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  • War of words over cost of ETS to households

    War of words over cost of ETS to households

  • US Offshore Wind Project Updates

     

    Project Updates

    But just which project will get that first turbine in the water is still a matter of speculation. In total there are four companies with more than 10 projects in different states of development. Each company — Cape Wind, Bluewater Wind, Fisherman’s Energy and Deepwater Wind — is developing projects on the East Coast.

    The most well-publicized and possibly controversial offshore wind project in the U.S. is Cape Wind. The project, which has spend eight years in development, would put turbines in Massachusetts’ Nantucket Sound. The project had a lot of opposition to overcome, first from residents in towns on the sound worried it would ruin their views and lead to higher electricity prices, and later from environmental groups concerned with the wildlife impact. These issues have since been addressed.

    More recently, a group of Native Americans have said the project would obscure the view from an ancient burial ground, this issue is working its way through the regulatory process and is expected to be resolved by the end of 2009.

    Not all of the news about Cape Wind has been negative however. The project was given a favorable Environmental Impact Statement from the U.S. Minerals Management Service, its grid connection in Barnstable, Massachusetts was approved by the Massachusetts Citing Board and National Grid has said that it will negotiate a power purchase agreement for the electricity the project might one day produce.

    Jim Gordon, president of Cape Wind said that he thinks the U.S. will see an offshore wind project realized sooner rather later and its one of the keys to fighting the effects of climate change, especially for East Coast cities like Boston where trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure could be damaged or destroyed by rising seas and stronger storms that would be a result of climate change and an economy that needs to put people back to work to grow.

    “Right now if Cape Wind was operating we would be producing 422 megawatts of clean renewable energy. That’s 422 megawatts of emissions free power that blows off our coast that will be harnessed by workers from this region,” Gordon said. “The Natural Resources Defense Council has said that Cape Wind represents one of the largest single greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in the United States. We’ve missed out these many years on mitigating many tons of greenhouse gases, but I believe and I hope that the American offshore wind industry is no going to emerge and reach its full potential.”

    While Massachusetts has been the first stand of sorts for offshore wind, Delaware might be the spot of the industry’s first major victory. Bluewater Wind, formerly owned by Babcock and Brown, and now a subsidiary of NRG Energy, has leases in place and is set to deploy a series of meteorological (met) towers to determine the best sites for turbines in 2010.

    The company also has one 200-MW PPA in place with Delmarva Power and has been selected to provide 55 MW of power to the state of Maryland under a PPA. Bluewater CEO Peter Mandelstam said that the company has interconnection agreements in place and also begun the federal permitting process.  He said the process is easier now as a result of the Obama Administration’s renewable energy goals.

    “The most important investor, the most important advocate and the most important public official for offshore wind is President Barack Obama. This industry was dead, but the restructuring of the tax credit, the loan guarantees, the various stimulus provisions and the new regulatory regime totally revived us. We can’t say enough good things about President Barack Obama. He mentioned our Delaware project on Earth Day and going into Copenhagen, he talked about offshore as one of his six pillars to mitigating climate change,” Mandelstam said.

    Two other development companies, Fishermen’s Energy and Deepwater Wind are taking different approaches to developing offshore wind projects.

    Fishermen’s Energy is taking what it calls a community-based approach to offshore wind. The company was founded by leading Northeast commercial fishing companies so that they could be part of and benefit from the emerging offshore renewable energy industry. The company’s CEO Dan Cohen said that commercial fishing executives knew there was a need for workers to do the construction, operations and maintenance for offshore wind projects, jobs uniquely suited to commercial fishermen who already work offshore and the know waters.

    Fisherman’s is involved in two projects: the first is a 350-MW project that the company plans to work on in conjunction with Bluewater Wind and Deepwater Wind. The second is demonstration project located in the waters just off the coast of Atlantic City, New Jersey. This 20-MW project is expected to be built by 2012 and rules for the build out of this project are currently drafted by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

    Deepwater Wind plans to do exactly what’s implied by its name, namely build projects 15-20 miles offshore, minimizing the impact of not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) protests and taking advantage of the stronger wind regimes in those waters. The company has been awarded met tower leases and plans to put them in the water in the next year.

    Deepwater, which is part of a consortium developing a project in the waters off Long Island, expects that its first project in the water will be the 30-MW Block Island project off the coast of Rhode Island, which is still pending federal approval. In conjunction with this project, the company is also working to develop Quonset Point, a former U.S. Navy base, into a dedicated offshore wind development hub for the Southern New England area.

    Hurdles Still to Overcome

    Some challenges remain however. First and foremost is the lack of the vessels needed to install these projects. There are currently no vessels in the U.S. equipped to install these turbines, and while a number of them exist in Europe they cannot simply be brought across the Atlantic Ocean and put to work.

    The Jones Act precludes any European based specialty vessel from taking part in commerce in U.S. waters, including the installation of offshore energy projects. While many have suggested that ships used by the oil industry could simply be converted, the cost would likely be prohibitive and U.S. ship builders will have to build wind specific vessels, which Mandelstam said will create thousands of jobs for ports and ship builders that take advantage of the need.

    “Seven thousand seven hundred green jobs would be created by building three turbine installation vessels,” he said. “As chairman of the offshore group in the U.S., I participated during the Bush Administration to analyze how we’d get to 20% wind, including 54,000 MW of offshore wind. The choke point is vessels. The Obama Administration has put up a TIGER Grant and the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority has applied and we may gain access to those vessels if there’s an announcement in February 2010.”

    Like any other renewable energy or conventional generating assets, in order for offshore wind projects to be built they will need transmission lines and utilities willing to buy the electricity they carry. In some ways this is where the U.S. industry is putting the cart before the horse.

    Transmission plans are already underway within the ISO New England region to bring tens of gigawatts of wind power online and the ISO has produced a report for New England’s Governors Association presenting them with a number of scenarios that would bring offshore wind energy to residents of New England.

    Even though this transmission capacity is still in the planning stage, utilities are lining up to buy the power once its online. Delmarva Power, National Grid, the state of Maryland and the Long Island Power Authority have already signed power purchase agreements (PPAs) with developers. The biggest advantage that utilities and ISO New England are looking at is the location of offshore wind resources. Who pays for it however remains the big question.

    Gordon van Welie, president of ISO New England said that while his company has made a number of transmission investments onshore, they need to wait for a national renewable energy and transmission plan to be in place before a scenario from their report to governors, most likely costing around $6 billion, is chosen and invested in.

    “The rhinoceros in the room is the transmission cost allocation,” Welie said, referring to the fact that who pays for the $6 billion in transmission will depend on who is thought to be getting the most benefit from its installation and costs are likely to be split between project developers, grid operators and utilities.

    Possibly the largest challenge facing U.S. offshore wind energy developers however is the lack of a stable policy and incentive regime that would bring more players into the industry, from all sides. No matter the policy, be it feed-in tariff, production tax credit, cash grants or renewable energy credits, developers, financiers, utilities and grid operators are calling for more stable incentives and policies.

    Long term policy surety would give banks more confidence investing in infrastructure, transmission, construction operations and maintenance vessels as well as generating equipment. Rhode Island Governor Donand Carcieri, who serves as vice chairman of the Governors’ Wind Energy Coalition said that while the states are leading the way, a federal standard is needed to move forward.

    “Offshore wind power is one of the most reliable and sustainable sources of energy in the United States, and we are on the path to develop this nation’s first deep water, offshore wind project,” Governor Carcieri said. “The impact of offshore wind is tremendous, from spurring economic development and new jobs to providing stable energy costs, and will move our country towards energy independence.”

  • New Labs to Concentrate on Solar Thermal Energy

     

    NREL is studying new thermal storage materials and technologies that will allow CSP plants to work at higher temperatures and greater efficiencies, while lowering the cost of energy produced by these systems.

    DOE’s goal is to make CSP cost-competitive by 2015 and provide a sizeable amount of clean energy to the grid by 2020.

    Rapid Growth Expected

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    Mark Mehos, manager of the concentrating solar power program, says much of the ARRA funding for the CPS program will be spent on new facilities to improve thermal storage and other CSP technologies.
    Credit: Pat Corkery

    CSP plants are generating about 600 megawatts of electricity today, mostly in the United States and Spain. An additional 1,000 megawatts are under construction by utilities in sunny regions such as the desert Southwest.

    In the U.S., an additional 8 gigawatts of CSP are being planned. Internationally, a similar level of CPS development is underway.

    NREL maintains an online database of CSP projects and technologies with SolarPACES, an international cooperative organization, to track CPS development worldwide.

    NREL and Sandia National Laboratories are funded by DOE to develop CSP technologies.

    “The CSP industry is growing rapidly and needs DOE’s help to evaluate technologies that will make projects more financeable,” said CSP program manager Mark Mehos.

    “The industry needs performance and durability data in everything from materials to systems,” he said. “And on the R&D side, these new facilities will help us develop the next generation of materials and systems.”

    Two of the NREL facilities — the Advanced Thermal Storage Process and Components Integration Laboratory and the Optical Components Characterization Laboratory — will be located in NREL’s new Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF), which is scheduled to be completed in late 2011.

    Department of Energy funding will be used in four important areas:

    1. Advanced Thermal Storage Process and Components Integration Laboratory, $660,000.

    Economically storing thermal energy for generating electricity during peak utility load periods is vital if CSP is going to help meet clean energy demand. Mehos said this new facility would include two test units — one 15 kilowatt and the other 100 kilowatt — to evaluate advanced CSP heat transfer fluids and thermal energy storage methods. The lab will test concepts being developed through grants awarded to industry and universities for developing advanced fluids and storage concepts.

    2. Advanced Optical Materials and Optical Components Characterization and Integration Laboratories, $1.36 million.

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    Florian Sutter, a visiting German researcher, uses a specular refractometer in the Advanced Optical Materials Laboratory that will be improved with new federal funding.
    Credit: Pat Corkery

    NREL’s existing advanced optical materials laboratories develop and test new lower-cost, durable optics and coatings for mirrors and receivers. Weatherization chambers currently expose a large number of advanced reflector materials under accelerated conditions of ultraviolet light, temperature and humidity. An advanced deposition chamber is being used to develop advanced reflector and absorber coatings. A diverse set of optical characterization equipment is used to evaluate the optical properties of advanced materials. Currently NREL has three laboratories located in the Field Test Laboratory Building doing versions of this work. A portion of the funding will be used to expand the capabilities within each of these laboratories.

    NREL researchers already have worked with one CSP company, Sky Fuel of Albuquerque, N.M., to develop a film-based optical coating on an aluminum parabolic shaped substrate to replace heavier, breakable glass mirrors. That development won a 2009 R&D 100 award. “Sky Fuel’s material is the furthest along,” Mehos said. “But other companies — 3M, Alcoa, Abengoa — also are looking at new materials.”

    Some equipment for the ARRA-funded improvements is being installed now at NREL’s Advanced Optical Materials Laboratory, including four new WeatherOmeters to test mirrors and other CSP components. At $120,000 to $160,000 apiece, these advanced chambers use xenon arc lamps and other systems to concentrate sunlight at about seven times typical outdoor exposure. They also simulate the freeze-thaw cycle and other conditions.

    “We can’t wait 30 years to find out if the new mirrors for CSP systems will actually last for 30 years,” said NREL senior scientist Cheryl Kennedy who leads the advanced materials team developing and testing reflector and absorber materials. “We do acceleration tests in these chambers that will be working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

    NREL also supports optical characterization of industry-furnished collectors and mirror facets at an indoor laboratory located at NREL’s Joyce Street facility. Currently, the only practical orientation for indoor and field testing of complete parabolic trough modules has been an arrangement in which the collector axis points to the horizon.

    However, rarely – if ever – does the CSP collector point toward the horizon during normal operation. Mehos said it is important to test these collectors under standard operating conditions where effects like gravity can impact optical performance. With this in mind, the funding will allow researchers to develop an overhead test configuration that will accommodate full parabolic trough module testing in the vertical position to more closely simulate real-world operations.

    3. Nanomaterials for Thermal Energy Storage in CSP Plants, $1 million.

    This project will develop new nanomaterials and encapsulation strategies that could lead to significant improvements in the thermal energy storage density for CSP systems. The nanostructure research leverages NREL’s existing fundamental materials research program.

    4. Advanced Thermal Energy Storage Test and Evaluation Facility, $2.4 million.

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    SolarTAC, as it appears in this artist’s illustration, will be a unique test site for photovoltaic and concentrating solar power technologies. Ultilities and roadways are being installed now at the 80-acre site near Denver International Airport.
    Courtesy of SolarTAC

    This pilot-scale facility will be built 30 miles east of the Laboratory in Aurora, Colo., at the new SolarTAC. The SolarTAC site near Denver International Airport is being privately developed as a test site for industry with NREL’s participation, both for large-scale photovoltaic and CSP trials. Being able to test advanced thermal energy storage systems for CSP at scale is essential to developing and deploying these new concepts commercially. The proposed pilot-scale storage facility will provide a general-purpose test bed available specifically to support DOE laboratory, industry, and university test and evaluation activities.

    NREL’s plans were endorsed in letters to DOE by more than two dozen corporate and university leaders in solar research.

    “One of the key advantages is that it will be possible to get direct comparisons of competing thermal energy storage concepts,” said Henry Price, vice president of technology development at Abengoa Solar Inc. “More cost-effective forms of thermal energy storage need to be developed.”

    Joseph B. Verrengia writes for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado.

    This article originally appeared as a National Renewable Energy Laboratory feature article and was reprinted with permission.

  • Sydney, Melbourne can’t handle growth targets

     

    “If we don’t, not only will we have pretty awful cities in the future, but I believe we will never get the large cities that are being discussed, because they will be too dysfunctional and people will move away,” said Professor Newman from Curtin University’s Sustainability Policy Institute. “It’s a scenario not that far off now.”

     
     

      

    Related Coverage

    Since Wayne Swan’s speech in October that confirmed the soon-to-be-published third Intergenerational Report projects Australia’s population to reach 35 million by 2049 from its current 22 million, the shape of the nation’s big cities has been much discussed.

    Treasury secretary Ken Henry told a business leader’s forum in Queensland in March the anticipated population expansion had “a host of implications for the Australian economy and society, and it raises a number of profound issues for economic policy”.

    “Where will these 13 million people live? In our current major cities and regional centres or in cities we haven’t yet even started to build?” Mr Henry asked.

    “How will Sydney cope with a 54 per cent increase in population, Melbourne a 74 per cent increase and Brisbane a 106 per cent increase? Surely not by continuing to expand their geographic footprints at the same rate as in the past several decades. Surely not by loading more cars and trucks on to road networks that can’t cope with today’s traffic.”

    The issue has engaged Kevin Rudd, who has not only met at least twice with capital-city lord mayors, but also demanded states and territories develop capital city strategic plans by 2012 that adhere to national criteria for transport, urban development and sustainability or risk future commonwealth infrastructure funding.

    Professor Newman, who is a board member of Infrastructure Australia, said the lack of public transport in new suburbs on the outskirts of major cities was “rapidly becoming a major social justice issue”.

    “The outer suburbs are less and less rail based and more and more car based, and as petrol goes up this hurts less well-off people most,” he said. “We’ve been building our cities around the car and it’s now catching up with us.”

    Professor Newman said, despite the continuing expansion of the big cities, “a lot of people’s preference would be to live in smaller houses more centrally located”.

    “But the options that are rolled out by developers continue to assume the market is for bigger and bigger houses on suburban blocks,” Professor Newman said.

    However, Bob Stimson, professor of geographical sciences and planning at the University of Queensland, says we “shouldn’t be scared of sprawl”.

    “There’s no shortage of land. Fringe housing developments create more affordable housing particularly for first-home buyers, and it creates the sort of housing that is still the preference for families,” Professor Stimson says.

    “One of the consequences of restricting sprawl and pushing more medium-density housing closer to the city centre is that it is socially discriminating. It pushes up the per-unit cost of housing and makes it less affordable for lower-income households.”

    While Professor Stimsonagrees with Professor Newman that urban rail transport is important, he says it shouldn’t be the sole focus. “So can a good freeway system. It’s not a matter of either/or, but both,” he said.

    Jane-Frances Kelly, program director for cities at the Grattan Institute, warned families buying into car-dependent outer suburbs might be basing their purchase on incorrect financial assumptions.

    “In these suburbs people have made the trade-off of affordability in terms of space, size of backyards etc against the lack of public transport, but that equation will change completely as the price of oil rises,” Ms Kelly says.

    Professor Newman said finding a solution was not a lost cause, with Perth’s public transport system a template for how things could work. “From 1992 until now, Perth has gone from seven million passengers a year to 115 million a year on rail. With the right processes you can generate change.”

  • Copenhage changes the ground on which we stand

     

    Copenhagen has altered the political terrain here in the U.S., providing us an opportunity to aim for rapid political change, more dynamic and more hopeful than waiting for a climate Pearl Harbor. COP15 failed by almost any standard, yet the drive by leaders from island and African nations and 350.org to wrench the world’s understanding of climate from a challenge resolvable by incremental steps within present markets and governmental frameworks to the central moral imperative confronting humanity may well have succeeded.

    There are many parallels between our present condition and the decades 1830-50, when the then-moribund drive to end slavery became the dominant question before the nation and flash point for the Civil War. Slavery moved from peripheral concern to central matter of national self-definition through singular actions taken by a handful of remarkable individuals.

    Negotiation with slaveholders. The monolithic, inextricable nature of slavery stumped every leader from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln, and mainstream anti-slavery advocates, none of whom could envision any exit other than gradual, cooperative measures acceptable to slaveholders, such as voluntary manumission, resettlement of former slaves in Africa or South America, and federal buy-out. Because anti-slavery efforts were deferential to slaveholding states’ interests, they were necessarily long term and in-urgent. Accommodation peaked with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, hailed as the first act by the United States to limit extension of slavery, and embraced by slaveholders because it guaranteed the extension of slavery in new territories below the Mason-Dixon line—a compromise derided by Thomas Jefferson, who observed that “a geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated.”

    William Lloyd GarrisonGarrison, the ur-abolitionist.William Lloyd Garrison & abolition. An out of work printer and editor named William Lloyd Garrison stood before an audience of Boston Unitarians and Universalists (the only congregations willing to hear him) on October 15, 1830, and issued the first public call for “immediate, unconditional emancipation, without expatriation,” which, he said, “was the right of every slave and could not be withheld by his master for one hour without sin.” Furthermore, Garrison said, “by holding fellowship with slaveholders,” in their churches, mercantile enterprises, and political parties, New Englanders gave moral sanction to slavery.

    Garrison’s words divided anti-slavery forces into two camps: those who, through personal prejudice or pragmatic politics, continued to advocate small steps that might past muster in Congress, and those who rallied to his immoderate call for immediate abolition.

    John Brown & Harpers Ferry. Garrison polarized the moral ground, but slavery remained a second-tier concern until John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, in October, 1959, ignited the national furor that led directly to secession, election of Abraham Lincoln, and the Civil War. On May 30, 1880, Frederick Douglass delivered a memorial address, in which he said, “If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery … Until this blow was struck [at Harpers Ferry], the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy, and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words, votes, and compromises.”

    Prolific burning of fossil fuels is no less monolithic, globally, than slavery in the Antebellum South. So too, our organizations and politicians aiming to ameliorate climate change, like anti-slavery advocates, see no alternative but to negotiate with coal and oil interests.

    Cap and trade is as disingenuous and fruitless as gradual emancipation, and the Markey/Kerry bill is the moral equivalent of the Missouri Compromise, ostensibly aimed at righting a great wrong, while in substance guaranteeing maintenance of the institution that perpetuates that wrong. The purpose of Markey/Kerry is to ease the minds of those desperate for climate action, even as the extension of coal burning is written into federal law. Its premise is that emancipation from fossil fuels must, perforce, be a gradual undertaking of small steps acceded to by our enemies, with a final accounting made the responsibility of some other generation.

    The target of returning below 350 ppm is the critical benchmark defining the problem (with accumulating evidence that “below” is closer to 300 ppm and may require rapid return below pre-industrial 275 ppm), but having already blasted past this mark, 350 ppm alone is ambiguous. How much higher can we safely go? Is 450 ppm an acceptable peak? 550? For how long?

    Lacking scientific certainty, we are forced to make judgment calls that amount to playing dice for survival. We stand on no true ground, have no moral compass, and are unable to apply any standard other than ascertaining what we think may be palatable to our enemies.

    But Copenhagen clarifies. As environmentalists, we must, and have, acted on behalf of species facing extinction and ecosystems on the road to destruction, but as practical players within a society largely unmoved by such concerns, our central argument must be anthropocentric. We no longer confront speculative injuries remote in time and place; huge populations are on the very brink of catastrophe, with loss of water perhaps the most immediate threat.

    Therefore, any act that countenances the extension of fossil fuel burning is wrong. Anything short of immediate and total shutdown of extractions is immoral. That we are all complicit is no justification for acquiescing to evil.

    That the violence commences with extractions recognizes the injustice done to local peoples, whether they be in Appalachia or Nigeria; but more profoundly, we must accept that every investment in fossil fuel exploration and each decision to mine or drill is a deliberate, premeditated, and ruthless act.

    To say this is to state the obvious. Yet if this is so, and if we continue our rush toward self-induced cataclysm, then why do we continue to treat with the prime authors of our mass suicide?

    Look at BP—“Beyond Petroleum”—with its flowery logo and bold vision of transforming energy supplies. BP CEO Tony Hayward caused a stir last year when it was reported that the company planned to sell off its renewable energy division,* but this was a small kerfuffle compared to the overall perspective, in which BP has never deviated from its drive to overtake Exxon-Mobil as the major fossil fuel company in the world.

    For two decades now, environmentalists have courted BP (once led by another John Browne). Environmental Defense conducts joint programs, ED and NRDC head up USCAP with BP, and CERES, our environmental voice within the investment world, conferred an award on BP. To what end? In the twelve years since BP first teamed up with ED, BP’s profit has risen from $2.8 billion to $25.5 billion, with the overwhelming bulk of investment going to fossil fuels. Capital expenditures and acquisitions in 2008 alone totaled $30.7 billion, against which BP’s pledge of $1.25 billion annually over 10 years for renewable energy is paltry, even assuming the promise is kept. It may once have been reasonable to try negotiating with BP and others, but no longer.

    John Brown at Harpers FerryTime to take a page from John Brown’s book?Something other than dialogue is required. John Brown provided that kick-in-the-pants to complacent anti-slavery efforts by the attempt to capture the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry and ignite a slave rebellion, succeeding in the end in getting two sons and a number of other followers killed, and himself hung. Poorly conceived and without hope of success, the raid and John Brown’s bearing through trial and execution nonetheless galvanized both sides, polarizing and elevating the conflict around slavery.

    That Brown’s action was violent and murderous reflected both the author and the times, a thing to be firmly eschewed. Non-violent civil disobedience is the means for direct moral action, as the waves of protest at coal plants, in the mountains of West Virginia, on the Boston Commons and before the offices of organizations that continue to collaborate demonstrates.

    Slavery ended in the United States when it did because slaveholders over-reached, but the end of the peculiar institution could not have been avoided. Abolition would have been delayed, however, absent the actions of Garrison and Brown. Time, of course, we do not have, so it is incumbent upon us to take up the same challenge that Garrison made of the citizens of Boston: to examine in what ways our organizations and associations aid and abet the practice of evil; to take direct, non-violent action to halt those practices; and, if we are not so situated, to provide all possible assistance and aid to those in the front lines in West Virginia, Boston, and coal blockades across the nation.

    * Hayward quickly retracted the statement, reaffirming BP’s commitment to renewables and carbon emissions reduction, yet the company has taken a number of contrary actions, including recent sale of Indian wind farms, complete withdrawal from the UK renewable sector, and repudiating a pledge to capture and store carbon in natural gas extractions.

  • Past decade the warmest since records began in 1850

     

    Andy Pitman, co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of NSW, said this year should have been a cool year because of low solar activity and a recent La Nina weather event. ”The fact it ranked in the top 5 since 1850 is actually frightening,” he said.

    This year’s heatwaves in NSW, Victoria and South Australia also did not bode well for next year, Professor Pitman said.

    The report is based on data from a network of weather stations on land, ships, buoys and satellites.

    This information was fed to three analysis centres, including one maintained jointly with the British Met Office by the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, which has been at the centre of the climate email affair, after its computers were hacked.

    The other two analysis centres are the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Goddard Institute of Space Studies at NASA.

    Not only did Australia have three heatwaves – in January and February, August and November – winter was also exceptionally mild, the report said.

    ”Maximum temperatures were well above normal across the entire continent, reaching 6 to 7 degrees above normal in some parts.” Climate extremes, including devastating floods, severe droughts, snowstorms, heatwaves and cold waves, were recorded in many parts of the world.

    ”This year the extreme warm events were were more frequent and intense in southern South America, Australia and southern Asia, in particular.”

    India had an extreme heatwave in May, which caused 150 deaths, and a heatwave that hit northern China in June broke summer records in some areas.

    In East Africa, a drought led to ”massive food shortages”, and drought in central Argentina also caused severe damage to agriculture, livestock and water resources, the report said.

    In the Arctic, sea ice during the summer melt was the third lowest since satellite measurements began in 1979, ranking behind 2008 and the record year, 2007.

    Globally, the combined sea surface and land surface air temperature for January to October this year is estimated at 0.44 degrees above the 1961 to 1990 annual average of 14 degrees, making it likely 2009 will rank in the top 10 years on record