Vortex Hydro Energy's VIVACE system could generate as much as 51W in waters moving at 3 knots per hour and may be available by 2010.

Although Africa contributes significantly to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from sources other than fossil fuels, it could be absorbing more carbon from the atmosphere than it puts back in, according to CarboAfrica, an international research project of 15 institutions from Africa and Europe that includes the UN's Food & Agriculture Organisatin (FAO). To get the most out of Africa's future climate role, reducing emissions from agriculture is considered to be crucial. So is preserving the continent's existing carbon sinks.

Studying wild fires in South Africa's Kruger Park, carbon dioxide flows in the rainforest of Ghana or weather patterns in Sudan, CarboAfrica's research indicates that, as opposed to its minor part in global GHG emissions from fossil fuels — less than 4% of the world's total — Africa makes a major contribution to GHG emissions from natural sources, FAO said today.

As to deforestation and fires, Africa accounts for 17 percent and 40 percent of the global aggregate emissions respectively. In addition, it strongly influences the atmospheric variations of CO2 between seasons, and from year to year — half of them can be attributed to Africa.

"These first results show that Africa plays a key role in the global climate system," said Riccardo Valentini of the University of Tuscia, Italy, and project coordinator of CarboAfrica, which was set up in 2006 with €2,8 million of funding from the European Commission's research department.

It's the carbon cycle
What matters most though, Valentini stresses, is the balance between carbon captured through photosynthesis by Africa's vast expanse of forests and savannas, and carbon released into the atmosphere as a result of deforestation, fires and forest degradation — Africa's ‘carbon cycle'.
Our evidence so far indicates that Africa seems a ‘carbon sink', meaning that it takes more carbon out of the atmosphere then it releases. If confirmed, this implies that Africa contributes to reducing the greenhouse effect, thus helping mitigate the consequences of climate change. - Riccardo Valentini, CarboAfrica project leaderCarboAfrica has been observing Africa's Sub-Saharan carbon cycle through a network of monitoring stations in eleven countries for the last two years.

The preliminary results, to be finalized by 2010, were discussed at a conference in Accra/Ghana, that brought together over 100 participants from the international scientific community, governments and the United Nations.

Agriculture is crucial
"Agriculture must play a central role in reducing Africa's carbon emissions even more," said Maria Helena Semedo, Representative of FAO's Regional Office for Africa, opening the meeting:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: carbon cycle :: greenhouse gas emissions :: agriculture :: carbon sink :: deforestation :: Africa ::

"We should reach out to farmers in Africa, teaching them how to use their land and their forests in such a way that Africa's carbon cycle becomes our ally in the battle against climate change," she said. "It is crucial, and possible, that such efforts contribute to increasing food security at the same time."

Ms Semedo stressed that through appropriate soil management, such as practiced by conservation agriculture, GHG emissions from agriculture can be reduced, while at the same time increasing productivity and even harnessing agriculture against the woes of climate change.

In line with the UN's Convention on Climate Change, avoiding deforestation and extending Africa's forest cover, should be another top priority.

References:
CarboAfrica website.

CarboAfrica introductory leaflet [*.pdf]

FAO: climate change portal.

Wind turbine maker Suzlon said it expects to install another 1.5 gigawatts of wind power in one state alone by 2011.

China aims for lower vehicle emissions by 2012, subsidizing a Chinese car maker's hybrid car production plans.

The conservation of tropical rainforests and other biodiverse ecosystems in the (sub)tropics faces tremendous challenges. Simply declaring that a region becomes a conservation area without taking away the pressures that threaten the integrity of the area, doesn't work. The social and economic needs of local populations have to be taken into account. And this is where many conservation projects often fail. Biochar, a technique to boost the fertility of poor tropical soils, could help in solving this particular problem.

Conservation challenges
Forest conservation projects are confronted with pressures that range from the global (e.g. the expansion of agriculture in response to global market forces) to the very local (e.g. slash-and-burn farming by poor rural people who rely on this technique to survive.) The global forces are difficult to control, but the local pressures can be addressed. Most conservation projects will attempt to search for alternative livelihoods for the local people who used to depend on the ecosystem that is now to be protected. But this in itself is a major challenge. Not all people who live in and around a conservation area can be employed in ecotourism, for example. And these populations still need food, energy and social services to meet their basic needs, so the pressures on the conservation zone will remain.

When a conservation project turns local farmers into forest guards or tourism guides, the farming activities may be phased out in the immediate vicinity of the area, only to pop up elsewhere because local demand for food, fiber, forest products and energy does not disappear. This phenomenon, known as 'leakage' is one of the weak points of most current forest conservation efforts. In some cases, projects may even generate 'conservation refugees' - people who are chased away from their land that is turned into a protected area, and now need to fend for themselves elsewhere. In extreme cases this violence can involve the use of military force (see the brilliant overview in the forthcoming book by Mark Dowie, Conservation Refugees - The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples, MIT Press, May 2009).

However, nowadays most conservation efforts are 'hybrids', in that they no longer militarize conservation areas, but instead open them up so that local people can keep benefiting from their land and forests. However, this requires complex and expensive transitions from rudimentary land use techniques - such as slash-and-burn farming - to more refined concepts, such as agroforestry.

The emergence of a growing market for ecosystem services may greatly help forest conservation projects, because this market would generate extra revenues that can tackle some of the challenges. The funds may flow towards the people who would else have been displaced by the project or whose livelihoods need to be transformed to make it work.

Biochar: a win-win-win
This is where biochar, a promising new land-use strategy, comes in. Biochar can simultaneously protect conservation areas, without the need to force local farmers to give up farming, while tapping ecosystem service markets and preventing 'leakage'. Biochar might thus represent a win-win-win situation and make forest conservation projects more feasible:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: land-use :: biochar :: rural development :: tropical forests :: conservation ::

How is this possible? It is easy to understand. Biochar is a carbon-rich product obtained from the pyrolysis of biomass. When this porous, recalcitrant substance is added to acidic, nutrient-poor tropical soils -- the infertile soils that push people in tropical forest areas to rely on slash-and-burn farming -- the soils become far more fertile and productive. Biochar does this by positively altering the fundamental biological, chemical and physical properties of these problem soils. Among other things, biochar makes soils less acidic, enhances their nutrient and water retention capacity, increases their cation exchange capacity, and aerates the soil.

Biochar can thus short-circuit the slash-and-burn cycle, make subsistence farming at the forest frontier far more productive, and thus reduce local pressures on forests. More food, fiber and biomass can be produced on a plot of land that has been amended with char. In some cases, grain yield increases of 880% have been recorded when highly weathered soils received biochar and mineral fertilizer, as compared to the same soils only receiving fertilizer. Depending on local circumstances, a single hectare of farm land amended with biochar can protect some 5 to 20 hectares of pristine forest.

What is more, biochar not only enhances the productivity of poor tropical soils and thus reduces pressures on local ecosystems, it also doubles as a stable, permanent carbon sink. That is: it helps fight climate change. In the future there should be carbon credits available for sequestering biochar in soils. Biochar projects could thus generate two types of carbon credits: direct credits obtained from storing recalcitrant char in soil, and indirect credits obtained from avoiding deforestation.

Linking biochar and forest conservation
When biochar projects are linked to conservation areas, a potential synergy emerges that can overcome the gap between the economic needs of local rural populations and the requirement to reduce pressures on the protected zone.

By creating 'biochar buffers' around forest areas, local farmers could keep on farming and supply local populations with food, fiber, fodder and forest products. Because their fields are now far more productive, their farming activities would not threaten the conservation area. Farmers would remain farmers. Conservationists would not have to transform the local people's lives by inventing entirely new jobs for them. At the same time, the risk of 'leakage' is reduced as well: food and biomass production will not be displaced, but remains locally rooted.

Moreover, biochar's capacity to restore the fertility of depleted soils makes it possible to expand these 'biochar buffers' outwards, away from the conservation area. Without biochar, local farmers would work their way inwards, toward the protected region as their soils deplete and they need new land. They would thus threaten the integrity of the conservation zone. With biochar, abandoned farm plots with their depleted soils that no longer yield food, can be taken back into production.

One of the key pressures on forest conservation zones, namely land clearing for farming, would thus be deflected and even turned around. As biochar zones expand outward and keep generating enough food and biomass on previously abandoned land, the margins around the conservation area can gradually be reforested.

The concept of creating 'biochar buffers' around conservation areas needs to be explored further. The way we presented it here is crude and many questions about the feasibility of such a concept remain. But the growing evidence of biochar's capacity to keep soils productive, especially at the tropical forest frontier, hints at a potential synergy between conservation and local development.

References:
Christoph Steiner: Slash-and-char as Alternative to Slash-and-burn - soil charcoal amendments maintain soil fertility and establish a carbon sink, Cuvillier Verlag, December 2007.

Mongabay: "Ancient Amazonian technology could save the world" - May 17, 2007

Mongabay: The biochar revolution begins - Biochar fund to fight hunger, energy poverty, deforestation, and global warming - March 10, 2008

On conservation projects that generate 'conservation refugees', see the work of an NGO that grew out of resistance to the creation of a natural park in the Omo valley of Ethopia: Native solutions to conservation refugees.

Mark Dowie, Conservation Refugees - The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples, MIT Press, May 2009.

Vietnamese companies competing against local exporters find biodiesel made from catfish fat too pricey for production.

Environmental Business and Supply Base transfer to India with the further development on the local market place. The new prospects of the Indian State promotion policy and legislative regulations toward attracting foreign investors' confidence and expectations

It's all but a foregone conclusion that a government bailout of the auto industry will happen, to save the millions of direct and indirect jobs generated by the Big Three. But unlike his predecessor who bailed out the banks, the new President ought to make sure that those receiving tax dollars use them in an accountable way to power a viable industry.

In 2007, the US produced 254 million tons of municipal solid waste according to the EPA. The great variety of waste ranges from organic material in landfills, to waste from the chemical industry that must be treated as hazardous material, a costly proposition. While all of this waste is a big problem, it is also an opportunity for those who find better ways to deal with it, turning waste into profit.

The ministers in charge of space activities in the European Space Agency's 18 Member States today concluded a successful two-day council meeting in The Hague, agreeing on a €10 billion (US$ 12.9bn) budget to undertake new initiatives in several fields and endorsing the next phases of a set of ongoing programmes. Many of the approved projects have a high degree of relevance for the study of climate change, the environment and the management of the planet's natural resources.

The deal was reached after two days of intense negotiations, but ministers agreed with ESA's director general Jean-Jacques Dordain on the relevance of investing in space, especially in a time of economic crisis: space is a key sector providing for innovation, economic growth, strategic independence and the preparation of the future. The ambitious budget, which covers the next three to five years, represents a substantial increase in funding over the previous ones.

French research minister Valerie Pecresse, who presided the council, said that her nation's cash would be spent on those programmes that delivered the greatest gains to society. France, currently holding the European Presidency, is ESA's second largest contributor (after Germany), responsible for about a quarter of the organisation's budget. The focus on the public relevance of investments in space was the leading theme throughout the council.

ESA's space activities can be divided into three types of programmes: voluntary, optional and mandatory. The voluntary programmes include the most expensive activities, including Europe's participation in the International Space Station and its Ariane rocket project. France, Germany and Italy are the biggest backers of these programmes, which contribute up to a third of the budget. The UK focuses more on small optional programmes, and remains a marginal contributor to ESA. However, despite remaining the weak link in Europe's space activities, the country has committed more than expected (€356 million), in exchange for ESA opening a research center in the UK.

Programmes
On the programmatic side, ministers today took decisions concerning the full range of ESA's initiatives. Some highlights:

• Subscriptions for the launcher programmes, including further funding of Europe's space port in French Guiana, Ariane 5 and Vega accompaniment technology programmes, Ariane 5 evolution and the future launchers preparatory programme. The Ariane 5, which has come to dominate the commercial launcher market, will be upgraded to allow it to carry heavier payloads than its current nine-tonne limit. Ariane 5 symbolizes Europe's independence in space. Esa wants to study what comes after Ariane; to consider what the launchers of the future will look like. It will also test the technologies required on demonstration spacecraft such as the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV).
• Subscriptions for the Earth Observation activities, including the second segment of the flagship Global Monitoring for Environment and Security Space Component programme (GMES), the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) development programme and a novel Climate Change Initiative on the provision of essential climate variables. GMES is a major new EO program. It will take the "pulse" of the planet and requires a series new satellites to be launched (more below).
• Subscriptions for the human spaceflight, microgravity and human exploration programmes including exploitation and evolution of the International Space Station, on-board research in life and physical sciences and definition studies on the evolution of a returnable transfer vehicle. Europe will thus take the first step in a plan that could eventually lead to a manned spaceship based on its highly successful unmanned, automated space-station cargo-vessel, known as the ATV.
• Subscriptions to robotic exploration programmes (the ExoMars programme and preparatory activities on future Mars robotic exploration).
• Subscriptions for Advanced Research in Telecommunications Systems (ARTES), focusing on technologies, applications and mission demonstrations and including preparatory work for a European Data Relay System (EDRS), an air traffic management satellite system (Iris) and Integrated Application Promotion combining usage of telecommunications, Earth observation and navigation satellite systems with terrestrial information and communications systems.
• Subscriptions for the programme on the evolution of the European Global Navigation Satellite System, to continue the improvement of Galileo.

GMES
The Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme, also known as Kopernikus, has got earth observation and climate scientists all excited. The €2 billion venture will build a full picture of the state of the planet from new satellites and ground-based data. It will be a key tool for the analysis of climate change and the environmental health of the planet:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: natural resources :: ecology :: climate change :: earth observation :: ESA :: EU ::
The programme can and will evolve into something which will be of major benefit to mankind; I don't think it is too melodramatic to say that. We need a planetary Earth-observing system to gather all the information to take remedial action on climate and environmental change. - Professor Alan O'Neill, the director of the UK's National Centre for Earth Observation.
Through GMES the state of our environment and its short, medium and long-term evolution will be monitored to support policy decisions or investments. GMES will be built up gradually: it starts with a pilot phase which targets the availability of a first set of operational GMES services by 2008 followed by the development of an extended range of services which meet user requirements.

Years of research in the fields of science and technology associated with observation and understanding of the processes and phenomena of the terrestrial environment led in 1998 to the idea to launch GMES. By a combination of measurements at terrestrial level and from space, it rapidly became clear that new operational services could be offered in fields such as oceanography, precise mapping of land use, rapid mapping at times of emergency for the civil protection field or air quality monitoring.

The services provided by GMES can be classified in three major categories:

• Mapping, including topography or road maps but also land-use and harvest, forestry monitoring, mineral and water resources that do contribute to short and long-term management of territories and natural resources. This service generally requires exhaustive coverage of the Earth surface, archiving and periodic updating of data.
• Support for emergency management in case of natural hazards and particularly civil protection institutions responsible for the security of people and property. This service concentrates on the provision of the latest possible data before intervening.
• Forecasting is applied for marine zones, air quality or crop yields. This service systematically provides data on extended areas permitting the prediction of short, medium or long-term events, including their modelling and evolution.

The widespread and regular availability of technical data within GMES will allow a more efficient use of the infrastructures and human resources. It will help the creation of new models for security and risk management, as well as better management of land and resources.

Biomass and bioenergy


BIOMASS measuring concept
GMES will have direct relevance to the bioenergy sector. One of the proposed missions, Earth Explorer BIOMASS, will analyse the world's boreal forests, which cover about 15% of the Earth’s land surface and, being the world's largest terrestrial carbon reservoir, play an important role in the global cycling of energy, carbon and water.

Currently ESA has undertaken the BioSAR 2008 campaign in northern Sweden in order to find out how best to map boreal forest with space borne radar. By answering this question, the campaign addresses one of the key objectives of the candidate BIOMASS mission.

BIOMASS is one of the six candidate Earth Explorer missions that has just completed assessment study and will be presented to the science community at a User Consultation Meeting in January 2009. The next stage of development for the BIOMASS mission, if selected, will be the feasibility study which is expected to greatly improve knowledge of how much and where carbon is being stored, and better quantify carbon fluxes between land and the atmosphere. This knowledge will obviously contribute to the better understanding of the global carbon cycle, climate change, and the bioenergy potential.

To achieve this goal, the BIOMASS mission will exploit the P-band which is the longest radar wavelength available for Earth Observation and is uniquely sensitive to mapping biomass from space. Afterwards highly accurate and robust methods for transforming the P-band radar signals into forest biomass maps are required. Collecting airborne SAR measurements over Boreal Forest and comparing these to extensive ground measurements, will allow a very accurate mapping of the forest biomass.

Given that complete remote sensing dataset and ground data simultaneously acquired are rare for northern forests, the interest of the campaign, beyond the immediate needs of the BIOMASS mission, is expected to be enormous. Finally, once the process has been completed, the dataset will be made available to the wider scientific community through ESA.

EU and ESA convergence
The progressive implementation of GMES is made possible by the activities and investments of European Union and ESA Member States. These and other public and private contributions are jointly supported by the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Together with Galileo, Europe's satellite-navigation system, GMES thus indicates a gradual alignment of ESA and the EU. Currently, these are distinct legal entities which do not share the same membership; ESA counts some non-EU nations among its membership. But space is now of such high political and economic importance that these two entities are expected to "converge" in the future.

References:
ESA: European Ministers inject new impetus to ensure space’s role as a key asset in facing global challenges - November 26, 2008.

ESA: Ministerial Council 2008.

Global Monitoring for Environment and Security homepage.

GMES: BIOMASS Mission - 19 Nov 2008

ESA: ESA leads the way to map boreal forest - October 20, 2008.

Is this the beginning of a trend toward loans and debt financing in cleantech? This, and we spot 31 deals this week.

The Vatican endorses solar energy with installation of $1.6 million system on roof but ponders 740-acre solar farm to become net exporter of energy.

Chennai-based developer plans acquisitions of biomass and other projects to reach 500 MW capacity in the next two to three years.

The global economic crisis has seen the demise of a lot of 'corporate freedom' and the resurgence of the idea of direct government intervention. This comes at a time when more and more scientists are convinced of the fact that another planetary crisis with more far reaching consequences - namely climate change - needs to be tackled by strong state intervention as well. Especially so when it becomes apparent that corporate responses to this crisis may not be working.

An example comes from the U.K., where the green credentials of British businesses are falling far short of their environmental claims and don't have an effect on mitigating climate change. That is the conclusion of Gareth Dale, a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Brunel University, writing in the International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy. Dale too maintains that only government intervention offers the power and tools required to do what corporations can't or won't.

Dale has investigated how several major UK companies have responded to the threat of climate change. By comparing their public rhetoric with actual corporate adjustments made to address climate change, he has found that their business practices "fall far short of the claims made." This, he says, raises important questions about how far companies can go, particularly as we face impending recession, when confronting climate change. "Bad remedies may be diverting attention from and even driving out good ones," he says.

Big companies including multitasking corporations like Richard Branson's Virgin and Tesco, bankers such as HSBC and Barclaycard, media companies such as BSkyB and the major oil companies like BP, have all embraced the wider trends of the green revolution. Until the economic downturn hijacked the nation's news desks barely a day would pass without a report on how blue-chip companies were investigating climate-change mitigation strategies. But, asks Dale, was this investigating followed up by investment or is the talk of address global warming nothing more than boardroom hot air?

Several companies claim to have achieved carbon neutrality. Others are pumping cash into carbon sinks and surveys. Consumers are even rating the eco credentials of the likes of Virgin, Tesco, and Marks & Spencer, and BP as being in the top twenty of green firms:
energy :: sustainability :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: renewables :: capitalism :: state intervention :: climate change ::

When it comes to biofuels, carbon offsetting, the use of renewables, carbon sequestration, many companies are flying the green flag and rebranding and relabelling themselves as champions of the green movement. Yet, Dale's analysis of the actual energy use and pollution production of many major corporations reveals this in many cases to be nothing more than a cynical attempt to trump their competitors with garbled ecological rationality in the name of profits.

"A more effective and more just strategy would involve concerted state intervention focused upon investment in public transport, housing and renewable energy, coupled with regulatory measures to radically reduce fossil-fuel use," concludes Dale.

References:
Gareth Dale, "Green shift: an analysis of corporate responses to climate change", International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy, 2008, 3, n°2, 134-155, DOI: 10.1504/IJMCP.2008.021271

VeraSun Energy Corporation, one of the nation's largest ethanol producers, today announced that it recently received a non-binding unsolicited indication of interest with respect to the purchase of its assets. The company intends to pursue this indication of interest to its conclusion and evaluate other proposals it may receive in accordance with its obligations as a debtor in possession under chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code.

Current economic uncertainty makes finding investors more difficult but could create a 'more sustainable, more enduring' sector, Cleantech Group says.

Both corn-ethanol giants confirm they're in talks with undisclosed companies for acquisitions.

Startup's prototypes use technology that could broaden LED applications while reducing costs.

A start up at the GreenHunter BioFuels' biodiesel refinery in Houston has been initiated following repairs to the facility following the damage caused by Hurricane Ike. Plant debugging had just been completed and the facility was beginning to ramp up production when Ike struck in September, causing th eplant to close completely for repairs.

BKW seeking investors of 10 million Swiss francs for 'Projekt Goldfisch.'