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The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
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  • Support splits green group

    Support splits green group

    Tom Arup and Adam Morton

    May 6, 2009

    Divisions are emerging in the Australian Conservation Foundation’s board and council over the foundation’s apparent backing of the Government’s emissions trading scheme.

    ACF executive director Don Henry backed the Government’s legislation after changes announced on Monday. The changes include raising the 2020 emissions reduction target range to 25 per cent in the event of strong global agreement, delaying the scheme, and extra help for industry.

    While Mr Henry was at pains yesterday to point out the ACF still had serious reservations about the scheme, other members of the ACF hierarchy were taken aback by Mr Henry’s support for legislation that included the 25 per cent target.

    The Age was told yesterday the ACF’s 40-member council would harden its position against the scheme rather than back it. The board was not informed of the decision to support the legislation.

    Mr Henry said a decision had been made by himself and ACF president Ian Lowe. “We will be having a discussion with the board at the next sitting in a couple of days,” he said.

    Mr Henry said the ACF would continue to campaign for tougher targets. The decision to back the legislation was made because the tough 2020 target would give greater impetus to global climate negotiations.

    Rank-and-file members of the ACF have also expressed anger. Pablo Brait, a 10-year member, quit in protest over the foundation’s support for a policy that scientists warned would not prevent runaway climate change. He knew of others who had taken a similar stance.

    Environment groups including Greenpeace, the Wilderness Society and Friends of the Earth have joined pressure group GetUp in opposing the proposed scheme. The Climate Institute and the WWF support it.

  • Economic recovery unlikely given oil supply

    During May to September 2007 I had plenty of time for reflection and observation. In September 2007 I expressed concern to my family that we could be headed for something nasty and that it could be the big one. Like an idiot I prepared our house for sale when I should have just taken whatever I could get. By January 2008 when I put it on the market it was too late and I didn’t read it.

    In September 2007 I said we had a 50:50 chance that this could be the big one coming – the one that would change things forever. By January 2008 I had upgraded that to a 75% chance. I am still sticking with that, but the odds may be slightly higher.

    By the big one, I mean when the world hits the wall, when scarcity of natural resources governs, not scarcity of money. Growth will no longer be the status quo. It is physically impossible for this to be the case. That means decline is inevitable. It doesn’t mean the end of the world but it does mean a whole new paradigm, particularly in what one invests in.

    Total productionIf the attached graph is correct and there is to be an oil slide of 2.9% pa that will probably translate to a decline in GDP of about 1.5% pa. Scary stuff if you are hoping to return to business as usual. Australia is particularly vulnerable because of where it currently competes to buy oil. Nearly all of those countries are already in decline (cf Vietnam, Indonesia). The projected deficit in what we want and what we can get is 55% by 2025.

    The way I see it, the recession could be long enough that it takes us into the next oil shortage which in turn will precipitate a tumbling oil price through catastrophic collapse of demand. A bumpy ride is ahead for sure. No conventional wisdom is going to cope with this. We may even see a change in government breakup. The dichotomy now is supposedly to share the scarce resource of monetary wealth. What if it breaks into how to share the scarce resource of the environment?

     

     

  • Lobby group ready to get up Rudd’s nose on climate

    Lobby group ready to get up Rudd’s nose on climate

     

     

    Ewin Hannan | May 07, 2009

    Article from:  The Australian

    THE organisation that helped deliver young voters to Kevin Rudd at the last election will campaign in marginal seats to pressure Labor to shift ground on climate change.

    Lobby group GetUp warns that the Government faces an electoral backlash from ALP supporters at the next election, due before April 16, 2011.

    GetUp will start door-knocking voters in marginal seats within weeks in the wake of the Rudd Government’s backdown on its emissions trading scheme.

    The changes, announced after secret negotiations with business and green groups over the past few weeks, include a one-year delay on the scheme’s proposed start date of July 1 next year, taking it beyond the next federal election.

    They also include a low $10-a-tonne fixed carbon price for its first year of operation, bringing it much closer to the scheme design advocated by the Coalition since before the previous federal poll.

    Simon Sheikh, the organisation’s national director, said GetUp members were disappointed the Government “seems to be listening to industry more than people”. “What we hear a lot is that the Prime Minister was given a mandate at the last election to act on climate change and now our members are asking, ‘Well, how can we possibly be in a space where no serious climate action will be taken in this term?”‘ he said.

    Mr Sheikh said GetUp had surveyed its members, including ALP voters in marginal seats, and they were prepared to move away from Labor. “Our members had a great degree of optimism in November 2007,” he said.

    “When we have asked the question, ‘Are you prepared to change your vote on the back of any issue, and what is that issue?’, it’s climate change that comes out No 1.

    “People are prepared in huge numbers — certainly the majority of our Labor-voting members are prepared — to switch their vote if they don’t see strong action.”

    Mr Sheikh said GetUp had almost 18,000 members in the seat of Melbourne, which Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner won on preferences by less than 5 per cent from his Greens opponent, and 16,000 in Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek’s seat of Sydney, another with a big Greens vote.

    “These are seats where significant shifts in voting patterns can make an impact,” he said. “We have thousands of members in other marginals across the country and I think it’s very clear that if those members mobilise in any united way, then the Prime Minister will have electoral problems.

    “In the lead-up to Copenhagen (the UN’s climate change meeting in December), who is he going to listen to? Big polluters or people who voted for him?”

    While the campaign was aimed at pressuring the Government, Mr Sheikh ruled out GetUp formally campaigning against Labor at the next election.

  • Domestic Hydro Power

    Domestic Hydro Power

    Renewable energy is a hot topic at the moment, however few people know about hydro power. This is especially true when looking at using hydro power in your own home, so what can you use it for?

    When people think about renewable sources of electricity people think about fairly new technology, however hydro power is without a doubt one of the oldest forms of renewable energy generation. Water wheels, the first form of hydro power were used for irrigation in the fareast over 2000 years ago. Waterwheels were then used for milling.

    During the 19th century water turbines were created, these turbines were much smaller, and more efficient.

    In England, water mills have been used for over 900 years, during the 19th century there were over 20,000 water mills just in England. Throughout the world, water wheels have been used to power numerous pieces of machinery.

    China has over 85,000 hydropower stations, all of which are small scale plants. Many other developing countries are realising the importance of using hydropower to generate electricity.

    If you have naturally falling water in or near your home then it will also be possible to harness the energy by using a domestic hydro power system. These are very small systems which can be used without damaging the environment.

    There are several different types of turbines which can be used, depending on the project in question. In each case the turbine spins a shaft which is used to generate electricity. There are two main categories of turbine.

    Impulse turbines are where pressurised jets hit shaped cups. This means that virtually all of the waters energy can be captured.

    Reaction turbines on the other hand are where the water is not pressurised into a jet, the water simply passes over the blades. This causes the blades to spin, and so creates movement which can be converted into electricity.

    Large scale hydro power schemes have been seen to be damaging to the environment, however these small scale plants do not cause as much disturbance. As long as they are managed correctly they shouldn’t create any environmental problems.

    Before you consider installing hydro power systems you check whether or not you need to apply for planning permission before building such a scheme.

    By using small scale systems there are actually environmental benefits, for a start it reduces the need to use fossil fuels, and other methods of energy production. Micro hydro power systems can also provide power for properties located in isolated areas who have no other options when it comes to electricity.

    Hydroelectric power stations account for 20% of the worlds electrical supply. Norway is very keen on hydro electrical power stations and produces most of its electricity from this method. Iceland and Austria are also keen, they produce in excess of 70% of their electricity using hydro power plants.

    There are three different types of hydroelectric system:-

    Diversion This is where a portion of a river is diverted through a manmade canal, this can be done without using a dam and so is not as damaging to the environment.

    Impoundment This is the most popular system for large scale systems, a dam is constructed across the river which creates a lake behind it. This creates a body of water which can be used to drive a turbine to create electricity.

    Pumped Storage If not much electricity is required water can be pumped from a lower reservoir to a higher reservoir. When more electricity is required the water can be used to turn a turbine and create electricity. In other words the water is being used to store the energy, like a battery.

    Domestic hydro power projects are encouraged by the Low Carbon Buildings programme and therefore may be eligible for grants.

    Hydro Power – The State of Play

  • Bursting the carbon bubble

    Bursting the carbon bubble

    The world economy may be recovering, but inaction on climate change could cost far more than the current financial crisis. 

    A new Economist survey found over 100 articles in the month of April hailing “green shoots” of recovery for the world economy. Not so fast. Ultimately, recovery should be judged by the extent to which global demand is revived in the short term, global imbalances are corrected in the medium term and the world economy is put on a climate-friendly trajectory in the longer term.

    As the IMF’s recent World Economic Outlook shows, most economists predict growth for 2010, the glimmerings of which are now evident in such indicators as mortgage re-financings. Even if this is true, it is only the first step. If we stop here, the effort to date may be a mere bridge loan to the next bubble.

    That’s what happened last time, and what got us into this mess. After the dotcom bubble burst and the US slumped into a recession in 2001, low interest rates and fiscal stimulus (of tax cuts) followed. Such actions made credit cheap and spending in vogue.

    So borrow and spend we did. We borrowed to buy homes. We filled them with goods from China. With the profits, China loaned us more. We spent even more. The results were massive and unsustainable global imbalances – a huge US current account deficit and an equally large Chinese surplus. This, along with deregulation and no regulation in the case of the shadow banking system, sowed the seeds of the crisis.

    True, expansionary policy is needed in the short term to boost global demand. But in the medium and long term, the US has to consume less and the world’s poorer countries have to consume more in order to correct global imbalances. Yet this has to be done in a cleaner way than ever before.

    Global imbalances also swelled the carbon dioxide emissions bubble that is yet to burst. Since the turn of the century, emissions surged as China became the world’s factory, and US emission remained large. China and the US are now the two largest emitters at 46% of the annual world total.

    On climate change, there are true glimmerings of hope amid the response to the financial crisis. Yet we will need to be much more audacious in order to recover.

    In the US, a new ICF study says $52bn of the $787bn stimulus package is “green” (6% of total). The report cites the home weatherisation programme, smart grid, loan guarantees for renewable energy and some of the transportation funding as examples of measures that will remove 61m tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the equivalent of taking 13m cars off the road.

    Up to 12% of China’s $500bn stimulus package is climate-friendly. China will be spending stimulus funds on high-speed rail, low-carbon car production, renewable energy and energy-efficient buildings. China already leads the world in installed renewable energy capacity with 42 gigawatts of capacity (compared to 23 in the US).

    It is true that China and the US have stimulus packages with climate-friendly components that couldn’t have been dreamed of in either country seven years ago. Yet these measures are far from adequate. China’s green industrial policy is swamped by a “brown” energy policy based on cheap coal – a policy that accounts for over 80% of its emissions.

    The US still hasn’t passed climate legislation, let alone put together a green industrial policy.

    Last week the journal Nature published a study that shows how we may exhaust our “carbon budget” in 20 years. In other words, without a drastic reduction in global emissions within the decade, we lose our chance to prevent dangerous climate change. This could lead to more than two degrees (celsius) of global warming – a tipping point that could trigger catastrophic global change.

    Economist Frank Ackerman points out in a new book, Can We Afford the Future: The Economics of a Warming World, that most economists who look at climate change don’t consider worst-case events. When factored in, the costs of doing nothing on climate change that have been put at 5-20% of global GDP by economists such as Nicholas Stern, don’t look so out of this world.

    In other words, the costs of inaction on climate change could be far worse than affects of the current financial crisis.

    Some shoots may get us through the season, but we have to plant the seeds for medium- and long-run sustainability. Such efforts also need to be treated like a bank bailout. Rather than asking “How much does it cost?”, we need to ask “What does it take?” The benefits of living in a more stable and healthy economy far outweigh the costs of a warming world more susceptible to crises.

  • Anaconda wave-power generator snakes into nexr stage of production

    Anaconda wave-power generator snakes into next stage of production

    The device is said to be at the forefront of a new generation of wave-power machines that could slash renewables cost

    Link to this video

    Giant rubber sea snakes could harness the plentiful clean power off Britain’s coasts within five years, according to the inventors of a new type of wave-energy generator.

    Yesterday, Checkmate Sea Energy unveiled the final stages of a proof-of-concept trial of its Anaconda device, seen by many experts as at the forefront of the next generation of robust, cheap wave-power machines that could slash the costs of making renewable electricity.

    Made from a composite of fabric and natural rubber, the Anaconda rides oncoming waves and uses the motion to drive a turbine in its tail. The test device is nine metres long but its developers say that a full-scale device could be up to 200m in length and be capable of producing 1MW of power, enough for a thousand homes, and cost £2m to build. Farms of 50 or more could be placed underwater a few miles from the coast.

    Harnessing wave power could contribute significantly to the UK’s target of sourcing 15% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. The Carbon Trust found that wave and tidal stream technologies could add 10-20GW of electricity capacity to the UK by 2050, in particular from areas such as north-west Scotland and south-west England.

    “It’s a completely new kind of wave power machine,” said Rod Rainey, a chief engineer with engineering design consultants Atkins and inventor of the Anaconda. “The beauty of wave energy is its consistency. However, the problem holding back wave energy machines is they tend to deteriorate over time in the harsh marine environment. Anaconda is non-mechanical: it is mainly rubber, a natural material with a natural resilience and so it has very few moving parts to maintain.”

    Each Anaconda device is tethered to the sea floor and positioned head-on into the coming waves. Floating under the sea surface, the water-filled rubber tube swims with the waves – as a swell hits the front of the device, it creates a bulge that travels to the back of the tube, in the same way a pulse of blood travels along an artery. When the bulge wave reaches the Anaconda’s tail, the energy is used to drive a turbine and create electricity.

    “Wave power has always been the poor relation of wind energy, but a lot of people are resentful of wind turbines on their doorstep, or in vast tracts of coastal waters,” said Paul Auston, chairman of Checkmate. “What we’re offering […] is a new technology which you can’t see, it’s under the water so it’s not as intrusive and it’s made of a natural material.”

    The device has already been given a significant vote of confidence by the Carbon Trust. The Anaconda has been chosen as one of only two technologies to take part in the Trust’s marine accelerator programme, which aims to push new low-carbon technology ideas closer commercial reality.

    “We were attracted to it because of its simplicity – in theory it’s just a rubber structure,” said the Carbon Trust’s Stephen Wyatt. “It has the potential to be robust and quite easy and cheap to manufacture. When you look at some of the severe offshore conditions that wave and tidal devices have to face, then we realise that a structure this simple could be quite cheap.”

    Their analysis of the technology concluded that, because of this simplicity, Anaconda could create a “step-change” in how soon wave devices became commercial. Their research showed that, while wave energy in general costs around 25p per KWh to make, the anaconda had the potential to bring prices down to around 9p per KWh. Mains electricity today form fossil fuels costs around 6p per KWh.

    Marine energy devices that are nearing commercial reality today include the SeaGen and Pelamis, a tidal and wave generator respectively. Both went into trials in the sea last year, SeaGen in Strangfod Lough and Pelamis off the coast of Portugal. Like Anaconda, Pelamis also uses a snake-like motion to capture wave energy by flexing its articulated metal sections on the sea surface. Both devices have had technical problems however, mainly due to the harsh conditions at sea.

    The Anaconda’s designers stress that its key advantage is its survivability. “If the worst comes to the worst it’ll only be washed up on the beach, and you can patch it up and put it back out there,” said Rainey.

    The proof-of-concept trials have been carried out for the past few weeks in a wave tank defence company QinetiQ in Gosport, Hampshire. When these are complete, Checkmate hopes to build a quarter-size version of Anaconda for possible sea trials. If all goes well, the Checkmate thinks the first devices in commercial production could be floating in the seas off Britain as early as 2014.