Category: Sustainable Settlement and Agriculture

The Generator is founded on the simple premise that we should leave the world in better condition than we found it. The news items in this category outline the attempts people have made to do this. They are mainly concerned with our food supply and settlement patterns. The impact that the human race has on the planet.

Largest biochar research project in Australia’s history

admin /23 May, 2009

The Rudd Government today announced $1.4 million for the biggest biochar research project in Australia’s history – and one of the biggest in the world.

The CSIRO will coordinate the three-year project, to look at biochar’s potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and boost farm productivity.

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Tony Burke announced the funding, under the Government’s Climate Change Research Program.

He said it would be a significant project for Australia and the global community.

Experts in biochar, soil science and emissions management from across Australia will join the national research project.

Biochar is a fine charcoal, produced when organic matter such as wood or crop waste is burnt without oxygen.

It has potential to store carbon from the atmosphere in soil and could be used to help offset greenhouse gas emissions.

Other potential benefits include storing more nutrients and water in soil and reducing acidity.

Expert groups including the CSIRO had called for more research to address substantial ‘knowledge gaps’ in relation to biochar.

An expression of interest for the research proposal was submitted in September 2008 in the first round of applications under the Climate Change Research Program.

The independent Climate Change Expert Panel recommended no decision be made on the proposal until the CSIRO had completed a review to identify major biochar research gaps.

Pearson at odds with city greenies

admin /23 May, 2009

Pearson at odds with city greenies COMMENT: Tony Koch | May 23, 2009 Article from:  The Australian A VISITOR strolling through the Brisbane CBD any weekday will almost certainly be confronted by an earnest-looking university-age youth handing out glossy pamphlets that tell how the Australian Wilderness Society is caring for Aborigines by “protecting their wild Continue Reading →

Sainsbury’s purchase of fish fingers isn’t enough to sustain certified palm-oil

admin /22 May, 2009

Sainsbury’s purchase of fish fingers isn’t enough to sustain certified palm oil

Only 1% of sustainable palm oil has been bought because some supermarkets won’t put their money where their mouth is.

A hut in Riau, Indonesia, where palm oil plantations are a major cause of deforestation.

A hut in Riau, Indonesia, where palm oil plantations are a major cause of deforestation. Photograph: Ahmad Zamroni/Getty Images

 

Palm oil is slippery stuff. It’s in biscuits and shampoo, biodiesel and margarine, soap and, well, roughly a third of everything you buy at the supermarket. And most of it is grown on land previously covered by rainforest in Malaysia and Indonesia.

 

So the creation of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), where growers and food manufacturers, retailers and commodity traders can work out how to do things better should have been a good idea. Especially when the likes of British retailers Sainsbury’s and Tesco kept promising that if there was sustainable palm oil out there, they would make sure they used it and bought products made from it.

CPRS will lock out massive jobs boom

admin /22 May, 2009

CPRS will lock out massive jobs boom

Hobart, Friday 22 May 2009

The Minerals Council’s jobs scare campaign pales into insignificance
next to the hundreds of thousands of jobs that would not be created if
the Rudd Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme goes ahead as
planned, the Australian Greens said today.

“Transforming Australia into a zero carbon powerhouse would create at
least 800,000 jobs, but the CPRS would lock out the potential to create
more than a handful,” said Australian Greens Deputy Leader, Senator
Christine Milne.

Nuns arrive at eco-convent and leave behind high-carbon habit

admin /22 May, 2009

Nuns arrive at eco-convent and leave behind high-carbon habit

Move sees convent swap fuel-hungry abbey for new home with solar panels, grass-covered roof and reedbed sewage system

Nuns move from Stanbrook Abbey into new eco-convent near Helmsley

A nun arrives at her new nunnery near Helmsley, North York Moors. Photograph: John Giles/PA

It is not often that the Benedictine nuns of the Conventus of Our Lady of Consolation leave their monastery. It is even rarer for them to move monasteries entirely.

But today, the nuns left their Worcestershire home of 171 years to take possession of their new residence in the North York Moors national park – a new building that they insisted must remain as environmentally-friendly as possible as they lead their quiet life of prayer.

Zero-carbon eco home is light years ahead

admin /21 May, 2009

Zero-carbon eco home is light years ahead

The dream of zero-carbon living is being realised on an estate in Denmark. Andrew Purcell takes a tour of the world’s first Active House

Active House: A zero carbon emission house

Active House: an ultra efficient house in Denmark that captures more energy than an average family needs to heat and power it. Photograph: Morten Fauerby

Solar panels warm underfloor heating. Fifty square metres of solar cells generate electricity. Computer-controlled windows automatically regulate internal temperature.

This is the last place you would expect to find the solar-powered home of the future. Lystrup, a suburb of Denmark‘s second city, Aarhus, is grey from street to sky. The spring sun, hidden behind a bank of clouds that doesn’t break once on my week- long visit, barely seems strong enough to run a pocket calculator, let alone meet the energy needs of a family of four. But it is here that a dream of zero-carbon living is being realised.

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