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We constantly hear about new ways to reuse and recycle waste, but not so often does our waste get the opportunity to play a direct role in creating new life. Such is the case, however, with the products about to be shipped from Fiberwood, a new company in Sacramento, California, that converts cardboard into mulch.

Material for hydroseeding often uses mulch manufactured from trash.

When we visited Fiberwood last week to talk with their CEO, Stuart Douglass, it was clear they were about to go into full scale production.

Mountains of shredded cardboard stood to one side of the cavernous space, with a completed line of equipment already in place on the other side.

This first line, explained Douglass, will take cardboard feedstock and grind it down to nearly powder, and at a rate of up to 100 tons per day, output this mulch into 50 pound bags ready for shipment.

The logic of this is clear – California is the entry point for billions of dollars worth of manufactured goods each month, and virtually all of them arrive in cardboard containers. This surplus cardboard can go into landfills, or it can be recycled. The sheer volume of this incoming cardboard means only mulch for hydroseeding provides demand at a scale that can keep up with this supply.

The process of “hydroseeding” is where mulch and water are mixed at a ratio of 75 pounds of mulch for every 100 gallons of water, and this slurry is sprayed onto land with seeds added to the mix. The type of seeds added depends on the use, but only a small fraction of total hydroseed use is for conventional landscaping. The product is also used for dust and erosion control at construction sites, as well as to quickly restore ground cover in areas where there have been forest fires. At about one ton of hydroseed per acre, enormous volumes of this product are required.

Another huge demand for hydromulch, without the seeds but with a bonding agent added, is to spray a thin layer over landfills each day, covering the raw waste. This practice, recently passed into law, is required in order to reduce smells from landfills. It is known as “alternate daily cover,” and given only a 1/4″ thick layer is required, it is much more cost effective for landfill operators who would otherwise be required to add 6″ of soil each day to the surface of their landfills.

Douglass is no stranger to turning waste products into useful materials. In 1992 he built his first plant to turn newspaper fiber into loose fill insulation, an operation he later sold to Louisiana Pacific. In 2003 Douglass applied for a new patent that will enable the company to make an all natural blanket insulation using cardboard and other cellulosic waste. Douglass plans to eventually add a manufacturing line at his current facility to produce this product. Because this product is far more fire resistant and mold resistant compared with fiberglass, there is already a great deal of interest in the product.

So the next time you see native plants rapidly repairing a landscape scarred by fire, know that the material used to efficiently reseed the area may well have come from the cardboard boxes that once protected your imported consumer product. It gives a whole new meaning to composting.

Dr. Roger Pielke, Sr. “Scientific rigor has been sacrificed, and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.”

Roger Pielke Sr. is a retired professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, and a senior research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Since July 2005 he has written and maintained Climate Science, a blog that serves as a scientific forum for dialogue and commentary on climate issues. With William R. Cotton, he is the co-author of Human Impacts on Weather and Climate (Cambridge University Press, 2007). And over the past summer he co-hosted a conference entitled “Land Use and Climate Change,” in Boulder, Colorado. While Dr. Pielke rejects being characterized as a “global warming skeptic,” his work is unwaveringly critical of the current conventional wisdom regarding climate change and what to do about it. EcoWorld Editor Ed Ring recently caught up with Dr. Pielke, who had the following to say on the topic:

EcoWorld: How would you say that current conventional wisdom regarding climate change has gotten it wrong?

Pielke: In terms of climate change and variability on the regional and local scale, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) report on surface and tropospheric temperature trends, and the U.S. National Assessment [of Climate Change] have overstated the role of the radiative effect of the anthropogenic increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in relation to a diversity of other human climate- forcing mechanisms. Indeed, many research studies incorrectly oversimplify climate change by characterizing it as being dominated by the radiative effect of human-added CO2. But while prudence suggests that we work to minimize our disturbance of the climate system (since we don’t fully understand it), by focusing on just one subset of forcing mechanisms, we end up seriously misleading policymakers as to the most effective way of dealing with our social and environmental vulnerability in the context of the entire spectrum of environmental risks and other threats we face today.

EcoWorld: What about experts’ predictions of rising sea levels, extreme weather, melting polar ice caps, and so on?

Pielke: Global and regional climate models have not demonstrated themselves to be skillful predictors of regional and local climate change and variability over multidecadal time scales. For example, in the case of sea ice, the models are consistent with the decrease in Arctic sea ice in recent years, but they cannot explain the multiyear increase in Antarctic sea ice (including a record level this year). With respect to extreme weather, a much more important issue than how greenhouse gases are altering our climate is society’s greatly increased vulnerability to extreme weather events – a direct result not of changes in weather but of increased settlement by expanding human populations into low-lying coastal regions, floodplains, and marginal arid land.

EcoWorld: But what about the northern icecap shrinking this September to possibly possibly its smallest size in history (exposing more than 1 million square miles of open water) or the comments of Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, regarding recent observations in Greenland (“We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea”)? Is something new and alarming happening?

Pielke: These examples represent selected observations that promote the view that human-input carbon dioxide is dominating climate change. However, the climate is – and always will be – changing. Thus, although human activity certainly affects the way in which climate varies and changes, actual global observations present a much more complex picture than that represented by the two examples listed above. For example, Antarctic sea ice reached a record maximum coverage in 2007, and the globally averaged lower atmosphere has not warmed in the last nine years (and, in fact, is cooler than it was in 1998). In addition, there are regions of the world where glaciers are advancing (such as New Zealand, parts of the Himalayas, and Norway). However, this information – which conflicts with the projections of the multi-decadal global climate models and the 2007 IPCC report – has been almost completely ignored by policymakers and the media.

Human Impacts on Weather and Climate, by Roger Pielke, Sr., and William R. Cotton Cambridge University Press

EcoWorld: What role have alterations in land use played in climate change?

Pielke: Changes in land use by humans and the resulting alterations in weather and hydrology are major drivers of long-term regional and global climate patterns – yet the 2007 IPCC Statement for Policymakers largely ignores their importance (despite extensive documentation in research literature). Along with the diverse influences of aerosols on climate, land use effects (caused, for example, by deforestation, desertification, and conversion of land to farming) may be at least as important in altering the weather as the changes in climate patterns associated with the radiative effect of carbon dioxide and other well-mixed greenhouse gases. Moreover, land use and land cover changes will continue to exert an important influence on the Earth’s climate for the next century.

The reason for this is that even if the globally averaged surface temperature change over time ends up being close to zero in response to land use and land cover change and variability, the regional changes in surface temperature, precipitation, and other climate metrics could be as large as or larger than those that result from the anthropogenic increase of greenhouse gases. Moreover, people and ecosystems experience the effects of environmental change regionally, not as global averaged values. Thus, the issue of a “discernable human influence on global climate” misses the obvious, in that we have been altering climate by land use and land cover change ever since humans began large-scale alterations of the land surface.

EcoWorld: What were the main conclusions to come out of your recent conference focusing on the land use changes that affect the Earth’s climate?

Pielke: This meeting reconfirmed the first order role of land management as a climate forcing mechanism. These findings supported the conclusions of the 2005 National Research Council report “Radiative Forcing of Climate Change: Expanding the Concept and Addressing Uncertainties,” which identified land use change as having a major effect on climate. Unfortunately, the role of land surface processes was underreported in the body of the IPCC report and was essentially ignored in the IPCC Statement for Policymakers.

EcoWorld: Sticking with land use changes: Do you think that tropical forests create a thermostatic effect that moderates extreme weather? And following on that, do you think tropical deforestation could be as significant a driver in climate change as anthropogenic CO2?

Pielke: Tropical deforestation clearly has an effect on both regional and global climate that is at least as important as the radiative effect of adding CO2. When forests are removed, not only does the climate system lose the biodiversity and other benefits of that environment, the vegetation loses its ability to dynamically respond in ways that reduce extreme weather fluctuations. For example, when trees access deeper water through their roots, the resulting transpiration of water vapor into the atmosphere (making rain more likely) can help ameliorate dry conditions when the large-scale weather pattern is one of drought.

EcoWorld: What is your criticism of the IPCC?

Pielke: Mainly the fact that the same individuals who are doing primary research into humans’ impact on the climate system are being permitted to lead the assessment of that research. Suppose a group of scientists introduced a drug they claimed could save many lives: There were side effects, of course, but the scientists claimed the drug’s benefits far outweighed its risks. If the government then asked these same scientists to form an assessment committee to evaluate their claim (and the committee consisted of colleagues of the scientists who made the original claim as well as the drug’s developers), an uproar would occur, and there would be protests. It would represent a clear conflict of interest. Yet this is what has happened with the IPCC process. To date, either few people recognize this conflict, or those that do choose to ignore it because the recommendations of the IPCC fit their policy and political agenda. In either case, scientific rigor has been sacrificed, and poor policy and political decisions will inevitably follow.

EcoWorld: How effective are current climate computer models in helping us understand global climate trends?

Pielke: Using global climate models to improve our understanding of how the system works represents a valuable application of such tools, but the term sensitivity study should be used to characterize these assessments. In sensitivity studies, a subset of the forcings and/or feedback of the climate system are perturbed to examine their response. Since the computer model of the climate system is incomplete (meaning it doesn’t include all of the important feedbacks and forcings), what the IPCC is really doing is conducting a sensitivity study.

The IPCC reports, however, inaccurately present their assessment as a “projection” – one that’s widely interpreted by policymakers and others as being able to skillfully forecast the future state of the climate system. But even one of the IPCC’s leading authors, Kevin Trenberth, has gone on record reminding people of the limitations of the models used in its projections. Says Trenberth, “There are no predictions by IPCC & and there never have been.” He further states, “None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state, and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.”

Indeed, says Trenberth, “The current projection method works to the extent it does because it utilizes differences from one time to another, and the main model bias and systematic errors are thereby subtracted out. This assumes linearity. It works for global forced variations, but it cannot work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle.”

Thus, as clarified even by one of the key IPCC contributors (who has a vested interest in the acceptance of the 2007 IPCC report), current climate models clearly cannot accurately model observed real-world changes in climate. Global model results projected out decades into the future should never be interpreted as skillful forecasts. Instead, they should be interpreted as sensitivity studies on limited variables. When authors of research papers use definitive words (such as “will occur”) and display model output with specific time periods in the future, they are misleading policymakers and other people who use this information.

EcoWorld: What policies should be considered to deal with climate change? Is reducing CO2 emissions part of the solution?

Pielke: Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions can only serve as a useful “environmental currency” as long as it provides the benefits needed to reduce the risk to critical environmental and social resources. As such, it needs to be part of a win-win strategy that provides a diversity of benefits. With energy efficiency and energy independence, for example, everyone benefits. As the “currency” for these benefits, however, greenhouse gas emission reduction represents an unnecessarily blunt instrument if there are more effective ways to reduce the risks to societal and environmental resources. Moreover, greenhouse gas policies can produce serious unintended negative consequences such as an increase in carcinogenic emissions when biodiesel is used, or reductions in biodiversity and alterations in climate when land management practices convert large areas to biofuels.

Greenhouse gas emission reductions, relative to other environmental currencies, should be evaluated with respect to their ability to reduce risk to essential social and environmental resources. In this framework, greenhouse emission reductions are only useful if they provide real benefit to those resources. Thus, if a policy made for other reasons also happens to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, you clearly have a win-win situation. The current focus on using reductions in CO2 emissions as the primary currency for achieving benefits to society and the environment, however, clearly represents a very flawed approach.

Well thanks to small quantities of dihydrogen monoxide, otherwise known as H2O, being injected into the hot mixture, it is now possible to mix asphalt at a dramatically lower temperature. When I spoke with Don Brock, CEO of Astec Industries, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of equipment used to make asphalt, he said this new innovation was like “a green tsunami.”

A plant using Astec equipment in Tennessee Astec’s asphalt recycling technology will save the USA 90 million barrels of oil per year.

Based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Astec has already sold equipment for 60 asphalt plants that will use this new technology, with 20 already on stream as operating plants.

Up till now, typical “roller asphalt,” used in most roads, which is a mixture of 5% heavy oil and 95% crushed rock, had to be mixed at 330 degrees fahrenheit. At lower temperatures the mixture would not be viscous enough to properly mix.

Astec’s equipment can now mix concrete at 270 degrees, crucially below the 285 degree boiling point. By achieving sufficient viscosity at 270 degrees, far less emissions occur because the asphalt mixture isn’t boiling. It also requires less energy. This is a breakthrough.

We aren’t talking small quantities here. Each year, 750 million tons of asphalt is poured and rolled in the USA, about 90% of it to resurface existing roads. Brock explained that their new technology to mix asphalt at a lower temperature, combined with their new equipment that can grind and recycle more of the asphalt from old roads will increase the amount of old asphalt that can be reused in new roads from today’s 15% to 50%. The amount of oil that would be saved in this manner in the USA each year, according to Brock, was equivalent to one week of imported oil – about 90 million barrels.

Astec’s technology to up the recycled content of new roads from 15% to 50% will also save about 250 million tons of rock each year. Every year in the USA about 3.0 billion tons of rock are quarried, about 10 tons per person per year. About 25% of that is used for asphalt, 25% for concrete, and the rest is used for base rock under buildings, canals, embankments and roadbed. We expect technology to deliver solutions to huge environmental and resource challenges – in Astec’s case, it’s happening already, and on a very huge scale.

Discussions about technology enabled conservation rarely deal with something as fundamental as asphalt. But Astec’s new products demonstrate that even – or especially – in areas as basic as how we build our roads, immediate and huge environmental and economic advantages are still to be won. Given that Astec is the world leader in manufacturing tools to recycle, mix and lay asphalt, with these new technologies already rapidly coming on stream, their innovations are as fine an example of the greentech revolution as any.

Whether you think it will stop climate change, reverse the acidification of the ocean, or help nations achieve energy independence, the political momentum to raise the price of fossil fuel appears unstoppable.

With that as a given, then, the current debate should focus on what mechanism should be used, how much the price should be raised, and how the resulting funds should be allocated—all of which boil down to choices between practical environmentalism and emotional environmentalism, head vs. heart.

If we’re to adhere to Nobel laureate Al Gore’s “pledge,” for example, we must stop burning coal within 20 years — this despite the fact that coal is the cheapest and most abundant fossil fuel on Earth, that nearly 25% of all energy produced on the planet comes from coal, and that the U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts coal’s use will increase by 74% between now and 2030 (mostly in countries like China, which will do whatever their economic interests dictate, despite anything the IPCC has to say about the matter). It would take huge price increases to price coal out of existence within 20 years, and it would require the cooperation of every major nation on earth—tough challenges.

That’s why trying to precipitously phase out coal rather than simply clean the emissions from it while making an orderly transition to alternative fuels represents a policy agenda that’s deeply flawed. Accept for a moment that anthropogenic CO2 is the cause of global warming and that global warming is going to become a serious problem for humanity. If these assumptions are true, there’s little we can do at this point. As Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, has said, “The inertia of the system that we have is such that climate change would continue for decades and centuries even if we were to stabilize the concentrations that are causing this problem today, which means that adaptation is inevitable.”

So think about this instead: If the funds collected through taxes and carbon offset payments assessed on CO2 emissions were used to adapt to the effects of global warming rather than to attempt to eliminate global warming altogether, the amount spent would equal a fraction of what it would cost to halt global warming. The Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg in his 2007 book Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming calculated the costs of mitigating global warming and came up with a premise that’s hard to challenge: Pouring money collected from a carbon tax into the development of the economies of the equatorial nations would make these nations wealthier—and in turn enable them to afford to mitigate the negative impacts of global warming.

High-tech entrepreneurs who are hoping to fund their companies through carbon taxes now have a vested interest in global warming—and suddenly public policy rather than product superiority has become the key to success. These entrepreneurs, after all, don’t stand to benefit if policymakers determine that a tax of just $2 per ton of carbon will fund economic development throughout the world and enable everyone, everywhere to adapt to global warming. These high-tech entrepreneurs should remember their roots: Silicon Valley did not change the world by fomenting or condoning irrational panic and feeding at the tax trough; it did so by innovating and providing superior products that responded to real customer needs.

Another issue to debate as we contemplate raising the price of energy is whether the source of that increase should take the form of a tax or be based on a “cap and trade” mechanism. With cap and trade, energy producers that emit CO2 are required to spend a designated amount per ton to finance projects that facilitate CO2 absorption. This means that if you were to operate a coal-fired power station, for example, you’d pay to plant hundreds of square miles of forest. But there are huge problems with cap and trade: As it turns out, exactly what constitutes a CO2 “offset” is grossly subjective. European CO2 offset credits, for example, created a market for biofuel imported from the tropics that in turn unleashed a devastating wave of ongoing rainforest destruction to grow oil palms and other fuel crops. Tropical deforestation to grow biofuel is a global catastrophe and has probably contributed as much to climate change as CO2 from fossil fuels ever will.

Environmentalism is multifaceted: There’s what one might call practical environmentalism, which supports policies designed to eliminate pollution and other toxic hazards as well as to preserve and protect reasonable amounts of wilderness and endangered species, and then there’s emotional environmentalism. Occupying the latter category are many of today’s environmentalists. Overly driven by ideology and emotion, they’re well meaning but fanatical, and they engage in an unwittingly cynical and synergistic dance with all kinds of powerful forces with hidden agendas.

To wit: Restricting energy production enriches the cartels that produce and sell most energy (since prices and profits go up). Declaring nearly all land to be protected “open space” makes housing prices skyrocket (thereby raising property taxes and building fees, and enriching public sector entities). And cap-and-trade schemes enrich not only traders on Wall Street but also every private company (or cash-strapped public entity) who can sell (to public sector regulators and environmentalist nonprofits tasked with vetting these plans) a project to produce an “offset” and collect a fee.

Environmental organizations enjoy tax-free status. They also employ litigious attorneys who tie economic development and private entrepreneurship up in knots: For these folks, the growing alarm over global warming represents the best financial windfall they’ve ever witnessed. Environmentalism, as we’ve seen, delivers huge benefits. But when it goes too far—as it often does—the costs are staggering.

Green-tech entrepreneurs need to decide what version of environmentalism they want to believe in—practical or emotional, market driven or government mandated. Hopefully they’ll embrace the same rules that made the Silicon Valley great, winning in the competitive market with solutions people choose to buy, and not through lobbying, litigation, and government subsidies. If rationality and market competition are left intact, the global economy and the global environment will both be better off as we manage the transition to clean and renewable energy.

Now there’s a mouthful. A relatively unheralded study released nearly two years ago by scientists at UC Berkeley explains the significance of this phenomenon on forests and climate. In a report on the UC Berkeley news website entitled “Deep-rooted plants have much greater impact on climate than experts thought,” hydraulic redistribution is defined as the internal process whereby trees will use their tap roots to deposit water deep underground during the rainy season, then through “hydraulic redistribution” they will move this water up to the shallow soil surrounding their surface roots to use during the dry season.

The implications of this are consistent with what we’ve been trying to say all along – forests, tropical forests in particular – are probably more significant drivers in climate change than burning fossil fuels. As the report states:

“During the wet season, these plants can store as much as 10 percent of the annual precipitation as deep as 13 meters (43 feet) underground, to be tapped during the dry months.”

The report also stated:

” ‘Global climate models don’t do a very good job of capturing plant effects on how climate might behave,’ Lee (one of the study’s authors) said. Lee accounted both for daily and seasonal dryness in the Amazon, and showed that the two together have a large impact on the climate over the region. The increased moisture in the soil created by hydraulic redistribution during the dry season allows the plant to carry on photosynthesis at a higher rate, leading to greater carbon uptake. This also leads to greater evaporation from the leaves of water, which takes heat with it. Thus, the summer dry-season temperatures are cooler than would be expected.”

We learned of this study after recently being linked to by an excellent blog “Transect Points,” authored by soil scientist Philip Small, that offers further expert analysis of the implications of this study, particularly on soil nutrition, in a post entitled “Tap Roots;” this is good reading.

So what do we know?

(1) Tropical rainforests have shrunk from 8 million square miles to 3 million square miles in the last 150 years, most of that in the last 50 years, and they are currently being further decimated to grow biofuel, ironically because environmentalists think biofuel is less likely than petroleum to cause catastrophic climate change.

(2) Rainforest trees, through hydraulic lift (energy provided by evaporation of water out of the leaves) “transpirate” sufficient volumes of water into the atmosphere to increase and moderate precipitation, which impacts the climate globally. Transpiration from rainforests add moisture to clouds blowing in from the ocean, giving them critical mass to release evaporation from the ocean as rainfall, adding to the reserves of land based fresh water and reducing incidence of droughts.

(3) The cloud cover that forms over rainforests is reflective, unlike the open land of biofuel plantations that are replacing them, which collectively has a thermal impact that impacts the climate globally.

(4) “Hydraulic redistribution” is part of a phenomenon where trees absorb at least 10% of precipitation in the rainy season in the earth around tap roots, and then lift this water into the shallower soil near their surface roots during the dry season – this, along with trees stablizing soil and therefore harvesting runoff that otherwise would run back into the ocean, means trees raise the water tables – something of interest to anyone operating an irrigation pump to (hopefully) grow food.

Will the recognition that rainforests are the key to moderating extreme weather, averting drought, and lowering global temperatures, arrive in time to avert destroying the last of them to grow biofuel?

Even if China cuts energy per unit GNP by 50%, to increase per capita income to 50% of the USA, energy production will still need to increase 40%.

Lake Tai’s breathtaking beauty belies the fact it is one of the most polluted lakes in China. (Photo: Wikipedia)

It’s no secret that China is on the brink of environmental crisis. As the country works to clean up its act, the development of the renewable energy industry could mean a big payoff to investors as well as Chinese society as a whole.

A recent article in the New York Times profiles a Chinese environmental activist named Wu Lihong. The article, part of the paper’s series on environmental degradation in China, documents Wu’s attempts to clean up Lake Tai, one of China’s most polluted bodies of water. As the article shows, Wu’s efforts have been truly heroic: he has campaigned vigorously against corrupt officials, has succeeded in generating public awareness about the problem and has risked his own livelihood – including possible jail time – for the cause.

Western reportage about the environment in China, such as the Times article about Wu, inevitably focuses on the disastrous environmental degradation that has accompanied the country’s rapid economic growth, noting that the government’s proclamations of concern for the environment mostly go unfulfilled. Such reporting usually carries with it the implication that pro-environment statements made by the Chinese government are just for show, and treats the government as a homogeneous entity and Chinese society as interested only in making money.

However, the reality is not so simple. China’s 5-year plans and far-reaching policies are indeed often bogged down in the obsession with economic progress, and the rapid pace of economic growth combined with the sheer size of the country means that effectively implementing those policies is difficult and prone to corruption and inefficiency. Focusing on activists such as Wu Lihong puts the problems of China’s embrace of capitalism in stark relief. Yet it should be noted that such cases may obscure the larger potential of China’s environmental efforts, specifically its renewable energy industry. Prominent officials and institutions in the Chinese government frequently indicate an awareness of the country’s environmental problems. China’s drive to build up its renewable energy industry will offer many opportunities for foreign investment, and the government’s plans for the future – the kinds of policies that will see fruit in the long term – are far from unpromising.

China’s plans for the future

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the institution responsible for the country’s macroeconomic planning, plans to have renewable energy account for 10 percent of China’s total energy consumption by 2010, and 15 percent by 2020, compared to 7.5 percent in 2005. (In comparison, in the United States about 7 percent of energy consumption was supplied by renewable energy in 2005 according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, less than China’s figure for that year.)

The main dam at the Three Gorges Complex. When complete, this hydroelectric project will generate a staggering 17.5 gigawatts of electricity. (Photo: NASA)

Breaking that figure down further, the NDRC aims for hydropower generation capacity to reach 180 gigawatts a year by 2010 and 300 GW by 2020, compared to 115 GW in 2005; annual wind power generation capacity to reach 5 GW by 2010 and 30 GW by 2020, compared to 1.3 GW in 2005; biomass capacity to reach 5.5 GW in 2010 and 30 GW in 2020, compared to 2 GW in 2005; and, finally, solar power to reach 0.3 GW in 2010 and 1.8 GW in 2020, compared to 0.07 in 2005.

As for the very long term, an energy development plan compiled by the China Academy of Sciences (CAS), a Chinese government think tank, recently recommended that the country should push to make nuclear power and renewable energy (besides hydropower) main elements of the country’s energy mix by about 2030, and ensure that dependency on fossil fuels falls under 60 percent by 2050.

Government projections of renewable energy in China’s overall energy usage, 2005-2020

Can China achieve its goals?

Are these goals feasible? It’s too soon to know for sure. On the one hand, the government has often expressed its seriousness in reaching its environmental targets, and has issued several preferential tax policies and subsidies to support the development of renewable energy. On the other hand, the country has fallen short of some of its yearly goals. Energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product fell by only 1.23 percent in 2006, one-third of the country’s annual target of four percent. The government has said it will stick to its previous plan of cutting energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20 percent between 2006 and 2010, or 4 percent annually, as well as emissions by 10 percent for the period.

Taking wind power, one of China’s fastest growing renewable energy sectors, as another example, the sector ranked sixth in the world in terms of wind power generation capacity in 2006, up from eighth in 2005, according to the NDRC. Figures released by the Global Wind Power Council indicate that wind power installed capacity in China went up from 1260 megawatts in 2005 to 2610 MW in 2006, an increase of 107 percent.

In short, China’s record is inconsistent – some projects succeed, while others stall. What is clear is that the country will have to be more rigorous in implementing energy-saving measures if it really plans to achieve its environmental goals.

China’s renewable energy potential: analyses and predictions

Many Western analysts are optimistic about China’s renewable energy potential. Dr. Eric Martinot, a former senior energy and environment specialist at the World Bank, told Interfax in June, “For all the [renewable] technologies [apart from biomass], I think they’ll all achieve [the targets] early. Wind will go definitely more than 30 GW by 2020 and it would very likely achieve its 2010 target two years early. Also for hydropower, I think they’ll achieve the target early.”

There have also been indications that many elements in the Chinese government, including prominent government officials and institutions, are increasingly willing to confront environmental problems head-on. The Three Gorges Dam hydroelectric project, a pet project of powerful Chinese officials, has caused landslides, stagnant pollution and excessive algae. All of these problems were finally admitted openly in September by government officials (though there was no mention of another problem with the project, the forced relocation of nearby residents). Wang Xiaofeng, the director of the Three Gorges Construction Commission on the State Council, which is in charge of building the dam, reportedly said, “We must never lower our guard against environmental problems caused by the Three Gorges project, and we cannot achieve economic prosperity at the cost of damaging the environment.” Such openness has earned praise from international commentators. “It’s the first time that Chinese officials have (openly) talked about the pollution issues and environmental effects of the Three Gorges Dam. It’s a milestone for the Chinese government to show a positive attitude towards solving the ecological problems caused by the project,” Dr. Li Lin, the Conservation Strategy Director for the World Wildlife Fund’s China branch, told Interfax.

The development of renewable energy in China: pitfalls and opportunities

The Dabancheng Wind Farm At 100 megawatts, China’s largest

The country will face several hurdles in its development of the renewable energy industry. The biggest hurdle is also foreign companies’ biggest opportunity: the need to attract more foreign investment. As Francois Nguyen, senior policy adviser with Paris-based International Energy Agency, explained to Interfax in May, “The obstacle is that China needs to attract more foreign companies and in order to achieve that, China needs to provide more incentives.” Nguyen added that China needs a more diverse and competitive market that can ensure efficient allocation of resources, and needs to reorganize the government regulators in charge of the industry. “Right now the NDRC controls both policy-making and implementation,” he said. “If you have an independent market watcher and an independent regulator, that will give confidence to foreign investors.”

China will also have to improve its technology to develop the renewable energy industry. In the wind power sector, building wind turbines is expensive, and China still largely relies on foreign equipment. “In 2006, 60 percent of all wind power equipment in use in China was imported from overseas. Such equipment is expensive, as equipment prices have soared in recent years on the international market,” Qin Haiyan, secretary-general of the China Wind Energy Association, said in June, as cited by state media. He added that only three domestic companies are able to mass produce equipment with an individual capacity of more than 1.5 MW. Other sectors, such as solar and geothermal, face similar problems: the government will need to invest substantial resources in technological development to spur the renewable energy industry.

Another problem is that energy produced by renewable energy projects tends to be more expensive than traditional sources. The solar power sector is a good example. Eric Martinot, the former World Bank official, said that an important question is, “how soon will the cost come down so that there will be a domestic market for solar PV [photovoltaic]? We are looking at maybe at least five years. Actually a lot of people are thinking much longer. The first problem with solar in China is the acceptance by the utility companies to use power generated by solar power.”

Development of the industry may suffer from infrastructure problems as well. One potential obstacle that is often overlooked is the difficulty in connecting some renewable energy projects, especially wind power, to national and local grids. “The government likes to talk about how rapidly China is building up its wind power capacity, seeing it as a symbol of achievement in its renewable energy drive,” Shi Pengfei, the vice chairman of the China Wind Energy Association, told Interfax earlier this year. “However, to me, it means nothing, as it will only make a difference in our energy mix when the grid is able to receive a majority of the power generated.” Shi added that steps are being taken to address the problem, such as requiring wind power projects to consult with local and national grids before construction.

In the coming years, all sectors of the renewable energy industry – wind, solar, hydropower, biomass, nuclear, geothermal, waste-to-energy, clean coal and gas-fired power generation – will be expanded. All will face obstacles, but it is increasingly apparent that the Chinese government recognizes the reality of the environmental crisis, and will work to build up renewable energy in the country. As Li Lin from the WWF put it, “In recent years the central and local governments have gradually realized that sustainable economic development won’t happen without effective environment protection.”

This article was originally published by Interfax-China, and is republished with permission. Author Sam Goffman is the Editor of the Interfax-China Energy Sector Team, with special thanks to Terry Wang, Sector Analyst, Interfax-China. This article is part one of a five part series written as part of the research efforts for Interfax-China’s “China Clean & Renewable Energy to 2010″ special industry report. To automatically receive the other parts of the series please send an email to andrew@interfax.cn.

Last week we reported on a photovoltaic powered car, today we feature a company that is manufacturing photovoltaic powered lighting. Founded not quite two years ago by Sam Goldman, d.light Designs intends to sell affordable, clean lighting to households that currently rely on kerosene for illumination.

Better light equals better health and better education. Initially, d.light will distribute their lights in India

Currently d.light is doing trials with two different versions of rechargeable solar lanterns. They will provide a 180 degree hemisphere of ultra-efficient LED illumination, which will allow these lights to be mounted on walls and ceilings to replace kerosene lamps.

When I talked with Goldman earlier today, he said d.light intends to sell solar panels as separate modules – giving the consumer the option to recharge these lights using solar power.

It isn’t easy to project what these lights will actually cost the consumer. In India, for example, which is the first market d.light is targeting, there are import taxes that will significantly affect the end-user price. More relevant in many respects is what the payback time would be for consumers of these lamps who no longer had to buy kerosene.

Again using India as an example, not only are the end-user prices for d.light’s products not yet settled, but the price of kerosene varies widely between India’s subsidized official price and the prices charged on the wide open, more informal markets. But Goldman estimated the average rural family in India would be able to recoup the costs of a solar powered lighting system within 6 to 24 months. Considering these systems are designed to last at least five years (the solar module will last far longer than that; the inexpensive battery will require replacement every two years or so), this is a good deal.

Financial payback isn’t the only reason families who currently use kerosene for illumination may want these lights, however. The indoor air pollution caused by kerosene lighting is responsible for lower respiratory infections, a major killer of children under five in India and elsewhere. Chronic lung disease afflicts everyone subjected to years of unhealthy indoor air. Kerosene is also dangerous, causing thousands of fires and injuries each year.

Sam Goldman is an interesting entrepreneur, having spent much of his life in Africa and Asia. His online blog “let there be d.light! ” can provide a great deal of insight (and inspiration) to other social entrepreneurs, as well as potential business partners who may wish to find out more information than is available on d.light’s corporate website. Goldman’s company is funded by an assortment of equity investors, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Garage Technology Ventures, Mahindra & Mahindra and Nexus India Capital.

One of d.light’s major priorities currently is establishing a distributor network in India. As Goldman stated, “we’re looking right now to sign more distribution partners – anyone who is interested in partnering to help create solutions and distribute products should contact us.”

MELTING ON GREENLAND’S ICECAP

The darker the shading, the more days of summer melting are happening today compared to the base year of 1988. (Photo: NASA)

Meltwater stream flowing into a large moulin in the ablation zone of the Greenland ice sheet. (Photo: NASA)

It is hard to shock journalists and at the same time leave them in awe of the power of nature. A group returning from a helicopter trip flying over, then landing on, the Greenland ice cap at the time of maximum ice melt last month were shaken. One shrugged and said: “It is too late already.”

What they were all talking about was the moulins, not one moulin but hundreds, possibly thousands. “Moulin” is a word I had only just become familiar with. It is the name for a giant hole in a glacier through which millions of gallons of melt water cascade through to the rock below. The water has the effect of lubricating the glaciers so they move at three times the rate that they did previously.

Some of these moulins in Greenland are so big that they run on the scale of Niagara Falls. The scientists who accompanied these journalists on the trip were almost as alarmed. That is pretty significant because they are world experts on ice and Greenland in particular.

We were visiting Ilulissat, Greenland, once a stronghold of Innuit hunters but now with so little ice that the dog sleds are in danger of falling through even in the depth of winter.

But it is not the lack of sea ice that worries scientists and should be of serious concern to the inhabitants of coastal zones across the world. Cities like New York and states like Florida are in the front line.

Scientists know this already, but just to give you some idea of the problem, the Greenland ice cap is melting at such a fast rate it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break up.

Scientists say the acceleration of melting and subsequent speeding up of giant glaciers could be catastrophic in terms of sea level rise and make previous predictions published this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) far too low. The glacier at Ilulissat, which it is believed spawned the iceberg which sank the Titanic, is now flowing three times faster into the sea than it was 10 years ago.

Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, from Washington told me: “We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 metres an hour on a front five kilometres long and 1,500 metres deep. “That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one day to provide drinking water for a city the size New York or London for a year.”

Professor Correll, who is also director of the global change programme at the Heinz Centre in Washington said the estimates of sea level rise in the IPCC report in February 2007 had been “conservative” and based on data two years old. The range of rise this century had been predicted to be 20 to 60 centimetres, but would be the upper end of this range at a minimum and some now believed it could be two metres. This would have catastrophic effects for European and US coastlines.

He said newly invented ice penetrating radar showed that the melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a melt water lake 500 metres deep causing the glacier “to float on land. “These melt water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic.

The glacier is now moving at 15 kilometres a year into the sea although in periodic surges it moves even faster. He has seen a surge, which he had measured as moving five kilometres in 90 minutes – an extraordinary event.

If all of Greenland melts, something we were previously assured would take thousands of years, but now could be hundreds, then sea level round the world would rise seven metres. That is without any contribution from the Antarctic, the glaciers of Alaska, the Rockies, the Himalayas, or the ocean water expanding as it warms.

So the talk of sea level rise should not be in centuries, it should be decades or perhaps even single years. For 10,000 years, during all of human civilisation sea level remained stable leading us to believe that coastlines remained roughly in the same place. A century ago the sea began to rise one millimetre a year, 20 years ago it had reached two millimetres and this century it has risen to 3 millimetres. This annual rise may not seem much but add hurricane storm surges and high tides and we are soon saying good bye to a lot of coastal settlements like the Big Apple.

CHINA, USA, INDIA – 1995 vs. 2005

In 2007 China’s CO2 emissions passed the USA, though China and the USA currently have virtually identical energy intensity (energy consumed per unit of GNP).

Switch forward a week from the helicopter ride to George W. Bush’s meeting of 16 of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in Washington last month and what do we hear. We hear lots of rhetoric about how, along with terrorism, climate change is the biggest threat to the earth although the catastrophic sea level rise facing our major coastal cities does not rate a mention.

But instead of decisive political action (as with terrorism) we get suggestions from the President of voluntary cuts in emissions, down to the government of each country, and then next summer another conference to discuss where we have got to which on past form will be nowhere at all. It did not sound like the much needed change of heart from the President, but just another delaying tactic to tide him over until his term of office ends.

Although it may sound like it, the commentators in Europe are not singling out America for criticism, although it has to be said as often as possible that the US is the world’s most profligate nation when it comes to fossil fuel consumption, AND has rejected the only legally binding international agreement that could do something about it. But Europeans are not doing enough either. We need convincing that our own leaders have enough political will to reach the tiny Kyoto targets that are the minimum first step to tackling this problem. The public hears the latest scientists warnings that an 80% cut in greenhouse gas emissions is needed if we are to stave off catastrophic climate change, yet wait in vain for the policies needed to achieve them.

In my book, protestors wearing George Bush masks are pictured “fiddling while the earth burns.” Maybe he is just the lead violinist of the orchestra.

About the Author: Paul Brown was the environment correspondent for The Guardian newspaper for 16 years and has worked in newspaper journalism for more than 40 years. He has written extensively about climate change, population, biodiversity, pollution, energy, desertification, and ocean management. Brown has appeared in and written television documentaries on environmental issues, contributed to books on green politics, and is the author of several books on the environment, ref. Global Warming Book.

Once in a while you run across something that challenges just about everything you thought you knew. “Terra preta” (Portuguese for “black earth”) are anomalous deposits of deep, rich soil found in large pockets of land throughout the Amazon. Once thought to be 100% comprised of thin, fragile soil that would immediately desertify if the trees were removed, it now turns out there are significant sections of Amazonia where this terra preta is abundant. But the biggest mystery is this: The Amazon’s best soil, terra preta, possibly was deliberately created by Native Americans.

The Amazon basin’s best soil, agrichar, possibly was deliberately created by Native Americans.

As put forth in 2002 in a lengthy article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled “1491″ by Charles C. Mann, there is a growing body of evidence that the indigenous population of the Americas in pre-colombian times was far greater than is typically estimated.

In Mann’s report several thought provoking bits of evidence are presented: The great mass of carrier pigeons that filled the skies and the great masses of bison that dominated the endless prairies in the 18th century were not always there – if they had always been there, in archeological sites we would see their bones in far greater abundance. Instead they were “outbreak species,” whose numbers mushroomed in the wake of human demographic collapse. Read the article for more arguments supporting this new theory – which basically says the impact of European disease on Native American populations was far, far greater than previously conjectured, and in fact abruptly destroyed a network of complex urban civilizations numbering well over 100 million people.

The presence of Amazonian terra preta is another piece of evidence allegedly supporting this theory, because the placement of these deposits of charcoal rich black earth are not explained without human intervention. The theory holds that this black earth was created by a process called “slash and char,” something very distinct from slash and burn. In this process the seasonal crop residue was not burned, but charred and turned into the earth. Doing this sequestered most of the carbon in the crop residue, and created an extremely hospitable amendment to the otherwise thin and fragile soil – something that in turn nurtured beneficial microorganisms that broke down the poor native soil and transformed it in to extraordinarily rich humus. Read this from “1491″:

“Landscape” in this case is meant exactly—Amazonian Indians literally created the ground beneath their feet. According to William I. Woods, a soil geographer at Southern Illinois University, ecologists’ claims about terrible Amazonian land were based on very little data. In the late 1990s Woods and others began careful measurements in the lower Amazon. They indeed found lots of inhospitable terrain. But they also discovered swaths of terra preta—rich, fertile “black earth” that anthropologists increasingly believe was created by human beings.

Terra preta, Woods guesses, covers at least 10 percent of Amazonia, an area the size of France. It has amazing properties, he says. Tropical rain doesn’t leach nutrients from terra preta fields; instead the soil, so to speak, fights back. Not far from Painted Rock Cave is a 300-acre area with a two-foot layer of terra preta quarried by locals for potting soil. The bottom third of the layer is never removed, workers there explain, because over time it will re-create the original soil layer in its initial thickness. The reason, scientists suspect, is that terra preta is generated by a special suite of microorganisms that resists depletion. Apparently at some threshold level … dark earth attains the capacity to perpetuate—even regenerate itself—thus behaving more like a living ‘super’-organism than an inert material.

In as yet unpublished research the archaeologists Eduardo Neves, of the University of São Paulo; Michael Heckenberger, of the University of Florida; and their colleagues examined terra preta in the upper Xingu, a huge southern tributary of the Amazon. Not all Xingu cultures left behind this living earth, they discovered. But the ones that did generated it rapidly—suggesting to Woods that terra preta was created deliberately. In a process reminiscent of dropping microorganism-rich starter into plain dough to create sourdough bread, Amazonian peoples, he believes, inoculated bad soil with a transforming bacterial charge. Not every group of Indians there did this, but quite a few did, and over an extended period of time.”

If rich topsoil was literally engineered by humans on this scale, this is an encouraging possibility to address the today’s challenges of depleted soils and desertification. Organizations have sprung up to study the potential of employing similar techniques today, creating what is now referred to as biochar (or agrichar), such as the International Biochar Initiative. And the notion that Native Americans manipulated and nurtured the ecosystems of the Amazon over 500 years ago also challenges today’s conventional definitions of what is pristine – indeed by taking away one of our most reliable archetypes of living without a footprint – perhaps shakes the whole idea of pristine wilderness to its roots. And needless to say, if carbon sequestration is truly an imperative for our species, creating biochar could hold more potential – and side benefits – than virtually any other scheme.

If you had 100 square feet of photovoltaic panels (PV), at 10 watts per square foot (full sun only), then you would be able to save one kilowatt-hour per hour. For that matter, if you only had 50 square feet of PV, but your panels yielded 20 watts per square foot in full sun, you would also be able to store one kilowatt-hour per hour.

The reason all this matters is because there isn’t a lot of room on the outside of automobiles for PV, but Fisker Automotive in Irvine, California, intends to put a silicon skin on their new plug in hybrid. During a follow up interview after our initial report “Fisker’s Luxury Electric Car,” Henrik Fisker also disclosed today that the car will be a series hybrid. But returning to silicon PV skin on electric vehicles, the real question is how many miles will you get per kilowatt-hour of stored electricity? Fisker wouldn’t say, although from his remarks it appears they intend to exceed expectations.

The Tesla Roadster, with 52 kilowatt-hours of storage and a 245 mile range, gets 4.7 miles per kilowatt-hour. The Chevy Volt, at 12 kilowatt-hours of storage, and a 40 mile range, gets 3.3 miles per kilowatt-hour. These are the yields you can expect from a silicon PV skinned vehicle. It is reasonable to expect Fisker’s “ecochic” line of electric cars to store at least a mile or two of range per hour parked in the sun if they can allocate 15+ square feet of car roof for PV, possibly much more, depending on the efficiency of the photovoltaics, the amount of PV skin, and the actual kWh/mile performance. Also, as Fisker explained, the owner would be able to select how to allocate PV power in order to ensure climate control in the vehicle’s interior, and overall thermal management in addition to charging the batteries.

Fisker’s new car has an elongated wheelbase, although the length of the vehicle is standard. This is because the wheels are moved further towards the front and rear of the vehicle than normal. Doing this makes extremely efficient use of the chassis, allowing the vehicle to weigh less. From front to rear, there is a gasoline engine, an electric generator (turned by the gasoline engine, which is completely disconnected from the drive train), a lithium ion battery (not using cobalt technology), and two electric motor-generators.

There is much about this car we do not know, in spite of the fact they have already been testing prototypes. With crash testing getting underway, Fisker is working with Quantum Technologies (QWTT), who have extensive experience crash testing battery systems for major automakers and the U.S. military, to provide the battery systems and power electronics. Considering Henrik Fisker’s experience doing automotive design (including the chassis), this company is a real contender. It is likely they have taken the intrinsic advantages of serial hybrid design, and taken them all further. The efficient placement of components on the chassis, twin motor-generators directly engaging the rear axles, non-cobalt lithium battery chemistry, are all logical innovations that exemplify the emergence of serial hybrid technology as the platform of choice for the next generation smart green car.

There are already a lot of credible entrants to these new automotive sweepstakes. There will be an efflorescence of auto manufacturers reminiscent of the first golden age of the car, when it was clear the horse was an obsolete transportation innovation, and where for a time there were dozens of major automakers. Fisker, Aptera, Tesla, Phoenix, Think, Zenn, Zap, and others claim their cars will join this next wave, the great inaugural generation of smart, clean, green cars. Series hybrid plug-in technology is a big part of this next automotive revolution.

Along with photovoltaic skin, Fisker intends to sell an optional PV module that will go onto your property, presumably atop your house, sized to collect sufficent electricity to power your Fisker ecochic car through any prescribed duty cycle. You would drive off the grid. Your car would have no footprint (ref. Photovoltaic Cars). Eventually, Fisker Automotive hopes to offer cars in the more affordable $35,000 range, but even in these days of internet wonders, you can’t just create a major automaker out of thin air – it will take a few years if things go well. But it really appears the cat is out of the bag, the green car generation is upon us, and manufacturers are going to sell these cars as fast as they can make them for a long, long time.