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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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  • Water limiist solar power in California

    Power companies are facing challenges in setting up solar thermal power generation plants in California’s Mojave desert. The limited supply of water and the delicate ecosystem of the region have both contributed to a scaling back of plans to build more than 150 solar powered electricity generators across the region. Solar thermal power generation which superheats an oil or saline solution to drive traditional steam powered turbines have been the hardest hit, because of the volume of water they use. Some companies have proposed to switch over to concentrated photovoltaic systems, others are exploring air cooled turbines, which are less efficient. As well as the shortage of water, the impact of the development on wildlife has become an issue.

     

    Related story in the Boston Globe

     

  • Damaged Barrier Reef coral makes ‘spectacular recovery’

    From the UK Guardian

    Sections of coral reef in Australia‘s Great Barrier Reef have made a “spectacular” recovery from a devastating bleaching event three years ago, marine scientists say.

    In 2006, high sea temperatures caused severe coral bleaching in the Keppell Islands, in the southern part of the reef — the largest coral reef system in the world. The damaged reefs were then covered by a single species of seaweed which threatened to suffocate the coral and cause further loss.

    A “lucky combination” of rare circumstances has meant the reef has been able to make a recovery. Abundant corals have reestablished themselves in a single year, say the researchers from the University of Queensland’s Centre for Marine Studies and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS).

    “Three factors were critical,” said Dr Guillermo Diaz-Pulido. “The first was exceptionally high regrowth of fragments of surviving coral tissue. The second was an unusual seasonal dieback in the seaweeds, and the third was the presence of a highly competitive coral species, which was able to outgrow the seaweed.”

    Coral bleaching occurs in higher sea temperatures when the coral lose the symbiotic algae they need to survive. The reefs then lose their colour and become more susceptible to death from starvation or disease.

    The findings are important as it is extremely rare to see reports of reefs that bounce back from mass coral bleaching or other human impacts in less than a decade or two, the scientists said. The study is published in the online journal PLoS one.

    “The exceptional aspect was that corals recovered by rapidly regrowing from surviving tissue,” said Dr Sophie Dove, also from CoECRS and The University of Queensland.

    “Recovery of corals is usually thought to depend on sexual reproduction and the settlement and growth of new corals arriving from other reefs. This study demonstrates that for fast-growing coral species asexual reproduction is a vital component of reef resilience.”

    Last year, a major global study found that coral reefs did have the ability to recover after major bleaching events, such as the one caused by the El Niño in 1998.

    David Obura, the chairman of the International Union for Conservation of Nature climate change and coral reefs working group involved with the report, said: “Ten years after the world’s biggest coral bleaching event, we know that reefs can recover – given the chance. Unfortunately, impacts on the scale of 1998 will reoccur in the near future, and there’s no time to lose if we want to give reefs and people a chance to suffer as little as possible.”

    Coral reefs are crucial to the livelihoods of millions of coastal dwellers around the world and contain a huge range of biodiversity. The UN’s Millennium Ecosystem Assessment says reefs are worth about $30bn annually to the global economy through tourism, fisheries and coastal protection.

    But the ecosystems are under threat worldwide from overfishing, coastal development and runoff from the land, and in some areas, tourism impacts. Natural disasters such as the earthquake that triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 have also caused reef loss.

    Climate change poses the biggest threat to reefs however, as emissions of carbon dioxide make seawater increasingly acidic.

    Last year a study showed that one-fifth of the world’s coral reefs have died or been destroyed and the remainder are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

    The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network says many surviving reefs could be lost over the coming decades as CO2 emissions continue to increase.

     

  • US power company to tap solar energy in space

     

      

    US power company to tap solar energy in space

    Orbiting solar farms will be commercially viable within next seven years, says group

    solar farm

    Ground-based solar installations require huge tracts of land, and cannot produce a constant supply of electricity. Photograph: OLIVIA HAMPTON/AFP/Getty Images

    A leading American power company is hoping to turn science fiction into reality by supporting a project to set up solar panels in outer space and beam the electricity generated back to Earth.

    Pacific Gas and Electric Company, which serves San Francisco and northern California, has agreed to buy electricity from a startup company claiming to have found a way to unlock the potential power supply in space.

    The firm, Solaren Corp, says it will launch solar panels into orbit and then convert the power generated into radio-frequency transmissions, which will be beamed back down into a depot in Fresno, California. The energy would then be converted into electricity and fed into the regular power grid, PG&E said.

    Although spacecraft and satellites routinely use solar panels, the project marks the first serious attempt to take advantage of the powerful and near-constant supply of sunshine in space.

    Nasa and the Pentagon have been studying the idea of orbiting solar farms since the 1960s, and a number of private researchers have been looking at ways to tap into space-based solar energy.

    But Solaren Corp, founded by a former spacecraft engineer, says it has developed a technology that would make it commercially viable within the next seven years to transmit electricity generated in space to a terrestrial power grid.

    PG&E announced this week that it had agreed to buy 200 megawatts of electricity from Solaren starting in 2016. The deal has yet to be approved by California state government regulators and PG&E has not put any money into Solaren, but the promise alone has turned the notion of space based solar power from fantasy to reality.

    “There is a very serious possibility they can make this work,” said PG&E’s spokesman Jonathan Marshall.

     

    Unlike on earth, with its cycle of nights and days and where there can be clouds, sunshine in space is practically constant – aside from a few days around the spring and autumn equinoxes. That means the space-based solar panels could potentially produce a steady supply of electricity.

    The sunlight hitting solar panels 200 miles in space would be 10 times as powerful as the light filtering down to Earth through the atmosphere. The satellite would then convert the energy into radio waves and beam them down to a receiving station on Earth. Spirnak did not give details of how this would work but said the technology was based on that now used by communications satellites, describing it as “very mature”. He added that power losses via the radio-wave route are lower than transmission cables used on Earth. Another advantage of the plan is that it does not require large amounts of real estate. Ground-based solar installations require huge tracts of land.

    Solaren has released relatively few details about the project. But Solaren’s CEO, Gary Spirnak, said the company, a group of about 10 former satellite and aerospace engineers, was confident in the technology and timing behind the venture.

    He argued that the science behind the orbiting solar farms was little different to that of communications satellites. “This is the exact same thing that satellites do every day. The basic technology is there,” said Spirnak. “The bottom line is that this is not really a technology issue.”

    Daniel Kammen, a professor in energy and resources at the University of California, Berkeley, agreed: the most daunting challenge to Spirnak is cost.

    “The ground rules are looking kind of promising. Whether we can do it at scale, whether we can do it affordably, whether it is too much of a technological leap or not, those are all factors,” Kammen said. “It is doable. Whether it is doable at a reasonable cost, we just don’t know.”

    Spirnak argues that a confluence of recent events now make the project more commercially viable. The cost of rocket launches – though still prohibitive – has been dropping because of the commercialisation of space, making it cheaper to send up and service solar panels.

     

    Spirnak will face a difficult task raising funds for his project though, especially in this time of global economic recession. He said he was seeking in the low billions of dollars in investment – much higher than the usual $100m (£67m) to $200m costs for projects in renewable energy.

  • Climate change threatens Ganges, Niger and other mighty rivers

                                                                                    Neville Gillmore

    Climate change threatens Ganges, Niger and other mighty rivers

    water levels map

    This map shows the change in run-off inferred from streamflow records worldwide between 1948 and 2004, with bluish colors indicating more streamflow and reddish colors less. Graphic: Journal of Climate, modified by UCAR

    Some of the mightiest rivers on the planet, including the Ganges, the Niger, and the Yellow river in China, are drying up because of climate change, a study of global waterways warned yesterday.

    The study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado found that global warming has had a far more damaging impact on rivers than had been realised and that, overwhelmingly, those rivers in highly populated areas were the most severely affected. That could threaten food and water supply to millions of people living in some of the world’s poorest regions, the study warned.

    “In the subtropics this [decrease] is devastating, but the continent affected most is Africa,” said NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth. “The prospects generally are for rainfalls, when they do occur, to be heavier and with greater risk of flooding and with longer dry spells in between, so water management becomes much more difficult.”

    The scientists examined recorded data and computer models of flow in 925 rivers, constituting about 73% of the world’s supply of running water, from 1948-2004. It found that climate change had had an impact on about a third of the major rivers. More than twice as many rivers experienced diminished flow as a result of climate change than those that saw a rise in water levels.

    In addition, those rivers that did see a rise were in sparsely populated, high latitude areas near the Arctic Ocean where there is rapid melting of ice and snow.

    The authors said their study brought new clarity to an understanding of the long-term effects of climate change on waterways. “I think our study settles the question regarding long-term trends in global streamflow,” said Aiguo Dai, the lead author of the report.

    The greatest danger was posed to those dependent on the Niger in West Africa, the Ganges in South Asia and the Yellow river in China. The Colorado river in the US was also experiencing a drop in water levels.

    Other big rivers in Asia, such as the Brahmaputra in India and the Yangtze in China, remained stable or registered an increase in flow. But the scientists said they too could begin shrinking because of the gradual disappearance of the Himalayan glaciers.

    The only rivers that could gain strength from climate change were those that flow north of the 50th parallel. “Global warming raises temperature and precipitation there and it may not be a bad thing,” said Dai. “However, these are sparsely populated regions.”

    The study found that climate change, which had disrupted rain patterns and evaporation, had a far greater and more damaging effect on the world’s rivers than other human-made factors such as dams, and diverting water for irrigation. “For many of world’s large rivers the effects of the human activities on yearly streamflow are likely small compared with that of climate variations during 1948-2004,” the study said.

    It also had a knock-on effect because the rivers empty into the world’s oceans. As the rivers shrink, oceans were growing saltier. During the lifespan of the study, fresh water discharge into the Pacific ocean fell by about 6% – or roughly the annual volume of the Misssissippi.

  • ACF urges Senators :fix CPRS, then pass it

     

    ACF urges Senators: fix CPRS, then pass it.         Neville Gillmore

    Date: 22-Apr-2009

    The climate change problem is too urgent and Australia has too much to lose for the Parliament not too fix the flaws in the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), the Australian Conservation Foundation told a Senate inquiry in Melbourne today.

    ACF executive director Don Henry told the Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy tens of thousands of lives, hundreds of thousands of jobs and some of Australia’s most beautiful places were at risk if Australia responded weakly to climate change.

    “This year’s heatwave and bushfires are a foretaste of a much worse future if we don’t act now,” Mr Henry said.

    “More than 50,000 jobs in the tourism and recreation sectors are dependent on a healthy and attractive Great Barrier Reef and thousands more jobs that depend on the ski fields, the Daintree Rainforest and Kakadu are similarly at risk.

    “A weak Australian and global response to climate change will condemn these Australian icons and many of the jobs that depend on them.  On the other hand, Australian leadership on climate change can generate more than half a million jobs and help achieve strong global action to avoid dangerous climate change.”

    Mr Henry said it was in Australia’s national interest that an agreement to substantially cut greenhouse pollution was reached at the global negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

    “We call on the Parliament to set strong Australian targets, not the existing weak targets, to cut emissions.  We call for the CPRS be fixed and passed this year.  In its current form it carries a high risk of entrenching Australia in a laggard position on climate change.” 

    Mr Henry said for the emissions trading scheme to be effective it must have a strong 2020 target to reduce emissions and strong measures to boost renewable energy and energy efficiency.

    “This Parliament has the unique chance to promote strong action on climate change at precisely the time it is needed. As a nation we have the opportunity to play a key role in averting the worst of climate change and promoting strong jobs growth in the clean economy of the future. I urge all Parliamentarians to grasp this historic opportunity now.”

    Find the full text of Don Henry’s opening statement here »

  • Atmospheric CO2 and Methane Still Building

     

     April 21, 2009, 12:27 pm

    Atmospheric CO2 and Methane Still Building      Neville Gillmore

    By Andrew C. Revkin

    co2 on the riseNOAA The graph shows recent monthly mean carbon dioxide measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii (recent months are preliminary data).

    The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is reporting that the concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane, the two most important greenhouse gases released through human activities, rose in 2008.

    The agency’s preliminary summary of greenhouse gas trends consolidates data from 60 monitoring stations around the world. A variety of factors shapes how much of these two gases remains in the atmosphere after they are emitted, which is one reason the global economic recession hasn’t become evident in the data yet, N.O.A.A. researchers said.

    The concentration of carbon dioxide has reached 386 parts per million in the air. The pre-industrial peak in concentrations was 280 parts per million (UPDATE: for at least the preceding 650,000 years or so). Some scientists, notably  James Hansen of NASA, say that a long-term target for the atmospheric concentration of the gas should be 350 parts per million. In this century, given continuing growth in the use of fossil fuels, many climate scientists see the concentration exceeding 450 parts per million or even 550 parts per million before stabilizing and — someday, perhaps — declining.

    Methane levels rose in 2008 for the second consecutive year after a 10-year plateau. As the agency put it, “Atmospheric concentrations increased by 4.4 molecules for every billion molecules of air, bringing the total global concentration up to 1788 parts per billion.” Methane persists only a few years in the air, but is about 25 times more efficient than carbon dioxide at trapping heat.

    In a printed statement, Pieter Tans of the agency’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., said the only way to stop growth in the atmospheric concentration of the gases is to reduce emissions enough that natural processes can keep pace. “Think of the atmosphere and oceans taking in greenhouse gases as  a bathtub filling with more water than the drain can empty, and the drain is very slow,” Dr. Tans said.