Google to roll out free tool to help save energy

LONDON (Reuters) - Google Inc is soon to roll out free software which allows consumers to track their home electricity use and improve energy efficiency in a bid to help mitigate global warming.

Dan Reicher, Director for Climate Change and Energy Initiatives Google, told Reuters it was in talks with utilities companies in the United Sates, Europe and Asia to make the product available shortly to general consumers.

As part of its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Google said in February it would use its software skills for the program that will show home energy consumption in real time on a user's computer or a telephone.

"It will get rolled out very soon to regular energy consumers," Reicher said, without providing exact timings.

"When I began getting information about my own home, I discovered that I had a 35-year electric motor running for my heating system. That was using huge amount of electricity. I did not realize that's the change I need to make in my home."

The company cited studies showing that access to home energy information typically saves between 5 percent and 15 percent on monthly electricity bills.

"The beauty of the tool we are developing is that is going to be an open source," Reicher said.

Coal industry hopes it has place in Obama's energy plan

WASHINGTON — The coal industry — long the lifeblood of mountain rich but economically poor states like Kentucky — is bracing for a seismic shift as the Obama administration charges ahead with re-envisioned energy policies focused heavily on renewable resources and new ways of storing carbon emissions.

The gambit pits mining companies and lawmakers who are concerned about costly innovations against environmentalists who argue the ecological damage left behind by an industry that powers nearly all of Kentucky and much of the nation is too high a price.

"The stakes are very high. We have to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and efforts to do that will affect how we use coal in the future," said Barbara Freese, author of the book "Coal: A Human History," and a clean energy and climate policy advocate with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Climate change will force economic and technological changes. The question is how to bring those changes about in the most cost effective and efficient way."

Politically, changes in the nation's approach to coal are already afoot.

The Department of Energy will soon announce whether it will use $1 billion in stimulus funds to resurrect FutureGen, a proposal to create in Illinois the world's first coal-fired power plant designed to capture and bury carbon emissions underground. Kentucky was once a contender for the plant, which the Bush administration ultimately decided not to build citing a cost overrun that pushed the price tag to $1.8 billion.

A recent Government Accountability Office report said the cost to build is actually closer to $1.3 billion, and the Bush administration's overestimation, coupled with the decision not to build the plant, set the country's "clean coal" efforts back a decade.

In response to last year's massive coal ash spill at a Tennessee Valley Authority facility in Kingston, Tenn., the Environmental Protection Agency recently announced plans to create standards for regulating the ash that is left over after coal is burned to produce electricity.

According to a Natural Resources Defense Council report, Kentucky comes in at No. 11 on a "Filthy 15" list of states where new power plants would produce more coal ash.

The Obama administration is also promising to make good on a campaign pledge to implement a governmental cap-and-trade program that would "cap" companies' carbon emissions and force businesses to purchase or "trade" for lower emissions levels.

The economic stimulus has $16.8 billion for renewable energy and efficiency programs compared to $3.4 billion for the coal industry. Congress previously nixed $50 billion in loans for the coal-to-liquid fuels and nuclear industries.

Some Kentucky lawmakers feel that's not nearly enough.

"President Obama in his budget proposal said that if they initiate a cap and trade it would produce $650 billion in revenue for the federal government. That's a little bit scary in itself because it's a source of income he's depending on to offset some of his proposals," said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Hopkinsville, who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment. "It will increase the cost of electricity being produced and it will be extremely difficult for Kentucky and a lot of Midwestern states to get themselves in a position to meet these standards."

Lexington has the country's largest "carbon footprint" -- leading the nation in emitting the greenhouse gases that most scientists think contribute to global climate change. Other Kentucky cities follow closely, including the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky area and Louisville, according to a study of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan areas by the Brookings Institution.

The coal mining industry has donated heavily to the state's congressional delegation's campaign war chests.

Kentucky lawmakers have long pinned their hopes for an economic revival in Appalachia on a windfall in federal funding to capture and store carbon emissions underground. The method is seen as critical to efforts to convert coal to liquid fuels -- a process that produces a significant amount of carbon dioxide that could be released into the atmosphere.

Clean Coal Power Resources of Louisville could decide in a few months if it will move forward with a proposed $7.6 billion coal-to-liquid fuels plant in McCracken County -- a project that would take years to build as environmental and regulatory standards are met. During the last Congress, Whitfield and other Kentucky lawmakers co-sponsored legislation to advance the development and deployment of carbon capture and storage.

However, that technology is not yet commercially viable, and "absent greater incentives through government subsidies, regulatory policies, or shifting construction risks to vendors, 'clean coal' is likely to remain an elusive part of the future of electric generation," Todd Shipman, a credit analyst with Standard and Poor's, told the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment during a panel on the future of coal last week.

The tremors created by the shift in energy policy can perhaps best be seen in the multimillion-dollar advertising battle over the public perceptions of coal as an energy resource. The mining industry, environmentalists, lawmakers and the Obama administration all have varying definitions of "clean coal". Coal companies through the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity have produced television spots punctuated with snippets from Obama's campaign trail speeches extolling the virtues of "clean coal".

The Reality Coalition shot right back with a commercial directed by Academy Award-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen that features a clean coal air freshener that "harnesses the awesome power of the word clean."

"The term clean coal has been around for a long time, before we were even talking about carbon capture and storage," Freese said. "It came out of the industry and it became a catchall phrase for reduced pollution related to coal. That's not helpful because there are so many technologies involved."

McClatchy Newspapers 2009

China appeals to exclude exports in climate deal

WASHINGTON (AFP) – China appealed to exclude its giant export sector in the next treaty on climate change, as doubts grow whether the world can close ranks by a deadline of December.

Rich nations buying Chinese goods bear responsibility, a Chinese negotiator said, estimating that export production caused up to 20 percent of the Asian power's carbon emissions blamed for global warming.

"It is a very important item to make a fair agreement," senior Chinese climate official Li Gao said during a visit to Washington.

Climate envoys from China, Japan and the European Union were holding talks with US President Barack Obama's administration as the clock ticks to the December conference in Copenhagen meant to approve a post-Kyoto Protocol deal.

Developed nations demand that developing countries such as China and India take action under the new treaty. They had no obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, leading Obama's predecessor George W. Bush to reject it.

But Li said it was unfair to put the highest burden on China, which by some measures has surpassed the United States as the world's top emitter.

"We are at the low end of the production line for the global economy," Li told a forum.

"We produce products and these products are consumed by other countries, especially the developed countries. This share of emissions should be taken by the consumers but not the producers," he said.

Li said Beijing was not trying to avoid action on climate change, noting that Obama in his address to Congress last month said China "has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient."

Li's remarks met immediate skepticism, with other negotiators saying it would be a logistical nightmare to find a way to regulate carbon emissions at exports' destination.

Asking importers to handle emissions "would mean that we would also like them to have jurisdiction and legislative powers in order to control and limit those," top EU climate negotiator Artur Runge-Metzger said.

"I'm not sure whether my Chinese colleague would agree on that particular point," he said.

China's chief climate official, Xie Zhenhua, was also in Washington where he met with US global warming pointman Todd Stern, who praised Beijing's "broad work" on climate change but sought greater cooperation.

"This is a historic opportunity for both countries to contribute to a better future for the planet," Stern said, according to the State Department.

But Obama has run into resistance in Congress from members of Bush's Republican Party who say tough measures to reduce emissions would further hurt an economy in its roughest patch in decades.

Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change which organized the forum, said that countries should be ready to accept setting only a framework in Copenhagen.

"We can still make very substantial progress toward a final agreement and perhaps the best way to do that is aiming for a strong interim agreement in Copenhagen," she said.

Runge-Metzger said the EU believed the world now had the political will for an agreement in Copenhagen but conceded: "It doesn't have to be a deal that goes into each and every technical detail."

Japan's chief negotiator Shinsuke Sugiyama said that Asia's largest economy -- which is struggling to meet its own obligations under the Kyoto treaty reached in its ancient capital -- was waiting for Washington and Beijing.

"Japan will not repeat Kyoto," Sugiyama said. "At Kyoto we were not able to involve the biggest emitters in the world by now -- and that means the United States of America and China."

Li hit back that Japan, not China, was among countries with "historical responsibility" for global warming -- which UN scientists say threatens entire species if left unchecked.

"If I were Japanese, I would be very proud of the Kyoto Protocol. It seems the ambassador is not," Li said.

Crisis hampers EU wind power in short-term: lobby

MARSEILLE (Reuters) – The economic downturn is delaying wind power projects in the European Union but the negative impact will not last because of strong sector fundamentals, a European wind power lobby said on Monday.

"There is a slowdown in the sector, we are seeing some signs, but much less than in other sectors," Arthouros Zervos, president of the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), told Reuters on the sidelines of a wind conference.

"The impact will be short term because the fundamentals are still there for wind development," he said.

There was some difficulty in financing projects, which meant some were delayed but there had been no canceled projects so far, Zervos added.

Michael Liebreich, analyst with consultancy firm New Energy Finance, said he believed between 10 and 15 percent of all new projects in Europe in 2009 would be delayed or canceled.

The wind energy sector was attracting new sources of capital that compensated for banks' reluctance to provide debt finance for projects, the EWEA said.

"A growing number of power companies with strong balance sheets are investing in wind energy and there is increasing interest from institutional investors," it added.

While it expected the sector to be among the first to emerge from the economic turmoil, it urged governments and the European Investment Bank to establish loan guarantees to ease the banking liquidity squeeze.

LONGER TERM

In the longer term, Zervos was optimistic because of the European Union's decision last year to source a fifth of its energy by 2020 from renewable sources like the sun and wind, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce dependence on unreliable imports of oil and gas.

The EU's plan had gained urgency after a gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine earlier this year, which forced hundreds of European businesses to shut down and left thousands of homes without heating, the EU's energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs told conference delegates.

"We now estimate installed capacity in the European Union to reach 230,000 megawatts (MW), up from a 2003 forecast of 180,000 MW," Zervos said, adding this included 40,000 MW in offshore capacity.

Wind power was expected to generate 600 terawatt hours per year by 2020 and make up between 16 and 18 percent of the EU's electricity demand.

The Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) said last week the economic downturn would dent wind power growth in the United States in 2009, as firms scrambled to finance their projects.

It expected wind power growth to be stable in Europe and continue to increase sharply in China.

GWEC was more optimistic than some analysts, forecasting added installed power would grow in 2009 compared with 2008, contrasting with an HSBC report which last week forecast new additions would drop by a fifth.

The council said a $787 billion U.S. stimulus package would however help revive the sector when it kicked in, through tax breaks, financial incentives, loan guarantees and grants.

The council said it expected global wind power capacity to nearly triple in the next five years, although the year-on-year growth would slow down to an average of 22 percent, down from 28 percent in the last 10 years.

(Editing by Sue Thomas)

Maldives Pledges to Be First Carbon-Neutral Country

WASHINGTON, Mar 16 (OneWorld.net) - The president of the Maldives announced Sunday that his nation will become the first carbon-neutral country in the world, within 10 years.

• The announcement was made via video link with viewers at the premiere of the forthcoming climate film, "The Age of Stupid," which will be released in Britain later this week. Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed said: "What we need to do is nothing short of de-carbonizing the entire world economy," adding that the process will likely be difficult and somewhat painful, but it is achievable and necessary. "If man can walk on the moon, we can unite to conquer our own carbon enemy. We [the Maldives] are willing to play our part."

• Nasheed called on the leaders of wealthier nations to take decisive action at the Copenhagen climate summit in December. Climate journalist Mark Lynas said: "This is more than just an amazing announcement. This is potentially a game-changer for the entire political negotiations on climate change, worldwide."

• Nasheed did not say how his country would reconcile its drive to become carbon-neutral with its economic reliance on tourism, which often demands long-haul airline travel, a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions.

• "The Age of Stupid" is aiming to reach 250 million viewers worldwide with its message clarifying the short time frame in which humans must act to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. Concerned viewers are being directed to the action hub at OneClimate.net, a member of the OneWorld family of Web sites, to find out how they can get involved in the follow-up action campaign entitled "Not Stupid."

Climate change accelerates water hunt in U.S. West

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – It's hard to visualize a water crisis while driving the lush boulevards of Los Angeles, golfing Arizona's green fairways or watching dancing Las Vegas fountains leap more than 20 stories high.

So look Down Under. A decade into its worst drought in a hundred years Australia is a lesson of what the American West could become.

Bush fires are killing people and obliterating towns. Rice exports collapsed last year and the wheat crop was halved two years running. Water rationing is part of daily life.

"Think of that as California's future," said Heather Cooley of California water think tank the Pacific Institute.

Water raised leafy green Los Angeles from the desert and filled arid valleys with the nation's largest fruit and vegetable crop. Each time more water was needed, another megaproject was built, from dams of the major rivers to a canal stretching much of the length of the state.

But those methods are near their end. There is very little water left untapped and global warming, the gradual increase of temperature as carbon dioxide and other gases retain more of the sun's heat, has created new uncertainties.

Global warming pushes extremes. It prolongs drought while sometimes bringing deluges the parched earth cannot absorb. California Department of Water Resources Director Lester Snow says two things keep him up at night: drought and flood.

"It isn't that drought is the new norm," said Snow. "Climate change is bringing us higher highs and lower lows in terms of water supplies."

Take Los Angeles, which had its driest year in 2006-2007, with 3 inches (7.6 cms) of rain. Only two years earlier, more than 37 inches (94 cms) fell, barely missing the record.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a drought emergency last month, and Los Angeles plans to ration water for the first time in 15 years. Courts are limiting the amount of water taken from into rivers to save decimated fish populations, which is cutting back even more to farms.

California farmers lost more than $300 million in 2008 and economic losses may accelerate to 10 times that this year as 95,000 people lose their jobs. Farmers will get zero water from the main federal supplier.

Nick Tatarakis sank his life savings into the fertile San Joaquin Valley but now thinks his business will die of thirst.

"Every year it seems like this water thing is getting rougher and rougher," he said. "I took everything I had saved over the last three or four years, put it into farming almonds, developed this orchard. Now it is coming into its fifth year and probably won't make it through this year."

SWINGING TEMPERATURES, PRICES

In the global economy, a little trouble goes a long way when supplies are tight, said University of Arkansas Ecological Engineering professor Marty Matlock.

The essence of climate change is greater swings in precipitation -- and thus food production. At times of peak demand, prices can skyrocket, he said, as happened to food prices last year.

"There's no slack any more. The rope is tight, and if you give it a tug, it yanks on something," he said.

While farmers suffer, cities continue to grow. The sunny, warm American West remains a magnet.

"Add water and you have the instant good life," said James Powell, author of "Dead Pool," a book about global warming and water in the U.S. West.

"For the last few years, the driest states, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada, have been the fastest growing. And you know that can't be sustained," he said.

California, the world's eighth-largest economy, already uses a staggering amount of water -- roughly enough to cover the nearby state of Washington with a foot (30 cms) of it.

Some 80 percent is used by farms, growing organic lettuce on the temperate coast; rice and citrus inland. Almost anything will grow in the ideal climate -- if there is water.

California water planners in a draft report see three different scenarios for the state by 2050. In the most unfettered, suburbs sprawl ever-farther, replacing productive farms with water-soaking lawns and the population doubles -- as does urban water use. In the best case scenario for water use, the population increases about 20 percent, but denser housing and conservation help keep urban water use roughly steady.

All of the scenarios show agricultural output dropping -- it is just a question of how much.

Businesses, too, have much to fear. Semiconductor manufacturers and beverage companies are high on a list of at-risk sectors in a report on corporate water by Pacific Institute and investor group Ceres.

SLOW CHANGE

Change is happening too slowly, nearly all water planners say, but they disagree about what to do and which options are financially viable, especially the expensive dam projects favored by agricultural interests.

Climate change's challenge to traditional water supplies starts in the mountains. The snow-capped Sierras in eastern California and the Rockies farther east fuel rivers that provide a steady supply of water through much of the year.

The Sierras will have 25 percent to 40 percent less snow by 2050 as rising global concentrations of greenhouses gases raise the temperature, California's water department forecasts.

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program sees the entire West on average getting less precipitation, but there is plenty of debate about that. There is a consensus, however, that most of today's snow will turn in coming decades to rain, often in the form of blinding thunderstorms early in the year, when it is needed least.

California wants to raise or build new dams to catch the increased flow as part of a broad set of solutions.

"There is no one silver bullet," the water department's Snow said.

But the Natural Resources Defense Council and a Los Angeles business coalition see dams as a costly solution that mostly favors farmers.

"The dams are an expensive detour that I don't think will ever be built," said Lee Harringon, executive director of the Southern California Leadership Council, a group of urban public utilities and other businesses.

A study by his group put the price of new dams at up to $1,400 per acre foot. Current supplies cost about $700 for one acre foot -- a year's supply for two houses. Urban water conservation costs $210, local stormwater $350 and desalination of ocean water or contaminated groundwater about $750 to $1,200 an acre foot.

The NRDC estimates that California could get 7 million acre feet per year from conservation, groundwater cleanup and stormwater harvesting.

Even energy-intensive desalination is cheaper than dams, the group argues. "People always used to think that desal was the lunatic fringe of water supply. (Now) desal is the mainstream, and dams are exiting the mainstream," said policy analyst Barry Nelson.

But so far water is the cheapest utility in most homes and businesses, and it's treated that way.

"As long as you are undervaluing a resource, you are going to be perpetually short," said Robert Wilkinson, director of the Water Policy Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Many see water's pricing future following that of electricity. Despite the energy crisis of the early 2000s, California leads the nation in controlling electricity use. One key strategy was letting utilities charge more when consumers use less, making power producers advocates for conservation.

But the simple conclusion is that the West must secure a water supply, even at a high price, says business advocate Harrington.

"While these options are expensive, the options of not having the water makes them all viable at the end of the day," he said.

(Editing by Alan Elsner)

Climate scientists gather, and the news is not good

COPENHAGEN (AFP) – Only months before make-or-break UN climate talks in Copenhagen, an extraordinary conclave of climate scientists gathering on Tuesday are expected to warn that global warming is accelerating more quickly than forecast by a key UN report for policymakers.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in early 2007 that global warming, if unchecked, would unleash a devastating amalgam of floods, drought, disease and extreme weather by century's end.

But a welter of new research suggests the impact could be even worse, and will arrive sooner rather than later.

Most worrying, they say, is the possibility that human activity -- mainly the burning of oil, gas and coal -- could trigger natural drivers of global warming which, once unleashed, would be nearly impossible to reverse.

The shrinking of the Arctic ice cap, and the release of billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases trapped in melting permafrost are two such "positive feedbacks" that could become both cause and consequence of global warming.

The three-day conference is also likely to unveil a new scientific consensus that sea levels are set to rise at least a metre by 2100, more than double the IPCC estimate, which failed to take melt-off from the Greenland Ice Sheet into account.

"I and a lot of scientists see this meeting as an opportunity to update the science that has come out since the last IPCC report," said William Howard, a researcher from the University of Tasmania in Hobart, Australia.

Howard will present evidence showing for the first time that ocean acidification caused by climate change is stripping away the calcium-based shells of tiny organisms, called forams, that play a vital role in absorbing huge amounts of carbon pollution from the atmosphere.

"The policymakers that are meeting in Copenhagen in December need to consider this and other impacts in addition to what they traditionally think of as climate change," he told AFP.

More than 2,000 scientists and researchers from 80 countries responded to the open invitation to present their findings, which were then vetted by a panel of climate experts, many of them top figures in the IPCC.

The head of the UN panel, Rajendra Pachauri -- who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace prize with Al Gore -- is slated to kick off the proceedings, along with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and top climate economist Lord Nicholas Stern.

"The huge response from scientists comes from a sense of urgency, but also a sense of frustration," said Katherine Richardson, head of the Danish government's Commission on Climate Change Policy and a co-organiser of the meeting, sponsored by the University of Copenhagen and nine other schools.

"Most of us have been trained as scientists to not get our hands dirty by talking to politicians -- throw your data on the table and run away as fast as you can.

"But we now realise that what we are dealing with is so complicated and urgent that we have to help to make sure the results are understood," she told AFP.

Richardson said the IPCC report was an invaluable document, but will be five years out of date by the time negotiators convene in December to hammer out a global climate treaty.

"There is a whole lot more knowledge available today," she said. "When you make decisions on what you are going to do about the problem it is important to know what trajectory you are on."

Connie Hedegaard, Denmark's Minister for Climate and Energy, agreed that political decisions should be driven by science.

"As policymakers, we can't ignore what the scientists are telling us, nor can we close our eyes to reality," she told AFP.