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  • UTS research to help grow sustainable timber building

    Professor of Structural Engineering in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, Keith Crews, is heading up the project, which he said would advance sustainable timber construction as a viable alternative in large-scale projects.
    “Timber buildings have a variety of environmental benefits, including lower CO2 emissions and excellent carbon sequestration, as well as lower life-time heating and cooling costs,” he said.
    “As a building material it is also light and easy to transport, ensuring timber is also a commercially viable construction option.”
    Professor Crews said sustainability principles would underpin all aspects of the research and construction. “Crucially all the timber used in the construction is sustainable as it is all replanted, making this a sound environmental choice as well,” he said.
    “This is a significant investment that will fund six research projects over the next four years, as well as securing seven postgraduate scholarships.”
    Clive Tilby, Chairman of the STIC Board, welcomed the agreement, saying, “We are very excited to be working with UTS, an Australian research organisation that has leading structural timber capabilities.
    “This collaboration across the Tasman greatly expands the research potential and strength of the consortium.”

    Ends…

    Further Information:
    Michelle Callen, UTS, Ph 02 9514 1271 or 0404 608 131
    or Dr Jane Shearer, STIC, Ph +64 21 358 231

    Issued by: Terry Clinton, UTS Media Office,
    Ph (02) 9514 1623 or 0419 293 261

    UTS: Top rated for teaching and learning in Australia

  • Uranium plans leak a ‘shocking breach’

     

    The document states the contents are potentially sensitive to Australia’s relationship with other countries and should not be made public.

    The Opposition’s Foreign Affairs spokeswoman, Julie Bishop, says the release is highly embarrassing.

    “This is a shocking breach of security that will undermine Australia’s international reputation,” she said.

    “This puts at risk the Australian Government’s ability to conduct sensitive and confidential negotiations with neighbouring countries.

    “The release of this confidential information is a shocking breach of security.”

    The Greens say they are disturbed by revelations the Federal Government is considering exporting more uranium to China.

    The Greens’ nuclear spokesman, Senator Scott Ludlam, says the negotiations should be done publicly.

    “The Australian Parliament and the Australian people should be told when negotiations over sales of uranium to nuclear weapons states are occurring,” he said.

    “It shouldn’t be happening behind our backs.”

    A spokeswoman for Mr Smith says the document should not have been tabled but the Foreign Minister has and does accept responsibility for this error.

    The Minister’s office says the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is in the process of contacting the affected countries to tell them of the accidental release.

    The Trade Minister, Simon Crean, says he does not expect any countries to express concern but concedes it is not helpful.

    “I don’t think it’s a good thing that you table something that says shouldn’t be tabled,” he said.

    “I don’t think, on the trade front, it is embarrassing for us. I don’t expect any comment or concern and if there are, then I’m sure we can deal with it.”

  • Climate change could kill Coral Triangle: WWF

    “Some of the locations in the Coral Triangle are really important areas for all sorts of fish. The migration of tuna and turtles that spawn in the Coral Triangle are not going to have a next generation.”

    Saving the Coral Triangle will require countries to commit to deep cuts in carbon gas emissions when they gather for global climate talks in the Danish capital Copenhagen in December to work out a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.

    Cuts of 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050 would be needed to avert the worst effects on the region, home to more than half the world’s coral reefs and a lynchpin for ocean life in the region.

    Heat-trapping carbon gases – notably from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas – are blamed for warming Earth’s atmosphere and driving changes to weather patterns.

    Local communities and governments will also have to curb over-fishing and pollution, the WWF report said.

    “If you continue down the path of the over-exploitation of resources, even if you get an incredible reduction in emissions there will still be a threat,” WWF climate campaigner Richard Leck said.

    The report comes as ministers and officials from over 70 countries meet in the Indonesian city of Manado for the World Ocean Conference, the first global meeting on the relationship between oceans and climate change.

    Nations at the conference hope to pass a joint declaration aimed at influencing the direction of the Copenhagen talks in December.

    A concurrent meeting will also see leaders from the six Coral Triangle nations – Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, East Timor, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea – pass a joint plan on conserving the region.

    WWF campaigner Leck said any agreement to save the Coral Triangle would help limit damage to the region, which despite gloomy forecasts would likely be among the reef regions slowest to be ravaged by climate change.

    “The Coral Triangle is potentially more resilient than other coral areas around the world and what is amazing is the level of political commitment we are seeing this week,” he said.

  • COST OF SOLAR ENERGY WILL MATCH FOSSIL FUELS BY 2013, CLAIMS SOLARCENTURY

     

    Last December, the renewable energy analysts New Energy Finance predicted silicon costs – a key material for much solar panel technology – would fall by 31.5% in 2009 compared with 2008 levels. Energy consultants Element Energy, under commission from the government, have also forecast solar PV costs will fall by around half between now and 2020.

    Derry Newman, CEO for Solarcentury, said: “When you reach grid parity, you have a watershed moment where the perceptions of investors and consumers shift. People have been programmed to believe solar is expensive and takes a hundred years to pay back, but when parity arrives people realise it takes 8-10 years to payback, and they can then be making money out of it.”

    Jeremy Leggett, executive chairman of Solarcentury said, “The feed-in tariff that the government has said it will bring in from April 2010 is vital. A burst of premium-pricing for solar energy, of the kind now on offer in 18 European countries, will stimulate a very fast-growing market.”

    Experts said the projections were based on significant assumptions in future energy prices, which have been extremely volatile over recent years – last year saw gas and electricity prices double, but now household bills are falling again.

    Ray Noble, solar PV specialist at the Renewable Energy Association, said: “The predicted grid parity by 2013 could be possible if all of the predictions, both in terms of grid electricity prices increasing and reductions in the cost of solar PV, come through. However that’s a big if – any slight changes in the pricing can add further years to this date.” He added that the important message is that even if grid parity slipped to 2016, the moment when solar can compete on cost is not far off.

    Chris Goodall, Green party parliamentary candidate and author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, warned the grid parity predictions were based on unrealistic price assumptions. “This projection of residential grid parity depends crucially on continually increasing prices of conventional electricity, but I just don’t see any evidence that residential electricity will cost 17-18p a kWh in 2013. The ‘underlying’ retail price of electricity at the moment is no more than 11p per kWh,” he said.

    Newman argued that China will continue to take more fossil fuel and believes peak oil will begin to bite in 2013, which will both contribute to rising prices in fossil fuel electricity.

    Other parts of the world, such as Spain and California, have already achieved grid parity on the price of solar, but only for large installations rather than small scale ones for homeowners.

  • Climate change biggest threat to health, doctors say

     

    “We have not just underestimated but completely neglected and ignored this issue,” said Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, which published the report commissioned from University College London. “This has not been an issue on the agenda of any professional body in health in the last 10 years in any significant way. This report is one of the stepping stones in changing that culture within the health sector. It is the biggest employer in Britain and it should be a leading voice in the debate.”

    The lead author of the report, Prof Anthony Costello, a paediatrician who works on maternal and newborn health in the developing world, said his own views had changed. “I thought there were other priorities 18 months ago,” he said. Now he believed that mitigating the impact of rising temperatures was urgent. “Every year we delay, the costs go up. We are setting up a world for our children and grandchildren that may be extremely turbulent.”

    The biggest impact could be in food and water shortages, which in the past have led to war and mass migration.

    Prof Hugh Montgomery, of UCL’s institute for human health and performance, who was one of the report’s authors, noted that Mikhael Gorbachev had linked 21 recent conflicts to water instability.

    The report says that the poorest people in the world will be worst affected. Although the carbon footprint of the poorest billion people is about 3% of the world’s total footprint, loss of life is expected to be 500 times greater in Africa than in the wealthy countries.

    Despite improvements in health, 10 million children still die every year, more than 200 million children under five are not developing as well as they should, 800 million people are hungry, and 1,500 million people do not have clean drinking water. All those things could worsen very significantly, the report says.

    The impact of heatwaves, flooding and global food shortages will be felt in Britain too, the authors warned. “This is an immediate danger. It is going to affect you and it will certainly affect your children. While there is the injustice that the poorest will be worst affected, you will be affected too,” said Montgomery.

    The report says evidence on greenhouse gas emissions, temperature and sea-level rises, the melting of ice-sheets, ocean acidification and extreme climatic events suggests the forecasts by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 might be too conservative. The UK target, to limit global warming to two degrees more, is unlikely to be achieved.

    Costello, however, said the message from the report was not entirely negative. “There is an awful lot we can do,” he said. Reducing carbon emissions would encourage people to cut use of vehicles, and if that led to more walking and cycling it would tend to lower stress levels, reduce obesity, and lessen heart disease, lung disease and stroke risks.

  • Green feed-tariff needs to maximise solar power

     

    For solar PV, the government has already come a long way from its dismissive treatment of the technology in the 2008 Renewable Energy Strategy consultation, and with good reason. Under the level playing field of the government’s own grants programme, for example, solar PV has been the technology of customer choice, accounting for 70% of completed projects to date.

    But currently, we are only scratching the surface of the potential of this technology in the UK. The absolute resource potential of solar PV is 460 terrawatt hours each year, more than current total demand for electricity in the UK. That message is beginning to get through to MPs and others, helped by the launch of the “We Support Solar” campaign, which is backed by the Federation of Master Builders, Friends of the Earth, RSPB, and more than 220 MPs.

    MPs and others now recognise one of the prizes of a well-structured and properly implemented feed-in tariff will be green jobs, and lots of them. Our own modelling, which reflects assumptions made by the government’s own independent consultants, shows that by 2020 the tariff could create more than 100,000 solar PV services and installation jobs.

    So how are we going to ensure that the feed-in tariff really does maximise the jobs potential in solar PV, but also in the other small-scale renewable electricity technologies? Here’s how we think the UK feed-in-tariff should operate.

    The government must keep it simple. The tariff should be structured to pay for generation not export to the national grid, to encourage the broadest range of take-up in small-scale renewable energy, from homeowners to investors. They must ensure it’s easy for people with small green energy systems to connect to the grid.

    Secondly, the tariff needs to encourage investment. That means setting the price for each unit of green electricity generated high enough to allow suitable returns for investors. We also need support for low- or zero-interest loans, to help people get beyond the up-front cost of many small-scale renewable technologies.

    Lastly, the UK’s feed-in tariff must create green jobs. The tariff should be structured to encourage microgeneration on buildings. For example, solar PV on buildings is more job-intensive than mounting PV on the ground and involves a broad range of skills from the construction industry (roofers, surveyors and consultants). In hand with this job creation, government should subsidise the re-training of electricians, roofers, engineers and others whose jobs are now lost or under threat from the construction industry’s decline.

    You can help the government to create an effective feed-in tariff for green energy too – email your MP asking them to sign early day motion 689, or demonstrate your support online.

    • Jeremy Leggett is the executive chairman of Solarcentury