Clipper Windpower

Clipper Windpower appeared in a recent Daily telegraph Aim Market company profile. Clipper is developing a new offshore wind turbine with a 150m wingspan on a 115m high tower with a generating capacity based around a 7.5 megawatt machine. This is significantly higher than the existing generating capacity of 2.5 megawatts.

California based Clipper Windpower was floated on AIM in 2005 at 200p a share. The price peaked at 916p in June 2007 before two profits warnings drove the price down to below 500p a share in September 2007.

CEO Jim Dehlsen says that the company is working through its supply problems and is ironing out problems with its manufacturing process. The testing phase is expected to start in 2009 or 2010.

Cool Earth

Do you fancy owning your own piece of Amazonian Rain forest? The following site allows you to do just that.

http://www.coolearth.org/

Founded by Frank Field, the Labour MP for Birkenhead, and Johann Eliasch the founder of the sporting goods company Head who put his money where his mouth is and purchased 400,000 acres of Amazonian Rainforest from a logging company.

In a similar vein, the World Land Trust, whose Patron is David Attenborough, buys up land for various projects across the world.

Carbon offset standards

This week's Economist on-line has an article in its Green.view column looking at the baffling array of carbon offset options and registries that have sprouted up over the last year.

The main points are:

• Variable quality of schemes - a tonne of carbon offset can mean many things.
• Growing fears of sharp practice by "carbon cowboys" as prices range from 45c to $45 per tonne of carbon offset.
• Clarity will soon emerge with the highest quality standards surviving, such as the Voluntary Carbon Standard and The Gold Standard developed by the World Wildlife Fund.
• Most of the rest will fall by the wayside.
  

Can Clean Tech save the World from Global Warming?

Let's hope the answer is yes. This week's Red Herring investigates:



Topics covered include:

• Ethanol
  
• Energy efficiency
• Advanced batteries
• AC v DC power distribution
  
• Solar thermal v Photo-voltaic
• US Energy bill in Congress
  

Two fishy tales

Two articles from this week's Economist magazine. The first article "Shellfish desires" is about a new type of dredge for trawler nets which does far less damage to the seabed than traditional dredges, which do terrible damage to seabed ecosystems.

Trawling, which is the most widespread form of fishing dredges the seabed by raking it to dislodge the intended catch into a cloud that is captured by the trailing net. Unfortunately, it also throws up coral, sponges, seaweeds as well as other fish, crustaceans and molluscs. This plant life forms the ecosystem of the seabed rather like the plants in a forest. Trawling is the equivalent of clear-cutting trees.

The article tells of a new invention by Cliff Goudey of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) which has a series of gentle jets which dislodge just the fish without damaging the seabed itself. Initial trials, catching scallops off the Isle of Man, against a traditional dredge showed less damage to the seabed and to the catch making it a more efficient method than the traditional one. So look out for "coral-safe scallops".

The second article is about the arguments for giving up eating fish altogether from the Economists Green correspondent in his Green.view on-line column. Alas, I have to agree with what he says but I don't think I could ever persuade the wife to do it!

The cost of the Floods

Evan Davis, the BBC's Economics editor, in his latest blog has estimated the economic costs of the current flooding in the UK and pondered what this would mean economically if this is a precursor to more regular bouts of flooding caused by global warming.

In summary:

• Evan estimates the cost at around £5 billion.
• £5 billion represents under 1/2% of GDP. So small in the big picture.
  
• News stories tend to over-embellish damage done and we tend to over-estimate its economic importance.
• This would be more important if it represented a regular economic cost, say every few years, rather than a one in sixty year event.
• Infrastructure may need to be made more weather-proof at significant expense.
  

Building on flood plains

The leaked UK housing green paper says that a ban on building on flood plains would be "unrealistic". Against the backdrop of widespread flooding in the UK, which so far has affected around half a million people in England, it seems reckless. In fact, Gordon Brown, in his press briefing today, said that climate change meant planning for more extreme weather events was needed. This planning doesn't appear to stretch to where we should safely build people's houses. The only conclusion I can draw is that Brown & co assume that the political gains from happy new home owners is greater than the risk of widespread flooding before an election.

I could of course be being wildly cynical and, in fact, the government are going to take into account the risk of flooding and build appropriate houses like these in the Netherlands.



The BBC has an article about them here.

Of course, the other issue here is insurance. Will Insurance companies insure new homes built in flood planes? It seems unlikely unless the premiums are very expensive and the flood defences very good. Which, of course, they aren't as the state has failed in its side of the bargain and neglect flood defences for years.

As global warming is likely to increase sea levels over the next few decades, the low lying Thames estuary will become susceptible to flooding. It is also being touted by engineers as probably the best flood defence for Central London, particularly against storm surges from the North Sea. The mooted plans to build hundreds of thousands of homes there seems not just reckless for those who would be living there but also for Londoners and their businesses.

Developing world more concerned by Global Warming than the Developed World

The economist.com reports that people in China, Brazil, India and Mexico are more concerned about global warming than their counterparts in the Developed world. It also shows a high level of pessimism in the West about our ability (or willingness to make sacrifices?) to fight climate change.

• 60% of Indians think climate change is one of the world's biggest problems.
• 47% of Chinese agree.
• Only 22% of Britons think so.

• Only 5% of Britons think people and organisations (including governments) were doing enough.
• 41% of Germans thought it was not worth bothering as nothing could be done about climate change.

(Source: HSBC report published 12th July 2007)

I wonder how much of this is a generational thing. I think young people are far more optimistic about their abilities to make changes, both to their own lifestyles and to society, and are almost certainly less set in their ways than older people. And there is a far higher proportion of young people in Developing countries than in the ageing West.

'No Sun link' to climate change

The following story appeared on the BBC news website reporting that new scientific findings, published in the Royal Society's journal Proceedings A, show no link between the Sun's output and global warming:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6290228.stm

The study was initiated in response to claims made in the Channel 4 documentary 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'.

A thorough debunking of climate change myths can be found on the New Scientist website -
Climate change: A guide for the perplexed

Shenanigans on the high seas

There's an interesting article (it may require a login) in last week's Economist about the Polestar, a tramper that carries fish without using sea containers, that was detained by Moroccan armed forces at the request of several European governments. It was on a blacklist of ships known to be involved in illegal fishing. It had picked up a consignment of Pollock from one of the world's few certified sustainable fisheries, off the coast of Alaska, that was destined for Europe. The cargo has been allowed to proceed on a legal ship but the Polestar's fate is undecided.

The worry is that cargoes that come from Marine Stewardship Council certified fish stocks, which companies like WalMart and Unilever are increasingly committed to using (see the links for details of their schemes), can become contaminated with illegally fished cargoes. Until the entire supply chain can be validated as clean then the world's fish stocks will remain under threat. And as the above article pointed out, the business of international shipping is notoriously lawless.

Airbus A380 SuperJumbo bought as Private Jet

My jaw dropped when I read The Economist that a private buyer has placed an order at the Paris Air Show for an Airbus A380 super-jumbo. Airbus said the individual was "not from Europe or the US" and that the plane was for "personal use for him and his entourage". The cost is estimated at around $300m.

This follows on from Joseph Lau, the Hong Kong Real Estate tycoon, who became the seventh person to order a Boeing 787 VIP as a private jet.

Apart from the moral aspects of such outrageous flaunting of wealth, the unjustifiable squandering of the earth's limited resources mean that neither Boeing nor Airbus should even be selling large aircraft for this purpose. But as all taste and propriety seems to have disappeared in the stratosphere of the super-rich and the boardrooms of corporate behemoths, then a simpler approach needs to be taken.

My proposition is this, that non-commercial/private aircraft, over a certain (small) size, should be barred from landing at any public airport or airport whose flight path causes noise pollution over residential areas. And that should go double in the over-crowded skies in Europe and the US.

Google basks in sunlight...

As part of its commitment to solar energy production, Google's Mountain View Googleplex offices is having 9,212 solar panels installed - now 90% completed according to the Google Solar Panel Project website.

The website provides details and graphs on how much energy has been produced in the last 24 hours and the last week. You can also see pictures of the installation.

This part of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative which is seeking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers by 54 million tons a year by 2010.

Plug-in hybrid cars

Check out this site about Plug-In hybrid cars.

Key points:

• battery electric vehicles emit at least 50% lower greenhouse gases than gasoline cars even including the power station emissions required to produce the electricity to power them
  
• higher reductions possible if using renewable energy sources
• runs at an equivalent cost of under $1 (50p) per gallon
• reduces urban air pollution and smog
• reduces reliance on foreign oil imports
• the technology is here today
  

EU greenhouse gas emissions drop

The European Environmental Agency's "Annual European Community greenhouse gas inventory 1990-2005 and inventory report 2007" reports that emissions of greenhouses gases (GHGs) dropped between 2004 and 2005, the latest years for which they have figures. The key findings are:

• EU-15: Emissions of GHGs decreased by 0.8 % between 2004 and 2005.
• EU-27: Emissions of GHGs decreased by 0.7 % between 2004 and 2005.
• EU-15: Emissions of GHGs decreased by 2 % compared to 1990.
• EU-27: Emissions of GHGs decreased by 7.9 % compared to 1990 levels.
• Germany, Finland and the Netherlands contributed most to the EU-15 reduction.

The EU-15 has a common target to reduce GHG emissions by 8% compared to their baseline (usually 1990 emissions). The laggards would seem to be Austria, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain who are all way above their targets. The table below has the GHG emissions by country and their targets. Click it to open in a new window.

Wind farms in the sky

The Economist magazine, in its Technology Quarterly supplement, has an article about a company Sky WindPower, based in San Diego, that wants to build wind farms in the sky (about 6 miles up where the winds are very strong).

Check out the company site for more details but here is a thumbnail of their design, there's a larger picture on their website.



The only thing I'm not clear about is how they'll avoid it being blown away or the cable connecting it to earth snapping! Neat idea though.

EU fisharies policy

There's an interesting article by Charles Clover in today's Daily Telegraph about the latest EU fisharies policy. Charles Clover wrote an excellent, but depressing, book about the state of global fishing called "The End of the Line: How Overfishing is Changing the World and what We Eat" which I read a couple of years back and I keep an eye out for his articles.

Here what he says today:

- EU voted to allow fishing of endangered bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic at twice the quota level scientists say will lead to a collapse of stocks.

- Britain and Ireland voted against and were unhappy that Italy and France who are estimated to have overfished their quotas by 30% in the last two years were not forced to pay this back.

- French and Itailian fishermen are using illegal drift nets to catch tuna. Drift net fishing can lead to the death of dolphins and turtles.

- According to the WWF, the fisheries should be closed in June and the minimum landing size reduced to 30kg.

So after the razzamatazz of the Global warming spectacular last week at the G8, the EU is back to the dirty business of petty national advantage being considered more important than the long term survival and viability of our fisheries.

A couple of things worth reading...

This week's Economist (June 2nd - 8th) has an excellent special report on business and climate change. Meant to post this a few days back but definitely worth a read if you can still get hold of it. The Economist, long a sceptic of climate change, has definitely become converted to the cause and produces it usual high standard of analysis and reporting on what's going right, what's going wrong and what's on the horizon. I particularly enjoyed the article 'Irrational incandescence' which highlights that there are around 6 gigatonnes of CO2 pollution per annum which if abated would actually save us all money and improve economic growth. This ties in with a point made in the IPCC report that I blogged recently (here):

"Note that the bottom up analysis [of greenhouse gas mitigation] anticipates potential mitigation even at a zero carbon tax."

The second article is online at Yahoo Finance by Dr Charles Wheelan. It looks at plans in the US Congress to subsidise the liquidisation of coal to make fuel and the broader economic and environmental issues it raises. Judging by some of the responses to the article there are a lot of people who just don't understand the relationship between 'free' markets, state regulation and the purpose of subsidy and taxation in relation to things like pollution. This is a pity as it increasingly plays a role in all our lives.

As a brief aside, in the UK there are plans to increase airport capacity in the very crowded South East of England (the area around London). This, to me, raises a very simple question. How do you balance the economic gain accruing to the airport operator BAA and the airlines against the economic (reduction in house values) and environmental (air and noise pollution) losses faced by the residents affected?

OPEC's economic blackmail?

The oil producing countries, OPEC, are obviously starting to get nervous about their future prospects, as a mix of the green agenda and a desire for energy security take hold in the West. This story on the BBC caught my eye. The secretary general of OPEC has said that investment in biofuels could push oil prices "through the roof". His argument is that OPEC would reduce investment in new production and this would push prices up as there would be a squeeze on supply.

All in all, it's hard to think of a dafter argument from OPEC. If demand started to decrease for oil, then it is hard to imagine any sane country (and that is obviously a priviso that needs to be included with OPEC countries) holding back production to a future date when demand, and therefore price, is likely to be even less. Furthermore, a simple application of Porter's five forces analysis, which any business studies student would be familiar with, implies that the threat from substitution and the increased bargaining power of the customer (due to falling demand) would increase the rivalry within the oil production industry and the temptation for each member to pump as much as they could while the going was good. Despite OPEC's public face espousing quotas, the reality has always been that its members cheat as much as they can. One wonders whether OPEC could survive a shrinking oil market as it became every member for themselves.

For years, the Saudis have sought to keep oil prices at a level where they could milk the West for every penny they could get without pushing prices high enough for us to look elsewhere, particularly to renewables and nuclear, for our energy sources. It has been an interesting confluence of events, rising oil price due to Middle East instability and the rise of China, growing concerns in the US and Europe over energy security, rising trade imbalances and worries over global warming that have finally broken their hold. And frankly that's a good thing. And if oil prices were to go up if we move to biofuels, then that's good too. It would just speed up the process of getting away from a carbon economy and stop the backsliders.

Emissions accelerating faster than economy

The US National Academy of Sciences have just produced a report which finds that global greenhouse gas emissions have since 2000 been growing more quickly than the global economy. This is faster than the worst predictions of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Here is the summary text with graph:

"Carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere is the main culprit in human-induced global warming. Typically, developed countries are identified as the main source of CO2 as a result of the burning of fossil fuels and other industrialized processes. An analysis by Michael Raupach et al. shows that developing countries are quickly catching up in CO2 emissions. The authors studied regional trends in emissions, energy use, and population and economic growth to determine patterns that affect CO2 emission and, ultimately, global warming. The analysis showed that, since 2000, CO2 emissions worldwide have increased more rapidly than predicted because emissions and energy use are growing faster than the gross domestic product (GDP) of many countries. No countries are decreasing their percentage of reliance on fossil carbon as an energy source. In addition, developing countries show significantly increased recent rates of growth in emissions. Developing economies, together forming 80% of the world's population, accounted for 73% of the global growth in emissions in 2004. However, these economies accounted for only 41% of emissions themselves and only 23% of emissions since the start of the Industrial Revolution around 1800."

George Bush and Climate Change

So, straight to the $64,000 question: is George Bush serious about addressing climate change or is he trying to derail European efforts to address it?

His previous record suggests great scepticism is due him. As the latest report from the IPCC has laid out in great detail, there are serious time constraints on us to achieve stabilisation of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere. If we fail to achieve this then the likelihood of severe climate change impacts is increased.

This is from Chapter 3 of the latest IPCC report:

"Decisions to delay emission reductions seriously constrain opportunities to achieve low stabilisation targets (e.g. stabilising concentrations from 440 to 535 ppmv CO2-eq), and raise the risk of progressively more severe climate change impacts and key vulnerabilities occurring. For example, if the time when global emissions peak is postponed beyond the next 15 years category, constraining global temperature rise to below 2.6°C above the pre-industrial level (2.0°C above 1990), at equilibrium, would be out of reach using 'best estimate' assumptions of climate sensitivity. Once this temperature threshold is breached, climate impacts accrue significantly in the earth and human system."

As I pointed out in this blog on the latest IPCC report - "Delayed emissions reduction lead to investments that lock in more emissions-intensive infrastructure and this constrains the opportunities to achieve lower stabilisation levels and increases the risk of more severe climate change impacts." So, time is critical in addresing climate change and GHG emissions.

The European Union has agreed to a goal of preventing a temperature rise of more than 2C and to that end is promising to cut GHG emissions by 20% by 2020 (and by 50% by 2050). Some member states, including the UK are proposing to go further.

George Bush seems intent on refusing to commit to carbon reduction goals or timeframes. Instead he seems to be pinning his hope on technology to bail us out. But by ruling out carbon trading and refusing to accept a carbon tax this is unlikely to happen because for technology to be cost effective there needs to be a realistic carbon price (against which the technology can save money). This is at odds with the wishes of many of the states, including California, which want carbon trading systems and with much of US business which would like to operate under one set of rules.

So, the likelihood is that George Bush will seek to play for time, by insisting that China and India have to sign up for emissions cuts before the US will, and push the whole issue onto the next President in 2009.