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  • Poo power drives Norway forward

    Biomethane is a by-product of treated sewage. Microbes break down the raw material and release the gas, which can then be used in slightly modified engines. Previously at one of the sewage plants in the city half of the gas was flared off, emitting 17,00 tonnes of CO2. From September 2009, this gas will be trapped and converted into biomethane to run 200 of the city’s public buses.

    Project leader, Ole Jakob Johansen said: “The city of Oslo has great visions for Oslo as a green capital. Oslo aims to be one of the most environmentally sustainable capitals of the world. Using biomethane makes sense. Not only would the biomethane otherwise be wasted, but the reduction in emissions per bus will go a long way to achieving our carbon-neutral target. What’s more, aside from the intial set-up costs, we expect to see an average saving of 0.40 Eruo cents per litre of fuel”.

    The city’s diesel public buses will only require minor modifications to their engines to run on methane, which is stored on tanks on top of the vehicles. The only noticeable difference will be how quietly they drive.

    “Biogas is popular in Sweden, but they have very few vehicles powered by biomethane. We chose to focus on biomethane as this emits less carbon and is easier and cheaper to produce,” said Johansen.

    The net emissions from a biomethane operated bus are zero, because the carbon originally came from the atmosphere rather than fossil fuels, but electricity is used at the sewage plant to convert the gas from the waste into fuel for the buses. Oslo city council is taking the electricity used to generate the fuel into consideration and calculate that carbon emissions per bus are 18 tonnes per year, a saving of 44 tonnes of C02 per bus per year.

    The city’s two sewage plants have enough biomethane to provide fuel for the 80 buses, but if the trial is successful Oslo city council plans to convert all 400 of the public buses to run on biogas. The biogas will be created from a mixture of biomethane and biogas from the incineration of kitchen waste from the capital’s restaurants and domestic kitchens. Eventually, the council hopes that cars will also be able to run on biogas sourced locally from biomethane and converted kitchen waste.

  • Once in century heat wave continues

    All indications are for SA to be just as hot until the weekend, when a weak cooler change arrives, according to weatherzone.com.au.

    If Adelaide also reaches 40 degrees on Thursday and Friday, it will equal the longest such hot spell in 101 years.

    In January 2006 there were also four consecutive days of 40 or hotter.

    In Victoria, emergency services remained on high alert as temperatures climbed into the 40s, too.

    Melbourne reached a peak of 43.4deg – the hottest day in three years.

    Victorian temperatures are forecast to reach similar maximums over the next four days.

    It’s that run of extreme temperatures which has weather forecasters talking about the heatwave being among the worst in 100 years in Victoria, too.

    Laverton’s temperature was sitting on 41 at midday and still climbing, with many Victorian temperatures recorded in the mid 40s farther north across the state.

    “Nhill, for instance, hit 41 degrees by midday,” weatherzone.com.au meteorologist Matt Pearce said.

    “Northerly winds carried extremely hot air down from the interior of the continent towards Victoria.

    “These northerlies are the result of a persistent and slow-moving high pressure system out in the Tasman Sea.

    “This high looks like remaining in place for the next week.

    “So we are expecting this extremely hot weather to persist right through into the weekend.”

    In addition to the high temperatures, the dry northerly winds are also sending fire dangers to extreme levels in many districts.

    As a result, a total fire ban is in force for the North Eastern, Central, North Western and South Western Total Fire Ban Districts.

    “The bad news is that there is no rain in sight for the parched state,” Pearce said.

    “Coming hot on the heels of one of the driest springs in years, the lack of rainfall through January and now heading into February is a cause for some concern.”

  • World treaty leaves Australia behind

    “Australia cannot hope to transform into a renewable energy powerhouse while neither the Government nor the industry are interested in making it happen,” Australian Greens Deputy Leader and Climate Change Spokesperson, Senator Christine Milne, said.

    “Renewable energy technologies are already capable of replacing coal if governments and industry come together to make it happen.

    “But the Rudd Government refuses to do anything to challenge coal’s dominance, and the domestic renewable energy industry seems unable to effectively promote itself.

    “The establishment of IRENA shows that Australia’s renewable energy reticence is not shared by the rest of the world.

    “If the Rudd Government signs and ratifies the IRENA founding treaty, its hypocrisy will be on global show. If it fails to sign, it will only be the Australian people who will come face to face with the hypocrisy of the Government they so recently elected on a platform of climate action.”

    IRENA aims to drive “a rapid transition towards the widespread and sustainable use of renewable energy on a global scale” by providing technical and policy advice to industrialised and developing countries, as well as promoting renewable energy on the global stage.

    “The Australian renewable energy industry needs to take inspiration from the establishment of IRENA and start to speak up for itself instead of accepting scraps from the table,” Senator Milne concluded.

    All information about IRENA can be found at http://www.irena.org/

  • Warming gets cold shoulder from Rudd

    And when coal flows from two new export infrastructure projects announced in 2008, in the Hunter Valley of NSW and at Gladstone, Queensland, the addition to global emissions from burning that coal will be an amount each year greater than Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions, cancelling out the planned reduction by 2020 many times over.

    How did it come to this, when there was optimism after its election that the Government would take a lead in climate policy in 2008, not jog on the spot at the rear of the field? Was a mistake made in taking the political pressure off in 2008 as the large climate groups switched from mobilising people power to advocating policy detail, assuming the Government was predisposed to listen? Did the Government decide to give real access only to those climate advocates who were prepared to support its “clean coal” policy, narrowing and conservatising the range of voices to which it listened? Was the Government always going to put the views of big business and the fossil fuel lobby first?

    It is not unreasonable to answer yes in each case.

    The climate action movement’s message is big and unsettling, so it is easier for government not to want to listen. Many of the policy players — business, unions, welfare groups — are sending mixed messages about supporting action as long as it does not hurt their constituencies in the short term, which quickly reduces to sectoral self-interest and political equivocation.

    It is also clear that the Government does not understand how big the scientific imperatives are. If it did, its failure to act in accord with the size and urgency of the problem could justifiably be characterised as a failure to carry out its duty of care.

    But the evidence points to another possibility. In a Rumsfeldian manner, it seemingly does not know it does not know; it is ignorant about the most recent climate science knowledge.

    Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Europe’s leading climate scientist and adviser to the German Government and the EU, says that “we are on our way to a destabilisation of the world climate that has advanced much further than most people or their governments realise”. Schellnhuber says only concentrations of greenhouse gases close to the pre-industrial levels may be safe, around 280 to 320 parts per million, compared to the present level of close to 390 parts per million.

    One sign of this problem in Australia is the way the Prime Minister and Climate Minister have adopted a traditional Labor approach to climate: something for the environment lobby and something for business. But solving the climate crisis cannot be treated like a wage deal. It is not possible to negotiate with the laws of physics and chemistry, and believing that it can reflects only an ignorance of the task at hand.

    The planet cannot be traded off. There are absolute limits that should not be crossed, and doing something, but not enough, will still lead to disaster. This the Government appears not to understand at all.

    Serious climate-change impacts are already happening, both more rapidly and at lower global temperature increases than projected. We have passed the tipping point for complete loss of the Arctic’s sea-ice in summer.

    “The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coalmine for climate warming, and now, as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died,” says Dr Jay Zwally, a NASA glaciologist.

    The Arctic sea-ice is the first domino and it is falling fast. Other dominoes, including catastrophic levels of carbon release from warming permafrost in Siberia, are likely to fall unless we stop emitting greenhouse gases and cool the planet to get the Arctic sea-ice back.

    When transformative national and global leadership on climate is now necessary, the many thousands of Australians who work diligently in their local climate action groups see a spectacular failure of political imagination in Canberra.

    And the conclusion to their four-day meeting in the national capital? It will be back to doorknocking the neighbourhood, talking in local churches and workplaces, engaging with local MPs and building an enormous grassroots movement that aims to make our politicians energetic advocates for transformative action on global warming, but a movement also capable of inflicting political pain on those who continue to taken them and the planet’s health for granted.

    David Spratt is co-author of Climate Code Red.

  • Garrett reviews Tillegra Dam

    Wetlands of international importance are one of seven matters of national environmental significance that must be assessed under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

    The Lower Hunter’s 3000-hectare wetland area was declared a site of world significance on the Ramsar register in 1984. It includes the Kooragang nature reserve and the Shortland wetlands centre.

    The Commonwealth’s assessment, which will be done via a bilateral agreement between the state and Commonwealth governments, will examine the likely effect of the dam on the region’s wetlands.

    Mr Garrett will then make a determination on the project.

    Newcastle Wilderness Society campaigner Vanessa Culliford said the dam would have a major impact on Lower Hunter wetlands.

    “The Williams River has the most diverse and intact aquatic biotic communities in the Hunter Valley and runs into Ramsar wetlands; why would we want to allow that to be destroyed,” she said.

    Greens MP John Kaye said Mr Garrett’s intervention represented a significant setback for the State Government that recently used its controversial 3A planning powers to declare the dam critical infrastructure.

    “While the NSW Government is trying to fast-track approval, Peter Garrett has thrown up a massive speed hump,” he said.

    “This is bad news for Premier Nathan Rees and his Water Minister Phil Costa. They now have two fights on their hands, defending both the environmental impacts and need for the water.”

    Ms Holmes said Hunter Water welcomed the Commonwealth’s involvement.

    “We believed that referring the project for consideration by the Commonwealth was a prudent approach for a major infrastructure project,” she said.

    “We welcome the Commonwealth’s involvement in the process, we look forward to working with them.”

    No Tillegra Action Group spokeswoman Sally Corbett said more than 100 public submissions had been sent to Mr Garrett’s office opposing the dam.

  • Dark undercurrent sullies the flag

    It was ever thus. Over excited young men letting off steam in a collective frenzy have characterised all civilisations at one time or another, and their enthusiasm is regularly harnessed by social engineers who want someone to do their dirty work. The mood of the mob is an indicator to the nature of society.

    Roman youth interrupted and denigrated the holy women’s ritual of worshipping the Bona Dea, bringing calamity on the republic that led to revolution and the imperial stranglehold on Roman politics. Parisian mobs in the eighteenth century toppled the government after sharpening their cudgels on the cats of the bourgeoise a few decades earlier. The mobs of frustrated German shock troops with nothing to do after the First World War were crafted into the SS-Totenkopfverbande (Death’s Head Organisation) which did the dirtiest work of the dark years of the Third Reich.

    The banners under which these mobs march is an indicator of political intent. Young French apprentices loathed the cats which represented the comfort and luxury of their masters. The French revolution put the masters themselves to the guillotine. The SS troops marched for a mechanical purity that did not recognise shades of grey or honour cultural nuance. They pillaged the great works of art across Europe that carried the official stamp of greatness. At the same time they destroyed the art and artists in their midst.

    With that background in mind, it is disturbing that the Australian flag has been dramatically identified with mob violence against minorities a number of times in recent years. Patriotism has been described as the last refuge of scoundrels. Last week indicates that also it inflames the worst passions of cowardly bullies.

    What national identity are we building?

    Of course, unpleasant mob violence is not only done under the flag. A dance at the Repentance Creek Hall near Lismore on Saturday night was violently destroyed by a large group of drug crazed youth who smashed cars, beat dancers and then beat a hasty retreat in the face of peaceful chanting by the locals who refused to fight back.

    In the search for an approach that might steer this energy to more productive pursuits two things stand out. Firstly, everyone agrees that methamphetamines, like ice, play a significant role. Our management of drugs though has spanned the spectrum from intelligent harm minimisation strategies to the disastrous zero tolerance. Criminalising recreational drugs simply drives them underground making them stronger and more profitable as a result.

    More subtly, though, the total lack of integration between age groups means that youth are left to their own devices. The lack of imagination they show in entertaining themselves screams out for those of us who are a little older to get involved and organise activities that steer the mob away from its worst excesses. The challenge is that we have already developed a culture of alienation and segregation. Experience has taught me that it is tedious and difficult to engage bored mobs with a head full of grog and a lust for action in their eye. We have to do whatever it takes, though, to turn this ship around.