of CO2 emissions and will place the EU among the world leaders of fuel efficient cars.

How the legislation will work
The draft legislation defines a limit value curve of CO2 emissions allowed for new vehicles according to the mass of the vehicle. The curve is set in such a way that a fleet average of 130 grams of CO2 per kilometre is achieved. A manufacturer must ensure that by 2012 measured fleet average emissions are below the limit value curve, when all vehicles manufactured and registered in a given year by the manufacturer in question are taken into account.

This means that the level of emissions by heavier cars will have to be improved proportionately more than lighter cars compared to today. Manufacturers will still be able to make cars with emissions above the limit value curve provided these are balanced by cars which are below the curve as long as the fleet average remains at 130 grams.

The proposal will now be communicated to the Council and to the European Parliament as part of the co-decision legislative procedure. More at European Commission here and here.

Eminent coral scientists have given world leaders more reason to act urgently against climate change, by producing a new report that warns coral reefs will disappear within decades if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise.

Their paper, published on Dec14, in the prestigious Science magazine, is the most compelling scientific case yet that unchecked global warming will be a disaster for coral reefs and the 100 million people and one million species depending on them.

CO2 concentration in the earth’s atmosphere is currently 380 parts per million (ppm) but the authors say if future emissions exceed 450ppm we risk losing reefs.

“This is a very ambitious target and should represent yet another reality check for world leaders meeting in Bali,” lead author UQ Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said.

The study has found serious consequences follow on from even small increases in CO2.

“The warmer and more acidic oceans caused by the rise of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels threaten to destroy coral dominated reef ecosystems, exposing people to flooding, coastal erosion and the loss of food and income from reef-based fisheries and tourism,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.

“Increased CO2 not only warms the climate but also dissolves in sea water making it more acidic. “This, in turn, decreases the ability of corals to produce calcium carbonate, which is what the all-important framework of coral reefs is made of.”More at the University of Queensland.

San Francisco, Calif — Arctic sea ice shrank drastically this summer, reaching a record low, largely because warm ocean currents ate away at the base of the ice sheet, new research says. The arctic ice cap melted at an unprecedented rate in mid-2007, losing an area of ice the size of the state of Alaska, US scientists said at a conference this week.

“The average rate of loss of sea ice every summer year to year up to 2006 was equal to an area the size of West Virginia,” or about 62,800 square kilometers (24,250 square miles), said Michael Steele, the senior oceanographer at the University of Washington in Seattle.

However the decrease in ice between 2006 and 2007 “was almost equivalent to the area of Alaska,” or some 1.7 million kilometers (more than 663,000 square miles), Steele further said.

“It was a huge retreat,” said Steele, one of the researchers who discussed the subject at the annual American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference in San Francisco, California.

At the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, some scientists argued yesterday that the end of the perennial ice is near.

“If this trend persists, the Arctic would be ice-free [in the summer] by 2013,” said Wieslaw Maslowski of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. The researchers told a meeting of the American Geophysical Union that some of the observations had been astonishing.

“The further you go down this path, the harder it is to get back,” observed Don Perovich from the US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. “Things could come back, but basically it’s the fourth quarter and we’re down two touchdowns,” he said, using an analogy from American football.

The big thin
The extent of the sea ice cover fell to a record minimum in September of 4.13 million sq km, beating the previous low mark, set in 2005, by 23%. This was well publicised at the time, but some of the other “Arctic numbers” have not been so widely reported. Scientists say they demonstrate the step changes in environmental conditions in the northern polar region.

Warmth from below
A big driver behind the melt is the current warmth of the waters in the Arctic. In the summer of 2007, Arctic Ocean surface temperatures hit new maximums.

In waters just north of the Chukchi Sea (above Alaska and Eastern Siberia), sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) were 3.5C warmer than the historical average and 1.5C warmer than the historical maximum. SSTs of 4C were recorded.

This warming was probably the result of having increasing amounts of open water that readily absorb the sun’s rays, a phenomenon known as the ice-albedo feedback: less ice means less reflection and more absorption, leading to more warming and more melting.

“Water that is now circulating just 200 meters below the main ice pack is now significantly warmer than it was just five years ago,” said John Walsh of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

New research shows that carbon dioxide, one gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, can be captured as it leaves coal-burning power plants and then permanently sequestered in rock formations thousands of feet below the Earth’s surface.

How Much Time Is Left?
When asked how long the perennial ice might last, many researchers here shrugged their shoulders.

A report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released in February predicts that the summer sea ice may disappear early in the next century.

More at National Snow and Ice Data Center, BBC News.

September 9, 2007, sea ice extent compared to animation of Septembers 1979 to 2006 

BALI, Indonesia — Dec 16, `07 — A UN Climate Change Conference adopted a plan to negotiate a new global warming pact on Saturday, Dec 15, after the United States suddenly reversed its opposition to a call by developing nations for technological help to battle rising temperatures.

The adoption came after marathon negotiations overnight, which first settled a battle between Europe and the U.S. over whether the document should mention specific goals for rich countries’ obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The agreement launches a two-year negotiating process - the “Bali roadmap” - aiming to secure a binding deal at the 2009 UN summit in Denmark.

European and U.S. envoys dueled into the final hours of the two-week meeting over the EU’s proposal that the Bali mandate suggest an ambitious goal for cutting the emissions of industrial nations_ by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

EU Welcomes Agreement

European Commission President José Manuel Barroso: “There is only one planet. Together, developed and developing countries can reach success.”

The European Union welcomes the agreement reached at the UN climate change conference in Bali to start formal negotiations on a climate regime for the post-2012 period and on a ‘Bali Roadmap’ that sets out an agenda for these negotiations.

The conference set an end-2009 deadline for completing the negotiations to allow time for governments to ratify and implement the future climate agreement by the end of 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period ends.

The decision explicitly acknowledges the findings of the recent scientific assessment by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and recognises that deep cuts in global emissions of greenhouse gases will be required to prevent global warming from reaching dangerous levels.

The conference also took important decisions on several other issues, including launching demonstration projects to reduce deforestation, finalising arrangements for a fund to help developing countries adapt to the impacts of climate change, and scaling up financing for transfer of technology to developing countries.

The Bali Roadmap

The conference agreed to launch formal negotiations among the 192 parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on action up to and beyond 2012. These formal negotiations replace a process of informal dialogue that has taken place over the past two years. They will involve the United States, which is a Party to the UNFCCC but not the Kyoto Protocol.

The decision to launch negotiations sets out a ‘roadmap’ to guide them which includes the key building blocks of a future agreement. These are: enhanced mitigation of climate change by limiting or reducing emissions; adaptation to climate change; action on technology development and transfer; and scaling up of finance and investment to support mitigation and adaptation. Four negotiating sessions are scheduled in 2008, starting in March or April.

The decision explicitly acknowledges the findings of the IPCC’s recent Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), emphasises the urgency of addressing climate change expressed in the report and recognises that deep cuts in global emissions will be required to reach the Convention’s objective of preventing dangerous levels of climate change.

In parallel with the negotiations under the climate change Convention, the 176 parties to the Kyoto Protocol will continue negotiations already under way on new post-2012 emissions targets for developed countries that are in the Protocol. For this negotiating ‘track’ the Bali conference agreed on an intensive work schedule for 2008 to accelerate progress.

A review of the Protocol at the next UN climate conference, in December 2008, will help to inform these negotiations on future commitments by developed countries.

The negotiations under both ‘tracks’ – Convention and Protocol - will be completed at the UN climate change conference to be held at the end of 2009 in Copenhagen. The EU and many other Parties insisted on this simultaneous deadline to ensure a coherent result.

More at UN Bali Reports,  EU.

EAST LANSING, Mich — Dec 05, ‘07 — The data are in. Divorce is bad for the environment.

A novel study that links divorce with the environment shows a global trend of soaring divorce rates has created more households with fewer people, has taken up more space and has gobbled up more energy and water. The findings of Jianguo “Jack” Liu and Eunice Yu at Michigan State University are published in this week’s online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A statistical remedy: Fall back in love. Cohabitation means less urban sprawl and softens the environmental hit.

“Not only the United States, but also other countries, including developing countries such as China and places with strict religious policies regarding divorce, are having more divorced households,” Liu said. “The consequent increases in consumption of water and energy and using more space are being seen everywhere.”

Liu and his research assistant Yu started with the obvious – that divorce rates across the globe are on the rise. Housing units, even if they now have few people in them, require resources to construct them and take up space. They require fuel to heat and cool. A refrigerator uses roughly the same amount of energy whether it belongs to a family of four or a family of two.

When they calculated the cost in terms of increased utilities and unused housing space per capita, they discovered that divorce tosses out economy of scale. Among the findings:

* In the United States alone in 2005, divorced households used 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water that could have been saved had household size remained the same as that of married households. Thirty-eight million extra rooms were needed with associated costs for heating and lighting.

* In the United States and 11 other countries such as Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa between 1998 and 2002, if divorced households had combined to have the same average household size as married households, there could have been 7.4 million fewer households in these countries.

* The numbers of divorced households in these countries ranged from 40,000 in Costa Rica to almost 16 million in the United States around 2000.

* The number of rooms per person in divorced households was 33 percent to 95 percent greater than in married households.

To track what happens when divorced people returned to married life, the study compared married households with households that had weathered marriage, divorce and remarriage. The results: The environmental footprint shrunk back to that of consistently married households.

This new work also acknowledges that divorce is not the only lifestyle trend changing family living structures – the demise of multigenerational households and people remaining single longer are examples.

“Solutions are beyond a single idea,” Liu said. “Consider the production of biofuel. Biofuel is made from plants, which also require water and space. We’re showing divorce has significant competition for that water and space. On the other hand, more divorce demands more energy. This creates a challenging dilemma and requires more creative solutions.”

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station. More at Michigan State University.

Billboard delivers up to 3.4 kilowatts of renewable, solar energy.

SAN FRANCISCO — Dec 03, ‘07 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Pacific Gas and Electric Company today unveiled the nation’s first solar-powered billboard,located in San Francisco, Calif. The billboard is part of the utility’s new advertising campaign, titled “We Can Do This”, which features information about a variety of programs and services PG&E offers that reflect the company’s commitment to the environment.

The nation’s first solar-powered billboard is prominently located at 1000 Brannan Street in San Francisco, visible from the Highway 101 9th
Street exit. It is outfitted with 20 solar modules that can provide up to 3.4 kilowatts of renewable solar energy to the PG&E grid. The power
generated by the system exceeds the power used at night to illuminate the billboard’s lights. In addition to installing solar, PG&E replaced the
billboard’s halophane light fixtures with energy-efficient LED lights.

The solar panels, provided by SunTech Power, collect direct current (DC) electricity from the sun’s rays. Using a Fronius IG 3000 grid-tie
inverter, the renewable energy is converted to alternating current (AC) power and fed into the electricity grid.

With the debut of PG&E’s solar-powered billboard, the United States joins Canada and South Africa as the only countries worldwide to utilize
solar technology in this innovative way. Unlike the two Canadian solar-powered billboards located in Vancouver and Toronto, PG&E’s billboard is interconnected to the grid, providing renewable energy to the utility’s customers. The South African solar-powered billboard is also interconnected.

To see how you can become involved in helping to slow climate change, visit PGE.com/WeCanDoThis

Know your contribution to climate change
mobGAS will challenge individuals to make small changes to their daily routine in order to achieve significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

Brussels — Nov 30, ‘07 — mobGAS is a new mobile phone application available in 21 European languages that allows users to see how their daily choices impact on climate change.

This smart technology, developed by scientists working at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, allows users to see the implications of the choices they make every day, in terms of the three major greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.

Information about everyday activities – cooking, transport, lighting, electronic appliances etc. - is put into the application, and calculations made of individual emissions. A user diary of daily, weekly and yearly emissions can be registered on a secure website, allowing a comparison with national and world averages.

The application also includes an animation reflecting the user’s contribution to the Kyoto Protocol target.

Individuals can have a significant impact on reducing emissions. According to recent Eurostat figures, 21% of emissions are related to industrial and associated processes, while 31% are from energy production, 20% from transport, 9% from agriculture and 3% from waste, and the remainder from other sources.

All of this shows that individual behaviour, such as how we travel, the appliances we use or the food we eat, can make a real different to emissions. Lifestyle and consumer choices are a key factor, so it is important that people are aware of the implications of their personal choices.

By downloading the application to a mobile phone – something people carry with them almost all the time – it is possible to make use of quieter moments – travelling on a bus, or waiting for an appointment, for example – to input the data for that day. This could include the means of transport they took, how they heated their house, how long they watched television and what they ate.

From today, mobGAS is being made available free of charge to anyone who is interested. Communication networks and mobile phone producers will also be involved in rolling-out the technology at national level.

This technology will be demonstrated by scientists of the JRC at the EU pavilion during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali from 3 December.

To download the application visit mobGAS

San Francisco, Calif — Nov 27, ‘07 — Google said on Tuesday it plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help drive down the cost of electricity made from renewable energy below the price of coal.

The project, which Google is calling RE<C, using mathematical symbols to denote “renewable energy cheaper than coal,” will be based in Google’s research and development group and is hiring dozens of engineers and targeting investment financing at advanced solar thermal power, wind power, enhanced geothermal systems and other new technologies, Google said.

The Web services and online advertising group will be a big customer for the project, running computers and networks on the electricity and selling back what’s left to the power grid.

“Our goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades,” Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and president of products, said in a statement.

A gigawatt can power a city the size of San Francisco. An analyst at broker Raymond James noted the entire US solar cell generation capacity at the end of 2006 was only just over half a gigawatt, while 11.6 gigawatts came from wind power.

“We see technologies we think can mature into very capable industries that can generate electricity cheaper than coal,” Page further added, “and we don’t see people talking about that as much as we would like.”

The company also said that Google.org, the philanthropic for-profit subsidiary that Google seeded in 2004 with three million shares of its stock, would invest in energy start-ups.

As part of the initiative, executives at Google.org said they are working with two companies that have “promising, scalable energy technologies.” One of these, eSolar, based in Pasadena, Calif., uses thousands of small mirrors to concentrate sunlight and generate steam that powers electric generators. The other, Makani Power of Alameda, Calif., is developing wind turbines that will run on powerful and generally more predictable winds at high altitudes.

Page, in an interview, said that failing to investigate new businesses could hurt Google more than any potential distraction. “If you look at companies that don’t do anything new,” he said, “they are guaranteed never to get bigger. They miss a lot of opportunities and they miss the next big things.”

In a conference call Tuesday with reporters, Sergey Brin, Google’s other founder and president of technology, said the effort was motivated in part by the company’s frustrating search for clean, cheap energy alternatives.

“It’s very hard to find options that aren’t coal-based or other dirty technologies,” he said. “We don’t feel good about being in that situation as a company. We feel hypocritical. We want to make investments happen so there will be alternatives for us to use down the road.” Both founders declined to specify what the company now spends on energy.

Idealism is hardly new at Google. In their Letter From the Founders before the company’s 2004 initial public stock offering, Page and Brin wrote: “Our goal is to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. In pursuing this goal, we may do things that we believe have a positive impact on the world, even if the near-term financial returns are not obvious.”

Google does not disclose the energy consumed in powering its online services, but local energy experts say it ranks as one of Silicon Valley’s biggest energy customers.

“As Google grows, we don’t want our core business to be part of the problem. We want to be part of the solution,” said Larry Brilliant, head of Google.org, the company’s philanthropic arm which will direct the energy investments.

Brin said he felt the company would be “hypocritical” not to do something. Google and its founders are big promoters of electric cars and the roof of its headquarters in Mountain View, California, supports a large solar energy installation.

The push comes as oil prices near $100 a barrel and coal, which generates 40 percent of the world’s electricity, faces regulatory and environmental pressures that may boost prices.

Google plans to spend tens of millions of dollars in 2008 on renewable energy development and other efforts. Its initial focus will be solar thermal and enhanced geothermal systems.

Eventually, the company would spend hundreds of millions of dollars in for-profit “breakthrough renewable energy projects.” Hydroelectric and nuclear energy are not part of the project.

Page believes no more than 1,000 researchers worldwide are focused on renewable energy cheaper than coal. “We would really like to get those people in one room and give them resources.” More at Google.

Commission Fees go Directly to Carbonfund.org, a Nonprofit Organization Committed to Fighting Global Warming. NEW YORK, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Eco-conscious publishing company Ogden Publications today announced the launch of the climate change-combating website EarthMoment.com. An innovative new shopping portal, EarthMoment.com provides consumers with millions of competitively priced products from top retailers while dedicating half of its commission-based revenues to certified carbon offsets, one of the most effective ways to fight climate change.

Consumers have access to more than 15 million products and services from over a thousand leading merchants including Apple, Barnes and Noble, Blockbuster, Circuit City, GNC, Kohls, Macy’s, Office Depot, Sharper Image, Wal-Mart, and many, many more. While other companies that put money toward “environmental funds” do so by tacking on fees to consumer purchases, EarthMoment.com contributes 50% of its revenue from vendors to carbon offsets — at no additional charge to the consumer.

Earth Moment allows consumers to compare prices from different vendors, then takes the shopper directly to the retailer of their choosing. Any purchase made on the retailer’s site within 24 hours will contribute to Carbonfund.org.

The commissions Earth Moment receives from each vendor go directly to Carbonfund.org, a nonprofit organization committed to addressing the issue of climate change by supporting projects that reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Consumers can decide how they want to reduce their carbon footprint: energy efficiency, renewable energy or reforestation.

EarthMoment.com shoppers create a profile to assess their total annual emissions and the dollar amount needed to offset their personal contributions to global warming. From there, users can set carbon-reducing goals and track their progress as they go from “red” to “green.”

“We think we offer consumers one of the easiest ways to make a positive difference in the world.” Said Bryan Welch, Publisher and Editorial Director of Ogden Publications and Managing Partner of Earth Moment.

More at PRNewsWire, EarthMoment