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  • Harmless chemicals are poisonous in combination

    Harmful chemicals commonly used: Gray then tried the same experiment with phthalates – the ubiquitous compounds used for softening plastics and thicken lotions, and found in everything from shampoo to vinyl flooring and flexible medical tubing. They also disrupted male development, in this case by stopping the foetus from making testosterone.

    Increased risk through value additivity: The mix of two phthalates that Gray used caused many of the same effects on male rat foetuses as a mixture of vinclozolin and procymidone. It makes sense that chemicals targeting the same pathway would have an additive effect. But what about mixtures of chemicals that work via different mechanisms? Surely the individual doses of such chemicals would not be additive in the same way.

    Principle does work: In 2004, Gray and his team put this to the test by mixing procymidone with a phthalate at levels that, on their own, would produce no effect. Because the chemicals work via different routes, he expected that the combination wouldn’t have any effect either. But they did.

    Wreaking havoc in reproductive system!: Then the team mixed seven compounds – with four independent routes of action – each at a level that did not produce an effect. "We expected nothing to happen, but when we give all [the compounds] together, all the animals are malformed," Gray said. "We disrupted the androgen receptor signalling pathway by several different mechanisms. It seems the tissue can’t tell the difference and is responding in an additive fashion."

    Time to take cognizance: All of this was throwing up problems for regulatory agencies around the world. Governments generally don’t take into account the additive effects of different chemicals, with the exception of dioxins -which accumulate to dangerous levels and disrupt hormones in the body – and some pesticides.

    Easier said than done!: For the most part, risk assessments were done one chemical at a time. Even then, regulation was no simple issue. First you needed to know a chemical’s potency, identify which tissues it harmed and determine whether a certain population might be exposed to other chemicals that might damage the same tissue. Add in the cocktail effect and it would get harder still. "It is a pretty difficult regulatory scenario," admitted Gray. "At this point the science is easier than implementing the regulatory framework."

    New Scientist, 1/9/2007, p. 46

  • EU to Fall Just Short of 2010 Renewable Target

    However, a big increase in wind capacity in Germany, Spain and Denmark as well as in the UK, France, Italy and Portugal has boosted electricity from renewable sources to record levels, compensating for droughts that have hit Europe’s hydroelectric power production, and paving the way for the EU to come within a whisker of reaching its electricity sector target of 21% by 2010.

    A record 7,500 megawatts (MW) of wind capacity was built in Europe in 2006. Wind energy now supplies 3.3% of the EU’s total gross electricity consumption. It is estimated that the wind power capacity will increase from today’s 50,000 MW, producing 100THW of energy, to 180 GW, producing 500 TWH of electricity by 2020. Wind power could, some studies say, supply 16% of the EU’s total electricity consumption by 2020.

    In 2005, 16.3% of renewable electricity came from wind, 15.8% came from biomass, 1.2% from geothermal and 0.3% from solar power; the majority, 66.4%, came from the EU’s expanding hydroelectric power sector.

    Nine countries are on track to meet their national renewable electricity targets of 21% for 2010: Denmark, Germany, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Luxemburg, Spain, Sweden and The Netherlands.

    Germany has already overshot the EU target and 14 per cent of its gross electricity consumption is expected to come from renewable energy by the end of 2007. In 2000 the share was 6.3%.

    About 22 billion kWh of electricity was produced by wind power in the first half of 2007 in Germany with 21,283 MW of installed capacity. The country is also the third biggest generator of electricity from biomass behind Finland and Sweden and ahead of Spain, the UK and Denmark.

    New legislation that set a feed-in tariff guaranteeing a fixed price to suppliers has played a key role in increasing the amount of electricity coming from renewable sources in Germany, analysts say.

    Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was hopeful that Germany could extend its use of renewable energy to 30% by 2020.

    Some European countries are set to miss all the EU renewable energy targets, including Belgium, the UK, Italy and Greece.

    UK government officials estimated that the UK can hope at best to have 9% of its energy by 2020 from renewable sources; it currently has 2% from renewable sources.

    Stephanie Schlegel from the Institute for International and European Environmental Policy in Berlin said that the key to meeting the renewable energy targets as well as to cutting GHG emission cuts was reducing the overall consumption of energy in the EU.

    However, electricity consumption in the EU member states has continued to grow in spite of energy saving policies. Total electricity consumption in the residential sector for the EU grew by 10.8 per cent between 1999 and 2004 from TWH in 1999 to 765 TWH in 2004. The electricity in the industrial sector grew by 9.5 % between 1999 and 2004.

    Also, Schlegel said that some of the EU renewable targets might not help cut GHG emissions: in particular the environmental benefits of the EU target on biofuels is hotly debated among experts.

    Looking ahead, she said that the EU could only meet its target of 20% energy from renewable sources by 2020 if the next round of talks between the EU member states is successful.

    The European Commission is opening up negotiations with member states this autumn to set specific targets for each country and for each renewable energy sector; national plans are to be finalized by December 2007.

    "Setting EU wide targets is a good policy instrument for increasing renewable energy use, but the negotiations on which country has to meet which specific target are bound to be difficult this autumn, and it is only when each country has clear targets that the progress can really be measured," Schlegel told RenewableEnergyAccess.com.

    Jane Burgermeister is a freelance science writer based in Austria.

  • Police Back Down on Greens Climate-Saver Event In APEC Security Zone

    The event is to be a media conference with a group of Greens members
    dressed to resemble lifesavers as a colourful backdrop. The media will
    be addressed by Senator Kerry Nettle who will be calling on APEC leaders
    to be “climate-savers” by taking urgent action to address climate
    change, which threatens the future of millions of people throughout the
    Asia-Pacific region.

    “Like any citizen I find it disturbing to have formal written threats
    made against me by the NSW Police to the effect that they intend to
    commence immediate, and potentially costly, proceedings against me in
    the Supreme Court,” Ms Hale said.

    “The issue that we are addressing in the media conference, the urgent
    need to take serious action about climate change, is a matter of great
    concern to many Australians.”

    “I confirmed with Police that Martin Place is to remain open to the
    public before I submitted my notice of intention. If it is open to the
    public it should be open for a media conference and some street
    theatre.”

    “I believe that the Police were trying to act beyond the powers they
    were given by the parliament in trying to ban political activity in
    Martin Place. It is important to maintain the right to express a
    political opinion in a public place,” said Ms Hale.

    To quote Commissioner Scipione from yesterday “this is a victory
    for common sense.””

  • Democracy for sale

    Democracy for sale

  • Kyoto recalcitrance costs billions

    New research released by the Australian Conservation Foundation today shows Australia is losing a staggering $3.8 billion per year in investment opportunities as a result of the Government’s failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. “Australia continues to miss out on business opportunities worth billions of dollars by refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, because Australian businesses cannot gain credits under the Protocol’s carbon trading mechanisms,” said ACF executive director Don Henry.

    The Kyoto Protocol’s Joint Implementation (JI) and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) would allow Australian companies to gain credits from investing in low-emission and renewable energy projects here and overseas.

    The new study, conducted for ACF by sustainability consultancy Cambiar, concludes Australia’s failure to ratify Kyoto means:

    • Australian companies are missing out on $2.4 billion every year in credits from carbon reduction projects through the CDM, because of the immense hurdles facing most Australian companies interested in participating in such projects.

    • Australian companies involved in carbon reduction projects in Australia are not realising the full value of those projects, because they cannot generate offset credits that could be sold on the JI or EU carbon trading markets. This results in an estimated loss of $1.2 billion per year.

    • As a major existing financial hub for the Asia-Pacific region, Australia is a natural centre for a regional carbon trading hub. But this cannot happen without Kyoto ratification. The loss of trading revenue and associated legal, accounting and other services to Australia is estimated at $180 million per year.

    “By ratifying the Kyoto Protocol Prime Minister Howard could achieve a great practical economic result from APEC – boosting Australian investments in renewable energy and efficiency measures and helping reduce emissions in other APEC economies,” Mr Henry said.

  • Renewables baseload ready says energy boss

    Professor Andrew Makers, director, ARC Centre for Solar Energy Systems Australian, National University argued that "Contrary to the assertions of Peter Lang (Letters, July 31, August 27), a renewable energy future was eminently feasible and no more costly than other low-emission technologies", in a letter to The Canberra Times (30/80/07, p. 24).

    Management of renewable energy: The intermittency of some (but not all) forms of renewable energy could already be managed at modest cost by:

    • demand management (shifting loads from night to day);

    • wide geographic dispersal (to minimise the effect of local cloud);

    • technology diversity (photovoltaics, solar thermal, wind and wave);

    • dispatchability (biomass. hydro and geothermal can generate at any time);

    • storage (hot water, hot rocks, pumped hydroelectric storage etc); and

    • the judicious use of natural gas.

    It would be several decades before renewables dominate energy markets, allowing time to develop additional solutions.

    Renewables competitive: The solar and wind energy industries were doubling in size every two years and costs were falling. Wind, hydro, solar heaters and biomass from waste were already fully competitive with both nuclear energy and the predicted future cost of zero-emission fossil fuel. The cost of photovoltaics on building roofs would soon fall below the retail price of electricity in many countries.

    Solar 100 times cleaner than fossil fuel or nuclear: The mass of mined material and waste per unit of energy produced was 100 times smaller for solar than for fossil and nuclear energy systems. Widely dispersed renewable energy generation was of low utility to terrorists. There were minimal impacts from accidents, no energy resource wars and no risks of nuclear weapons proliferation. Renewable energy was a good solution" he argued.

    The Canberra Times, 30/8/2007, p. 24