Industry pushes energy efficiency

A group of eight European trade associations want energy efficiency technologies, like better building insulation, given greater recognition in the European Union’s (EU’s) energy technology plan because of its cost effectiveness in reducing greenhouse emissions, a view shared by an Australian energy efficiency expert. They also want a mandatory 20% target set for improving energy efficiency by 2020. The trade associations from sectors ranging from light-bulb manufacturing to building insulation to household appliance makers urged the European energy commissioner, in a letter, to make energy efficiency figure more prominently in the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan, the SET-Plan.

The SET-Plan was a part of wider proposals on energy and climate change seeking to identify technologies for which the EU needs to find “a more powerful way of mobilising resources”. The proposal looked at launching industrial initiatives in areas such as wind energy, solar, bio-energy and nuclear fission. Financing proposals are expected to be presented in December.
Australian energy efficiency expert Alan Pears said multiple benefits result from becoming more energy efficient, apart from the obvious cost savings of lessened energy use. Higher energy efficiency defers the need for investment in energy supply, Pears said, using the Australian electricity industry as an example.

“It is estimating it will need to spend up to $20 billion to expand the energy supply capacity to cope with growth in demand.  If we could stop that growth in demand, we could save a lot of money.”

Pears said energy efficiency benefits businesses and industries not only in terms of lower electricity bills, but is also “a driver for other improvements” such as in product quality, productivity and occupational health and safety.

“If you better insulate systems that give off heat, for example, staff will have a more comfortable working environment, they are less likely to suffer health problems, less tired, make less mistakes,” he added, saying these and other benefits to prioritising energy efficiency are often overlooked. Sourced from www.EnvironmentalManagementNews.net

Melting ice caps could suck carbon from atmosphere – but how much?

It's not often that disappearing Arctic ice is presented as good news for the planet. Yet new research, as reported in New Scientist, suggests that as the northern polar cap melts, it could lift the lid off a new carbon sink capable of soaking up carbon dioxide.

The findings, from two separate research groups, raise the possibility - albeit a remote one - of weakening the greenhouse effect. The researchers say the process of carbon sequestration is already underway. Even so, the new carbon sink is unlikely to make a significant dent in the huge amounts of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere by industrial activities.

Kevin Arrigo and colleagues at Stanford University studied satellite data collected between 1998 and 2007 to see how sea surface temperatures and the quantities of sea ice and phytoplankton had changed during that time. Phytoplankton produce chlorophyll to obtain energy from CO2, and so increased phytoplankton productivity would remove carbon from the atmosphere.

"We found that as sea ice diminishes, annual productivity goes up," says Arrigo. Satellite remote sensing measures the amount of chlorophyll in surface waters, and so provides an estimate of ocean productivity.

From one year to the next, the phytoplankton grew more in areas where the ice had disappeared: less ice meant more open water for longer, allowing the plankton to soak up more energy from the Sun. In some areas, production was boosted more than three-fold.

Ken Denman of the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis warns that the Arctic sink as it stands is likely to have only a very small impact on human emissions. Typically between half and a quarter of the carbon soaked up by phytoplankton ends up stored at the bottom of the ocean.

If the Arctic became completely ice-free and phytoplankton productivity levels were maintained, Arrigo and his colleagues calculated that the new carbon sink could in theory absorb an extra 160 million tonnes of carbon each year. "Given the current rate of human emissions that would only account for 0.7% of total annual emissions" says Arrigo.

"When you look carefully at the amounts involved, they just are not significant relative to the massive amounts of CO2 that we are and will be putting into the atmosphere," agrees Denman.

For the sink to have a larger effect, productivity would have to rise further, something Arrigo says is uncertain. "The Arctic has relatively low nutrients in surface waters, so once they are all used up production will not increase any further," he told New Scientist.

To sustain the growing phytoplankton, more nutrients would need to be brought to the surface waters, for instance from the silt on the seabed. Some studies have suggested that strong winds and more storms are mixing up Arctic waters and could eventually bring more nutrients to the surface. The findings, however, are debated.

What is clear is that the impacts of the melting Arctic ice are complex and will continue to unfold as temperatures rise. Less ice cover may mean more phytoplankton, but it also means a darker sea surface, which will reflect less solar energy back out into space.

What's more, the entire Arctic food chain could be affected, from top to bottom. "Food supplies for lower trophic levels may indeed be greater, but the loss of sea ice could precipitate profound ecological shifts," says Arrigo. Most likely, fish that live in open water would be favoured over the predators that rely on ice - ringed seals and polar bears for example - that dominate today.

"It is clear that careful monitoring of climate and ecosystem changes in the Arctic is necessary to determine the longer-term implications of substantial losses of Arctic sea ice," conclude the team.

Story sourced from www.NewScientist.com  news service by Glenn Moore, Director of Wollongong Science Centre and Planetarium http://sciencecentre.uow.edu.au  

Biggest landfill energy project this decade in Australia?

The biggest waste-to-energy (WtE) project to come on line in Australia this decade has opened in Sydney, with five new 1.1MW engines capable of providing 5,000 homes with renewable base load energy all year. The project is a joint venture between LMS Generation and WSN Environmental Solutions, and the site's energy export capacity will increase over the next five years as more landfill gas becomes available at the Eastern Creek landfill in Sydney’s west. Three more engines will be commissioned over the next five years, taking total installed capacity to 9MW.

"At full capacity, the new facility at Eastern Creek is expected to prevent 355,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent being emitted per year – the same as taking 84,000 cars off the road," said Verity Firth before being shuffled out of the NSW Environment Ministry and into the education portfolio in the recent NSW Government changes.

"The project will also save approximately 180ML of water each year when compared with a traditional coal-fired power station generating the same amount of electricity.”

Calling it “an example of innovative science helping solve two environmental problems at once”, Firth said the facility – to be known as Eastern Creek 2 – will reduce greenhouse emissions in two ways, “by reducing the need for coal generated power and by using up methane from waste that would otherwise escape into the atmosphere”.
Courtesy of Inside Waste Weekly (http://www.insidewaste.com.au)

Bagging Notebooks and old computers

A Hewlett-Packard notebook computer packed in a protective bag rather than a box – cutting packaging by 97% – won an eco-design challenge by US retailer Wal-Mart to electronics companies. It came around the same time a Texas law made it mandatory for computer companies to take back old computers, the fourth US state passing such a requirement.

Wal-Mart invited all its electronic consumer products suppliers to come up with attractive design, innovative, environmentally-friendly products and packaging that reduces waste and toxic materials. HP’s bags not only met those criteria but reduced by a quarter its transportation needs to deliver the notebook to Wal-Mart stores.

The HP Pavilion dv6929’s fabric bag, made from 100% recycled materials, has enabled “dramatic” reduction in overall packaging content, “ conserving fuel and reducing CO2 emissions by removing the equivalent of one out of every four trucks previously needed to deliver the notebooks”.

Sourced from www.EnvironmentalManagementNews.net

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