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  • Green collar job creation’oustripped traditional sectors in US’

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    The study stopped before the economic downturn, which has caused steep job losses in the traditional economy. Some 347,000 Americans were put out of work in May alone.

    However, its authors also noted that the rapid growth came at a time when there was little or no federal government support for clean energy – unlike today when Barack Obama has committed to greening the economy.

    They also said that wind farms, solar projects, and battery factories had fared better than traditional manufacturing as the job market has contracted.

    “This is a sector poised for explosive growth,” said Lori Grange, the interim deputy director of Pew. “Our report points to trends that show a very promising future for the green energy economy.”

    The report helps bolster Obama’s claims that his $787 billion economic recovery plan could create millions of new jobs. The package contains about $85 billion in green investment, and the administration has repeatedly touted its efforts at creating new clean energy jobs.

    The Pew report said the new jobs were created across 38 states, and not restricted to specific regions.

    By 2007, more than 68,200 businesses accounted for about 770,000 green jobs. That is not hugely below the numbers of jobs in fossil-fuel industries, including oil and gas extraction and coal mining, which employed 1.27 million people in 2007, the report said.

    California created the most green jobs: 125,390, while Wyoming had the fewest, just 1,419. Pay scales among the new jobs ranged from $21,000 to $111,000 a year, Pew said.

  • Japan’s 15% target to cut emissions condemned as ‘disaster’

     

    Taro Aso, Japan’s prime minister, announced the target in Tokyo while UN talks on a draft climate agreement are continuing in Bonn. The talks, which finish on Friday, aim to lay foundations for a a meeting in Copenhagen in December when a new global treaty on global warming to succeed the Kyoto protocol will be agreed.

    Observers said Japan’s target was only slightly more ambitious than already required under Kyoto – a cut of 6% on 1990 levels by 2012. Japan’s emissions have actually risen 7% since 1990. Its new 15% reduction commitment uses a 2005 baseline, equating to a 8% cut on 1990 levels by 2020.

    Japan will have to do more to help keep global warming below dangerous levels, said the European environment commissioner Stavros Dimas: “The EU believes that we must be fundamentally guided by science.”

    Japan’s target represents “the weakest target any country has pledged so far”, said Kristian Tangen, at analysts Point Carbon

    The UN climate panel says developed countries should reduce their emissions by 25% to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 to keep temperature increases to within 2C of pre-industrial temperatures.

    Paul Cook, director of advocacy at development charity Tearfund, said: “This is a disaster. The level of ambition among developed countries is already incredibly weak – way below the 40% emissions reductions needed. . Japan’s decision risks creating a race to the bottom among other developed countries looking for an excuse to evade tough targets.”

    The group said Japan’s decision would make it difficult for EU countries to increase their target of a 20% reduction by 2020 to 30% – which they say they will only do if other developed countries make a similar effort to cut emissions.

    The Obama administration has talked of cutting emissions by 17% on 2005 levels by 2020, about 4% relative to 1990 levels. But the target has yet to be approved and may be weakened to help it pass into law.

    Cook said: “It is difficult to see how a fair, science-based deal can be achieved [at] Copenhagen if developed countries so utterly fail to do what is necessary to prevent a catastrophe for poor people and for the planet. Japan should be condemned for its failure of leadership and ambition.”

    Japan argues its target is ambitious given that its economy is already relatively energy and carbon efficient. It already has made a long-term pledge to cut emissions 60-80% by 2050.

    Kim Carstensen of WWF said: “It is true that Japan’s energy efficiency improved in the 1980s, during the oil crisis. Unfortunately, since 1990 most of the sector’s energy efficiency either stagnated or declined.”

    Hidefumi Kurasaka, professor of environmental policies at Chiba University, Japan, said: “The target is not strong enough to convince developing nations to sign up for a new climate change pact. Japan’s population is falling, so that means it has an advantage over the United States. The fact that Japan can commit to only an 8% cut from 1990 levels, even as its population falls, will lead to doubts over its seriousness to fight climate change.”

  • Rain ensures critical water supply to Murray River

     

    Altogether, over the three-year period 2006-2009 only 5040GL has flowed into the river, one fifth the long-term three-year average of 26,700GL.

    The outlook for irrigation water for 2009-10 is grim.

    Mr Freeman said after nine dry years, the soil was now so dry that the long-standing relationship between rainfall and inflow into the rivers had broken down.

    “Even if you do get average rain, you get nothing like average run-off. In fact in most of the basin we have got no run-off from the rain.”

    He said although there had been some rain in the northern basin, “we haven’t got the run-off. We will get a small inflow into Menindee Lakes.”

    But Mr Freeman said the soil was now wet in the northern basin “and this most recent rain in the last few days is wetting up the southern basin to a point where it may respond and we might get run-off.”

    Mr Freeman was also optimistic about the Bureau of Meteorology’s forecast for average rain over winter, the wettest time of year for the Murray system. “The outlook for the next three months is better than we have had for the last few winters, without doubt.”

    Basin storages are now at 980GL, or 11 per cent of capacity, above the lowest year of 2007, but well below the average of 4670GL.

    “It is a pretty gloomy story,” Mr Freeman said.

    But he pointed out that there were some positives.

    The series of algal blooms that extended down the Murray River from Albury to Wentworth before Easter have dissipated, thanks to the lower temperature.

    “We have gotten through a terrible summer with minimal water, high temperatures and significant blue-green blooms without a major environmental disaster. I think that is good,” hesaid.

    Mr Freeman added that salinity was at an all-time low.

    “If you don’t irrigate, you don’t mobilise salt. People are talking about the water quality at Swan Hill — it is some of the best we have ever seen.”

  • Toyota Prius revamped with solar power roof

     

    So far, so clever, but unlike the core concept of the car – the frugal hybrid drive – it is unlikely that the cost will ever be recouped by the owner. In fact, at £1,450 for the solar upgrade it is rather more than unlikely.

    To sugar-coat the pill Toyota, recently trumped by Volvo to a greenest car award, has packaged it with remote-controlled air conditioning. This can be switched on a few minutes before you climb in, but the price will doubtless still leave a bitter taste for most.

    For those whose environmental concerns are stronger than their bank balance, foregoing air conditioning altogether and suffering through hot days may be the only option.

    Those early adopters who were first in line for a Prius years before most had heard of hybrid drives will happily pay. One day the feature will filter down to each and every car on the market, shrinking in price and becoming more powerful as it goes.

    But even if the option doesn’t sell well at first, Toyota should be praised for bringing it to market –

    and it is already looking into the possibility of trickle-charging the car’s battery.

    The solar panels may be grabbing the most attention of all the Prius’s new features, but there are plenty more to be had on even the basic £18,370 model, in the face of increasing competition from the electric car market. It is now the most aerodynamic production car in the world, for example, allowing it to reach the same speed while using less energy.

    There are also more efficient headlights, which save 17% of the power used by the old model.

    These small tweaks may not make a huge difference to an individual car, driving an individual mile, but Toyota has sold more than a million, and they have collectively covered 37 billion miles.

    On that sort of scale, every bit counts.

  • China launches green power revolution to catch up on west

     

    “Similarly, by 2020 the total installed capacity for solar power will be at least three times that of the original target [3GW],” Zhang said in an interview in London. China generates only 120 megawatts of its electricity from solar power, so the goal represents a 75-fold expansion in just over a decade.

    “We are now formulating a plan for development of renewable energy. We can be sure we will exceed the 15% target. We will at least reach 18%. Personally I think we could reach the target of having renewables provide 20% of total energy consumption.”

    That matches the European goal, and would represent a direct challenge to Europe’s claims to world leadership in the field, despite China’s relative poverty. Some experts have cast doubt on whether Britain will be able to reach 20%. On another front, China has the ambitious plan of installing 100m energy-efficient lightbulbs this year alone.

    Beijing seeks to achieve these goals by directing a significant share of China’s $590bn economic stimulus package to low-carbon investment. Of that total, more than $30bn will be spent directly on environmental projects and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

    But the indirect green share in the stimulus, in the form of investment in carbon-efficient transport and electricity transmission systems, would be far larger.

    HSBC Global Research estimated the total green share could be over a third of the total package.

    China also believes the price reforms that will take place in its economic recovery programme will lead to more efficient use of resources and an increased demand for renewable energy.

    “Due to the impact of global financial crisis, people are all talking about green and sustainable development,” Zhang added. “Enterprises and government at all levels are showing more enthusiasm for the development of solar for power generation, and the Chinese government is now considering rolling out more stimulus policies for the development of solar power.”

    He said the government would also plough money into the expansion of solar heating systems. He said the country was already a world leader, with 130m square metres of solar heating arrays already installed, and was planning to invest more. The US goal for solar heating by 2020 is 200m square metres.

    Zhang was speaking in London on a day China came under increased pressure from Washington to do more cut its emissions.

    David Sandalow, the US assistant secretary of energy, said the continuation of business as usual in China would result in a 2.7C rise in temperatures even if every other country slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 80%.

    “China can and will need to do much more if the world is going to have any hope of containing climate change,” said Sandalow, who is in Beijing as part of a senior negotiating team aiming to find common ground ahead of the crucial Copenhagen summit at the end of this year.

    “No effective deal will be possible without the US and China, which together account for almost half of the planet’s carbon emissions.”

    Zhang said China was pursuing “a constructive and a positive role” in negotiations aimed at agreeing a deal in Copenhagen. As part of that agreement, he said developing countries would have to pursue “a sustainable development path”, and said Beijing was open to the idea of limits on the carbon intensity of its economy (the emissions per unit of output).

    “We have taken note of some expert suggestions on carbon intensity with a view to have some quantified targets in this regard. We are carrying out a serious study of those suggestions,” Zhang said.

    Zhang told the all-party parliamentary China group in Westminster yesterday that Beijing’s stimulus package was already showing signs of re-energising the Chinese economy. He said it grew by 6.1% in the first quarter of this year, and growth in the second quarter would be stronger than the first. He predicted that China would meet its target of 8% growth this year.

     

  • A Call to Action on Peak Oil

     

    As soon as the global economy recovers, we can expect oil and other fossil fuel prices to shoot right back to where they were last summer, and probably far higher. The International Energy Agency (IEA), formed in the 1970s to act as an energy watchdog for western nations, stated in its 2008 World Energy Outlook:

    Current global trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable …The future of human prosperity depends on how successfully we tackle the two central energy challenges facing us today: securing the supply of reliable and affordable energy; and effecting a rapid transformation to a low-carbon, efficient and environmentally benign system of energy supply.

    This is a call to action of the most urgent kind and we dare not ignore it.

    U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and has declined ever since, apart from a small and short uptick in the late 1970s, and oil imports have increased steadily. We now produce half of what we produced at our peak and import about 60 percent of our oil.

    What is the global situation? The United Kingdom struck oil in the North Sea in the 1970s and became a major world producer. But oil production peaked without warning in 1999 and the UK suddenly transformed from an oil exporter into an oil importer just seven years after its oil production peaked. UK North Sea oil production is now down almost 50 percent from its peak.

    The same pattern occurred in Indonesia, formerly a member of OPEC. Norway, Russia, and the majority of other oil producers are also past their peak. This is why the IEA regards the situation as so dire: existing oil fields are declining very quickly and new oil fields are not coming online quickly enough to replace them. The IEA concludes that we need three or four additional Saudi Arabias to meet projected demand by 2015!

    Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a respected oil forecasting firm that has been very skeptical of the peak oil discussion, also recently forecast that eight million barrels per day of oil projects have been canceled or delayed since the global recession hit, exacerbating the mid-term situation further.

    Oil production is not the only issue, however. Natural gas production will follow a similar production decline, probably just a few years behind the oil production decline. Natural gas currently constitutes about one quarter of the world’s energy consumption, so this cannot be forgotten in the discussion.

    As we’ve seen with food exports such as rice, when fears grow over the domestic availability of key resources (like food, oil or gas), nations will change export policies overnight: last year, Thailand, the world’s second largest exporter of rice temporarily outlawed rice exports. The same thing could very well happen in oil- and gas-exporting nations: as soon as the global economy recovers and the supply shortage becomes clear, major exporters can simply forbid exports, keeping their precious oil and gas for their own use.

    Similarly, some countries’ oil and gas exports are already declining quickly. Mexico, while struggling with a major drug war, saw its oil exports plummet over 20 percent in 2008 due to the decline by 33 percent in just one year of its major field, Cantarell. Mexico is the third largest supplier of oil to the U.S. Mexico’s oil revenue has fallen off a cliff as its oil exports and oil prices more generally have plummeted. A full 40 percent of Mexico’s government funding is oil revenue. Clearly, Mexico is facing a formidable future and may not survive as a functioning nation, a conclusion also reached by the U.S. military’s Joint Forces Command in a 2008 report.

    The time is now to invest heavily in alternatives to oil and gas, such as energy efficiency, conservation, renewable energy and more efficient transportation. Our own dream is a sustainable energy future powered predominately by solar and wind energy, backed up with energy storage and baseload geothermal, biomass and hydro power. Much is happening in these areas already – and this is hopeful: the Obama Administration has budgeted billions of dollars for these efforts and has made energy reform one of its three top priorities. Individuals and communities around the world are also springing into action through various initiatives.

    But much more needs to be done. As the IEA concludes: “What is needed is nothing short of an energy revolution.”

    Walter Kohn (left) is Research Professor of Physics and Chemistry at UC Santa Barbara and a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry (1998).