A French government report published last month omitted significant details about Renault cars emitting nitrogen oxides at levels 9 to 11 times higher than EU limits. “The report was ultimately written by the state and they decided what would remain confidential,” Charlotte Lepitre, of France Nature Environment who sat on the commission, told the Financial times.
Renault denied using software to cheat emissions testing.
Source: euobserver.com
Participants from 33 counties attended a training course on sustainable energy, organized by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in the capital of Kenya, Nairobi.
The five-day course was supported by the Kenya Council of County Governors. It demonstrates the shift in energy delivery responsibility from the national Government to counties as stipulated under the new constitution.
“Taking into consideration the urgent need to build institutional capacity of the counties, UNIDO introduced this course in order to develop sustainable energy plans and oversee their subsequent implementation,” said Jossy Thomas, who manages the project at UNIDO.
Speaking at the opening ceremony, Governor Mandago, who heads the Infrastructure and Energy Committee at the Council of Governors, highlighted Kenya’s enormous renewable energy potential, saying that locally available renewable energy resources can bring down the cost of modern energy services in rural areas. In addition, this would also contribute to the efforts of mitigating global warning, he said.
The training course introduced three main components of renewable energy planning at county level.
The first one is the current usage of energy within the county, the nature of the users, the existing sources, such as fossil fuels and unsustainable biomass, and also the utilization technologies available. The second component relates to available local renewable energy sources and the possible conversion technologies and programmes county planners can identify, as well as potential renewable energy projects for specific counties. Lastly, the scope and rank of potential projects.
“At the heart of such planning are four clear benefits that each county stands to gain from renewable energy. They include increased household access to clean and affordable energy and services; greater business competiveness; improved county economics; and concrete environmental benefits,” said Thomas.
This training course was organized under a UNIDO project funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), titled “Sustainable conversion of waste to clean energy for greenhouse gas emissions reduction in Kenya” and finished on 12th August.
Source: unido.org
U.S. Forest Service scientists and collaborators calculated in a study recently published in Environmental Pollution, that trees, by removing air pollution, are saving more than 850 human lives and preventing 670,000 incidents of acute respiratory symptoms a year. This is the first broad-scale estimate within the United States.
NRS writes in their press release: “While trees’ pollution removal equated to an average air quality improvement of less than 1 percent, the impacts of that improvement are substantial. Researchers valued the human health effects of the reduced air pollution at nearly $7 billion every year in a study published recently in the journal Environmental Pollution.
The study by Dave Nowak and Eric Greenfield of the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station and Satoshi Hirabayashi and Allison Bodine of the Davey Institute is unique in that it directly links the removal of air pollution with improved human health effects and associated health values. The scientists found that pollution removal is substantially higher in rural areas than urban areas, however the effects on human health are substantially greater in urban areas than rural areas.”
Source: journals.elsevier.com
UNESCO is proposing adding sites in the high seas to the World Heritage List. These natural wonders are in international waters. Heritage status could help protect them against pollution and overfishing.
Many people might think there is nothing down there in the oceans but rocks, darkness and a lot of water. In fact you find a whole new world, full of life – stretching as far as the eye can reach.
Most of these unique places, though, cannot be protected, because they belong to what is known as the “high seas”.
“Half of our planet is beyond national jurisdiction,” Fanny Douvere, coordinator of the World Heritage Marine Programme, told DW. “It’s ocean, and belongs to nobody. So it is very much the wild west: Everybody can go there and extract resources.”
Douvere says that some two thirds of these amazing places so far off in the oceans are already suffering from unsustainable fishing.
UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre wants to change that – by starting to inscribe those spots on the World Heritage List. That would bring international recognition of their protection status.
Up to now, adding sites in the high seas is not possible, as countries themselves have to apply for one of their national sites to be added to the list.
“Mind-blowing”
In a report launched this week, UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) propose five sites that they think are definitely worthy of World Heritage status. Some of them were discovered just a few years ago.
“These places are just absolutely phenomenal, they are the Grand Canyons of the high seas,” Douvere enthused. “They include some of our biggest volcanoes and some of our most fantastic wildlife gathering points – it is mind-blowing.”
Douvere can tell, because she was lucky enough to see one of these places herself: the Sargasso Sea around the islands of Bermuda. A marine biologist, she went there with a submersible – down to a depth of 200 meters – deeper than any scuba diver can go.
Still, many places on the list are even deeper down in the ocean, down to 5,000 meters.
“It is an entirely different kind of life,” Douvere says. “Some of these things are not even driven by the light of the sun.” Yet even in those remote locations, there is lots of life.
The five spots UNESCO and IUCN experts say stand out from many other wonders in the ocean are two places in the Atlantic Ocean, two in the Pacific and another one in the Indian Ocean.
They include a sunken coral island, floating underwater rain forests, undersea volcanoes and a favorite meeting point for Great White sharks.
“It makes no sense to not include these places on the World Heritage List, because they are so evidently part of our human heritage,” Douvere says, adding that our children and granddchildren should be able to experience them in the same way as we are doing today.
he UNESCO World Heritage Program was created in 1972. Today, it lists 1052 sites, 203 of them natural, such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Galapagos islands and the Wadden Sea in Germany.
Adding sites in the high seas, though, is “an idea whose time has come,” UNESCO says.
The status of a World Heritage Site would be “the best mechanism to protect these unique places,” in Douvere’s view, as nearly every country in the world has ratified the World Heritage Convention.
What next?
The report published jointly by UNESCO and IUCN comes to the conclusion that adding high sea sites to the World Heritage List would be possible and “does not require any change in the definitions of natural and cultural heritage.”
What is still unclear, though, is the procedure for the inscription and later protection of such areas. The report suggests three legal options: a ‘bold’ interpretation of the 1972 World Heritage Convention, an amendment outside the terms of this convention or the negotiation of an optional protocol.
“It is now up to the World Heritage members, that is the groups of countries, to come up with ideas on how it can be done,” Douvere told DW.
The first step, though, has already been taken. The experts have taken a look at the other half of the planet not covered by the World Heritage Program as yet, to assess what is out there.
“We want to connect these far-off places where people think there is nothing there with places that people do cherish, like the Serengeti in Africa and the Great Wall of China,” Douvere says. “Everybody finds it common sense to protect those places.” And that is what UNESCO would also like people to think when it comes to floating rainforests deep down in the ocean.
Source: dw.com
Researchers have uncovered previously hidden sources of ocean pollution along more than 20 percent of America’s coastlines.
The study, published online Aug. 4 in the journal Science, offers the first-ever map of underground drainage systems that connect fresh groundwater and seawater, and also pinpoints sites where drinking water is most vulnerable to saltwater intrusion now and in the future.
Audrey Sawyer, assistant professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University and leader of the study, said that while scientists have long known that freshwater and seawater mix unseen below ground, until now they hadn’t been able to pinpoint exactly where it was happening, or how much.
Together with partners at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Sawyer was able to learn more about the previously hidden water exchanges via computer analysis, and without extensive and costly field surveys.
“We’re all pretty familiar with the idea that rain falls on land and flows out to the ocean in rivers, but there’s another, hidden component of rainfall that infiltrates the ground near the coast and spills into the ocean below sea level,” Sawyer said. “If you’ve ever been swimming in the ocean and felt a cold spot, there’s a good chance that the cold spot is due to groundwater seeping out from underfoot.”
“We call it ‘submarine groundwater discharge,'” she continued. “Freshwater flows out to sea, and vice versa. Urbanization, agricultural development, climate, and topography all affect how much water flows in either direction, and the exchange has a big impact on both onshore groundwater that we drink and offshore seawater where we swim and fish.”
The study identified 12 percent of the continental U.S. coastline – including the northern Gulf Coast from Mississippi to the Florida Panhandle, northern Atlantic Coast and Pacific Northwest – where the once-hidden drainage systems make the ocean most susceptible to freshwater contamination from septic tanks and fertilizer runoff. There, excess nutrients in the water can cause harmful algal blooms to form and remove vital oxygen from the water. This contamination from land to sea endangers fisheries and coral reefs as well as water recreation and tourism.
In contrast, another 9 percent of coastline – including Southeastern Florida, Southern California, and Long Island — are especially susceptible to the opposite threat: contamination from sea to land, the study found. In these areas, saltwater intrudes inland and infiltrates the fresh groundwater supply.
“It takes only a small amount of saltwater to render drinking water non-potable, so saltwater invasion is a big concern for water resource management in coastal areas,” Sawyer said.
Among the sites on the map with the worst impacts are Los Angeles and San Francisco, which the study found to be vulnerable to both ocean contamination and saltwater intrusion simultaneously.
Overall, more than 15 billion tons of freshwater flows through invisible underground networks into the ocean along the continental U.S. coastline every year, the researchers found.
That sounds like a lot of water, but it’s less than 1 percent of the total amount that flows from the continental United States into the ocean, pointed out study co-author Cédric David of JPL. The other 99 percent comes from rivers and surface runoff.
Still, David explained, the study is significant because it provides the first continental-scale high-resolution estimate of that 1 percent – a portion which, when compared to the other 99 percent, can be particularly rich in nutrients and other contaminants.
“This Ohio State-JPL collaboration has removed the cloak from hidden groundwater transfers between land and sea,” he said.
Sawyer, David and James Famiglietti, also of JPL, combined U.S. topography and climate models to identify key inland regions that contribute groundwater and contaminants to the coast. They examined rainfall, evaporation rates and the amount of known surface runoff to calculate the missing portion of water that was running out below ground, and melded those results with terrain and land-use data to identify where the water ended up.
For example, precipitation is similar in the Pacific Northwest and the mid-Atlantic regions, but the study found that underground drainage rates into the ocean were approximately 50 percent higher in the Pacific Northwest because the steep terrain there carries more groundwater to the coastline.
Land use was critical to discharge in Florida, the study found, and Sawyer said that she was surprised by the big effect that canals had there.
Since the early 20th century, Floridians have constructed thousands of miles of canals along the state’s coasts for transportation, irrigation and recreation. The study found that the canals capture water that would otherwise flow underground and out to sea.
As an example, Sawyer cited four adjacent counties along the Gulf Coast that have dramatically different amounts of discharge depending on the number of canals: Pinellas and Hillsborough counties, which have many canals, had about half as much below-ground drainage as Pasco and Hernando counties, which don’t.
The researchers commented that increased urbanization – and the extensive pavement that goes along with it – will also decrease submarine groundwater drainage in coastal regions where the population is growing, which increases the likelihood of saltwater intrusion.
“That’s why we hope others will use our analysis to better plan strategies for coastal land development and groundwater management that help preserve water quality,” Sawyer said. “Right now, we’ve created a map of American coastlines, but we hope to be able to do it for the world shortly, as data become available.”
Source: sciencedaily.com
High in the stark Nevada desert, a couple of hundred miles north-west of Las Vegas, is the shimmering circular mirage of Crescent Dunes. Ten thousand silvery glass panels, each measuring 115 square metres, surround a tall central tower, which stands like a twinkling needle in the featureless landscape around it. Resembling a fabulous alien metropolis, Crescent Dunes is in fact a highly sophisticated, mile-and-a-half-wide solar power plant – “the next generation in solar energy”, according to Kevin Smith, one of the project’s founders.
The glass panels, which comprise a combined area of more than a million square metres, are not photovoltaic (PV) panels like those installed on rooftops and in solar farms worldwide. Instead, they are simply vast, multifaceted mirrors, which track the course of the sun like heliotropic plants. This field of mirrors harnesses and concentrates the blazing Nevada sunshine, directing it precisely towards the top of the central tower.
“The difficulty with photovoltaic is that it’s intermittent,” says Smith, who is CEO of Crescent Dunes’s parent company, SolarReserve. “When the sun goes down, you’re done.” Engineers have long sought methods of storing solar energy – in water, in batteries, in fluid-filled “parabolic troughs” – but Smith claims that Crescent Dunes demonstrates “the world’s most advanced energy-storage technology”, known as molten-salt storage.
The central tower secretes a reservoir of potassium and sodium nitrate – about 25,000 metric tonnes of it – heated in advance to 288°C, at which temperature the mixture is a clear, water-like liquid. This is circulated in narrow, thin-walled tubes, rising dramatically in temperature when exposed to the fearsome, concentrated sunlight at the top of the tower. “We heat it to 560°C,” says Smith, “it flows back down the tower and we capture it in a large tank.”
The molten salt efficiently maintains the heat and when the energy is required, it is converted to electricity through a conventional steam turbine. This set-up allows Crescent Dunes to provide power to 75,000 Nevada homes long after the sun has set and even, if necessary, 24 hours a day. Smith believes that concentrated solar power (CSP) is not simply a substitute for photovoltaic panels but a potential competitor to conventional fuels. “It’s really an alternative to fossil fuel or even nuclear. You couldn’t power a city with just PV and wind, but you could with CSP, because of the storage capacity.” SolarReserve is already developing cheaper, higher-capacity installations and planning to build similar solar plants in South Africa, Chile and China.
Of course, the technology isn’t flawless: CSP can only efficiently operate in areas with intense, uninterrupted sunlight and birds can be burned and killed by the concentrated sunbeams. Nonetheless, Crescent Dunes emits no pollutants, uses a fraction of the water required to generate coal or nuclear power and occupies a smaller combined area than, say, a coal-fired power station. Assuming the technology proves sustainable and replicable, among the ancient mountains of the American west, a bright future may be under way.
Source: theguardian.com
Calcic injection wire for external steel treatment and titanic roll of production of Chepetsk Mechanical Plant (included into Fuel company of ROSATOM TVEL) became the diploma winner at the international industrial forum in India. At the MMMM-2016 exhibition which took place on August 10-12 in New Delhi the exposition of innovative HighMet trademark products was awarded with the Cup and the diploma for the 2nd place in the nomination ‘Innovative Representation of Products’. The award to JSC CMP was handed by minister of the mining industry of India Vishnu Deo Sai. The exhibition which is the largest industrial event of the Southern Asian region has united more than 300 participants from 21 countries.
At the international forum MMMM-2016 the Chepetsk Mechanical Plant has provided the new trademark of metallurgical products HighMet for the first time. Manager of the calcium project, who is the head of the JSC CMP delegation in India Igor Kuklin noted that participation in a forum became a new stage of relations of the enterprise with Indian partners. ‘The enterprise has already received requests for HighMet from metallurgists of India. Moreover, business contacts which we managed to acquire during these days, promise new perspectives for JSC CMP’, he said.
In addition to products of HighMet family – a monolithic calcic injection wire and titanium materials – industrialists of India could estimate the souvenirs made of zirconium fabricated by subsidiary of JSC CMP – Pribor-service. Visitors of an exposition responded to the offer to participate in chess tournament which highlight was zirconium chess with great pleasure.
Source: rosatom.ru
One-third of Europe’s countryside is potentially affected by noise pollution caused by human activity, according to a new report published in June by the European Environment Agency (EEA). Protecting areas not yet affected by noise can bring significant environmental and health benefits, the report says.
Within the European Union, the Environmental Noise Directive (END; 2002/49/EC) defines quiet areas outside cities as those areas delimited by national authorities that are undisturbed by noise from traffic, industry or recreational activities. The report ‘Quiet areas in Europe: the environment unaffected by noise pollution,’ provides a first mapping assessment of potential quiet areas in Europe’s rural regions. Approximately 18% of Europe’s area can be considered quiet, but 33% is potentially affected by noise pollution, the report finds.
The distribution of quiet areas is strongly related to population density and transport. Other factors such as elevation, distance from coastlines and land use also greatly influence the presence of human activity and noise. Countries with relatively low population densities, such as Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, have the highest proportion of quiet areas. The noisiest areas tend to be found in areas with higher population densities, such as Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Remote areas such as the Alpine region or near the Mediterranean coast also have a high proportion of quiet areas.
Around 27% of Europe’s protected Natura 2000 sites have large areas of quiet, although one fifth of protected sites are exposed to high levels of noise. Although some actions have been taken to protect quiet areas in the countryside, the report says more could be done to reduce noise pollution in these areas to protect human health and biodiversity. Such measures may include for example, the introduction of national or local legislation that restricts certain business or recreational activities in quiet areas.
The impacts of environmental noise
Environmental noise is one of the most pervasive pollutants in Europe. An EEA 2014 assessment estimated that at least one in four European citizens are exposed to noise from road traffic above EU thresholds, or a total of more than 125 million people. Harmful effects of noise pollution on humans include annoyance and sleep disturbance which can in turn result in more serious problems like hypertension or heart disease.
There is also increasing scientific evidence regarding the harmful effects of anthropogenic noise on wildlife. In nature, many species rely on acoustic communication for important aspects of life, such as finding food or locating a mate. Noise pollution can potentially interfere with these functions.
Source: eea.europa.eu
Transportation is a major contributor to carbon emissions, but historically it has not been the largest source. However, that has apparently changed. Transportation-related sources now account for the largest share of U.S. carbon emissions.
Earlier this year, transportation overtook all other sectors of the economy—including electric power, industrial, residential, and commercial—to earn that dubious distinction, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG). This is the first time in nearly 40 years that this has happened, the group says. It cites U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data showing the total carbon pollution of each economic sector over the previous 12 months.
The 12-month total covering May 2015 to April 2016 (the most recent available) shows transportation producing the highest levels of carbon emissions. That was also the case for the 12-month periods ending in February 2016 and March 2016, U.S. PIRG notes. The group attributes this to growth in transportation-related emissions, but also to decreases in other areas, such as electric power.
Coal-fired power plants are being retired at an increasing rate in North America, replaced by a combination of natural gas and renewable-energy sources. A natural-gas boom in North America has brought down prices, making it a more economically-attractive fuel than coal for many utilities. That, along with anticipated pressure from regulators on power-plant emissions, has led to a decline of the coal industry.
Earlier this year, Peabody Energy—the world’s largest private coal company—filed for bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the long-term future of U.S. Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for cars is in doubt. Regulators now believe carmakers may miss the original target of 54.5 mpg (equivalent to about 40 mpg on the window sticker) by 2025, due to a combination of low gas prices and high demand for SUVs. That may give carmakers grounds to challenge the standards for 2022 to 2025, creating the makings of a showdown between them and regulators.
Source: greencarreports.com
According to Balkan Energy News, team of designers and entrepreneurs based in Belgrade is working on solutions to reduce the car industry’s share in greenhouse gas emissions. Saša Milovančević, one of the founders and chief executive of Aqos Technologies d.o.o., said a solar film which the startup developed allows for the creation of thematic solar-conventional vehicles which won’t have an issue with aesthetics regarding solar cells. The texture and appearance of the cells are an indigenous art motif that should give a new visual – distinctive character to the car, he added. The solar cell has flexibility with two axes and Aqos is working on the solution for all three axes, with increased efficiency in all lighting conditions.
The Serbian company said it has support from scholars from the University of Belgrade and several international car industry entities. The management plans road tests for 2020 and hopes to launch production in Serbia, financed from overseas. After the solar cell is complete, designers and engineers will work on the engine, the battery and suspension, before creating a prototype and moving to a new financing round.
Milovančević said the first cars should be produced by 2023, depending on numerous steps, including market conditions. He underscored availability and good taste are key to the project’s success. The concept for the solar automobile is to design it to utilize energy even in the dark, as little there is.
Source: balkangreenenergynews.com
What would it take to convert an entire country to 100-percent renewable energy? How about a country that occupies an entire continent? Australian climate think tank Beyond Zero Emissions is publishing a series of plans addressing how different aspects of the country’s economy and infrastructure can be converted to renewable energy.
As part of its assessment—known as the Zero Carbon Australia Project—the group put a price on converting Australia’s entire fleet to electric cars, claiming that goal is achievable.
The electric-car push is part of one of six plans that address stationary power generation, renewable energy for businesses, transportation, and industry, as well as the issues of land use and economic impact.
The transportation plan in turn is broken down into reports on electric vehicles and high-speed rail, with reports on other forms of public transportation and freight transport forthcoming.
According to the report on electric vehicles, cars operating in urban areas are currently the largest transportation-related source of greenhouse-gas emissions in Australia, accounting for 36 percent of those emissions.
They also account for 6 percent of overall greenhouse-gas emissions in the country.
Switching to electric cars charged using renewable sources would eliminate those emissions, converting passenger cars used in more rural areas to electric power would reduce emissions by another 2 percent, the report says.
It claims that goal is fairly attainable.
Gradually phasing out internal-combustion cars over a 10-year period between 2015 and 2025 would cost at most approximately 25 percent more than a “business-as-usual” scenario in which electric-car adoption proceeds at its current pace, the report claims.
The total cost would be approximately $250 billion (in 2014 real Australian dollars) per year over the period between 2015 and 2035, it claims.
That is as measured under a “high-cost scenario” where the economic factors surrounding electric-car adoption are less than ideal.
Researchers also looked at a “low-cost scenario,” in which prices for electric cars and battery cells drop significantly, maintenance costs are lower than current projections, and gas prices are higher.
In that scenario, a transition to electric cars between 2015 and 2025 would cost the same as the “business-as-usual” scenario. Charging infrastructure to support the enlarged fleet of electric cars would cost $295 per capita annually between 2015 and 2035, the report claims.
That assumes heavier reliance on public Level 2 AC charging stations, with smaller amounts of home Level 2 stations and DC fast-charging stations.
In addition to electric passenger cars, the report looks at other modes of transportation.
As with electric cars, it predicts that electric buses could be adopted at relatively little cost, or possibly even less cost than continuing business as usual, if electric-vehicle costs remain low while gasoline and diesel prices spike.
In addition, a separate report on high-speed rail argues that it is a more attractive alternative to commercial flights in terms of emissions.
Other reports advocate further emissions reductions through more-efficient buildings and land use, and the conversion of Australia’s industries to renewable energy.
Source: greencarreports.com
Scotland recently experienced one of its windiest days of the year with gusts reaching over 180 km/h on top of the country’s highest mountains. While they were disruptive to trains, ferries and car traffic, the winds had the capacity to meet the entirety of Scotland’s electricity needs for the day, according to a report in The Guardian.
This is a milestone for the country. The Scottish government describes onshore wind as the country’s most cost-effective low-carbon energy technology.
However weather like this doesn’t happen every day. A recent analysis by the IEA on Next Generation Wind and Solar Power shows that the variable nature of these renewable resources can present serious technical problems for system operators in charge of maintaining a balance between stable electricity supply and demand.
It is a challenge that is only set to grow as governments around the world seek to meet renewable energy targets under climate action plans.
As long as the contribution of wind and solar to the electricity mix doesn’t exceed a few percentage points, their integration into the grid is simple. However, as next generation renewables are deployed, the issue of system and market integration will increasingly become a critical priority for energy policy.
The positive effects of renewables are clear: reduced fuel costs, reduced emissions of greenhouse gases, and increased energy security. However negative costs must also be taken into account, such as the higher costs of cycling conventional power plants when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining, or the need for more flexible grid infrastructure able to handle variability of supply.
Grid integration must be seen through the prism of declining technology costs but must also take into account the full system value of renewable energy. To ensure that the system value is positive, renewable energy must be considered within the context of the entire electricity system and implemented alongside other innovations such as renewable energy forecasting, enhanced scheduling of conventional power plants, electricity storage and more flexible generation and grid infrastructure.
A country meeting its energy demand entirely from renewable energy resources for a full day is a taste of a future zero-carbon energy system. However this is a future that cannot be realised solely through the introduction of more and more wind turbines. Smart, predictable, and long-term policies that are based on an understanding of the full system value of renewable energy technologies – and encourage their deployment appropriately – can ensure that even when the wind isn’t blowing, we are still taking steps to meeting climate targets.
Source: iea.org
Speaking ahead of the 10th anniversary of the illegal dumping of toxic waste in Côte d’Ivoire, a group of United Nations experts today urged the Ivorian Government, all responsible States and the international community to use the opportunity to address the ongoing human rights impacts of the incident. In a news release from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the experts also called on Trafigura, the Anglo-Dutch commodity trading company behind the dumping, to support this process by disclosing all the information it has about the contents and nature of the waste dumped, and its likely ongoing health and environmental consequences.
OHCHR noted that on 19 August 2006, the cargo ship Probo Koala discharged 500 tonnes of toxic waste in Abidjan. The hazardous substances, which belonged to Trafigura, were also dumped at 18 sites around the city while many other possible locations remain unknown to date. Trafigura had decided not to dispose of the toxic waste in the Netherlands because proper disposal costs more. According to official estimates, 15 people died, 69 people were hospitali zed and over 108,000 others sought medical treatment after the ‘Probo Koala incident.’
“Ten years on, victims of the dumping and other residents in Abidjan remain in the dark about the ongoing dangers to their health,” the experts said, noting that they still do not even know what was in the toxic waste; whether the dumpsites have been adequately cleaned-up, and whether the waste has entered the water supply or the food chain.
“Recognizing the lasting adverse impacts that hazardous materials can have on water and soils, there is real concern for food safety and the health of future generations,” the experts added. The experts urged the Government of Côte d’Ivoire to seize the opportunity of the 10th anniversary to address the long-term health and environmental impacts of the incident and seek additional financial and technical assistance from public health experts and the wider international community. They stressed that in a post-conflict country such as the Côte d’Ivoire, it is even more vital for the international community to provide support. Given their role in these events, the governments of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom where Trafigura is registered, have a particular responsibility to do so. Noting that in March 2015, the United Kingdom refused to launch a criminal investigation into whether Trafigura’s London-based subsidiary had conspired in the UK to dump the waste in Abidjan, the experts said that this lack of action and information has left those affected by the dumping feeling abandoned and vulnerable to further victimization. In November 2015, the Ivoirian Government announced that it had completed the decontamination of all of the dumpsites. At the Government’s request, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) performed an environmental audit of the dumpsites in July 2016 to verify their decontamination.
Source: un.org
On Thursday,a letter to Governor Jerry Brown of California, about how nuclear energy was essential to fighting global warming, was sent by Dr. James Hansen and the leading climate scientists in the world, plus a long list of environmentalists.
The letter was prompted by a recent announcement by Pacific Gas & Electric Company to close its well-running, low-carbon, low-cost nuclear reactors at Diablo Canyon because of political pressure from the state of California and especially its Lt. Governor.
The widespread claim—that dozens of nuclear plants merit subsidies to protect the earth’s climate—has been borne out by reality. At the same time, tax subsidies for renewables, plus low natural gas prices, are making reactors uneconomic in the short term.
New York addressed this imbalance last week when it passed a true Clean Energy Standard that supports both renewables and nuclear. Passage came after all parties acknowledged carbon emissions would go up if even a single nuclear plant closed.
But, strangely, California doesn’t seem impressed by the threat of global warming, even after the state’s carbon emissions jumped when the San Onofre nuclear plant closed from a combination of technical and political reasons. That carbon-free electricity was replaced by natural gas and costly out-of-state purchases.
Similarly, if Diablo Canyon closes, its almost 18 billion kWhs per year, the largest and lowest-carbon electricity generation in California, will be replaced by less than 2 billion kWhs per year of similarly-low-carbon renewables, less than 2 billion kWhs per year from efficiency, and over 10 billion kWhs per year from high-carbon natural gas and more out-of-state purchases. California would have little hope of achieving its emissions goals by 2030.
Global Warming does not care what technology is used, just how much carbon is emitted. All wind energy in California only produced 12 billion kWhs in 2015, much less than Diablo Canyon. The two Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors would produce almost 18 billion kWhs every year for the next 25 years if not prematurely closed for political reasons. Since wind turbines have to be replaced about every 20 years, this means that just to stay even, California would have to install three times as many wind turbines as exist today. The are no plans for installing that many wind turbines.
Which is why James Hansen, and most of the rest of us, seem at wit’s end at such foolishness on the part of what is usually the most environmentally-conscious state. It’s as if the Governor’s Mansion ideological hatred of nuclear exceeds their concern about global warming.
Source: forbes.com
The 2009 Green Energy Act gave little thought to the transformation that wind farms bring to rural communities — problems that even revisions to the act “will only partially address,” writes a group headed by Stewart Fast. Fast personally favours wind energy, “but only if it’s done right.”
In Ontario, he says, much of it wasn’t.
He studies energy and environment issues at U of O’s Institute for Science, Society and Policy, and led a study group including industry and anti-wind members. Their paper, Lessons learned from Ontario wind energy disputes, has been published in the journal Nature Energy.
The Liberals’ Green Energy Act came in quickly, the geographer said in an interview. It brought new investment, “but those discussions about how a place will change because of this new project happened late in the process … There was a sense that the quicker you got in your proposal for the FIT contract to the government, the better chance you had.”
The FIT, or Feed-In Tariff, gave premium prices for solar and wind energy.
“It was a gold rush, basically,” said Fast. And since those involved kept details secret to avoid giving their competitors an edge, residents didn’t know what their neighbours were planning.
“That is really the worst way to go about something that you know is going to have a big impact” on landscape and people, he said. Ontario took little account of heritage, landscapes and “place-attachment,” the sense we have of being anchored somewhere, the group writes.
“As it currently stands, Ontario’s renewable energy policy framework ignores these complex questions of identity and the question of whether or not turbines will fit into communities,” the study says.
Fast said there’s a “jarring change that can happen once turbines come up — that is something that is important.”
As well, some residents near wind farms worry about health impacts from vibration and sounds that are too low for human ears to hear. Fast says Ontario brushed off these concerns without enough information, assuming there is no health impact unless proven otherwise rather than “taking a precautionary approach.”
Other issues he raises:
Premier Dalton McGuinty announced at the start that renewable energy would not be blocked by NIMBY protests, effectively labelling opposition as “ignorant, kind of self-interested NIMBY-ism. That’s a mistake right off the top.”
“There was lip-service paid to the importance of having community ownership.” But the reality didn’t give much support to community projects.
Wind opponents have often complained that most wind farms are run by industries from outside their communities.
Developers preferred one-on-one talks with residents to avoid the protests that can happen at big meetings. But rural people saw this as a “divide-and-conquer” method.
The Act removes municipal zoning controls over renewable projects.
In Ottawa, one wind opponent said the disputes over turbines “have pitted neighbour against neighbour.
“Just in terms of the fabric of the community (it is) ripping people apart,” said Jane Wilson, who chairs Ottawa Wind Concerns. “Even families are not speaking. People have lost complete faith in their government … People had no say whatever in what happened in their community.”
Fast’s group concludes that more transparent approaches would make some wind proposals more acceptable, but it isn’t optimistic. The authors end the study by saying: “Nonetheless, many of our recommendations will unfortunately remain unaddressed, without further consideration or assessment of the lessons that could be learned.”
Ontario now has 5,700 megawatts of wind capacity, though turbines don’t run at top speed all the time. Ontario’s total capacity from all sources is 35,221 MW.
Source : ottawacitizen.com
The evolution of the first land plants including mosses may explain a long-standing mystery of how Earth’s atmosphere became enriched with oxygen, according to an international study led by the University of Exeter.
Oxygen in its current form first appeared in Earth’s atmosphere some 2.4 billion years ago, in an incident known as the Great Oxidation Event. However, it was not until roughly 400 million years ago that this vital compound first approached modern levels in the atmosphere. This shift steered the trajectory of life on Earth and researchers have long debated how oxygen rose to modern concentrations.
In a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor Tim Lenton, of the University of Exeter, and his colleagues theorised that the earliest land plants, which colonised the land from 470 million years ago onwards, are responsible for the levels of oxygen that sustains our lives today. Their emergence and evolution permanently increased the flux of organic carbon into sedimentary rocks, the primary source for atmospheric oxygen, thus driving up oxygen levels in a second oxygenation event and establishing a new, stable oxygen cycle.
Earth’s early plant biosphere consisted of simple bryophytes, such as moss, which are non-vascular — meaning they do not have vein-like systems to conduct water and minerals around the plant. Using computer simulations, the researchers first estimated that these plants could have generated roughly 30% of today’s global terrestrial net primary productivity by about 445 million years ago.
When the properties of modern bryophytes were taken into account, including their elemental composition and effects on rock weathering, they found that modern levels of atmospheric oxygen were achieved by 420 to 400 million years ago, consistent with independent evidence.
These findings therefore suggest that the first land plants, such as the humble moss, created the stable oxygen-rich atmosphere that allowed large, mobile, intelligent animal life, including humans, to evolve.
Professor Tim Lenton, of the University of Exeter, said: “It’s exciting to think that without the evolution of the humble moss, none of us would be here today. Our research suggests that the earliest land plants were surprisingly productive and caused a major rise in the oxygen content of Earth’s atmosphere.”
Source: sciencedaily.com
