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April, 2010:

Cape Wind project approved

0428-01_full_600Last updated: April 28, 2010

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

The Interior Department has approved the Cape Wind project, clearing the way for the first offshore wind power in the US.

The long-embattled Cape Wind project won federal approval today, marking a major step toward becoming the first US offshore wind-power project and paving the way for a new source of renewable energy for America.

For nearly a decade, regulatory battles have pitted residents of Massachusetts’ cape and islands, Indian tribes, and influential politicians against one another and developers of the project. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar gave the green light for the project Wednesday at the Massachusetts Statehouse with Gov. Deval Patrick at his side.

“After careful consideration of all the concerns expressed during the lengthy review and consultation process and thorough analyses of the many factors involved, I find that the public benefits weigh in favor of approving the Cape Wind project at the Horseshoe Shoal location,” Mr. Salazar said. “With this decision, we are beginning a new direction in our nation’s energy future, ushering in America’s first offshore wind-energy facility and opening a new chapter in the history of this region.”

IN PICTURES: The answer is blowing in the wind
A smaller project with some restrictions on it

But Salazar also noted that the project would be scaled back from its original 170 turbines to 130 and undergo special requirements – including requiring additional archeological research offshore to ensure that native sacred areas are protected.

The project, which will put the 440-foot-high turbines across a 24-square-mile swath of Nantucket Sound, is expected to provide Massachusetts residents with an average output of about 180 megawatts of power, enough renewable energy to power about 75 percent of the homes on Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket.

The elimination of some turbines would reduce the visual impacts from the Kennedy Compound National Historic Landmark, and the array of turbines would be moved farther from Nantucket Island to curb visibility from the Nantucket Historic District.

Regarding possible seabed cultural and historic resources, the developer would be required to halt operations and notify the government of any surprise archaeological find.

“Impacts to the historic properties can and will be minimized and mitigated, and we will ensure that cultural resources will not be harmed or destroyed during the construction, maintenance, and decommissioning of the project,” Salazar said.

A big factor in his decision, Salazar told reporters, was a recent letter by governors of Northeast coastal states, which protested a federal historic panel’s verdict that recommended that the project not be approved. If that advice were followed, the governors noted, most wind project proposals up and down the East Coast probably could not go forward.

Read the full article here.

Exxon Mobile is again 2nd worst air polluter in the US

exxon-logoSource: Political Economy Research Institute

Exxon Mobil owns 60% of CLP

Researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst today released the Toxic 100 Air Polluters (http://toxic100.org), an updated list of the top corporate air polluters in the United States.

“The Toxic 100 Air Polluters informs consumers and shareholders which large corporations release the most toxic pollutants into our air,” said Professor James Boyce, co-director of PERI’s Corporate Toxics Information Project. “We assess not just how many pounds of pollutants are released, but which are the most toxic and how many people are at risk. People have a right to know about toxic hazards to which they are exposed. Legislators need to understand the effects of pollution on their constituents.”

The Toxic 100 Air Polluters index is based on air releases of hundreds of chemicals from industrial facilities across the United States. The rankings take into account not only the quantity of releases, but also the toxicity of chemicals, transport factors such as prevailing winds and height of smokestacks, and the number of people exposed.

The top five air polluters among large corporations are the Bayer Group, ExxonMobil, Sunoco, DuPont, and Arcelor Mittal. The Toxic 100 Air Polluters rankings have been expanded to include large privately held firms, such as number 10 Koch Industries, as well as the world’s largest publicly traded corporations.

For the first time, the Toxic 100 Air Polluters includes information on the disproportionate risk burden from industrial air toxics for minorities and low-income communities. This makes it possible to compare corporations and facilities in terms of their environmental justice performance as well as overall pollution. For example, the data reveal that minorities bear 65% of the air toxics risk from facilities owned by ExxonMobil, while minorities make up 38% of the U.S. population.

Users of the web-based Toxic 100 Air Polluters list can view the details behind each company’s Toxic Score, including the names and locations of individual facilities owned by the corporation, the chemicals emitted by those facilities, and the share of the Toxic Score borne by minorities and people living below the poverty line. The new edition also provides access to this information on all firms operating in the United States, regardless of size. Several smaller firms rank as big air polluters, topped by the Marietta, Ohio, facility of the French-owned Eramet Group and Houston-based Quality Electric Steel Castings LP.

The data on chemical releases come from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). The TRI is widely cited in press accounts that identify the top polluters in various localities. But reports based on TRI data alone have three limitations:

  • Raw TRI data are reported in total pounds of chemicals, without taking into account differences in toxicity. Pound-for-pound, some chemicals are up to ten million times more hazardous than others.
  • TRI data do not consider the numbers of people affected by toxic releases–for example, the difference between facilities upwind from densely-populated urban areas and those located far from population centers.
  • TRI data are reported on a facility-by-facility basis, without combining plants owned by one corporation to get a picture of overall corporate performance.

The Toxic 100 Air Polluters index tackles all three problems by using the 2006 Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) data, the most recent available from the EPA. In addition to TRI data, RSEI includes toxicity weights and population exposure. PERI researchers added up facility-by-facility RSEI data released by the EPA to construct corporate rankings.

“In making this information available, we are building on the achievements of the right-to-know movement,” explains Professor Michael Ash, co-Director of the Corporate Toxics Information Project. “Our goal is to engender public participation in environmental decision-making, and to help residents translate the right to know into the right to clean air.”

Mainland dams accused of carbon credit scams

smokestackLast updated: April 7, 2010

Source: South China Morning Post

Environmental lobby group International Rivers has condemned the emergence of trade in fake carbon credits and says the biggest source is hydroelectric power projects on the mainland.

Under what is known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol, industrialised countries can support projects that decrease emissions in developing countries and then use the resulting emission reduction credits towards their own reduction targets.

But International Rivers says the CDM is “failing miserably and is undermining the effectiveness of the Kyoto Protocol” because most of the emission reduction credits are fake and come from projects that do not reduce emissions.

It says hydropower projects constitute a quarter of all projects in the CDM pipeline, and 67 per cent of these, or about 700 projects, are on the mainland.

However, International Rivers says there has been no substantial jump in hydropower development to match the large number of supposedly new projects applying to generate CDM credits.

The CDM recently withheld approval of carbon credits from numerous mainland dams and wind farms.

Controversy over the Chinese dams recently led the European Climate Exchange (ECX), the world’s leading market for trading carbon credits, to renew its ban on large hydropower Certified Emission Reductions (CERs), which are carbon credits issued by the CDM executive board.

The European Union is the biggest buyer of CERs, while China sells 70 per cent of the world’s CERs.

Dams built before applications are made for carbon credits are deemed not to contribute to reducing carbon emissions and thus should not qualify to sell carbon credits. Such dams are called “business-as-usual” in the industry jargon.

“There are blatant cases of hydro plants being business-as-usual, whereas other hydro projects seem to really require CDM credits,” Axel Michaelowa, a founding partner of the CDM consultancy Perspectives and a researcher at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, said.

The accuracy of assessments of the eligibility of mainland dams for carbon credits is distorted by questionable data, Michaelowa said.

“Many hydro plants in China use an artificially low utilisation rate for the calculation of their profitability. The regulators have also discovered some hydro projects reported a very low electricity tariff, lower than coal power plants and other hydro projects in the same province.

“Such projects are now increasingly being rejected.”

At a meeting of the CDM executive board in February, 38 mainland dams failed to get carbon credits. The board also decided to review 36 wind projects in China, Katy Yan, a campaign assistant with International Rivers, wrote in her blog.

“These 74 projects hope to produce almost 38 million carbon credits by 2013,” worth about US$600 million, she said.

“The problem is very serious,” Patrick McCully, executive director of International Rivers, said. “Dams are the largest single project type in the CDM. Almost all are likely projects that would have been built anyway regardless of receiving credits, meaning that any credits they generate are fake.”

A World Commission on Dams report has set guidelines that determine whether a dam qualifies to sell carbon credits.

By March 6, 16.32 million CERs had been issued for 132 dams, and China accounted for 71.52 per cent of the 653 large hydropower projects in the world that have been registered or are seeking registration under the CDM to sell CERs, according to International Rivers. A large hydropower project is defined as one with a capacity of more than 15 megawatts.

On March 24, ECX announced it would renew its ban, imposed in 2008, on contracts with large hydro CERs, ECX market development director Sara Stahl said. “We have always excluded large hydro because it’s a grey area,” she said.

Two types of carbon credits are traded on the exchange: CERs and EU allowances, which are carbon credits issued under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. Since trading at ECX began in 2005, trading of carbon credits and related instruments has soared.

Last year, the value of ECX’s trades surged 82 per cent year on year to €68 billion (HK$708.4 billion).

ECX’s renewal of its ban on large hydro CERs came about after discussions with its members, which include more than 100 large multinational companies, this year, Stahl said. “We felt there were some legitimate criticisms,” she said. “Companies are nervous about it.”

Michaelowa said there was concern that some Chinese dams had required the resettlement of the local population without proper compensation and about whether large hydro plants are sustainable.

In December 2008, an International Rivers press release alleged that German utility RWE, one of the biggest carbon dioxide emitters in Europe, planned to buy carbon credits from the Xiaoxi dam in Hunan – which failed to meet World Commission on Dams guidelines – and that would be a breach of EU law.

On a site visit, International Rivers found 7,500 people had been evicted to make way for the Xiaoxi dam without proper compensation, which violated the World Commission on Dams guidelines. Xiaoxi is one of at least 11 Chinese large hydropower projects from which RWE was buying credits. TUV SUD of Germany was auditor for the project.

At a CDM executive board meeting in March, the board suspended TUV SUD from auditing hydro projects, as it had approved dams that were later found to have problems. Another carbon credit auditor, Korea Energy Management Corp, was partly suspended.

“The fact that only a few of the projects validated by TUV SUD have been rejected is proof of the quality of TUV SUD’s activities,” Heidi Atzler, a TUV SUD spokeswoman, said.

An RWE spokeswoman, Julia Scharlemann, said every CDM project in which RWE was involved was “thoroughly reviewed” by an independent auditor, and RWE adhered to German Emissions Trading Authority rules, which were more rigorous than CDM processes and the standards of other EU nations.

RWE bought carbon credits only from projects approved by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, she added.

Michaelowa admitted CDM’s process of approving dams was imperfect, with room for improvement, while McCully said the best solution would be to scrap the CDM and the whole concept of international carbon offsetting entirely.

“If that is not possible, then ban hydropower from CDM,” he said.

Blackout woes for plants in Dongguan

city-in-blackoutLast updated: April 7, 2010

Source: South China Morning Post

Severe drought results in power rationing

The devastating drought in the southwest is forcing once-a-week blackouts at Dongguan factories due to power shortages from the nation’s hydroelectric dams.

Since April 1, Hong Kong manufacturers say power supplies have been suspended one day each week in Dongguan, and some expect the mandatory rationing will spread to industrial towns in Shenzhen.

Several factory owners said they were left with little choice but to generate their own electricity through diesel-powered generators, a dirtier and more expensive alternative.

Some warned that the supply crunch could balloon into a crisis next month, when the peak-production season begins. This would exacerbate recent challenges such as labour shortages, soaring raw material costs and wages, a possible appreciation in the yuan and weak demand in the United States and Europe.

“The export sector improved obviously in the first quarter, but new challenges come from all fronts now,” Toys Manufacturers’ Association of Hong Kong vice-president Yeung Chi-kong said yesterday. “Some costs such as electricity are rising so fast and are beyond our control that it will be lucky if a factory doesn’t lose money.”

To keep production lines moving, Yeung, who is also vice-chairman of toy exporter Blue Box Holdings, said the company’s factory in Dongguan was forced to produce its own electricity, which cost 30 per cent more than power from the state supplier.

He estimated that higher fuel costs, together with about a 21 per cent rise in the minimum monthly wage in Dongguan to 920 yuan (HK$1,046.70) and at least a 20 per cent jump in prices of plastics and paper-packaging materials, would in turn jack up overall operating costs by 5 per cent.

This would erode the factory’s wafer-thin profit margin, he said. “We are trying to pass the extra costs on to customers, but so far they are bargaining extremely hard,” Yeung said.

The once-in-a-century drought ravaging Yunnan, Guangxi and Sichuan provinces has hobbled hydropower plants, which have reduced electricity supplies to Guangdong by about 23 per cent in the first three months of this year.

Electricity from the western provinces supplies about one-third of Guangdong’s power needs.

The Guangdong provincial government placed priority on supply to residential users, and discouraged consumption by energy-consuming industries such as electroplating and cement and steel production. The province signed agreements last month with Hong Kong supplier CLP Power (SEHK: 0002), which will export more power across the border, particularly in summer.

Wilson Shea Kai-chuen, a premium product manufacturer in Dalong in Shenzhen and vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Small and Medium Enterprises Association, said he expected compulsory power blackouts would begin in a few weeks, when the busy season begins.

He said that on April 1, state supplier China Southern Grid recommended factories in Dalong suspend operations a day every week or minimise power consumption.

Dennis Ng Wang-pun, the managing director of exporter Polaris Jewellery, said electricity supply in Panyu in Guangdong remained normal but warned that the electricity crunch would come on top of labour shortages.

His factory in Panyu, which has about 400 workers processing jewellery, was still short of about 100 workers, Ng said. He said new orders improved in the first quarter from the same period last year, at the height of the global financial crisis, but shoppers’ appetite remained weak.

“I don’t see a marked improvement in demand in the US until the second half,” he added.

Letters to the Editor: Expensive, unsightly wind farms will have tiny impact on carbon footprint

windfarm4

Last updated: March 21, 2010

Source: South China Morning Post

I refer to the article concerning the plans by power firms’ CL Power and Hongkong Electric (SEHK: 0006) to pump HK$10 billion into offshore wind farms (“Clearly inadequate”, March 14).

I have to question the wisdom of these proposals.

Not content with defacing Lamma with the Hongkong Electric power plant which was constructed in the 1980s, these companies now want to despoil great tracts of sea near some of Hong Kong’s beautiful outlying islands with gigantic wind farms – one between Lamma and Cheung Chau and the other off Sai Kung.

As the article effectively confirmed, the economics concerning these options just do not make sense: “So, for about HK$10 billion, the two wind farms would produce at best about 1.5 per cent of Hong Kong’s electricity and reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by less than 2 per cent.” Therefore, they will do little to make the city greener or its skies cleaner and they will have a negligible effect on the city’s carbon footprint and air quality.

If it really is necessary to satisfy the political desire to meet the 2005 report produced by the Council for Sustainable Development for 1 to 2 per cent of Hong Kong’s electricity to be generated by renewable energy by 2012 by focusing on the wind farm method, then a more appropriate location for locating the wind farms should be chosen.

Somewhere such as, for example, the southwestern coast of the New Territories where the existing power stations of Black Point and Castle Peak are located may work.

Even wind turbines around Castle Peak itself may be more of an acceptable eyesore than ruining the view near Lamma, Cheung Chau and Sai Kung.

A far better solution is to ditch the idea of wind farms altogether.

With the cleanest power from an air pollution perspective being nuclear, we should instead source what Hong Kong needs from the mainland’s future nuclear power stations that the central government plans to build.

What is required is a leap of imagination.

Unfortunately it is not to be found with the wind farm proposals that have been put forward.

Nick Seymour, Kennedy Town