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Yesterday, his widow, Mavis, 67, said: "I wish I hadn’t let him go in for the transfusion. He had health problems before then but he lived with them and was okay up to the point where he went to hospital. It is heartbreaking." Mrs Burton-Pye, who lived with her husband in the Norfolk Broads town of Acle, added: "He had just gone into hospital for some blood and picked this bug up. It is absolutely diabolical that he caught this thing on just a routine visit. I just can’t believe he has gone. It won’t sink in."

She said Mr Burton-Pye’s family – including five children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren – had been devastated by his death.

Bosses at the hospital, which has been infected with the virulent "027" strain of the superbug, admit it could take 12 weeks to get the outbreak under control. The 17 deaths, almost all of people aged 65 and over, have occurred since December. Sixteen more patients have been infected but survived.

The hospital has invested an extra £400,000 to tackle the outbreak but Wendy Slaney, the acting chief executive of the hospital, said it could take months to bring under control.

Energy data collection "a disgrace": Allison said: "Our energy data collection is a disgrace. We just do not know which energy users are using power and how. That is the fact of the matter". Allison added: "One per cent energy efficiency target would reduce our wholesale electricity price by 19 per cent. You would not only be doing industry a favour by finding savings for them through the audit requirement; you would be advantaging consumers across the board because that wholesale price would go down… We know that one per cent can be achieved at little or no cost".

Reference: Senate Hansard, Wednesday, 21 March 2007, p.15. This document is available at: http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/dailys/ds210307.pdf

A beautiful thing: The beauty of it, especially in South Australia, which has few water resources, is that the water used in the process is continually under pressure and never turns to steam. This means that the water in the system is continually recycled. Since the first geothermal exploration licence in Australia in 2001, 16 companies have now joined the hunt for geothermal energy resources in 120 licence application areas. This represents a national investment of $570 million. These geothermal energy resources – although, as I said, many of them are in South Australia – are right around the country, right through Australia, and represent a very exciting possibility for energy generation.

But carbon price needed: However, and I alluded to this in the beginning of my speech, one of the problems is that the anticipated cost of the enhanced geothermal system energy has been estimated at $49 to $60 per megawatt hour. So without carbon pricing many forms of conventional energy generation, such as coal and natural gas, are much more cost-effective. Another complicating factor is that most, but not all, of the geothermal energy resources are in remote areas. That means that the cost of transmission to the energy market is also a factor in pricing.

Keep tech in Aus: However, it has been estimated that six per cent to eight per cent of Australia’s power could be produced by this source by 2030 if a 70 per cent reduction of emissions is required. We have the potential here to export this technology to other countries which, if there is a carbon pricing regime instituted around the world, I am sure will be keen to utilise this kind of technology as well. We would not want to be in the position where, once again, overseas companies buy the research and development and are then responsible for the commercialisation of this kind of energy and sell it back to us.

Govt support vital: Recently the 2006 annual report of the Australian Geothermal Implementing Agreement was released. That is a group consisting of most of the companies involved in this process looking at how they go forward. I am certainly hopeful that they get strong support from the government and that next time around we have a Labor government in place that is willing to look seriously at a carbon pricing regime and how companies in this form of energy, where carbon emissions are very low, will be properly supported and encouraged by the Federal Government.
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/dailys/ds200307.pdf

The design firm of Atkins did not believe that the look of the project was enough, and felt that it was important to incorporate sustainability features into this design. They first attempted to bring in solar panels into the project, but found that the extreme heat conditions of Bahrain made it an unfeasible proposition. So they turned to a second option, and came up with an even more striking image, that of the three 29 meter wind turbines, each supported by a 30-meter bridge spanning between the two towers.

The floorplan was key in making this feature work. The wing-like towers help to funnel and accelerate the wind velocity between them. Furthermore, the difference in the vertical shape of the towers should help reduce the pressure differences between the bridges, which, when combined with an increased wind speed at the higher levels, should provide an equal velocity amongst the turbines. All this will provide for an even greater efficiency in the powering of the generators.

When I heard about this project, I honestly thought that this feature would eventually be dropped. We’ve all seen it happen, a cool looking tower ends up changing dramatically due to cost-cutting, changes in the marketplace conditions, or a change in scope or brief.

But, luckily, it turns out that I was wrong. The Bahrain World Trade Center has just recently completed the installation of the three wind turbines, officially making it the first building in the world to incorporate this sort of technology at this scale. The turbines will be tested throughout the rest of 2007 and if all goes well, they ought to start normal operation next year.