Whilst Carbon Footprint calculators have been around for a while, i decided to go back and have look at mine ( I last calculated it about a year ago) - The results were interesting to say the least. I would suggest that if you have 5 minutes spare, click on one of the links below and try and fill in as much information as you can - But i warn you, the results may be alarming !

Google Carbon Calulator

The Big Green Switch

The UK Goverments ‘Act on Co2′ website

Carbon Footprint.com

Phew ! Its been a while since our last post - I decided to post this today - Yet another great article from The Guardian on the creation of a gravity mapping satellite, designed to make more precise measurements of the Earth’s gravitational field.

Scientists are preparing to launch a new satellite to make more precise measurements of the Earth’s gravitational field and so help improve predictions about global warming.

The €330m (£265m) project aims to provide an extremely accurate map of the planet’s gravitational field. Its main mission is to help climate scientists improve their predictions by enabling them to produce a more precise picture of the ocean currents.

By comparing the surface shape of the oceans with the undulations in the gravitational field, scientists can arrive at a more accurate picture of the oceans’ currents - the flows that transport vast amounts of heat around the planet and so have a profound impact on the global climate.

The satellite will complete a map of the gravitational field once every 70 days and stay in operation for about 18 months.

“This isn’t a scientific indulgence,” Professor Marek Ziebart, of University College London, told this year’s British Association Festival of Science, meeting in Liverpool. “It’s about predicting how the world is going to change.”

The torpedo-shaped satellite - known as the gravity field and steady-state ocean circulation explorer - was due to launch this week from the Plesetsk cosmodrome, about 500 miles north of Moscow. But engineers delayed takeoff for two weeks after problems with the guidance and navigation system.

The satellite, when launched, will orbit from pole to pole at an altitude of about 160 miles. This is very low for satellites, but it needs to be close to the Earth to be able to measure minute fluctuations in gravity - about 10 million-millionths of the gravity we feel on Earth. To measure these the engineers developed sophisticated control mechanisms that dampen other forces acting on the spacecraft, including buffeting by cosmic rays.

“Whether the ocean surface is sloped or not is a very sensitive indicator of what the currents are doing,” said Chris Hughes, at the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Liverpool. He said that just a one-centimetre difference in ocean height generated a current flow of 1m cubic metres a second.

The gravitational reference map will also have other applications. Geologists will use the map as a set of reference points to measure movements during earthquakes, for example. It will also be useful for tweaking satellite orbits and accurately surveying land.

Guardian Article:

A detritus-loving bug that can be found in nearly every garden compost heap in the land could be about to transform the way the world makes biofuels.

Initially, it is set to make bioethanol production from corn in the US more efficient, but the British company that has developed it says it can be applied much more broadly.

Unlike the yeasts traditionally used in brewing and bioethanol production it is more tolerant of tough plant matter, so raw materials such as grasses, willow, forest waste, wheat stalks and waste cardboard could all be converted into fuel.

The company, TMO Renewables, has built a trial plant near Guildford in Surrey to demonstrate the process. It is the first plant in the UK to use so-called “second generation” raw material - inputs that are not themselves foodstuffs. “It completely eliminates the debate about food versus fuel,” says the company’s CEO, Hamish Curran.

Curran is no hair-shirted, lentil-eating ecowarrior. He began his career in the oil and gas industry and now has a fondness for burning around the Surrey countryside in his convertible BMW. “You have to be a petrol-head to work here,” he says as we drive with the wind in our hair to TMO’s demonstration plant. The hot maze of hissing and clanging silver-grey pipework is sited next to the track and hangar where the TV show Top Gear is filmed. “Whilst we want to save the planet, if it’s not profitable it’s not going to be sustainable,” says Curran.

Critics argue that the massive expansion of biofuel production in the US has displaced food crops and taken land out of food production, contributing to a massive hike in food prices worldwide. According to a World Bank report obtained by the Guardian earlier this month, the extra demand for agricultural produce and land from biofuels has pushed food prices up by 75%. The US government claims the figure is 3%.

Using woody non-food plants would get away from the displacement problem and has long been the goal of the biofuels industry. But so far the technology to do it has proved elusive. The problem is breaking down tough molecules such as cellulose into smaller sugars that can be fermented into ethanol or other fuels.

Curran has big plans. “I see the opportunity within the UK to leapfrog the first generation and go directly to the second generation, making ethanol from biomass,” he said. But he knows that is not going to happen anytime soon because the infrastructure for supplying the raw materials will take years to build up.

In the meantime TMO plans to license its technology to US corn ethanol producers. “The market is gigantic because of the legislative agenda in the US,” he said. The fuel ethanol industry is currently worth around $30bn (£16bn) and this year is expected to produce between 9bn and 9.5bn gallons of fuel this year.

But making corn ethanol requires a substantial input of fossil fuels, which partially cancels out its green benefits. After fermenting the corn, producers are left with a cloudy ethanol mixture. The cloudiness is a cellulose-rich waste product that needs to be settled out, dried and then disposed of. At the moment producers recover some costs by selling the waste - called distillers dried grains - as cattle feed. That typically means transporting it from a bioethanol plant in the mid-West to a farmer in Texas using huge amounts of energy.

However, by feeding it into TMO’s process, Curran says a plant could make 15% more ethanol and reduce its energy consumption by 35% to 50%. He says he has already had interest from 22 US bioethanol producers in buying the technology.

TMO Renewables began by testing thousands of bacteria from compost heaps, farm silage pits, forest leaf litter - in fact, anywhere where there were rotting plants - and testing how good they were at decomposing plant matter. They eventually settled on a Geobacillus bacterium which was particularly unfussy about what it ate, and set about genetically tweaking it so it stopped converting food into other waste products. That boosted the bug’s ethanol production and at the same time the team “turbo-charged” its metabolism, as Curran puts it. So rather than taking days to ferment a batch of raw material as yeast would, it can do the same job in hours.

The genetically altered bug - christened TM242 to distinguish it from Geobacillus in the wild - is still only part of the way toward the ultimate goal of munching on raw cellulose, however. The fibrous input needs first to be blown apart with high pressure steam and then treated with enzymes to partially break up the long chains that make up cellulose molecules and convert them into sugars. That means adding enzymes to the mix, but unlike other bacteria TM242 can handle longer chain sugars so the cellulose only needs to be partially broken down.

Another advantage is that because TM242 operates at 65C to 70C and generates its own heat, the hot beer that comes out of the end of the fermentation process needs less warming to distil off the ethanol, thus saving energy.

“I think they are half way there,” said Edward Green of Green Biologics in Abingdon, another company that is researching the use of bacteria to create biofuels. “Whether or not that gives them something unique - probably not. There are other people out there with similar types of microbe, but TMO probably has more of an advanced position in terms of demonstration scale up.”

Some environmental campaigners remain unconvinced, however. A spokesperson for Friends of the Earth, which campaigns against biofuels, says that so-called second generation technologies are not the answer.

“Sustainable second generation biofuels are a PR promise, not a commercial reality – and are a distraction from real green transport solutions, like more fuel efficient cars, better public transport and safer routes for walking and cycling,” she said.

“The EU must scrap its proposed biofuels targets and vote instead to double the fuel efficiency of new cars.”

Another article from the Guardian:

One of Gordon Brown’s closest allies has joined calls for a windfall tax on oil and energy company profits to pay for measures to alleviate the impact of higher fuel bills on the poor.

Former paymaster-general Geoffrey Robinson is one of more than 50 Labour MPs to sign a petition organised by the pressure group Compass, launched in a letter in last Wednesday’s Guardian.

Other new signatories include Tony Lloyd, chairman of the parliamentary Labour party, Stephen Twigg, the former Blairite education minister who is now a candidate for Liverpool West Derby, and the architect Lord Rogers.

Neal Lawson, the chairman of Compass, said six parliamentary private secretaries, the MPs who work unpaid as bag-carriers to ministers who by convention do not sign petitions on government policy, had privately expressed support for the petition when they were called by mistake.

“The government has to take the issue seriously now. It is becoming a litmus test of Brown’s ability to show leadership in the country and reconnect with a demoralised party,” Lawson said.

Robinson was instrumental in the introduction of the last windfall tax, in 1997, which raised £4.5bn for Labour’s new deal for the unemployed.

He left the government in 1998 during the controversy about his home loan to Peter Mandelson, but remains one of the prime minister’s confidants.

The petition says BP’s profits soared by 23% to £6.7bn in the first six months of 2008, and that the main energy providers have seen their profits rise from £557m in 2003 to £3bn this year. It calls for a tax on the “spike” in company profits.

“Revenues from the tax should be ring-fenced to deliver social and environmental justice for all. Part of the money raised should be used to immediately help those struggling with rising fuel bills and should be particularly targeted at families in or facing fuel poverty,” the petition says.

“However, the best strategy to eliminate fuel poverty forever is to ensure every home is insulated and energy efficient to the highest standards.

Therefore, much of the money raised should be used to kick-start a national programme of home energy efficiency and installing renewable energy, starting with the homes of the fuel poor.”

Brown and his chancellor, Alistair Darling, are working on a package of measures to help vulnerable households hit by rising fuel costs.

But Darling said last week there were problems both of principle and practicality in imposing a windfall tax.

“There are no plans to introduce a windfall tax,” a Treasury spokeswoman said.

Another article from todays Guardian:

Britain is trying to water down tough new European legislation to boost the uptake of renewable energy, despite a pledge by Gordon Brown last month to launch a “green revolution” based on clean technology.

Documents obtained by the Guardian show the UK wants to block attempts to give renewable electricity sources such as wind farms priority access to the national grid. The European official who drafted the legislation accused Britain of “obstructing” EU efforts on renewables and said UK officials wanted to protect traditional energy suppliers and their coal, gas and nuclear power stations.

Claude Turmes, a Luxembourg MEP and architect of the EU renewables directive, said: “This would take us backwards and would weaken the possibilities of connecting renewable energy to the grid. A government that says it wants to promote renewables cannot go for other policies behind the scenes.”

The renewables directive is intended to support an EU target to generate 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.

On access to the electricity grid, the draft directive said: “Member states shall also provide for priority access to the grid system of electricity produced from renewable energy sources”.

However, documents seen by the Guardian show Britain wants to change “shall” to “may” - which experts say would seriously undermine the directive. Turmes said the original wording was based on a similar policy used successfully to boost renewables in Germany, Spain and Denmark, and was meant to help countries “kick dirty energy sources like coal off the grid”.

A lack of connections to the national grid, which was not designed to channel power from the scattered and remote locations that suit renewables, has stalled the uptake of alternative energy in Britain and led to completed wind farms across Scotland standing idle. A recent report from the Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills said 9.3GW of wind power projects were currently waiting to be connected - the equivalent of a new generation of nuclear power stations.

Last month, ministers launched a renewables strategy on how to meet the UK’s share of the EU 2020 target, which requires Britain to generate 15% of its energy from clean sources.

The strategy included steps on “removing grid access as a barrier to renewables deployment”. Gordon Brown said it would remove “without delay the barriers that currently prevent renewable generators connecting to the national grid”.

But the strategy also noted that the draft EU directive obliged member states to give priority grid access to renewables, and said the government was working to “clarify this obligation”.

At a meeting of the EU energy working group this week, leaked documents show British officials tabled several amendments to the draft directive, including changing “member states shall also provide priority access to the grid …” to “member states may also provide access …”.

Oliver Schäfer, policy director of the European Renewable Energy Council, said: “It might look like a minor thing to change the word “shall” to “may”, but in terms of policy it’s a major change. The word “may” means nothing when it comes to legislation.”

Britain’s justification for the change, included in the document, was that it was concerned about relying too heavily on intermittent renewablewable sources of electricity. It said: “The use of ’shall’ could have substantial implications on network balancing and security of energy supply.” It said “thermal sources” of electricity were needed as back-up, and “over time this essential back-up generation might not be available if new renewable generation projects must be given access to the grid”. It said the UK wanted the “discretion to prioritise renewable generation”.

Turmes said other countries including Spain, Germany and Denmark had experienced no problems giving priority to clean energy, and that large scale renewables such as offshore wind were no more intermittent than existing energy sources.

He said: “This is not a technical problem. Britain just does not want to make the choice to promote renewables, and that means it is lining up with the worst countries in Europe on this issue.” He said he was concerned Britain’s lead could be followed by France and that the directive would be weakened.

Turmes claimed the UK position was influenced by energy companies. “The incumbent operators want to make life difficult for newcomers.”

A spokesman for the DBERR said: “Priority access for renewables is not necessary for us to meet our fair share of the EU renewables target. What renewable generators want is quicker access to the grid, not priority access. The UK is already taking significant steps to remove grid access barriers for renewables.”

John Sauven, of Greenpeace, said: “We’ve always said there was a danger that going for nuclear power would squeeze out renewables. The government has been caught red handed undermining clean energy, and all because of Brown’s ideological obsession with atomic power.”

Another great read from the Guardians Environment section:

Article by Terry Macalister

The global biofuels sector has launched a ferocious attack on the Opec oil cartel by accusing it of deliberately “misleading” the public about who is responsible for soaring fuel prices.

An open letter to Chakib Khelil, president of Opec, from the main biofuel organisations in Europe, North America and Brazil accuses him of providing self-serving explanations by claiming that 40% of the $140-a-barrel crude price results from the intrusion of bioethanol into the market.

“Since you, as head of Opec, provide no explanation for what in our view constitutes a self-serving and misleading statement that goes counter to any independent analysis of the fuels market today, one can only conclude that Opec views competition with biofuels as a direct threat,” says the letter signed by the European Bioethanol Fuel Association, the Renewable Fuels Association in the US, the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association and the Brazilian sugar-cane producers of Unica.

The organisations point instead to a recent piece of research from the investment bank Merrill Lynch suggesting that biofuels push crude prices 15% lower than they otherwise would be. They note that petrol prices in Brazil have not risen in two years because of competition from sugar cane-derived ethanol.

Last month Opec warned western countries that their efforts to develop biofuels as an alternative energy source to combat climate change risked driving the price of oil “through the roof”.

Abdalla el-Badri, secretary general of Opec, said the cartel was considering cutting its investment in new oil production in response to moves by the developed world to use more biofuels.

The biofuels industry says Opec members are heading for revenues of $1.2tn (£600bn) this year as a result of the “exorbitant” price of oil. “We realise that biofuels may be reducing your windfall profits,” said the letter, which was published as a whole-page advert in the FT. “But, perhaps, the time for Opec to face some competition has finally arrived.”

An interesting read from the Telegraph’s site today:

Plans for an eco-town near Cambridge have been shelved after the world’s largest medical research charity refused to sell land to developers.

It is the fifth eco-town proposal to be dropped. Consortiums and developers have already pulled out of four of the 15 proposed new towns.

Following pressure from residents of the picturesque villages next to the Hanley Grange eco-town site, the Wellcome Trust has announced it will not sell the land to Tesco, which had planned to build 12,800 houses on the site.

The Wellcome Trust, the charity which worked to sequence the human genome, owns a large part of the prime agricultural land that has been proposed as the site of Hanley Grange by Jarrow Investments Ltd acting on behalf of the retail giant.

Delighted campaigners praised the governors of the charity for coming to a “responsible and far-sighted decision”.

Nick West, project director for the development, said: “We are naturally disappointed that the Wellcome Trust has decided not to join us in exploring the opportunity for an eco-town at Hanley Grange.”

Developers for eco-towns in Marston Vale in Bedfordshire, Curborough in Staffordshire, Selby in North Yorkshire, and Manby in Lincolnshire, have also withdrawn their bids.

A further two of the 15 proposed sites are also in doubt as developers are reviewing their plans.

The Fairfield partnership, which is behind a site near Stansted airport, said it would prefer a smaller 3,000-home development.

The developer behind the Middle Quinton site, in Warwickshire, has requested reassurance from Housing Minister Caroline Flint that the government is fully committed to the project.

The Guardian business section has a great peice on the creation of a new world energy forum :

• Larry Elliott and Patrick Wintour
• guardian.co.uk,

The G8 industrial nations today announced the creation of a new world energy forum as a response to the threat posed to their economies from a doubling in the price of crude over the past year.

With oil trading at $142 a barrel overnight, G8 leaders expressed “strong concerns” about surging energy costs and said they wanted to bring major oil producers and consumers together to discuss ways of boosting output and curbing prices.

“The leaders said it was not enough to say they were concerned (about oil prices). They felt they had to indicate action would be taken,” one source said.

In a statement, the G8 said it remained positive about “the long-term resilience of our economies and future global economic growth. Emerging market economies are still growing strongly though our growth has moderated.”

However, on the second day of their talks in Northern Japan, the G8 admitted that the outlook had darkened since they last met in Germany a year ago.

“The world economy is now facing uncertainty and downside risks persist.”

“We are determined to continuously take appropriate actions, individually and collectively, to ensure stability and growth in our economies and globally,” the G8 warned.

Oil prices are more then six times higher than they were in 2002, leading to fears of a period of stagflation - rising prices and weak growth - similar to that seen in the 1970s.

G8 sources said the new energy forum would be broader than the recent discussions in Saudi Arabia led by the oil cartel Opec. The G8 said it wanted oil producing countries to ensure “stable investment to meet rising global demand”.

A G8 statement also made a thinly veiled call for China to let the yuan’s tightly controlled exchange rate appreciate to help reduce global financial imbalances. For many years, China’s export growth has been helped by the weakness of its currency, increasing the current account deficit in the United States and fuelling protectionist sentiment on Capitol Hill.

“In some emerging economies with large and growing current account surpluses, it is crucial that their effective exchange rates move so that necessary adjustment will occur,” the statement said.

An interesting article relating to the Amazon Rainforest region in Brazil:

As part of the World Environment Day (5 June) celebrations the Brazilian government announced a set of measures to combat illegal deforestation and promote sustainable development in the Amazon region. Announced in a ceremony at the Palácio do Planalto (Presidential Palace), they include the following:

• Creation of three new protected areas;
• A bill that institutes the National Climate Change Policy;
• A decree that creates the Interministerial Group for the creation and operation of the Amazon Fund; and
• A decree that establishes criteria for the exploitation of mahogany.

2. The three new protected areas – namely the extractivist reserves of Médio Xingu River (state of Pará) and Ituxi (Amapá), and the Mapinguari National Park (Amapá) – have a total area of 26,532 km2 and constitute a new ‘green belt’ to contain the advancement of the agricultural frontier within the Amazonian biome. With these additions there are now about 611,000 km2 of protected areas, representing 14% of the biome.

3. It is important to remember that during the implementation of the first phase of the Action Plan for the Prevention and Control the Deforestation of the Legal Amazon (‘PPCDAM’) in 2004-08, almost 200,000 km2 hectares of protected areas were created and ownership of approximately 100,000 km2 of indigenous lands was ratified. In addition it is expected that 30% of this biome will constitute protected areas by 2010. In the current Government, the number of federal protected areas in the Amazon has increased from 76 (approximately 350,000 km2) to 111 (550,000 km2).

4. The bill that formulates the National Climate Change Policy, submitted to the National Congress on 5 June, aims to:

• reduce atrophic emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as strengthen their absorption by sinks in Brazilian national territory; and
• implement measures to promote adaptation to climate change in local communities, particularly those that are more likely to be vulnerable to its adverse effects.

5. The proposal of the National Climate Change Policy is the result of meetings held by the Executive Group coordinated by the Environment Ministry. This Executive Group comprises another six ministries, including the Ministry of External Relations, as well as the Brazilian Forum on Climate Change and the Office of the Chief of Staff. The Bill was also approved of by the Interministerial Committee on Climate Change (’CIM’), which comprises 16 ministries. The National Policy will be implemented along four axes: mitigation, vulnerability, impact and adaptation; research and development; training and public communication.

6. The Interministerial Group, created by decree, will also carry out studies and put forward directives for the establishment and operation of the Amazon Fund. Despite the fact that the Fund may eventually receive international donations, the fund will be national and its revenue will be managed by the National Economic and Social Development Bank (BNDES).

7. In addition, the President of Brazil signed a measure that establishes new criteria for the exploitation of mahogany. The new text of Decree 6,472 of 5 June 2008 definitively prohibits the felling of trees of this species where there is no plan for managed sustainable forestry (the contents of which are established by IBAMA – The Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources), including in those areas where logging is authorized. The new text substitutes the understanding given by the preceding decree on this matter, which prohibited the extraction of mahogany for a period limited to five years only in areas that had permission for logging (article no. 3 of Decree 4,722 of 2003).

8. The measures announced add to the efforts of the Brazilian government both to combat illegal deforestation in the Amazon region and to mitigate the emission of greenhouse gases.

Source: Ministry of External Relations