Biofuels Watch

Re: [biofuelwatch] Digest Number 1686

2012-02-05T05:12:00.000-08:00

Sarah,

the basic problem about using any crop residue or waste for biofuel is that this removes the plant "waste" from the natural nutrient cycling system.

If one remembers that the plant biomass has been grown using mainly artificial, fossil fuel based fertilisers, basically all that is happening is that the fossil fuel is being converted - in an inefficient manner - into energy, through tapping into the latent energy of the plant biomass.

What should be happening is that the plant waste should be being composted and returned to the fields to close the nutrient cycle.

All of teh talk of using switchgrass, bagasse and any other crop stover is basically a symptom of open cycle, opportunistic thinking which fails to consider the holistic nutrient cycle which we used to rely on! Which is one of the reasons we are in the mess we are in...

be well
Glenn

On 2012/01/05 01:43 PM, biofuelwatch@yahoogroups.com wrote:

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Bagasse for cellulosic ethanol From: Sarah

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Bagasse for cellulosic ethanol

Posted by: "Sarah" sarah.clayton7@ntlworld.com sarah.clayton7

Wed Jan 4, 2012 4:01 am (PST)

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[biofuelwatch] Another biofuelled flight

2012-01-27T08:17:00.001-08:00

Etihad Airways operates first biofuel powered delivery flight with Boeing and Sky Energy

Etihad Airways from the United Arab Emirates scores a double play in the Green World Series: Becoming both the first airline to fly on biofuel directly from the factory and the first biofuel-flying Gulf carrier. Not yet on its fuel-efficient Dreamliners, Etihad's new Boeing 777-300ER traveled from its Seattle birthplace to its home base at Abu Dhabi International Airport this past Wednesday.

The flight was powered by a mix of traditional fuel and plant-based biofuel created from recycled vegetable cooking oil. Used oil from the food industry qualifies as a bio-based waste stream, its resulting carbon footprint is especially trim.

"This flight marks a significant milestone in our efforts to drive commercialization of sustainable aviation fuel in Abu Dhabi, the region, and globally. Use of presently available biofuel is just part of a comprehensive strategy to ensure that we are able to use biofuel to decarbonize an entire industry sector in the long term", said Etihad Airways' President and CEO James Hogan in a public statement.

This national airline of the United Arab Emirates is an original founder of the Masdar Institute's Sustainable Bioenergy Research Consortium in Abu Dhabi.

Bankrolled by $2 million of Etihad funding, this ground-breaking R&D lab is pioneering use of salt water-tolerant plants in production of alternative aviation fuel. As a member of the global Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group, the airline is fully committed to developing biofuel feedstocks that protect drinking water supplies; are non-competitive with food sources; and maintain optimal biodiversity.

Biofuel for this inaugural flight was provided by Netherlands-based sustainable jet fuel company SkyNRG, which commented: "We think the Middle East has great potential to give a critical boost towards making a market for sustainable jet fuel that is affordable. With this flight, Etihad Airways has taken a fantastic step, particularly in increasing awareness within the region.

"There is a lot more to come in this continent and we are determined to be there when that happens", said Dirk Kronemeijer, SkyNRG Managing Director.

In an effort to push airlines to decrease carbon output, the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) now requires all airlines flying to or from EU airports to purchase permits to offset annual carbon emissions.

A way to fly no cost carbon offsets

No-cost offsets are available to carriers who can demonstrate conservation measures such as use of alternative fuels and sustainable operational practices at home airports. Biofuel is considered as "carbon-neutral" because its original source plant material absorbs carbon as it grows, only releasing it during the combustion process. Under the EU ETS, use of biofuel use exempts airlines from carbon taxation.

Despite strong industry opposition, new emissions regulations will continue to be imposed on aviation. Carbon tax can act as a deterrent to environmentally unconstrained practices, and also as a mechanism to raise revenue to fund other carbon reduction programs.

Costs related to taxation schemes might simply be passed to end-users, or could incite development of an alternative fuels industry that is commercially competitive with traditional fuel.

Biofuels perform as well as fossil fuels, and they can be used without re-tooling existing aircraft systems. How to scale up production to meet anticipated demand, at a cost the market is willing to pay, is a challenge sure to drive the biofuel game into extra innings.

http://www.greenprophet.com/2012/01/ethihad-jet-uses-biofuels-for-inaugural-home-run/

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[biofuelwatch] US EPA: Palm oil flunks the climate test

2012-01-26T10:40:00.001-08:00

EPA: Palm oil flunks the climate test
By Ben Geman - 01/26/12 11:37 AM ET
The Environmental Protection Agency will publish data Friday showing that biofuels made from palm oil won't count towards the nation's renewable fuels mandate because they're not climate-friendly.

Environmentalists will welcome the conclusion because the growth of palm oil plantations has driven tropical deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia.

The national Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) mandates increasing amounts of renewable energy in the nation's motor fuel mix. A 2007 law that expanded the mandate requires that the fuels have at least 20 percent fewer "lifecycle" greenhouse gas emissions than conventional gasoline and diesel — although most corn ethanol was exempted.

From EPA's "notice of data availability," slated for publication in Friday'sFederal Register:
EPA's analysis of the two types of biofuel shows that biodiesel and renewable diesel produced from palm oil have estimated lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions of 17% and 11% respectively for these biofuels compared to the statutory baseline petroleum-based diesel fuel used in the RFS program. This analysis indicates that both palm oil-based biofuels would fail to qualify as meeting the minimum 20% GHG performance threshold for renewable fuel under the RFS program.
Michal Rosenoer of Friends of the Earth cheered the finding.

She noted that the group believes EPA has inaccurately found that corn ethanol — currently the nation's primary renewable fuel — meets the emissions thresholds, but credits the agency for getting it right this time.

"They have done a good job with palm oil and recognized and fully accounted for palm oil's negative environmental consequences," said Rosenoer, a biofuels policy advocate with the group.

Biofuels opponents argue that forest-clearing to enable production of biofuels crops creates a long-term carbon "debt" that overwhelms any emissions benefits at the tailpipe.

"Oil palm planted on rainforest peatland when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence is still paying off its carbon debt today," said Glenn Hurowitz, director of campaigns for Climate Advisers.

EPA is inviting comments on its data.

The conclusion that palm-oil-based fuels fare slightly better than traditional fuels, but are not good enough to meet the 20 percent requirement, stems from EPA's "mid-point" estimate. The EPA notice states that actual emissions may be higher.
From the notice:
A majority of the areas of uncertainty that we have identified, and discussed above, would lead to higher actual lifecycle GHG emissions than estimated in our midpoint results. Some of these areas of uncertainty appear to be fairly likely to result in greater actual emissions and in some cases by a substantial amount. In comparison, we identified a smaller number of uncertainties which could result in less actual emissions, but these factors appear less likely to reduce emissions by an equivalent amount.

Rachel Smolker

Biofuelwatch/Energy Justice Network

rsmolker@riseup.net

802.482.2848 (o)

802.735 7794 (m)

skype: Rachel Smolker

respect existence or expect resistance

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[biofuelwatch] FAO: Corn Prices Rise Worldwide Due to U.S. Ethanol Policy

2012-01-25T01:09:00.001-08:00

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-21/use-of-corn-for-fuel-in-u-s-is-increasing-prices-globally-fao-chief-says.html

Corn Prices Rise Worldwide Due to U.S. Ethanol Policy, FAO Says

By Rudy Ruitenberg - Jan 22, 2012 12:01 AM GMT

The use of corn to make ethanol in the U.S. is helping to lift the grain price worldwide, said Jose Graziano da Silva, the new director general of the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization.

"FAO has been raising its voice against using food to produce bio energy," Graziano da Silva told 64 agriculture ministers in Berlin yesterday. That's "especially" the case for corn in the U.S. and oilseeds in Europe, he said.

Corn futures closed at $6.115 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade on Jan. 20, almost triple the $2.1175 a bushel for the grain a decade ago. Part of the U.S. corn production is used to make ethanol for blending into gasoline as a fuel while rapeseed is used in Europe to make biodiesel.

"We have been looking into the details of the price, and nowadays there is no doubt that the use of maize in the U.S. for biofuels affects the prices of maize all over the world," Graziano da Silva said, using another name for corn.

Ethanol production from sugar cane in Brazil accounts for 3 percent of land use and for now doesn't affect the price of sugar in international markets, according to the FAO director general, who is Brazilian and nominated FAO head as of Jan. 1.

Biofuel production doesn't necessarily affect food security, particularly when land used for extensive livestock raising is converted to crop use, Graziano da Silva said.

"We finished a study among the Latin American countries and we found only four countries in the region that could expand biofuel production without affecting food security," Graziano da Silva said. "Those are Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Colombia. All of them, they have a huge amount of area under extensive pasture that could be converted into very good lands for biofuel use."

Biofuels are "a promise," and technology improvements are still required to "completely change" that, according to Graziano da Silva.

"Food security comes first, that is the rule," the FAO head said. "The position we have right now in FAO is that cereals should not be used for biofuels production."

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[biofuelwatch] Fwd: New Video Reveals Global Resistance to Forest-Carbon Projects

2012-01-25T00:44:00.001-08:00

http://globalforestcoalition.org/?p=1953

New Video Reveals Global Resistance to Forest-Carbon Projects: A Darker Shade of Green Documents Critical Perspectives on REDD

January 24th, 2012

Global Forest Coalition and Global Justice Ecology Project have produced a new video entitled A Darker Shade of Green: REDD Alert and the Future of Forests. The twenty-eight minute video, launched today, documents opposition around the globe to controversial programs that claim to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) by putting forests into the carbon market.

As policies and programs to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) are promoted around the world by corporations and governments, Indigenous Peoples and other forest-dependent communities are raising the alarm that these programs will have serious negative impacts and will not mitigate climate change.

Clayton Thomas-Muller of Indigenous Environmental Network, featured in the video, declares, "We can take care of our own lands, we don't need agencies to do this for us. As Indigenous Peoples we want rights, and we don't want REDD."

Nnimmo Bassey, of Nigeria, Chair of Friends of the Earth International, also featured in the video, says, "The whole idea of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation is not about stopping deforestation. It's industry driven, it's driven by speculators who want to grab land in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, and who don't really want to change the mode of economy we're living right now."

REDD has been hotly contested since it was first introduced into the climate mitigation package at the United Nations climate talks in 2007. Every year since, REDD has been pushed by those who wish to use the world's forests as carbon offsets, and protested by Indigenous Peoples and forest dependent communities that face potential forced relocation if their forest homelands are "protected," under the REDD scheme. A Darker Shade of Green details the ideas behind REDD and the concerns being raised against it.

Following the UN Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa in December 2011, global REDD projects are coming under even greater scrutiny. Simone Lovera, Director of Global Forest Coalition, said, "The outcomes of the Durban Conference in the field of REDD are generally seen as a major step backwards. The already unacceptably weak and non-binding social and environmental safeguards were further undermined, and the vague guidance for reporting emission reductions allows cheating and exaggerations."

Subnational REDD programs such as the agreement between California, USA, Chiapas, Mexico, and Acre, Brazil featured in the new video are still set to move forward, though with carbon markets collapsing, grassroots resistance growing, and global climate agreements in deep-freeze, legislators may be hard-pressed to provide concrete footings for the complicated agreement.

A Darker Shade of Green: REDD Alert and the Future of Forests, produced in English and Spanish, features interviews and testimonies from Mexico, Brazil, Panama, Philippines, Indonesia, Nepal, Uganda, India, and California. It is available for viewing onClimate Connections. The DVD edition will contain two additional films on REDD:Amador Hernández: Starved of Medical Services for REDD+, by Global Justice Ecology Project and REDD: Greed for the Trees by the Chiapas-based NGO Otros Mundos. This DVD will be made available next week.

A three-minute trailer is also available for viewing in English and Spanish athttp://climate-connections.org/2012/01/12/new-video-trailer-a-darker-shade-of-green-redd-and-the-future-of-forests/.

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[biofuelwatch] 'Peak timber' concerns in tropics

2012-01-24T01:20:00.000-08:00

Current tropical timber practices are not sustainable and nations should consider the "implications of 'peak timber'", a study has suggested.

A team of researchers says the standard cutting cycle of 30-40 years is too short to allow trees to grow to a volume required by commercial loggers.

As a result, they add, the pressure to harvest primary forests will continue, leading to ongoing deforestation.

The findings have been published in the journal Biological Conservation.

The scientists used logging on the Solomon Islands as an example because it was, in some respects, "a microcosm of the challenges facing sustainable forest management in the tropics".

They said the industry had been a major source of government revenue for a number of years.

Yet, they added: "For nearly a decade, the nation had been warned that the volume of timber annually harvested from native forests was too high and, if unchecked, that timber stocks would be seriously depleted by 2012.

"In 2009, the Central Bank of the Solomon Islands asserted that (the) exhaustion of timber stocks had arrived even earlier that predicted and its economic consequences were likely to be severe."

Pushing the limit

The team - made up by Dr Phil Shearman and Jane Bryan from the Australian National University, and Prof William Laurance from James Cook University, Australia - said the trajectory of the country's timber production (a rapid increase in production, followed by a peak and then a decline) was akin to the 'Hubbert curve', which has been observed in the exploitation of non-renewable resources, such as oil.

"It is occurring in the Solomons because timber extraction has occurred at a rate far in excess of the capacity of the forests to regenerate commercial timber stocks," they wrote.

The researchers suggested that there were three main factors that made it difficult to find examples of sustainable forestry in the tropics:

Low level of marketable timber production - many tree species having unsuitable wood properties, and the slow growth rate of commercially viable specimens is another factor
Collateral damage - while logging in the tropics tends to focus on a small fraction of the trees, many others are damaged or killed as a result of the network of access roads to the area being logged
Second-wave clearance - the "labyrinths of logging roads have opened up vast swaths... for colonisation, hunting, illegal mining and other destructive activities"

As well as these factors, the problem of illegal logging was also threatening primary forest cover in many nations.

Deforestation accounts for up to 20% of annual greenhouse gas emissions from human activities

A joint World Bank and Interpol project called Chainsaw produced a report in 2010 that highlighted the widespread nature of the problem.

"Illegal logging is one, very significant, component of a complex array of problems that are leading to a worldwide crisis of forest loss and degradation," it reported.

It went on to say that Interpol estimated that an area of forests "equivalent in size to the territory of Austria" disappeared worldwide every year as the result of illegal logging.

The report added: "They also estimate that the percentage of timber marketed worldwide of illegal origin stands at between 20% and 50% of all marketed timber products."

Prof Laurance and the team said that the Redd (Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) concept could be an avenue that offered some hope in the future.

Redd is essentially a way of paying developing countries or communities within them to preserve their forests.

"We believe that some Redd+ funds should be directed at initiatives designed to keep loggers and their associated road networks out of forests, rather than merely modifying logging operations," they wrote.

The team concluded with a stark warning: "Unless something fundamental changes... we believe that logged tropical forests will continue to be over-harvested and, far too frequently, cleared afterwards, leading to an inevitable global decline in native timber supplies.

"It has become common these days to speak of 'peak oil'. In the tropics, we assert, we should also begin to seriously consider the implications of 'peak timber'."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16682177

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[biofuelwatch] Another article about palm iol and land conflicts in Bajo Aguan

2012-01-23T11:19:00.000-08:00

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3401-honduras-return-to-rigores

Honduras: Return to Rigores

Written by Chuck Kaufman

Wednesday, 11 January 2012 09:05

On Jan. 9, 2012 an Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) delegation of US and Canadian citizens visited the farming community or Rigores, Honduras in the fertile Aguan Valley near the country's Caribbean Coast.

It was a far different visit than was experienced by a previous AfGJ delegation just six months earlier. On that July 1st morning our delegation stood in a line at the top of a wash, standing between 40 police armed with military grade weaponry, and peasant farmers determined to hold their land against an illegal eviction. For 3-1/2 hours our delegation faced down the police, who had pistols drawn and snipers targeting us from the tree line.

Unable to produce an eviction order and unaccompanied by a lawyer as required by Honduran law, the police did not know what to do when faced with nearly 20 North Americans wearing blue t-shirts reading "Observador Internacional de Derechos Humanos" (International Human Rights Observer). After hours of tense discussion, negotiation, and demands, the police decided that they could leave the community. We accompanied them to their vehicles and then stayed with the community for another couple of hours during which the police drove through several times to see if we were still there.

But July 1, 2011 was neither the beginning nor the end of the story for the peasant farmers of Rigores. Rigores is a long-established community of farm cooperatives. The cooperative which we helped shield from eviction was 10-years-old, a tenancy under Honduras' Law of Agrarian Reform which should have insured them title to the land. But one of Honduras' rich landowners wants their corn fields, bean fields, grazing land and orchards so he can expand his African Palm plantation with this tree that produces an oil that is used in the majority of food products in First World supermarkets and supplies an increasing share of the European and US biofuel market.

Exactly one week before our stressful experience, police entered Rigores and at gunpoint burned the homes of 135 families, killed their animals, bulldozed their orchards, the school, and two churches. When we arrived on July 1, the community was living in the town's community center and a large tent provided by a Catholic charity. The police had arrived that day to drive off or kill the people, breaking their tenancy and weakening their legal case of ownership.

Six months later all but four families remain on their land. They have rebuilt their houses, although now from branches and mud wattle where before stood larger block or poured cement homes. Their corn is waist high, a few banana and orange trees survived the depredations, and chickens, pigs, turkeys, and cows which survived the slaughter are breeding quickly.

Today Rigores is poor in material wealth but the people are rich in courage and determination that they will not be driven from their land; land that is their hope for their children. As a person privileged to have visited Rigores both on that fateful day in July 2011 and again today, the current visit was an emotional experience. To witness growth where previously there was only destruction, to see chicks and piglets where previously there were only carcasses, but most of all to hear the stories of courage and defiance of a people who will be pushed no farther, was to renew my faith in solidarity and struggle. This peasant Occupy Movement long precedes our own. We can only hope to show the same courage as these people who daily face death defending their right to land to grow food to feed their families and their communities.

But this is not a fairy tale. There is no happy ending where the people of Rigores get to live happily ever after and we get to feel satisfied by performing a good deed.

Police, military, and private "security guards" still drive through the community and fire their weapons. On Sept. 16 and again on Sept. 19, the military invaded and terrorized the community. The 15-year-old son of the community spokesperson and another boy were kidnapped by the military, beaten, doused with gasoline and threatened with being set on fire.

Community members gave testimony to our delegation about the trauma they are suffering, especially the children. One man said, "Whenever my son hears a noise he shouts, `The police are coming. The police are coming.'" A woman said her young child crawls under the bed when he hears noises. When their houses were burned in June 2011, children were torn from the arms of their mothers and literally thrown from their houses. Mothers were shot at inside their houses to force them to leave. They were brutalized in ways that are hard for us in the United States to comprehend, and impossible for those who suffered through the terror to remain unmarked.

And now, as they still struggle to rebuild their lives and livelihoods, they have learned from the media that an official eviction order has been signed by a judge with an eviction date of later this month. At this point the eviction order may or may not exist. It is certain that they are receiving daily threats of violent eviction from the hired thugs of a rich landowner. However, they do not intend to leave their homes and we have an obligation to shine the light of international attention on the repression and injustice suffered by the people of Rigores and by the many other communities of the Aguan which are under similar threat.

Our report six months ago of the horror that the people of the Aguan have lived under since the June 2009 coup against democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, resulted in more press attention to the human rights situation in post-coup Honduras. The US State Department recently cut off Millennium Challenge Fund grants to Honduras. A few months ago 87 Members of Congress signed a letter to the Obama administration calling for a cut-off in military aid. The Defense Authorization Bill signed into law recently holds back a portion of military aid until the Secretary of State certifies that the human rights situation is improving. Even the corporate media, usually the reliable propaganda machine for the 1 percent (in the U.S. and abroad), is beginning to worry about the shocking degradation of human rights in Honduras since the coup.

All this shows the value of solidarity actions, even for the people of a country largely absent from the consciousness of most of us and from the foreign policy calculations of our government. We will ask people to take action on the specific case of Rigores as soon as we get solid facts. But the reality is that Rigores is just one small place in a global war by the 1 percent against to poorest people of the world who sit on the world's richest resources. However, another reality is that peasants no longer have a place to go. There is no place left for them to be displaced to. The so-called agricultural frontiers are gone. Peasants have no other choice but to defend their land.

At a conference of all the peasant movements of the Aguan that our delegation attended this before traveling to Rigores, Wilfredo Paz, Aguan coordinator for the National Front for Popular Resistance, told the 80 community leaders present that the Aguan land struggle is the most important land struggle in the world. In a way, his words are true and not just parochial. The peasant movements in the Aguan are among the most highly organized in the world, and among those with the clearest vision that their backs are to the wall and they can retreat no further. Failure now is a failure of life itself. Neither they nor their children have anywhere else to go.

One of the ways they are fighting back is to insure that the terror they are living under can no longer operate in the shadows invisible to the world at large. They have opened a Permanent Human Rights Observatory of the Aguan to host international accompaniers and to expose and denounce the repression and the impunity for crimes against humanity enjoyed by the oligarchy and its subservient police and military. The Alliance for Global Justice is a member of the North American Support Group of the Observatory. Along with other groups, we are looking for people with fluent Spanish who will commit to join a team of international human rights accompaniers in the Aguan. During its start-up we are particularly interested in finding people who have previous accompaniment experience in other countries. To learn more or to offer your time and skills, send an email to AFGJ(at)AFGJ.org.

Most of us have neither the skills nor the time to become long-term accompaniers. But we can support those who do, and we can support the people who are under threat by educating our communities and by insisting that our elected officials implement new priorities that stop funding violence and instead support policies that address the inequitable distribution of wealth and resources.

The people of Rigores do not intend to abandon their struggle. Our job is to change the political paradigm so that their struggle will prevail to the enrichment of all of us.

Chuck Kaufman is National Co-Coordinator of of the Alliance for Global Justice.

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[biofuelwatch] Campesino Land Struggles in the Aguán Valley, Honduras

2012-01-23T02:29:00.001-08:00

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3419-campesino-land-struggles-in-the-aguan-valley-honduras

Campesino Land Struggles in the Aguán Valley, Honduras

Written by Heather Gies

Friday, 20 January 2012 14:59

The Aguán River Valley in the department of Colón, Honduras, is a site of both an ongoing conflict and a powerful social movement. In a struggle for land that greatly predates, but was also further exacerbated by, the 2009 military coup in Honduras, campesinos in the Aguán are constantly subject to human rights abuses, repression and injustice. But, as witnessed during my recent participation in an Alliance for Global Justice accompaniment delegation, these communities are also unfailingly resilient. Poor, vulnerable, and landless, the Aguán campesinos truly represent and embody the Resistance movement in Honduras.

The land in the Aguán Valley is rich, fertile, and highly coveted. As a result of the Agrarian Reforms of the 1960's and 1970's, Honduran campesinos received farmland in the Aguán and proceeded to clear, prepare, and develop the once-rainforest Valley into an agricultural region. Subsequent abolishment of the Agrarian Reform legislation in the early 1990's led to growing privatization and changing agricultural tariffs, while structural adjustment policies and trade liberalization hit small farmers the hardest, increasing their vulnerability to global markets. Deceitful land grabs and state policies supporting large landowners, corporate agriculture, and systematic repression of the peasantry battered campesinos, robbing them of their land and their rights while leaving agribusiness and the oligarchy intact.

Threats, intimidation, manipulation, and dire economic straits pressured many campesino cooperatives to sell their land, resulting in a gross re-concentration of land ownership in the region, primarily in the hands of agribusiness moguls Miguel Faccusé, René Morales, and Reynaldo Canales. Even campesino communities that never voluntarily surrendered their titles have been forced from their land through repressive means, such as illegal evictions. Today, campesinos continue to grapple with the challenges of landlessness and clashes against large landowners and paramilitary forces in their ongoing fight for land titles and for justice. Their struggles are many, but their common demand and essential need for land unites the campesino movement.

The situation in the Aguán is highly complex, intertwined in a context of political weakness, widespread corruption, narcotrafficking, and systematic displacement of poor populations for the benefit of wealthy "developers." Former President Manuel Zelaya initiated agrarian legislation to grant title to certain campesino organizations, but these agreements were halted prior to their realization when Zelaya was overthrown in June 2009. Violence against campesinos has escalated in the wake of the coup, and current President Pepe Lobo has responded to discontent in the Aguán with heavy militarization of the region and state-led repression of campesinos. The movement in the Aguán reports that 55 campesinos have been killed at the hands of private security guards of large landowners, in cooperation with police and military forces, since the coup in 2009. Many others have been captured and tortured, and regular, targeted threats of disappearance, eviction, and death psychologically torture campesinos and function as a constant reminder of the insecurity and vulnerability of their livelihoods.

Despite this regime of systematic, structural, state-funded violence, campesinos of the Aguán have organized their communities to resist the repression, fight for land rights, and work toward viable alternatives. The campesino movements have recently established the Observatorio de los Derechos Humanos en el Bajo Aguan, a Human Rights Observatory with representation from local organizations, including each Aguán campesino community. The Observatorio also invites international human rights observers to join in solidarity with the movement through long term accompaniment in Honduras. Campesinos throughout the Aguan Valley are hopeful that the inauguration of the Observatorio will aid in denouncing repression and violence and will bring heightened international attention to the violations of human rights and impunity occurring in the Aguan Valley.

Campesinos have been deprived of their land and are suffering grave violations of human rights to fuel the prosperity of capitalist agribusiness. Nevertheless, they continue to occupy and fight for land in the Aguán Valley and to mobilize their communities as part of a larger national popular resistance struggle for democracy and justice in Honduras.

For more information:

Alliance for Global Justice

www.afjg.org

afgj@afgj.org

Rights Action

www.rightsaction.org

info@rightsaction.org

Food First

www.foodfirst.org

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[biofuelwatch] Biofuels full environmental impacts not yet understood

2012-01-23T00:26:00.001-08:00

Biofuel Research Suffers From Gaps

Biofuels: Little research has occurred on the effects of biofuel use on biodiversity and human health, scientists find

After a review of a decade's worth of biofuels research, scientists with the Environmental Protection Agency have concluded that significant knowledge gaps will likely prevent experts from adequately assessing biofuels' full environmental impacts (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es2023253). While researchers have paid substantial attention to greenhouse gas emissions, the new study says, they have focused little on how the production and use of biofuels affects biodiversity and human health.

"The last 10 years or so of research may have left us short of understanding what biofuels really may do to global economies, the environment, and society," says Caroline Ridley, an ecologist with the EPA's National Center for Environmental Assessment, in Arlington, Va., who led the study.

Interest in biofuels has grown in part because the U.S. government has mandated aggressive expansion of their production. One job of Ridley's group is to synthesize available information on such environmental policies.

She and her colleagues searched literature databases to identify more than 1,600 biofuels research citations from 2000 to 2009. They assigned each study to one of four themes, such as the environment or economics, and then to topics within those themes, such as greenhouse gas emissions or costs of production. They also looked at each study's geographical focus and whether the papers connected different topics.

The team found that the most common topics, with a few hundred papers each, were fuel production, feedstock production, and greenhouse gas emissions. Near the bottom of the list, 80 studies examined how biofuel production affects biodiversity, for example how local species fare after farmers clear large stretches of land to grow corn, switchgrass, palm oil, or other biofuel feedstocks. And only 15 studied the human health impacts of increasing levels of air pollutants produced by burning biofuel ethanol.

The team also found that researchers have focused largely on the environmental consequences in the Northern Hemisphere even though regions in the Southern Hemisphere, such as Indonesia, will probably grow most of the feedstock crops.

Jason Hill, an environmental scientist at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, who was a coauthor of a recent National Academy of Sciences biofuels report, finds the EPA team's review refreshing because it identifies what he calls an unbalanced focus on greenhouse gas emissions in biofuels research. The impacts on biodiversity and human health "are at least as large as the potential damage from climate change," he says.

Ridley and her team warn that these holes in biofuels research mean that expanded biofuels use could lead to unanticipated problems. As a result, she suggests her team's results could offer a useful guide to decision makers in allotting research funds. Hill agrees and sees the review as a call for scientists to fill in the gaps.

Chemical & Engineering News

ISSN 0009-2347

http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/web/2012/01/Biofuel-Research-Suffers-Gaps.html

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[biofuelwatch] GM microbe breakthrough paves way for large-scale seaweed farming for biofuels | Environment | guardian.co.uk

2012-01-21T12:25:00.001-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/19/gm-microbe-seaweed-biofuels

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[biofuelwatch] Money Is All That's Green in Biodiesel

2012-01-20T10:39:00.001-08:00

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106491

Money Is All That's Green in Biodiesel

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 19, 2012 (IPS) - The only green in biodiesel fuel is the money producers make from it, new research has revealed.

Most biodiesel production is making climate change worse not better, studies show. Biodiesel from palm oil plantations may be the world's dirtiest fuel - far worse than burning diesel made from oil when the entire production life cycle is considered.

Biodiesel made from the many palm oil plantations on Indonesia's peatlands have a "carbon debt of 200 years", said Louis Verchot, a research scientist at the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor, Indonesia.

This means it will take 200 years of continuous biodiesel production from these palm oil plantations to pay off the "carbon debt" that results from land conversion and indirect land use changes.

Verchot and colleagues' study is the first real-world look at the climate impacts of biodiesel and was published last month in the journal Ecology and Society. The study looked at biodiesel production involving palm oil, jatropha and soy at 12 sites in six different countries.

"Our study shows we have to eliminate a lot of what we're trying to do in the name of protecting the atmosphere," he said.

Global biodiesel production worldwide has risen by 10 times over the last eight years, topping 11 billion litres in 2010, according to the International Energy Agency. Ethanol production has risen by more than four times since 2000 and was close to 90 billion litres by the end of 2011. Those gains are being driven by government policies that mandate ever increasing amounts of biofuel be used in transportation fuels.

When burned, biodiesel emits between 40 and 75 percent less climate- heating carbon than regular diesel, according to various estimates. However, in order to grow palm oil, Indonesia's peat forests have been cleared and burned, resulting in huge emissions of carbon - on the order of 200 to 300 tonnes of carbon per hectare - Verchot told IPS.

In addition, these wet peatlands are drained and when exposed to air the peat decomposes and releases about 10 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year. The resulting "carbon debt" is so large it will take 200 years of continuous biodiesel production from these palm oil plantations to pay it off, he said.

In other words, if palm oil was planted during Napoleon's invasion of Russia, it would still be paying off its carbon debt today.

"I don't know of any place in the world where a single crop has been grown that long," Verchot said.

The size of the carbon debt of biodiesel from palm oil plantations has been seriously underestimated, said Ross Morrison of Britain's University of Leicester. Morrison is co-author of an independent analysis completed before Verchot's study was published.

Biodiesel from tropical peatlands emits more carbon than diesel from oil, Morrison and his colleagues reported in their analysis for the International Council on Clean Transportation.

Tropical peatlands in Southeast Asia hold more carbon than tropical forests and are under steady conversion to highly profitable palm oil plantations. Conversion of these lands also has negative impacts on local peoples and results in loss of habitat for many species, including endangered orangutans and Sumatran tigers.

"Projections indicate an increase in palm oil plantations on peat to a total area of 2.5 million ha by the year 2020 in western Indonesia alone an area equivalent in size to the land area of the United Kingdom," said Sue Page, co-author of the Leicester study.

The study also concluded that biofuels grown in Europe are no better than oil-based fuels, and biodiesel made from food crops like soy and rapeseed are worse. Bioethanol or biodiesel from waste cooking oil, on the other hand, could still offer carbon savings.

While palm oil plantations have long been criticised by environmentalists, Verchot's study also looked at biodiesel made from Jatropha and grown in Ghana, Zambia and Tanzania. The study found it had a 100-year carbon debt on average, although the debt could be as high as 300 years depending on where it is grown.

Jatropha yields much less oil per hectare than palm oil and more land must be cultivated, increasing its carbon debt.

Biodiesel made from soy grown on Brazil's dry cerrado grasslands in the state of Mato Grosso had the smallest carbon debt of the 12 study sites in six countries, at about 30 years. The main reason the carbon debt is low is because the cerrado doesn't have much biomass to begin with, Verchot said.

It is unknown whether soy could actually be grown year and year for three to four decades.

"We're not saying that all biofuels are bad. What we've found is that the right circumstances for growing biofuels are much more limited than people realise," he said.

Verchot's study did not look at the social impacts of biodiesel production. There is very little land capable of growing food on the planet that someone is not already using. Large-scale biodiesel crops often displace small landholders and local people who often don't have formal land titles, resulting in growing numbers of conflicts over land grabbing.

"Biofuels certainly create incentives for land grabbing," he says.

The biofuel industry and its supporters see things very differently. One reason is that the European Union has a goal of biofuels providing 10 percent of all transport fuels by 2020. The U.S. has target of tripling biofuel use from 2009 to 2022. Other nations also have targets as well creating a very large market in need of supply.

Attention is turning to Africa and its more than one billion hectares of rain-fed croplands as the next big source of biofuels.

Biofuels can be Africa's next big cash crop, according to the new book "Biofuels in Africa" published by the World Bank last year.

"Abundant natural resources and low-cost labor make producing biofuel feedstocks a viable alternative to traditional crops," the book says.

While noting that the effectiveness of biofuels in reducing emissions is in dispute, the U.S. or Europe will have to import increasing volumes of biofuels to meet their targets. In addition, the high fossil fuel prices mean Africa will produce much more biofuel for domestic markets in the coming decade, it concludes.

Governments, agribusiness, energy companies and venture capitalists have invested many billions of dollars into biofuels for at best a tiny net reduction and quite likely an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Most climate experts say biofuels are not even in the top five things that need to be done to meet the climate change challenge.

"It turns out that biofuels are not the miracle crop people had hoped it would be," Verchot said.

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[biofuelwatch] International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)

2012-01-19T08:27:00.001-08:00

this is the document referred to below - http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/17981996/2053901435/name/enb3006e.pdf

more at http://energy-l.iisd.org/

--- In biofuelwatch@yahoogroups.com, Simone Lovera <simonelovera@...> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> FYI. I think this is worth reading for both climate justice and bioenergy activists (at least the summary and analysis at the end - and please note Greece asked for more work on biofuels and Grenada mentioned carbon markets). As I wrote yesterday, I would welcome reflections from anyone who has been following the work of this new, highly relevant, agency.
>
> Best wishes,
> Simone
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>

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[biofuelwatch] Nuffield Council on Bioethics seek feedback on Teaching resource on biofuels

2012-01-19T04:35:00.001-08:00

http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=8511c645b9d4da10c7b9b3d53&id=958a28e5a7&e=2aee2caaf0

Teaching resource on biofuels and plea for feedback!

The Council has published a set of teaching resources based on its
report Biofuels: ethical issues. The resources introduce students to
the advantages and disadvantages of different types of biofuels, and
include case studies and a role play exercise to explore the drivers
of the biofuels industry and the impact that biofuels can have on
people's lives. Find out more

We are conducting a survey to gather people's views on teaching
resources produced by the Council. The survey should take around five
minutes to complete and your feedback would be much appreciated. Fill
out the survey
http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=8511c645b9d4da10c7b9b3d53&id=958a28e5a7&e=2aee2caaf0

News on other projects

Biofuels – in December 2011, the UK Parliament adopted changes to the
Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation which sets new sustainability
criteria for biofuels used throughout Europe. The Council welcomed the
new legislation but raised concerns about the omission of social
sustainability criteria for biofuels and the lack of incentives for
the development of new, more ethical types of biofuels.The issues were
discussed with the Transport Minister, Parliamentarians and others at
an event hosted by the Council in the House of Lords on 5 December.
Find out more

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[biofuelwatch] Ironbridge coal power station to use biomass

2012-01-19T00:34:00.001-08:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/18/britain-eon-biomass-idUSL6E8CI2WD20120118

E.ON to convert UK coal plant to biomass

Wed Jan 18, 2012 9:43am EST

* Biomass unit to open early 2013 at Ironbridge

* Plant to shut down by end-2015 under EU law

* RWE npower to open similar plant this month

LONDON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - German utility E.ON plans to convert one of two 500 megawatt units at its coal-fired Ironbridge power plant in Britain to use biomass and may decide to convert the second unit as well, the company said on Wednesday.

The modernised unit will start operating in early 2013 to produce electricity using wood pellets but will keep the ability to burn coal for up to 20 percent of its capacity.

Despite the modernisation, the Ironbridge power plant will have to shut down by the end of 2015 under EU-wide regulation that bans highly polluting power plants, called the Large Combustion Plant Directive

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[biofuelwatch] Biomass plans scrapped in Bishop's Castle

2012-01-18T16:11:00.000-08:00

After a five year local campaign to stop it, plans for a biomass plant in
Bishop's Castle have been scrapped because the developers couldn't agree terms
with the council for purchase of the site.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-shropshire-16613958

http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2012/01/18/bishops-castle-biomass-plant-plans-scrapped/

http://www.jollypages.co.uk/castlenews/?p=121

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[biofuelwatch] Fwd: ENB Vol. 30 No. 6 - Second Session of the Assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency - Summary and Analysis [1 Attachment]

2012-01-18T06:06:00.000-08:00

Dear all,

FYI. I think this is worth reading for both climate justice and bioenergy activists (at least the summary and analysis at the end - and please note Greece asked for more work on biofuels and Grenada mentioned carbon markets). As I wrote yesterday, I would welcome reflections from anyone who has been following the work of this new, highly relevant, agency.

Best wishes,

Simone

Begin forwarded message:

[biofuelwatch] Biogas Boom: Germany needs grains from abroad

2012-01-18T01:28:00.001-08:00

[My translation below - original article in German at http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/0,1518,808009,00.html - Almuth]

Biogas Boom

Germany needs grain from abroad

Poor harvests, high prices and the increase in maize cultivation for biogas digesters could create a new situation for Germany. According to one prediction, this year Germany could import more grain from abroad than it exports - for the first time in 25 years.

Frankfurt am Main/Hamburg - This year, Germany could become a net importer of grains. According to a report published in the newspaper 'Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung', Germany is likely to require net grain imports for the first time in 25 years. The newspaper cites Georg Keckl, an expert in agricultural statistics. "We are increasingly seeing the displacement of grain production by maize grown for biogas digesters", explains the head of Lower Saxony's department for agricultural statistics.

The degree to which Germany is self-sufficient in grain - which compares consumption with domestic production - has declined by 96% during the current agricultural year 2011/12, according to Keckl. Experts from the Information Service for Agricultural Markets (AMI) also believe that it is possible that imports will exceed experts. According to market analyst Wienke con Schenck, several factors suggest this. During 2011, cereal harvests were 2.5 million tonnes lower than during the previous year. Food processors are turning to cheaper imports from outside the EU because the price for German cereals has been high, partly due to the poor harvest.

A rise in imports is also due to the bioenergy boom. Maize cultivation is increasing disproportionally compared with grain production.

Von Schenck also stresses that Germany already depends on cereal imports in some sectors. For example rye and high quality wheat are already being imported. So far, however, cereal exports have exceeded imports, according to von Schenck. Between July 2010 and June 2011, 11.4 million tonnes of cereals were exported and 8.4 million tonnes were bought abroad.

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[biofuelwatch] Include trees in climate modelling, say scientists

2012-01-17T13:52:00.000-08:00

Include trees in climate modelling, say scientists

Climate models should include the effects of trees on the local climate, say agroforestry experts

Dyna Rochmyaningsih for SciDev.net, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 January 2012 10.49 GMT
Article history

Current climate models and projections may be inaccurate because measurements are based on guidelines that do not include the effects of trees on the local climate, according to agroforestry experts.
This in turn may be hindering effective adaptation by local farming communities, as the true effect of climate change on their crops is not accurately captured.
Trees can influence many of the climate factors predicted by modelling, and their effects should be added to climate maps, scientists from the the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) said in a book, How people and trees can co-adapt to climate change, launched last month (1 December).
According to the book, enhancing tree cover for agricultural purposes is a good adaptation mechanism.People have fought long and hard for access to our woodlands.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/16/climate-change-forests

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[biofuelwatch] "Sustainable" biomass could help rare UK plants - report

2012-01-17T13:45:00.000-08:00

Managing English woodlands could help rare plants, report finds

Plantlife argues that managing neglected English woodlands to produce wood fuel could boost declining species of flowers

Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 January 2012 11.21 GMT
Article history

Managing neglected English woodlands to produce wood fuel could boost declining species of flowers, conservationists have said.
A report from Plantlife has revealed that one in six woodland flower species is threatened with extinction, with plants hit by the "perfect storm" of under-managed woods, increasing deer populations and too many nutrients in the environment.
But sustainable woodland management to provide wood fuel could generate a low-carbon energy source that people could buy to support their local countryside, in the same way as buying local farm produce, and improve woods for wildlife.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/16/managing-england-woodlands-plants

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[biofuelwatch] A Cycle of Death: Inside Nicaragua's Sugar Cane Fields

2012-01-17T01:21:00.001-08:00

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/nicaragua-archives-62/3402-a-cycle-of-death-inside-nicaraguas-sugar-cane-fields

A Cycle of Death: Inside Nicaragua's Sugar Cane Fields

Written by Tom Laffay and Inka Haukka

Thursday, 12 January 2012 18:10

Produced by Tierra Unida Films by Tom Laffay and Inka Haukka

[Please go to url above to watch the video'

Written by Jason Glaser

The video above focuses on the community of La Isla de Viudas (The Isle of Widows) outside of Chichigalpa, Nicaragua, but it is a powerful introduction to a much larger global issue. Sadly, the stories shared are in no way isolated or limited to this area. Throughout the sugarcane industry in Central America child labor is rampant, widows from this disease far too common and young workers will likely not escape their fate, many will perish as their fathers have.

None of the usual causes of CKD have been linked to this new form of the disease and no adequate treatment exists for those affected making it a death sentence. Worldwide cases of CKD often correspond with hypertension and diabetes; however, research concludes that no correlation between these traditional causes has been made in this context.

Getting sick often means losing your job as companies attempt to distance themselves from responsibility by testing and then firing sick workers. With the need for labor still present workers enlist with subcontractors. When they are finally too sick to work their sons illegally work in their place. Despite the legal age being 18 for this type of work, in Nicaragua boys as young as sixteen are now coming down with the disease, their hope for a better life dashed.

This cycle of death ends futures and stymies any hope for meaningful development in the region.

Policy Impacts:

This situation is fueled by foreign policy decisions in Europe and Washington D.C. that are playing themselves out thousands of miles away while affecting people who lack a voice.

Europe has set incredibly ambitious goals to incorporate biofuels into their energy system over the next 10 years and view sugar cane produced ethanol as one of the most environmentally secure options. While embracing `green' fuels the associated costs of labor abuse, this emerging epidemic, and the food vs. fuel dynamic seem to be secondary considerations.

The US State Department for its part views the production of biofuels in Central America as a way to stifle the influence of Hugo Chavez's oil rich Venezuela. Historically, the State Department has sought only the counsel of the leading producers of sugar in the region while pursuing this policy. Recently this has changed and representatives from the US Embassy in Nicaragua have reached out to La Isla Foundation in order to begin a dialog. This is a developing relationship and I hope a positive one.

Finally, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) gave two loans totaling more than 100 million dollars to the two largest Nicaraguan sugar producers- Ingenio Monte Rosa and Nicaraguan Sugar Estates Limited who owns Ingenio San Antoio. The loans were given so they could modernize operations and produce ethanol for export to the EU via Rotterdam. Workers concerns at Ingenio San Antonio were only taken into account by the IFC after the loan was given. An impotent complaint process administered by the Compliance Advisor Ombudsmen has solved little and left families distrustful of outside intervention.

What is Being Done

Boston University was brought in under the CAO process to help establish the cause of the epidemic. They received their funding from the IFC, Nicaraguan Sugar Estates Limited and the Association of Nicaraguan Sugar Producers. After two years of work the Boston team, I believe correctly, decided that the CAO process is not the ideal venue in which to continue researching the cause of the disease.

Predictably, the public relations department at Nicarguan Sugar Estates Limited has used the inconclusive findings to distance themselves from responsibility while failing to acknowledge their other offenses. Despite promises of being committed to finding the cause of the disease, the company has seen it fit to misrepresent data and to outright lie about their work practices.

From the beginning, La Isla Foundation was skeptical about the CAO process as it readily favors those who have power. The party who has allegedly committed an offense can walk away from talks at any time and there are no tools with which to hold that party accountable. A loan cannot be taken back, payment for the loan cannot be demanded and any agreements are not enforceable. There is no evidence that a future loan would be denied.

Recognizing these shortfalls, La Isla Foundation immediately set about to create a broader and locally lead coalition. It includes leading Mesoamerican, US and European organizations.

Parties include: La Isla Foundation, local epidemiological experts from respected local health institutions SALTRA and CISTA, Mt. Sinai, Colorado University, Stony Brook University, Karolinksa University, the National Institute of Medical Sciences in Mexico and increasingly the health ministries of Central American countries. This international cooperation is working to secure funding in order to test a promising hypothesis that could establish the mechanism causing the disease. This coalition has produced the most insightful research published to date.

I'm pleased to report that the Boston team has also engaged us in the spirit of cooperation as they move forward in their research efforts.

It's important that all groups dedicated to finding the cause of the epidemic coordinate instead of compete. Especially in light of the fact that this epidemic may well be global. Most recently our network is now reaching out to researchers in Egypt and Sri Lanka who are reporting a similar epidemic of chronic kidney disease among workers in their countries.

It is hoped this broad based coalition can both find the cause of the disease and build capacity among local institutions that will need to monitor and facilitate treatment for those impacted by it.

Concurrently, La Isla Foundation is working with students from University of Pittsburgh's Law School and University of London Birkbeck. Important research is being undertaken to leverage policy change regarding the importation of biofuels into the EU, sugar into the US and work practices on the ground in Mesoamerica. This is important as labor issues, intimidation, displacement, and irresponsible environmental practices including the burning of sugar cane fields near populated areas and reckless agrochemical use plagues these communities.

In the community of La Isla we are also working to create greater autonomy and empowerment for those affected through educational programs and basic infrastructure projects.

This situation is grave but we can be part of the solution with support from concerned individuals and institutions that believe in building regional capacity while strengthening cooperation with independent northern institutions. For studies, information and comments please contact me directly: Jason Glaser, laislafoundation@gmail.com

Learn more at www.laislafoundation.org

Recommended links

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3355-thousands-of-sugar-cane-workers-die-as-wealthy-nations-stall-on-solutions

http://www.theworld.org/2011/12/kidney-disease-epidemic/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16007129

http://youtu.be/x9UZ1hbfPPw

Jason Glaser is the president of La Isla Foundation and can be contacted atlaislafoundation(at)gmail.com. Tom Laffay is the director of Tierra Unida Films based in Leon, Nicaragua and can be contactedattierraunidafilms(at)gmail.com.

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[biofuelwatch] Cargo boat and US navy ship powered by algal oil in fuel trials

2012-01-14T13:04:00.000-08:00

Cargo boat and US navy ship powered by algal oil in marine fuel trials

Substituting biofuel for bunker fuel may bring about revolution in world's shipping fleets

John Vidal, environment editor
guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 January 2012 17.59 GMT
Article history

Giant cargo boats and US navy warships have been successfully powered on oil derived from genetically modified algae in a move which could herald a revolution in the fuel used by the world's fleets – and a reduction in the pollution they cause.
The results of substituting algal oil for low-grade, "bunker" fuel and diesel in a 98,000-tonne container ship are still being evaluated by Maersk, the world's biggest shipping company, which last week tested 30 tonnes of oil supplied by the US navy in a vessel travelling from Europe to India. Last month, the navy tested 20,000 gallons of algal fuel on a decommissioned destroyer for a few hours. Both ran their trials on a mix of algal oil – between 7% and 100% – and conventional bunker fuel.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jan/13/maersk-cargo-boat-algal-oil?intcmp=122

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[biofuelwatch] Region’s growers look at beet washer for ‘green’ bio gas - Farming news - Eastern Daily Press

2012-01-14T03:09:00.001-08:00

Article below shows the market demand for biogas from specially grown energy crops (ie sugar beet) in UK.

http://www.edp24.co.uk:80/business/farming-news/region_s_growers_look_at_beet_washer_for_green_bio_gas_1_1177278

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[biofuelwatch] Uskmouth B to go 100% Biomass?

2012-01-13T11:38:00.000-08:00

Hi
Just read on the Scottish and Southern Energy web site a piece about the 393MW Uskmouth B coal fired power station in Newport going to be converted to use 100% biomass.It currently uses 15% biomass.They claim that they would potentially source the biomass from within Wales.

http://www.sse.com/Uskmouth/ProjectInformation/

Dave Yates

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[biofuelwatch] Open Letter against UK subsidies for biomass and bioliquid electricity

2012-01-13T04:32:00.001-08:00

www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2012/rocs_open_letter/

Stop subsidising deforestation and land-grabbing for biomass and bioliquid electricity

Open letter to the UK and Scottish Governments relating to the Renewables Obligation Banding Consultation

We call upon the UK and Scottish Governments^¹ to stop subsidies for electricity from biomass and bioliquids (i.e. agrofuels) which mean more land-grabbing, logging and industrial tree plantations worldwide.

Under the Renewables Obligation, the UK and Scottish Government are offering generous subsidies for burning unlimited amounts of wood, most of it imported, as well as agrofuels for electricity. Although the UK Government has proposed to cap the amount of subsidies for electricity from agrofuels, that cap would still translate into a minimum of 110,000 hectares of new plantations, most likely oil palm plantations in the global South.

The scale of the UK's biomass plans: The UK Government wishes to see biomass generating up to 50TWh by 2020. This would require over 50 and possibly over 60 million tonnes of wood being burned in UK power stations each year, compared to a total UK wood production of less than 10 million tonnes annually. This figure is likely to escalate, as the unlimited subsidies are likely to attract more investment from companies. By comparison, total EU wood pellet imports were 11 million tonnes last year.^²

At present, most UK wood imports come from North America, as well as from Scandinavia, the Baltic States and Russia, contributing to more logging and more forest and biodiversity destruction in those regions as well as releasing large amounts of carbon as a result. Companies are increasingly looking to source wood from industrial tree plantations in Southern countries, too, for example from Brazil and Ghana. Both directly and indirectly, the vast new demand for wood require an expansion of industrial tree plantations and thus more land-grabbing, more destruction of forests and grasslands and more depletion and pollution of soils and freshwater. This poses a further threat to the rights and livelihoods of Indigenous Peoples, forest-dependent peoples and small farmers.

Agrofuels for electricity in the UK: The UK proposes to burn 400,000 tonnes of bioliquids burned in UK power stations, which, if they were run on palm oil alone (by far the cheapest bioliquid) would require 110,000 hectares of land to be converted to plantations. Experience in Germany and Italy shows that palm oil is by far the most likely type of agrofuel to be burnt in power stations. This will mean yet more land-grabbing, human rights abuses and carbon emissions from deforestation.

Sustainability standards for biomass and bioliquids: The UK government insists that it can source biomass and bioliquids `sustainably' and as such proposes to introduce biomass `sustainability standards' from 2013. For agrofuels, EU standards already apply to renewable electricity subsidies in the UK. Agrofuel and proposed biomass sustainability standards are grossly inadequate: Above all, they do not address the inherently unsustainable nature of the new demand for wood and vegetable oil being created, on top of an already vastly unsustainable demand for both in the UK and across Europe. Standards ignore all indirect impacts from biomass and agrofuels, as well as all impacts on communities, human rights, the right to food, soil and water. What's more, the carbon savings requirements for biomass and bioliquids under the criteria are a false target, as the methodology by which carbon emissions are calculated wrongly assumes that burning bioenergy is carbon-neutral. And there will not even be any independent auditing or verification of companies' claims.

No subsidies for biomass or bioliquids electricity: By driving up the demand and the global price for wood and energy crops such as palm oil through subsidies (called Renewable Obligation Certificates or ROCs), the UK's policy on industrial biomass and bioliquids is set to increase land grabbing and speculation for tree plantations, expand destructive logging, speed up the conversion of biodiverse native forests to monoculture tree plantations, and worsen climate change. The government must show it cares about people and planet by investing in clean and genuine renewable energy solutions that do not adversely affect the global south.

We therefore call upon the United Kingdom to scrap all support measures for biomass and bioliquids and to focus on cutting the demand for energy, including through investment in energy efficiency and home insulation and focussing support on genuinely renewable and sustainable energy technologies instead.

Signed by:

ADP (Amics de Palanques) , Spain
Africa-Europe Faith & Justice Network (AEFJN), Belgium
AFRICANDO, Spain
Afrika-Europa Network, Netherlands
Agencia de Desarrollo Local, Argentina
Amazònia Assemblea de Solidaritat, Spain
American Environmental Health Studies Project, US
ATTAC España, Spain
Biofuelwatch, UK/US
Biomass Accountability Project, Massachusetts, US
Breathe Clean Air Group, UK
Buckeye Forest Council, Ohio, US
Bushwacker Wholefoods, UK
Campaign Against Climate Change, UK
CAPPA-Ecological Justice, Indonesia
Carmelitas Descalzas de Olza, Spain
Center for Biological Diversity, US
CESINSAD, Colombia
CISP - Comitato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo dei Popoli, Italy
COECOCEIBA-Friends of the Earth Costa Rica, Costa Rica
Colectivo de Ex Detenidas Desaparecidas "Carmen Soler" Asociación HIJOS PY, Paraguay
Comisión de DDHH de Paraguayos Residentes en Buenos Aires, Argentina
Comite Oscar Romero, Spain
Concerned Citizens of Franklin County, Massachusetts, US
Consejo de Organizaciones de Médicos y Parteras Indígenas Tradicionales por la Salud

Comunitaria en Chiapas, Mexico ï± Corporate Europe Observatory, Netherlands
Dachverband Kulturpflanzen- und Nutztiervielfalt e.V., Germany
Dogwood Alliance, US
Down to Earth, UK
Earth 3000, Germany
Earthpeoples
Ecological Society of the Philippines, Philippines
Econexus, UK
Ecoportal, Argentina
Eco Sitio, Argentina
Edinburgh 350, UK
Elephant Family, UK
Espacio Bristol-Colombia, UK
Forest Monitor, UK
Forum Ökologie & Papier, Germany
Friends of the Siberian Forest, Russia
Fundacion del Rio, Nicaragua
Global Forest Coalition
Grangemouth Community Council, Scotland
Green Delaware, US
Grupo Autoayuda Los Andes, Germany
Healthy Dubois County, US
INCOMINDIOS, Switzerland
Institut für angewandten Regenwaldschutz/Regenwald-Institut. e.V., Germany
Irish Doctors Environmental Association, Ireland
Kalpavriksh, India
Keep Our Island Clean, Hawaii, US
Labour,Health and Human rights Development Centre, Nigeria
LevegÅ` Munkacsoport (Clean Air Action Group), Hungary
Les Amis de la Nature et des Jardins (ANJ), DR Congo
Movimiento Nacional de Victimas,M.N.V., Paraguay
National Association of Professional Environmentalists (Friends of the Earth Uganda, NAPE),

Uganda
No North Blyth Biomass Power Station, Scotland
NOPE (No Oil Palm Energy), UK
No Leith Biomass Campaign, UK
No Southampton Biomass, UK
North East Peoples Alliance, India
Oakland Institute, US
Olympic Environmental Council, Washington, US
Organizacion Fraternal Negra Hondureña, OFRANEH, Honduras
Philippine Initiative for Conservation of Environment and the People, Philippines
Port Talbot Residents Against Power Stations, UK
Preserve Pepeekeo Health and Environment, Hawaii, US
PTAirwatchers Port Townsend, WA, USA
Reforest the Earth, UK
Regenbogenkreis, Germany
Rettet den Regenwald e.V., Germany
Salva la Selva, Spain
Save Americas Forests, US
Second Chance Foundation, US ï± Sobrevivencia / Friends of the Earth Paraguay
Society for Threatened Peoples International
Timberwatch Coalition, South Africa
Umweltinstitut München e.V. , Germany
War on Want, UK
Westfälische Gesellschaft für Artenschutz e.V. (WGA, Westphalian Society for Conservation),
Germany
Wight Biomess, UK
Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy, Georgia, US
World Rainforest Movement
World Temperate Rainforest Network

(85)

1The UK Government is responsible for decisions regarding renewable energy subsidies for England and Wales only. In Scotland, such decisions have been devolved to the Scottish Government.

2http://www.iwoodfuels.com/energy-articles/

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[biofuelwatch] Lufthansa's bio-fuelled fantasy finally grounded

2012-01-12T03:12:00.001-08:00

http://www.foeeurope.org/press/2012/Jan12_Lufthansa_biofuelled_fantasy_finally_grounded.html

Berlin/Amsterdam/Brussels, January 12, 2012 – Lufthansa's final flight of a controversial six-month trial of bio-fuelled flights will land today, bringing an end to a convenient smokescreen for aviation expansion, and a diversion from the real need to cut air travel in order to tackle climate change, according to Friends of the Earth Europe [1].

German airline Lufthansa, which ran bio-fuelled flights between Frankfurt and Hamburg (a four hour train journey), will only continue to use bio-kerosene for plane fuel if enough "volume of sustainable, certified raw materials" is available [2].

Robbie Blake, biofuels campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe said: "Lufthansa's bio-fuelled flights should remain grounded permanently – flying with biofuel is unsustainable, full stop. There simply isn't enough biofuel out there without diverting land and food from hungry communities, and causing worse climate-changing CO2 emissions."

"Biofuels exacerbate poverty and hunger, drive land grabbing and deforestation, push up food prices, and make climate change worse. Airlines would do better to fly less, and do so more efficiently, and passengers, between Hamburg and Frankfurt, would be better off on the train."

`Sustainable' certification schemes are industry led, highly controversial, and are likely to mislead the public, according to Friends of the Earth Europe, and the expansion of jatropha crops – part of Lufthansa's fuel mix – have been instrumental in driving land-grabbing and poor returns for farmers in countries such as Mozambique [3], Indonesia, and India.

***

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[biofuelwatch] microorganism able to convert CO2 to biomass

2012-01-10T00:27:00.001-08:00

RWE Power research identifies microorganism that converts CO2 to biomass

A joint research project between German energy company RWE Power and biotechnology company BRAIN has found a micro-organism that can convert CO2 from the flue gas of power stations into usable biomass.

RWE are hailing the breakthrough as a "strategic milestone" in its progress towards `clean coal' technology.

Researchers at BRAIN screened over 3000 microorganisms to find 29 promising candidates that have the potential to feed on CO2 and convert it into biomass or directly into secondary raw materials.

The work is being carried out at RWE's Niederaussem power plant, which is the centre of its `clean coal' activities.

So far, the partners have invested over 2 million in the project, but the promising results mean that the programme will now be expanded, says Johannes Heithoff of RWE Power.

"We are thoroughly convinced by the results delivered by BRAIN's research team in co-operation with our power station experts," he adds.

RWE Power says that it intends to look at other potential sources of carbon such as sewage water and waste from food or refinery processes.

Meanwhile, RWE npower is due to start commercial operations at its biomass power station at Tilbury in Essex later this month.

The last of three units totalling 750 MW will start producing power shortly and will, once at full capacity, be Britain's largest biomass facility.

The wood pellets that will be burned at the power station to produce electricity will be imported from the US and Europe.

For further information:
www.brain-biotech.de
www.rwe.com

http://www.energyefficiencynews.com/i/4763/

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[biofuelwatch] Study finds a better way to gauge the climate costs of land use changes

2012-01-09T03:10:00.000-08:00

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-gauge-climate.html

Study finds a better way to gauge the climate costs of land use changes

January 8, 2012

Those making land use decisions to reduce the harmful effects of climate change have focused almost exclusively on greenhouse gases analyzing, for example, how much carbon dioxide is released when a forest is cleared to grow crops. A new study in Nature Climate Change aims to present a more complete picture to incorporate other characteristics of ecosystems that also influence climate.

"We know that forests store a lot of carbon and clearing a forest releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and contributes to climate change," said University of Illinois postdoctoral researcher Kristina Anderson-Teixeira, who pioneered the new approach with plant biology and Energy Biosciences Institute professor Evan DeLucia. "But ecosystems provide other climate regulation services as well."

The climate effects of a particular ecosystem also depend on its physical attributes, she said. One such attribute is its reflectivity, a quality climate scientists call albedo.

"If you think of an open snow-covered field or bare sandy soil, that ground acts somewhat like a mirror, reflecting solar radiation back to space," Anderson-Teixeira said. "In contrast, a forest is dark and absorbs a lot of solar radiation. In that sense, any type of vegetation is going to warm the land surface to some extent."

Another factor that should be considered is an ecosystem's ability to release heat through the evaporation of water. The more water available in an ecosystem, the more it cools itself by evapotranspiration or, as DeLucia puts it, "planetary sweating."

"It takes a great deal of energy to convert liquid water to vapor, and this transition cools the soil and the surface of leaves as water evaporates, in the same way that sweating cools your skin," said DeLucia, who also is an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology at Illinois.

Scientists have known about biophysical effects for a long time, Anderson-Teixeira said. "But the challenge has been to incorporate them into a single metric that will help us design land-use policies that are going to help mitigate and not exacerbate climate change."

To tackle this problem, Anderson-Teixeira and DeLucia teamed with University of Minnesota professors Peter Snyder and Tracy Twine; professor Santiago Cuadra, of the Federal Center of Technological Education in Rio de Janeiro; and professor Marcos Costa, of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation in Brazil. The researchers compiled data to calculate the "greenhouse gas value" of 18 "ecoregions" across North and South America, and also modeled the ecoregions' biophysical characteristics. They looked at several types of forest, as well as grassland, tundra, tropical savanna and agricultural crops, such as soy, sugarcane, corn, miscanthus and switchgrass. (Please see graphic.)

"The challenge of combining the greenhouse gases with the biophysical effects is that they operate over very different spatial and temporal scales," Anderson-Teixeira said. To integrate the two, the researchers first divided the local biophysical effects by the global land surface area. They then combined the measures and converted the values into carbon dioxide equivalents, a common currency in the world of climate mitigation.

The researchers found that biophysical attributes make a tropical rainforest even more valuable for protection against climate warming, but lessen the climate value of boreal (evergreen) forests in Canada.

Any forest provides a climate service by storing carbon, the researchers said, but forests also absorb more solar radiation than bare ground. Tropical forests cool the land by evapotranspiration, but northern boreal forests have much lower evapotranspiration and are dark in comparison to open spaces. These factors give Amazon forests "the highest climate regulation value of all the ecoregions we studied," Anderson-Teixeira said.

Crops also have an enhanced climate-regulating value when their biophysical attributes are considered, DeLucia said.

"When considering only their effect on greenhouse gases, annually tilled row crops like corn tend to have a warming effect by contributing large quantities of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere," he said. "But when you factor in the ability to reflect solar energy and high rates of evapotranspiration, the net effect (compared with bare ground) is cooling."

Ecosystems perform a lot of other services of importance to humans and the planet, DeLucia said.

"While the climate-regulating value that we propose in this paper captures how ecosystems affect climate, it is important to note that this is only one of many services ecosystems provide," he said. "Ultimately the value of any given ecosystem to society must include these other services, including biodiversity, water purification and the production of food and fiber, to name just a few."

The researchers note that theirs is not the only valid way to quantify the climate services various ecosystems offer. But it captures more of the picture than previous methods have.

"We hope that this approach will help to design land-use policies that protect the climate," Anderson-Teixeira said.

More information: "Climate Regulation Services of Natural and Agricultural Ecoregions of the Americas," Nature Climate Change (2012).

Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (news : web)

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[biofuelwatch] Kilimanjaro jatropha

2012-01-07T07:32:00.000-08:00

Kilimanjaro Bio Fuels developing aviation biofuel from jatropha, has identified the economic development zone at Kilimanjaro Airport as `the most ideal location for process and refinery technology in East Africa', establishing a jatropha Centre of Excellence and extension of the plant species throughout the Kilimanjaro region to provide oil for processing. Envisaged as model for similar facilities around the world, refineries linked to main airports in Africa, Indonesia, India, South America and islands in the Caribbean and Indian oceans.

Jatropha was being grown around the airprot in 2007 but I've no idea how that turned out

http://sites.google.com/site/jclbjf/Climate-ChangeBio-Jet-Fuel-Jatropha-Curcas-Linn/kilimanjaro-biofuels-corporation

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[biofuelwatch] Maersk testing algae biofuel

2012-01-07T07:28:00.000-08:00

Maersk is testing algae based biofuel on a container ship from Europe to India, not saying where the fuel originated

http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=90644#SlideFrame_1

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[biofuelwatch] Re: Public Eye 2012 - nominations include Syngenta

2012-01-05T07:17:00.000-08:00

Something went wrong with the link below - hopefully this one will work:

http://www.publiceye.ch/en/vote/

--- In biofuelwatch@yahoogroups.com, "robert_palgrave" <robertpalgrave@...> wrote:
>
> Described thus at http://www.publiceye.ch/en/vote/:
>
> "Despite being banned in Europe, the world's largest agrochemical producer Syngenta continues to aggressively market its Paraquat herbicide in the Global South Thousands of farmers mostly in the poor Global South have already died due to use of the products; thousands upon thousands more have been gravely poisoned. A scientist criticizing Syngenta was being offered money in return for silence. In the US Syngenta is accused of having contaminated drinking water."
>
> Syngenta is also a big player in bioenergy, with investments in GM maize and soya and in jatropha. And is an active participant in the Round Table on Responsible Soy.
>
> A very worthy candidiate for the Public Eye 2012 award.
>
> More on their track record:
>
> New ETC Group report on Corporate Concentration in the Life Industries
>
> (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuelwatch/message/5065)
>
> 15 years of GM Soybeans in Argentina: The true cost of monoculture
>
> (http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuelwatch/message/4816)
>
> USDA Approves Use of Genetically Engineered Corn for Ethanol
>
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuelwatch/message/4571
>

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[biofuelwatch] Public Eye 2012 - nominations include Syngenta

2012-01-05T05:59:00.001-08:00

Described thus at http://www.publiceye.ch/en/vote/:

"Despite being banned in Europe, the world's largest agrochemical producer Syngenta continues to aggressively market its Paraquat herbicide in the Global South Thousands of farmers – mostly in the poor Global South – have already died due to use of the products; thousands upon thousands more have been gravely poisoned. A scientist criticizing Syngenta was being offered money in return for silence. In the US Syngenta is accused of having contaminated drinking water."

Syngenta is also a big player in bioenergy, with investments in GM maize and soya and in jatropha. And is an active participant in the Round Table on Responsible Soy.

A very worthy candidiate for the Public Eye 2012 award.

[biofuelwatch] DtE's latest agrofuels articles online

2012-01-05T05:19:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends,

The latest DTE agrofuels updates are now available at DtE's website at:

http://www.downtoearth-indonesia.org/story/dte-agrofuels-update-december-2011
and
http://www.downtoearth-indonesia.org/story/top-scientists-call-reassessment-agrofuels-policy-will-commission-take-heed-2012

Apologies for any cross postings.

Feel free to contact me at dteproguk@gn.apc.org.

Best wishes to you all for a happy 2012!

Clare

Clare McVeigh
Down to Earth

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[biofuelwatch] Bagasse for cellulosic ethanol

2012-01-04T04:01:00.001-08:00

As far as I can make out, from the story about China investing in many biofuel plants in Nigeria, using largely bagasse. It seems bagasse comes from the remains of the sugar, or sorghum plants, once the food part of the plant has been extracted.

So this is not actually using food to make fuel, but using the crop residues.

Presumably the residues could be used to heat things locally, or fuel the sugar refinery etc, instead of making biofuels for China. But apart from that use, is this quite a good way to produce biofuel, from residue that would otherwise biodegrade and produce carbon anyway?

Or are they actually using the food parts of the plants for biofuel as well?

There is an article about this at http://www.ncsu.edu/bioresources/BioRes_03/BioRes_03_2_0452_Dawson_B_Cellulosic_Ethanol_Bagasse.pdf

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[biofuelwatch] China and Nigeria integrated biorefineries

2012-01-03T06:16:00.001-08:00

From Biofuels Digest, (Industry magazine)

Profiles in Scale-up: China, Nigeria ink deal to invest $2.55B in 15 integrated biorefinery projects

Jim Lane | January 2, 2012

Chinese government to invest $1.78B in Nigerian biofuels, the latest in a series of projects announced in West Africa.

In Nigeria, Bloomberg and several local outlets are reporting that the Nigerian government has signed a $2.55 billion development deal with Global Biofuels, to construct 15 integrated biorefineries throughout the West African nation. According to reports, the first pilot plant will be completed in Ilemeso, in Ekiti State by Q4 2012, and projects thereafter will be completed in Ondo, Osun, Kwara, Kogi,Benue, Gombe, Bauchi, Zamfara, Kano, Kaduna, Nasarawa and Plateau states. Project cost for the initial pilot plant is $108M, while full-scale plants are expected to cost $183 million each.

According to Global Biofuels, $1.78 billion, or 70 percent of the financing will come from the Chinese government. The remainder will come from NEXIM Bank, ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development, Africa Finance Corporation; Fond Gari, and First Bank of Nigeria. The projects expect to generate 100 tons of total biomass per hectare, per yearn, using two cropping cycles per year, with total tonnage including tops, leaves, stalks and the primary crop. That equates to roughly 20 tons of total biomass per growing season, per acre.

But the massive Nigerian investment is just one of several announced in recent weeks and months in West Africa.

Nigerian Export-Import Bank:$695M

Just last week, the Nigerian Export-Import Bank gave $695 million to five companies investing in renewables including $12 million for a jatropha project and $56 million for a sorghum ethanol project.
The majority of the funding went to a sugarcane project that will include a bagasse co-generation component while the rest of the funding was for waste-to-energy projects.

Just before the US Thanksgiving holiday, the Ondo State Commissioner for Agriculture, Ademola Olorunfemi, said that the state would approve development of three sugarcane plantations and ethanol plants, with a focus on the production of biofuels and rural economic development. The Commissioner also said that the plants could provide materials for the bio-pharma industry.

The projects, whose goals center around industrialization and employment, indicate a new direction for the economy of this agriculture-heavy area of Nigeria.

Dangote Group, $7.7B

The same week, Aliko Dangote, the president of Dangote Group, announced an investment of $7.7 billion in Rivers Energy City, home of the budding $2 billion fertilizer and ethanol plant project put on by Indorama Eleme Petrochemical Company. His investment, says a top government source, will span into the methane and ethanol industries and provide thousands of jobs in the upcoming energy city.

Global Biofuels: $91M

In August, Global Biofuels has announced plans for ethanol plants across the West African region, with $91 million in sellers credit from COZA of Hong Kong and WEMET of China. The final project is expected to cost over $183 million, and produce 72 million liters of ethanol from 1.95 million tons of sorghum per year, and 216 gigawatts of electricity. Total land use as reported would be 65,000 ha in Nigeria and 32,500 ha in neighboring Economic Community of West African States member countries.

Also in August, Nosak Distilleries Ltd said it would raise production capacity at its Lagos facility to 540,000 liters per day from its current 350,000 liters per day. It also announced plans to commission a new 150,000 liter per day facility in Calabar, Cross River. Its first facility was commissioned in 2001 and together the company supplies about 70% of local ethanol demand.

The Bottom Line

Announcements of MOUs should be taken for what they are – an understanding that steel will go into the ground, as opposed to the actual construction of actual capacity. However, the trend is clear, scale is happening, project financing is becoming easier to source, especially overseas, and China is definitely expanding its ambitions with respect to countering the US lead in advanced biofuels technology, with a Chinese lead in actual gallons of renewable fuel.

[biofuelwatch] Disappearing Brazilian Cerrado

2012-01-03T03:44:00.000-08:00

Disappearing Cerrado: 'Brazil's great untold environmental disaster' - audio slideshow

Photographer Peter Caton talks about his visit to the Cerrado – the world's largest savannah. It contains 5% of the world's biodiversity, but is being destroyed at an incredible rate to make way for monocultures that may have devastating long-term effects.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/audioslideshow/2011/dec/22/cerrado-brazil-audio-slideshow?intcmp=122

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[biofuelwatch] Canal network could be used to transport biomass for power plants | World news | The Guardian

2012-01-02T08:38:00.001-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/01/canals-biomass-transport-power

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[biofuelwatch] Thetford biomass plant could be rejected - Environment - Eastern Daily Press

2012-01-02T08:19:00.001-08:00

http://www.edp24.co.uk:80/news/environment/thetford_biomass_plant_could_be_rejected_1_1166491

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[biofuelwatch] Corn ethanol subsidy due to expire in U.S.

2012-01-01T14:01:00.000-08:00

Even corn farmers are not all that enthused about ethanol subsidies! Hmm...we shall see.

Subsidies' end

A new year in ethanol

Dec 31st 2011, 12:51 by M.S.

NEW YEAR'S EVE seems like a good time to reflect on deep questions that are utterly critical to human understanding but aren't likely to actually lead anywhere. So it is in a mood of profound gratitude, wonder and awe that I read Brad Plumer'sreminder that corn-ethanol subsidies are going to expire this year, and that no one is defending them. This confounds my comprehension and leads me to realise that I understand nothing at all about the single most important question in human politics: how and why large numbers of people sometimes change their minds about things.

Three years ago, corn-ethanol subsidies appeared to be one of those common things in politics, an indefensible policy that was completely sacrosanct. It had, as many such policies do, a fiercely committed natural consistency, corn farmers, who enjoy a somewhat privileged political position due to their all-Americanness and the importance of the Iowa presidential caucuses. Corn ethanol is environmentally damaging; it putsmore carbon emissions into the atmosphere over the course of its production and consumption cycle than it takes out, and it uses up cropland that would otherwise be producing food for human or animal consumption. But this point was generally too complicated for environmentalists to make to the general public. And while conservatives are usually theoretically opposed to subsidies, in practice they've either actively backed them for carbon fuel industries, or never done anything to stop them. It just seemed as though corn-ethanol subsidies were the kind of policy that wonks all agree is terrible but that continues forever because of political realities.

Sometime in the past three years this all changed. The rise of the tea-party movement forced conservative politicians to take principled opposition to subsidies far more seriously. The budget-cutting frenzy in Washington made the subsidies a target. And the strange high-beta situation of Midwestern farmers, who are enjoying high corn prices and rising land prices while the rest of the country is seeing stagnant income and declining real-estate values, has muted their fervour for subsidies too. The speed with which this has happened puts me in mind of the country's startling attitude shift on gay marriage. I have absolutely no idea how things like this come to pass, and I don't think anyone could hope to predict them. But I think it serves as a somewhat hopeful close to a mostly horrible year to observe that in politics, solutions to problems often seem to be completely impossible, until all of a sudden they're not.

(Photo credit: AFP)

[biofuelwatch] Brazilian Eucalyptus research wins award

2011-12-30T12:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.renewableenergyfocus.com/view/22810/world-bioenergy-award-boosted-research-in-brazil/

World Bioenergy Award boosted research in Brazil

21 December 2011

The World Bioenergy Award, presented every two years, has given a lift to the work of the Brazilian researcher Laércio Couto, whose team has been studying the use of eucalyptus for bioenergy.

The World Bioenergy Award - a a collaboration between the World Bioenergy Association and World Bioenergy 2012 - was founded two years ago. Dr Couto was its first recipient.

According to Couto, the award has resonated around the world and has made other researchers and companies in Brazil aware of the possibility of cultivating eucalyptus using the methods developed by him and his team.

His method involves cultivating a variety of eucalyptus by planting it relatively densely, and using a short rotation period. The eucalyptus is planted on land that is unsuitable for food production.

Brazil has an estimated 200 million hectares of land suitable for this type of cultivation without affecting the rain forests. The cultivated biomass can be used to replace large amounts of coal and oil for energy production. The result is reduced fossil carbon emissions and therefore less contribution to climate change.

Spreads important knowledge

"The award's most important function is to disseminate research results around the world, even outside the circle of researchers in the bioenergy field," Dr Couto comments.

And he adds that the award has meant that companies even outside the energy sector have become interested in the method, known as Short Rotation Wood Crops (SRWC). They include producers of ethanol, wood chips, pellets, and particleboard. Several of them have now launched their own pilot plantations.

A number of research teams in Brazil are now studying how eucalyptus plantations affect the soil nutrient balance, soil preparation, and whether the same method can be used to cultivate other tree species.

Key future issues in bioenergy

"Our group is currently working to develop new technology to reduce the cost of establishing this type of plantation," Dr Couto reveals. "Together with machinery manufacturers, we are developing methods of doing one-pass harvesting and chipping."

The team is also addressing the controversial issue that intensively cultivated eucalyptus is a monoculture, with the associated risks, exploring whether it is possible to use other species and thereby achieve a greater genetic variety, while still keeping the rotation period under four years and maintaining the same energy yield: "In the short term it's important to develop methods to produce pellets and even torrefied pellets from fast-growing species in order to save land and time," he says, adding that in the longer term nanotechnology will play an important role also in the bioenergy sector.

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[biofuelwatch] Norway's Statoil invests in biofuels from seaweed

2011-12-29T09:22:00.001-08:00

Norwegian seaweed to be grown for fuel

Wednesday, 21 December 2011

Bio Architecture Lab (BAL) and Statoil, one of the world's largest offshore oil and gas producers, have announced a wide-ranging strategic partnership for the production of renewable, sustainable and low cost ethanol derived from macroalgae grown off the coast of Norway.

Under terms of the agreement, Statoil will fund BAL's research and development (R&D) and demonstration projects, and if successful, will also fund the commercialization of BAL's technology in Norway and elsewhere in Europe. BAL will have the right to equity participation and will receive royalties on all ethanol and by-products produced by the partnership.

"This game changing partnership will allow Bio Architecture Lab to accelerate our path toward commercialization and establish our technology in key markets in Europe," said Daniel Trunfio, CEO of BAL. "The significant commitment of resources and funds from Statoil further validates BAL's market opportunity and puts us with an elite group of companies in our industry who have partnered with established oil and gas companies to bring technology to market."

During the initial phase of the partnership, BAL is responsible for developing the technology and process to convert Norwegian seaweed into ethanol. Statoil is responsible for developing and managing the seaweed aquafarming operations, with consultation from BAL, which already has aquafarming operations in Chile. Upon the successful achievement of key milestones, Statoil and BAL will develop a demonstration scale facility in Norway, which could potentially lead to large scale commercialization by Statoil in Norway and other parts of Europe.

"Statoil has a unique competitive advantage in energy production in the marine environment. We are very impressed with the science and the progress BAL has made and we believe their approach to low cost and sustainable biomass feedstock solutions is among the most promising we have seen," said Guntis Aboltins-Abolins, Head of the Future Fuel unit at Statoil. "We look forward to partnering with BAL on such an important strategic initiative that has the potential to provide Europe with low carbon renewable fuels."

BAL was founded to address the huge market need for a low cost, scalable, and sustainable source of sugars for biofuel and renewable chemical production using aquafarmed, native macroalgae as a feedstock.

BAL has been building out a similar program off the coast of Chile as part of a program funded by the Chilean government. In addition, BAL has partnered with DuPont in a project funded by the Advanced Research Program Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) to convert macroalgae into isobutanol. In total, the company has received more than $34 million in funding, grants and strategic investments.

http://www.renewableenergymagazine.com/energias/renovables/index/pag/biofuels/colleft//colright/biofuels/tip/articulo/pagid/18439/botid/75

More information on Norway's background in seaweed biofuels:

http://www.sintef.no/home/Press-Room/Research-News/Kelp-in-the-tank/

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[biofuelwatch] Wood trading exchange stokes green energy row

2011-12-29T06:44:00.001-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/28/wood-trading-exchange-green-energy

--

Wood trading exchange stokes green energy row

New exchange launches in Netherlands amid growing row about wisdom of burning more wood to generate electricity

Power stations such as Drax in Yorkshire are switching to burning wood instead of coal as a way of reducing emissions. Photograph: John Giles/PA Archive/Press Association Ima

The APX-ENDEX exchange in the Netherlands has launched green energy contracts at a critical moment, when demand for biomass is soaring, but critics argue that burning wood to generate electricity causes as many problems as it solves.

Traditional power stations such as Drax in North Yorkshire are increasingly switching to burning wood instead of coal to reduce carbon emissions and an international trade in wood pellets is developing.

APX has developed the contracts in co-operation with Port of Rotterdam, which has seen a big increase in the amount of wood being brought into the docks to feed biomass plants across Europe. The port – the biggest in Europe – says it expects to be handling 2-3m tonnes annually by 2025 as imports from places such as Canada and Russia soar.

The APX commodity exchange has been publishing data on industrial wood pellet prices since 2008 and argues a traded contract will help biomass users find supplies in a more cost-efficient and transparent way. "Bilateral trading has been going on but not on any exchange. That will now change," said a spokeswoman for APX.

There is a growing controversy over subsidies being given to further the development of biomass plants in Britain. Renewable obligation certificates (ROCs) are issued to green generators and can be traded with other suppliers as a way of their meeting their obligations on renewable energy. A review by the Department of Energy and Climate Change has proposed keeping the 0.5 ROC (per MWh) support level for co-firing of coal or other fossil fuels and biomass.

This has not only upset other wood users worried about the impact on product prices, but also Fergus Ewing, the Scottish energy minister, who fears Britain becoming dependent on foreign imports.

"Both oil and gas prices have shown us the importance of a secure local supply, and if we rely too heavily on imported timber there is a risk of energy security problems in future," he argues.

Companies such as RWE are involved in switching the Tilbury coal-fired power station to biomass and is open about its plans to bring in all the fuel from America.

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[biofuelwatch] Wood trading exchange stokes green energy row

2011-12-28T13:07:00.000-08:00

Wood trading exchange stokes green energy row

New exchange launches in Netherlands amid growing row about wisdom of burning more wood to generate electricity

Terry Macalister
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 December 2011 15.11 GMT
Article history

Oil, gold and even pork bellies have been traded on commodity markets for many years, but traders are now able to buy and sell industrial wood pellets via an electronic market place for the first time.
The APX-ENDEX exchange in the Netherlands has launched green energy contracts at a critical moment, when demand for biomass is soaring, but critics argue that burning wood to generate electricity causes as many problems as it solves.
Traditional power stations such as Drax in North Yorkshire are increasingly switching to burning wood instead of coal to reduce carbon emissions and an international trade in wood pellets is developing.
APX has developed the contracts in co-operation with Port of Rotterdam, which has seen a big increase in the amount of wood being brought into the docks to feed biomass plants across Europe. The port – the biggest in Europe – says it expects to be handling 2-3m tonnes annually by 2025 as imports from places such as Canada and Russia soar.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/28/wood-trading-exchange-green-energy

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[biofuelwatch] Cellulosic Biofuels Fall Short-Wall St. J.

2011-12-28T07:17:00.001-08:00

Begin forwarded message:

Wall St. Journal
BUSINESS
DECEMBER 28, 2011

New Forms of Biofuel Fall Short
By RYAN TRACY
Hopes for a surge in production of alternative biofuels are falling flat, and the U.S. expects to continue to rely on corn- and sugarcane-based ethanol to meet a national mandate for renewable fuels in 2012.
The Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday that a tiny fraction—less than one-tenth of 1%—of renewable fuels required to be used in the U.S. next year will come from cellulosic biofuel, based on projected production volumes, despite a congressional target that the fuel made from plant stalks and other inedible materials account for more than 3% of the total.
The agency sets volume requirements for renewable fuels every year to implement a 2007 law that requires refiners to use increasing amounts of renewable fuels in gasoline.
Cellulosic fuel, which can be made from plant waste such as corncobs, is still far from being able to meet volume mandates laid out by Congress, the EPA said Tuesday, confirming a draft analysis it had published earlier this year. Instead, the agency will require refiners to use other types of advanced biofuels, including sugarcane ethanol, to meet the national standard.
The EPA said it would set the required volume of cellulosic fuel at 8.65 million gallons for 2012. Congress had set a goal of using 500 million gallons next year, on the way to 16 billion gallons in 2022. The EPA has the option to cut the cellulosic-fuel target based on industry capacity to produce the more advanced fuels.
Although the EPA set the requirement well below Congress's goal, its decision still irked refiners. Companies will have to buy credits from the EPA if they can't find enough cellulosic ethanol to purchase—even though the fuel may not be available. "The [EPA's] cellulosic number is still conjecture-based fantasy," said Stephen Brown, vice president for government affairs for refiner Tesoro Corp.
The credits cost about $1.20 per gallon, according to Charles Drevna, president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association. "Once again, refiners are being ordered to use a substance that is not being produced in commercial quantities—cellulosic ethanol—and are being required to pay millions of dollars for failing to use this nonexistent substance. This makes no sense," he said.
Brooke Coleman, executive director of the Advanced Ethanol Council, which represents advanced-biofuel companies, said Congress built flexibility into the mandate because "there was always a chance" the industry wouldn't meet the schedule.
"It shouldn't surprise anyone with the state of the economy, the state of the financial world, the state of the banks…that there are delays in implementation of new technologies," Mr. Coleman said. He argued that financing for more cellulosic-biofuel capacity would come as long as the renewable-fuels standard remains in place.
Overall, the 2007 law says the U.S. must use 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels per year by 2022, including 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuel. According to a National Academy of Sciences report published this year, the latter target won't be met "unless innovative technologies are developed that unexpectedly improve the cellulosic biofuels production process." Refiners are pushing for Congress to make changes to the mandate.

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[biofuelwatch] Making cellulosic biofuels out of wood chips and grass just loses money

2011-12-21T17:10:00.001-08:00

One of the possible sources of so-called "sustainable" biofuels for aviation is cellulosic biofuel – derived from plant material like wood chips, woody waste or various grasses. Several companies have been given large government grants in the USA to work on this, but it has proved to be too costly and fraught with problems. Tar production in the equipment is a problem that has proved hard to solve, especially at scale. One company has now failed and had to auction off its assets. Another is turning to corn (= maize) as that can make money, though the realise it competes with food and so affects food prices.

------

To Survive, Some Biofuels Companies Give Up on Biofuels
----Companies such as Gevo hope to become profitable by turning corn into chemicals.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2011
BY KEVIN BULLIS

Gevo, a prominent advanced-biofuels company that has received millions in U.S. government funding to develop fuels made from cellulosic sources such as grass and wood chips, is finding that it can't use these materials if it hopes to survive. Instead, it's going to use corn, a common source for conventional biofuels. What's more, most of the product from its first facility will be used for chemicals rather than fuel.

As the difficulty of producing cellulosic biofuels cheaply becomes apparent, a growing number of advanced-biofuels companies are finding it necessary to take creative approaches to their business, even though that means abandoning some of their green credentials, at least temporarily, and focusing on markets that won't have a major impact on oil imports. This is hardly the outcome the government hoped for when it announced cellulosic-biofuels mandates, R&D funding, and other incentives in recent years.

Cellulosic biofuels still cost much more to produce than either corn ethanol or gasoline. One reason is that startups have had trouble raising enough money to build the large-scale commercial plants needed to lower costs. That's in part because their technology is unproven, and in part because there's no guaranteed market for cellulosic biofuels yet.

Additionally, government mandates that were meant to help create a market for cellulosic biofuels have so far been ineffective; it's typically cheaper for the fuel providers affected by the mandate to purchase credits rather than biofuels. And finally, supply chains for cellulosic materials aren't yet well developed, so companies face a challenge when they try to lock in reliable access to them.

Gevo's strategy addresses all these problems. Besides relying on corn in order to overcome supply challenges, the company is reducing capital costs by retrofitting existing corn ethanol plants rather than building new ones; the retrofit of the first plant, in Luverne, Minnesota, will cost about $40 million, a fraction of the hundreds of millions it costs to build a new plant. And rather than making ethanol, Gevo is making butanol, which can command a higher price—especially for use as a feedstock for the chemical industry. Gevo expects that it can make butanol from corn—a readily available feedstock—for significantly less than it costs to make it from petroleum.

Gevo plans to start operations at Luverne within the next six months or so and hopes to produce 17 million gallons of butanol per year there. Most of it is destined for Sasol Chemical Industries, which will sell the butanol to make chemicals.

Butanol can be converted into a wide range of chemicals for making plastics and other products that are now made with oil. Gevo already has an agreement with a major maker of synthetic rubber, and last week it announced a partnership with Coca-Cola to develop plastic bottles made entirely from plants.

Gevo is not entirely abandoning the fuels market, however. It has an agreement with a distributor that can sell the butanol for use in small engines and marine engines, two applications where ethanol doesn't work well. It's also making 11,000 gallons of jet fuel from its butanol for the U.S. Air Force, which wants to test it for use in planes. That contract will cover the cost of a 10,000-gallon-per-month jet fuel demonstration plant, says Pat Gruber, Gevo's CEO.

The use of corn for fuels and chemicals is controversial, in part because growing and processing corn releases significant amounts of greenhouse gas, and in part because using corn for fuel may affect food markets.

Gruber says the impact on food supplies and prices is mitigated by the fact that the protein in corn is still available for use in animal feed. He even makes the case that using the sugar from corn to make fuel rather than soft drinks could help the obesity problem in the United States.

"Suppose we're in a world where we're making huge quantities of fuels and displacing petroleum. We could come to the point where we're running in a conflict of food versus fuel," he says. "We should use only excess carbohydrates to make fuels." Even so, eventually the company plans to use nonfood sources. "The feedstock in the U.S. right now is corn starch," he says. "That's the right feedstock for us. In the future it will be cellulosics."

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/39371/

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[biofuelwatch] Indonesia grants exemption from logging moratorium for 3.6m ha of forest

2011-12-21T11:58:00.000-08:00

http://news.mongabay.com/2011/1221-trip_moratorium_indonesia.html

Indonesia grants exemption from logging moratorium for 3.6m ha of forest

Rhett A. Butler
December 21, 2011

Indonesia exempted 3.6 million hectares of forests and peatlands from protected status under its two-year moratorium on forest concessions, according to a revised version of its moratorium map released near the end of climate talks in Durban.

The new Indicative Map includes 10.7 million hectares of peatlands, down from 15.5 million hectares in the previous version of the map that defines areas off-limits for new concessions. Some 1.2 million hectares of previously unprotected "primary forest" has been added to the moratorium area, resulted in a net decline of 3.6 million hectares under the moratorium, according toanalysis by Daemeter Consulting, an Indonesia-based forestry consultancy.

Daemeter says some of the changes appear to reflect the "inclusion of pre-existing licenses not accounted for previously in the original map". Most of the reclassified area is oil palm concessions on peatlands.

Under its self-imposed moratorium, Indonesia permits the Ministry of Forestry to revise the Indicative Map based on field evaluations. Daemeter says further reduction in moratorium area "is expected in future six-monthly revisions as increasing numbers of pre-existing licenses are registered".

The changes partly reflect the chaotic state of Indonesia's concession allocation system. Oil palm plantations are typically granted by local authorities, rather than the central government, making accounting more difficult than for timber concessions allocated by the Ministry of Forestry.

But Elfian Effendi of Greenomics said business interests may also be a factor.

A large portion of the remaining Tripa peat swamp forests photographed in August 2008. In the foreground are planted and unplanted oil palm blocks, with further blocks being drained before clearing. These blocks have now already been cleared. Image courtesy of Tim Koalisi Penyelematan Rawa Tripa.

"Forestry law and regulations in Indonesia are primarily designed to accommodate business interests, rather than accommodate the interests of our forests and forest communities," Effendi told mongabay.com via email.

Indonesia's forest moratorium is part of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's 7/26 initiative, which targets 7 percent annual economic growth and a 26 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 relative to business-as-usual. Reducing deforestation and peatlands degradation is the centerpiece of his push toward low carbon development.

However the president's efforts have been fiercely opposed by politically-powerful interests in the forestry sector, which have lined up behind the Ministry of Forestry and other agencies against Yudhoyono's REDD+ Task Force, the agency charged with reforming the country's forest management practices and institutions. These interests successfully weakened the moratorium, which was originally supposed to include all forests but now has gaping loopholes and only applies to "primary forests" and peatlands. Pre-existing concessions in peatlands and old-growth forests are exempted.

Trouble in Tripa

The location of the Tripa peat swamps (circled) on the west coast of Aceh province, northern Sumatra, showing rivers, forest cover in 1990, peat, and district boundaries. Tripa is the site of a controversial new oil palm plantation that has could put Aceh's governor in prison. Image courtesy of Tim Koalisi Penyelematan Rawa Tripa, a coalition of community groups seeking legal action against the governor.

The new revision however does not let Aceh Province's "green" governor off-the-hook for an oil palm plantation slated for development in the heart of Tripa peat swamp, an area that has the highest concentration of Sumatran orangutans. While the new Indicative Map shows an exemption for the 1,600-hectare plantation under the moratorium, groups contesting the development say it violates other regulations, including at least two laws and a prior commitment by Aceh Governor Irwandi Yusuf to impose his own moratorium in the province.

"The criminal report submitted to the Criminal Investigation Office at Police Headquarters is based on the facts and the consideration that the issuance of this particular license contradicts Government Regulation PP. No 26/2008 on the National Spatial Plan. Based on the PP No 10/2008, the Leuser Ecosystem is designated as a protected area with the status of a National Strategic Area. Therefore, issuance of oil palm plantations that are located within the Leuser Ecosystem and peat swamp areas is clearly a criminal act," said Kamaruddin, a lawyer representing the Coalition of Communities Concerned for Tripa, a group that is suing the governor for abuse of power. The coalition says Governor Irwandi could face up to five years in prison if found guilty of the charges.

The controversy surrounding the Tripa permit caught some by surprise Irwandi has been a champion of forest conservation in Aceh and is seen as a leader of efforts to link climate finance to forest protection through the Governors' Climate and Forests initiative. But as Agus Purnomo and Yani Saloh, special advisers to President Yudhoyono on climate change, recently noted in an editorial inThe Jakarta Globe, international financial support for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) programs has been slow to materialize on the ground in Indonesia.

"The province of Aceh has had a moratorium on logging for more than four years, but has still received no REDD money to compensate for its efforts," they wrote.

Northern section of the new concession plotted on a time series of satellite images (Spot 5: 29/1/06; Landsat 7: 21/1/10 and 20/10/20) showing damage to the area before the concession permit was ever issued. The purple star on the right hand image are orangutan nests photographed on 11/11/11. Red flames with yellow border are fire hot spots in 2011, red flames with black borders are those in 2009 and 2010, and the small red dots are fire events 2001 to 2008.

The 2 original concession areas of PT Kallista Alam (shown in pink hatching) and "new" concession (in red) in the Tripa peat swamps, on a 2006 satellite. Images and captions contained in Tripa Truths, a report produced for Tim Koalisi Penyelematan Rawa Tripa.

CITATIONS:

Wells, P.L., N. Franklin and G.D. Paoli (2011) Preliminary Observations on the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry Decree SK.7416/Menhut-VII/IPSDH/2011: The first revision of the Indicative Maps Concerning the Suspension of New Licenses for Forest and Peatland Utilisation. Published by Daemeter Consulting, Bogor, Indonesia. (Available for download at www.daemeter.org)
Tim Koalisi Penyelematan Rawa Tripa (2011)Tripa Truths[PDF].
Purnomo, A and Saloh, Y. (2011) Running Out of Time, Again.The Jakarta Globe. December 19, 2011

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Nicaragua: Video about the Chronic Kidney Disease epidemic

2011-12-20T14:13:00.001-08:00

"Throughout the Pacific lowlands of Central America a epidemic of unknown origin is disproportionately affecting sugar cane workers. There is no sufficient medical care available and the disease is a death sentence that cuts workers off from the ability to provide for their already struggling families."

See here for a short video about the epidemic, produced by the La Isla Foundation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c3kNNqfBDQ&feature=youtu.be

Small success for Stop Burning Our Trees campaign against power station subsid

2011-12-20T03:34:00.001-08:00

http://www.environmenttimes.co.uk/news_detail.aspx?news_id=1548

Small success for Stop Burning Our Trees campaign against power station subsidy

A month long campaign Stop Burning Our Trees has had a small success in attempting to make the UK Government change its policy of subsidising the burning of Britain's home grown trees in large scale power stations. The group believe such an action puts in jeopardy domestic wood processing, will drive up carbon emissions, and push up the cost of everyday wood-based products.

Stop Burning Our Wood CampaignThe Stop Burning Our Trees campaign has welcomed the Committee on Climate Change's key recommendation this month that "the use of woody biomass in construction (rather than energy use) should be given a high priority". The report also recommends subsidies should be removed from new large scale wood fired electricity plants.

The Stop Buring Our Wood campaign is also pleased that an MP has ignited the debate on subsidies for burning trees by calling on the government to protect jobs and the environment by reassessing the role of wood in the UK's energy plans.

The Rt Hon Anne McGuire MP, the Member of Parliament for Stirling in Scotland, spoke out on the level of subsidies available to energy companies for burning wood in biomass power stations recently at Westminster, and asked Minister of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change Charles Hendry to take on board the plight of industries affected by the issue.

The wood panel industry provides vital employment in rural communities and is the biggest recycler of wood in the country. The Norbord plant in Anne's Stirling constituency alone provides 250 jobs, without considering those employed at other points along the supply chain.

Anne McGuire said: "Incentivising biomass energy generation is already having serious ramifications on our forest industries. Through the Renewables Obligation, the Government continues to offer substantial subsidies as part of a scheme which is distorting the UK wood market. As a result, the valuable forest industries are being irreparably damaged as they are priced out of the wood market.

"Using wood to generate electricity is a very inefficient use of a valuable resource. It damages the environment, it is one of the least efficient electricity generation processes, it increases carbon emissions, and it obliterates the productive UK industries that use and recycle wood thereby locking carbon into construction and furniture products. All the while this is going to cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds.

Norbord visit by Anne McGuire MP"It is regrettable that the Minister has not yet had time to meet with those industries that are being so negatively affected by this policy, and I hope he will agree to meet them in the near future."

The Stop Burning Our Trees campaign has been brought together companies small and large affected by the issue to try and persuade the government there is a need to adjust the subsidies now before the economic and environmental impact is too great.

The SBOT campaign aims to collect 100,000 signatures to enable a debate to be raised in the House of Commons about the problems caused by the subsidy for burning UK tress in biomass power stations, and has been asking members of the public to sign the petition online at www.stopburningourtrees.org.

SBOT say this burning of trees in power stations releases all their stored carbon in one go and prevents them being made into useful things like tables, wardrobes, kitchens and flooring. Wood products like these `lock-in' carbon, often for decades.

Although the campign group agree that burning wood is greener than burning coal in the long term, they think that power stations should only burn wood that has no other use and would otherwise go to landfill, rather than trees straight from Britain's forests.

They point out that right now UK householders are paying for this subsidy via their electricity bills.

Stop Burning Our Wood CampaignThe SBOT campaign is pushing for the introduction of measures that recognise the limited nature and competing interests for the domestic wood resource, and to get across to Government that, for energy use, the sustainable option for this resource is to encourage small scale heat or efficient heat and power plant. The campaigners believe the carbon storage potential of wood and wood-based products isn't being sufficiently recognised within Government policy, and want to draw attention to the emission abatement potential that would be accrued if the wood resource was increased.

With utility bills continuing to soar at the same rate as energy companies profits, and wood prices having been driven up by 55.1% over the past the past five years, many believe that, at current levels, subsidies to large scale electricity generators will distort the market so much that wood processing businesses are in serious danger of being put out of business, threatening thousands of jobs.

The Wood Panel Industries Federation, which represents chipboard, MDF and OSB producers, is backing the Stop Burning Our Trees campaign.

Stop Burning Our Wood CampaignAlastair Kerr of the Wood Panel Industries Federation said: "In addition to the economic arguments, we have also calculated that CO2 emissions could actually increase by six million tonnes each year if the government continues to put resources into biomass power stations to the point where our industry is displaced, effectively cancelling out any environmental benefits into the bargain. The domestic wood resource is of insufficient size to cope with the demands of large scale electricity, but unless Government amends its policy, these energy generators will destabilise the domestic wood market and threaten any significant new investment into wood processing in the UK."

Kerr added, "The time for effective action is running out, so we are appealing to a wider audience and we are asking the general public to question whether it's better in the first instance to burn wood inefficiently and lose all the benefits in an instant or to make something from it and, in doing so, maximise the economic and carbon benefits of this unique resource."

The UK Government is currently consulting on the Renewables Obligation Banding Review until 12th January 2012.

LINKS
Stop Burning our Trees www.stopburningourtrees.org
Committee on Climate Change - Bioenergy Review www.theccc.org.uk/reports/bioenergy-review
Department of Energy and Climate Change - consulting on the Renewables Obligation Banding Review www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/consultations
Wood Panel Industries Federation www.wpif.org.uk
Rt Hon Anne McGuire MP, Member of Parliament for Stirling www.annemcguiremp.org.uk

Posted on Environment Times Online on 15th December 2011.

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Indonesia to investigate beheadings allegedly conducted by palm oil security

2011-12-19T01:41:00.001-08:00

http://news.mongabay.com/2011/1217-lampung_beheading.html

Indonesia to investigate beheadings allegedly conducted by palm oil security forces

December 17, 2011

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has ordered an investigation into a grisly beheading of two men alleged by security forces hired to defend an oil palm plantation, reports The Jakarta Post.

Videotapes of the beheading of two farmers were shown to a human rights commission in parliament this week. The incident was said to have occurred earlier this year in Mesuji regency, near the border of Lampung and South Sumatra provinces, in the midst of an ongoing land dispute between PT Silva Inhutani Lampung, a company that owns rubber and oil palm plantations, and a local community. Violence also occurred between villagers and PT Sumber Wangi Alam, another palm oil producer.

The Jakarta Post described the videos:
In one video, obtained by The Jakarta Post on Thursday, a man was shown being beheaded by an unidentified man dressed in black. The assailants were seen toting rifles and wearing black masks.

In the second video, a headless corpse was seen hanging from a pole while several other mutilated bodies were seen strewn on the ground.
Bob Hasan, a lawyer for the Mesuji community, said that the beheading was intended to intimidate other villagers.

"They intentionally put the heads in an open space to terrorize local farmers," Hasan was quoted as saying by The Jakarta Post.

Retired Major General Saurip Kadi, a member of an advocacy team for the community, said at least 32 villagers had been killed in the conflict since 2008.

The circumstances surrounding the violence remain "murky", but the Associated Press reports that the conflict arose from expansion of plantations in Mesuji, which drove thousands of people from their homes and the lands they traditionally used, according to Ifdhal Kasim, the director of the National Commission on Human Rights.
Facing protests, one of the companies formed an integrated security team, consisting of civilian guards, members of an elite police unit and military troops to protect their plantation...

.... Farmers also appeared to have killed at least five plantation workers and security guards in retaliation for the beheadings.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Friday he had sent officials from the Ministry of Security and the national police to investigate the killings.

Land conflict between plantation companies and local communities is rife in Indonesia. Disputes often arise from the government's failure to recognize claims to lands traditionally used by villagers. The government may grant these lands to companies for pulp and paper, timber, and oil palm plantations, pitting these firms, and the security forces they hire, against local people.

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La Via Campesina press release on Durban

2011-12-16T00:45:00.001-08:00

La Via Campesina press release on Durban

Farmers Condemn the Durban Platform: Sustainable peasant agriculture is the genuine solution to climate change

(Jakarta, 16 December 2011) La Via Campesina, the global movement of peasants, small-scale and agricultural family farmers, denounces the attempts of the largest carbon emitters to further escape their historic responsibility to make real emission cuts and push for more false and market based solutions to the climate crisis. This Durban Platform, the latest climate deal struck at the UNFCCC 17^th Conference of Parties in Durban, allows the polluters to get away with even more polluting while securing their market mechanisms.

The UNFCCC has hailed the Durban Platform as a breakthrough and a way forward in the fight against climate change. But what is there to hail as closer inspection shows that there are no commitments for real emission cuts from the developed countries. Others have said this was a success as it saved the Kyoto Protocol but in fact, the only thing that was saved are the market mechanisms of the Protocol. The second commitment period was not agreed and in fact postponed to next year but all the while, secured that market mechanisms would continue to be operational. The Green Climate Fund, which will be controlled by the World Bank if ever funded by industrialized countries (clearly unconcerned about their historical debt with the global south), is likely to be a source of financing false solutions in the most impacted countries.

Most disturbing of all from Durban is the opening of the doors for agriculture to be included in the carbon markets. Agriculture, which has since recently, not been included in the negotiations, will now be discussed in subsequent negotiations and the writing on the wall tells us that these would be the initial steps for agriculture to be included in carbon markets. The proliferation of side events on "climate smart agriculture" promoted by the agro-industry showed the high agribusiness interest to tap this new bonanza. La Via Campesina strongly denounces this move and reiterates its call to keep agriculture out of carbon markets as agriculture should not be treated as a mere carbon sink and that carbon accounting should not determine agricultural policy.

Peasant based agro-ecological agriculture, what La Via Campesina continues to promote and practice through its members in several countries around the world, is the best way to cool down the planet. La Via Campesina promotes peasant agriculture as the way to feed people with healthy food and at the same time to guarantee a balance in the ecosystem and the farms. The logic of carbon markets and trading run counter to the system of agroecology and should not be allowed to enter into agriculture.

We are now at the worst moment for agriculture, small farmers and for nature. The impacts of climate change are steadily worsening, leading to harvest failures, destruction of habitats and homes, hunger and famine and loss of lives. The future of humanity and the planet is in critical danger and if these false solutions push through, it will be a catastrophe for nature, future generations and the whole planet.

Now, more than ever, it is even more urgent for the demands and proposals from the Cochabambapeople's agreement to be pushed forward.

Read our declaration: La Via Campesina Declaration in Durban

See video coverage in English, in the following links:

Elizabet Mpofu: Not One Step Back

Chavannes Jean-Baptiste: Agribusiness is the Problem

La Via Campesina takes part in the Global Day of Action

Thousands March at U.N. Climate Summit in Durban to Demand Climate Justice

Vea vídeos sobre La Vía Campesina en Durban, en español/portugués:

Vídeo: Campesinos llegan a Durban a reclamar por cambio climático

Alberto Gomez en Durban: Tenemos que estar

A Via Campesina no Dia de Ação Global pela Justiça Climática

Rush for land a wake-up call : 40% for biofuels

2011-12-15T09:30:00.001-08:00

... Over the last year a number of reports have focused on cases of foreign investors "grabbing" large tracts of land in poor African countries to grow cheap food for their own populations. But, according to a study published by the ILC on Wednesday, rich national investors play a much larger role than previously thought, food is not the main focus of these deals, and African governments are not the only ones signing away large tracts of land.

Data collected by researchers show that around 40% of land acquired over the last decade is intended for biofuel production. In comparison, 25% is for food crops and another 27% for mining, tourism, industry and forestry. But the focus of land deals also varies by region: In Africa, 66% of land deals cross-referenced by researchers are intended for biofuel production, compared with 15% for food crops. Meanwhile, food production seems more significant in Latin America (27%), along with mineral extraction (23%). ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/dec/14/rush-for-land-gobal-south

Cellulosic ethanol - a continued waste of public money

2011-12-15T06:59:00.001-08:00

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204012004577072470158115782.html

Why first generation biofuels are here for the long haul...

The Cellulosic Ethanol Debacle

Congress mandated purchase of 250 million gallons in 2011. Actual production: 6.6 million..

'We'll fund additional research in cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn but from wood chips and stalks or switch grass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive within six years."

—George W. Bush, 2006 State of the Union address

Years before the Obama Administration dumped $70 billion into solar and wind energy and battery operated cars, and long before anyone heard of Solyndra, President Bush launched his own version of a green energy revolution. The future he saw was biofuels. In addition to showering billions of dollars on corn ethanol, Mr. Bush assured the nation that by 2012 cars and trucks could be powered by cellulosic fuels from switch grass and other plant life.

To launch this wonder-fuel industry, the feds under Mr. Bush and President Obama have pumped at least $1.5 billion of grants and loan subsidies to fledgling producers. Mr. Bush signed an energy bill in 2007 that established a tax credit of $1.01 per gallon produced.

Most important, the Nancy Pelosi Congress passed and Mr. Bush signed a law imposing mandates on oil companies to blend cellulosic fuel into conventional gasoline. This guaranteed producers a market. In 2010 the mandate was 100 million barrels, rising to 250 million in 2011 and 500 million in 2012. By the end of this decade the requirements leap to 10.5 billion gallons a year.

When these mandates were established, no companies produced commercially viable cellulosic fuel. But the dream was: If you mandate and subsidize it, someone will build it.

Guess what? Nobody has. Despite the taxpayer enticements, this year cellulosic fuel production won't be 250 million or even 25 million gallons. Last year the Environmental Protection Agency, which has the authority to revise the mandates, quietly reduced the 2011 requirement by 243.4 million gallons to a mere 6.6 million. Some critics suggest that even much of that 6.6 million isn't true cellulosic fuel.

The EPA has already announced that the 2012 mandate of 500 million gallons is unattainable, so it is again expected to lower the mandate to fewer than 12 million gallons for next year.

One reason the mandates can't be met is the half-dozen or so companies that received the first round of subsidies to produce cellulosic fuel never got off the ground. Some 70 million gallons, or 70% of the cellulosic supply to meet the 2010 mandate, was supposed to come from Alabama-based Cello Energy. Incredibly, those projections were made before Cello had built its plant to produce the fuel and before the technology was proven to work.

In 2009 a jury in a civil fraud case ruled that Cello had lied about how much cellulosic fuel it could produce. Some of the fuel that Cello showed to investors was derived from petroleum, not plants. The firm produced little biofuel and in October 2010 it declared bankruptcy.

It gets worse. Because there was no cellulosic fuel available, oil companies have had to purchase "waiver credits"—for failing to comply with a mandate to buy a product that doesn't exist. In 2010 and this year, the EPA has forced oil companies to pay about $10 million for these credits. Since these costs are eventually passed on to consumers, the biofuels mandate is an invisible tax paid at the gas pump.

And for what? An October 2011 report on biofuels by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the mandates "may be an ineffective way to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions." Because production is so low, advanced cellulosic fuels also do very little to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil. The report notes that "currently, no commercially viable biorefineries exist for converting cellulosic biomass to fuel."

Why? Because of what the National Academy report calls "the high cost of producing cellulosic biofuels compared with petroleum-based fuels, and uncertainties in future biofuel markets." The report does say that technological breakthroughs could make cellulosic fuels cost-competitive in the future, but that same leap of faith has driven subsidies to alternative energy for 40 years.

Still, the subsidies roll on. In August 2011 the Obama Administration funded a $510 million program in partnership with the Navy to produce advanced biofuels for the military. In September the feds loaned $134 million to Abengoa Bioenergy to build a cellulosic plant in Kansas. The optimistic forecast is that this plant will produce about 23 million barrels a year—a fraction of what Washington promised in 2006. In September the Department of Energy provided POET, which advertises itself as the "world's largest ethanol producer," a $105 million loan guarantee for cellulosic.

To recap: Congress subsidized a product that didn't exist, mandated its purchase though it still didn't exist, is punishing oil companies for not buying the product that doesn't exist, and is now doubling down on the subsidies in the hope that someday it might exist. We'd call this the march of folly, but that's unfair to fools.

Who Will Control the Green Economy?

2011-12-15T01:09:00.001-08:00

Who Will Control the Green Economy?

New ETC Group report on Corporate Concentration in the Life Industries

From the UN Rio+20 preparatory meetings in New York, ETC Group today launches Who Will Control the Green Economy? The 60-page report connects the dots between the climate and oil crises, new technologies and corporate power. The report warns that the world's largest companies are riding the coattails of the "Green Economy" while gearing up for their boldest coup to-date – not just by making strategic acquisitions and tapping new markets, but also by penetrating new industrial sectors.

DuPont, for example, already the world's second largest seed company and sixth largest company in both pesticides and chemicals, is now a powerhouse in plant-based materials, energy and food ingredients. DuPont's business plan is not unique. Other major players in seeds, pesticides, chemicals and food – including Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, BASF and Unilever – are also making strategic investments in risky technologies and forming R&D collaborations in hopes of turning plant biomass into all kinds of high value products – and profit.

Since the turn of the millennium, the vision of a bio-based economy has been taking shape; with its promise to solve the problems of Peak Oil and climate change and to usher in an era of sustainable development, it quickly acquired a patina of `green.' New technologies, primarily synthetic biology or extreme genetic engineering, enabled by advanced bioinformatics and genomics, are the bioeconomy's engine while agricultural feedstock is its fuel.

While seductive, the new green techno-fixes are dangerous because they will spur even greater convergence and concentration of corporate power and unleash privately owned technologies into communities that have not been consulted about – or prepared for – their impacts. If the "Green Economy" is imposed without full intergovernmental debate and extensive involvement from peoples' organizations and civil society, the Earth Summit to take place in Rio de Janeiro 20-22 June 2012 risks becoming the biggest Earth Grab in more than 500 years.

ETC Group's Kathy Jo Wetter explains: "The goal is not to reject the green economy or technologies, but these are tools that must be guided by strong social policies. Agenda 21 called for technology assessment back in 1992 and the need for such a precautionary tool, that includes strict oversight of corporate concentration, is now more urgent than ever before."

Alberto Gomez, of La Via Campesina, adds: "Corporate control over our food system threatens peasant farmers around the world. We already produce 70% of the world's food, but our ability to do so in an agro-ecological way is being undermined by the kind of corporate control this report documents."

Who Will Control the Green Economy? will be launched at the Rio+20 Intersessional meeting taking place in New York on December 15-16. Kathy Jo Wetter, one of the report's researchers, will present the findings on Thursday, 15 December 2012, at 7 pm at a side-event on Agriculture at Rio+20, in Conference Room 6, North Lawn Building at the UN Headquarters. Alberto Gomez will also speak at this event.

Who will control the Green Economy? is available in English (http://www.etcgroup.org/en/node/5296), Spanish (http://www.etcgroup.org/es/node/5298) and will soon be available in French.

What you will find in the

'Who Will Control the Green Economy?' Report – Dec 2011

Ø Naming The Green Economy's "One Percent"

'Who Will Control the Green Economy?' provides hard data on the largest and most powerful corporate players controlling 25 sectors of the 'real economy'. This is the only freely available report to assemble top 10 listings of companies (by market share) from 18 major economic sectors relevant to the Green Economy. These lists include the top 10 players in Water, Energy, Seeds, Fishing and Aquaculture, Food Retail and Processing, Chemicals, Fertilizer, Pesticides, Mining, Pharmaceuticals, Biotech, the Grain Trade and more. The report also identifies the leading players in a handful of new and emerging industrial sectors including Synthetic Biology, Big Data, Seaweed and Algae production and Livestock Genetics (pp.1-2).

Ø Corporate Concentration Unchecked

ETC Group has been monitoring corporate ownership trends for 30 years and the trendline is remaining steady: more monopoly everywhere. For example the top 10 multinational seed companies now control 73% of the world's commercial seed market, up from 37% in 1995 (p. 22). The worlds 10 biggest pesticide firms now control a whopping 90% of the global 44 billion dollar pesticide market (p.25). 10 companies control 76% of animal pharmaceutical sales (p.34). 10 animal feed companies control 52% of the global animal feed market (p.33), 10 chemical firms account for 40% of the chemical market (p.11), 10 forestry companies control 40% of the forestry market (p. 31), 10 mining companies control a third of the mining market (p. 29) and the top ten energy companies control a quarter of the energy market (p.10).

Ø Forget Windmills, Think Grain Mills

The 'Green Economy' may evoke iconic images of solar panels and wind turbines but this is not actually where corporate activity is focusing. While non-hydro and non-nuclear 'renewable' energy is only a thin sliver (1.8%) of global energy consumption - almost all of this consists of harvesting and burning biomass for energy and fuels and now chemicals. This report shows how the major corporate realignments in the new 'Green Economy' are happening around plant biomass (p.8-12, 18-21).

Ø New `Green' Oligopolies

This report uncovers new corporate convergences across diverse industry sectors as large players position themselves to dominate the Green Economy. A case in point is the DuPont company - the world's 2nd largest seed company, 6th largest chemical company and 6th largest pesticide company which is now emerging as a major player in biotech, biofuels and bioplastics, synthetic biology, seaweeds, ingredients and enzymes while partnering with the worlds third largest energy company BP (pp. ii-iii).

Ø Food Dollars Trump Energy Dollars

Conventional wisdom says the size of the global energy market weighs in at $7 trillion and dwarfs every other economic sector. According to our research, however, the global grocery market ekes out ahead of energy – even when government subsidies paid to producers for energy and agriculture are taken into account (p.37).

Ø Synthetic Biology's Meteoric Rise

In the early 1990's the early commercialization of genetic engineering technologies drove massive reorganization of the seed, agrochemicals and pharmaceutical sectors and the emergence of 'life science' giants such as Monsanto and Novartis. Today the new technologies of Synthetic Biology are spurring another frenzy of mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures around the biomass economy drawing large energy and chemical players such as Dow, DuPont, BP, Shell, Exxon, Chevron and Total into new alliances with grain, forestry and seed giants such as Monsanto, Cargill, Bunge, Weyerhaeuser and ADM. At the heart of these new alliances are surprisingly new Synthetic Biology companies such as Life Technologies Inc, Amyris, Solazyme and Evolva – all rapidly being promoted to significant roles in the global food, energy, pharma and chemicals sectors (pp.8-12).

Ø Controlling the Blue Economy too.

Biomass found in oceans and aquatic ecosystems accounts for 71% of the planet's surface area. That's why energy and chemical corporations such as Du Pont, Statoil , DSM, Exxon, Mitsubishi, Monsanto , Chevron and shipping giant Stolt Nielsen are looking to the wild, wet frontier for new sugars and oils to fuel the bio-based economy, proposing the large-scale exploitation of algae, seaweed, fish and all the aquatic biomass found in lakes, rivers and coastal estuaries. (Pp. 18-21)

"The inevitability of traceability in the oil and gas sector"

2011-12-14T10:19:00.000-08:00

I don't know what effect being able to trace oil derived from tar sands, and avoid it, would have on biofuels.
??
=======================

In many sectors, such as consumer goods, food, etc, products have to be traceable and show their country of origin. Attention is now turning to oil and gas. With the current controversy in the UK over the European fuel quality regulation there will be growing demand for greater transparency. There are already some companies that have pledged to avoid using unconventional oil from oil sands. Pressure to disclose is increasing and the technology to trace crude oil back to its origin is emerging.

======

Companies are going to need to develop mechanisms to ensure products can be traced and sourced with sustainability in mind

Posted by Geoff Lye for the Guardian Professional Network

14 December 2011 (Sustainable Business Blog)

Fast-moving industries involved in the production of consumer goods, food, apparel and precious stones have all come under pressure about the provenance of materials, components and products in their supply chains. Many companies in these sectors have responded by developing mechanisms to assure customers and consumers that products can be traced and sourced with environmental and social considerations in mind. Such traceability has reshaped expectations of corporate accountability and transparency.

Attention is now turning to oil and gas. The sector is already facing a reputational crisis following the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the WikiLeaks disclosures and recent events around the Keystone XL oil pipeline; and controversy in the UK over the European fuel quality regulation means that it is likely inevitable that there will be growing demand for greater transparency. As in other sectors, traceability will be a key feature of the rising tide of transparency and accountability, as businesses, customers and consumers become more discerning in their choice of fuel.

The growth of traceability within the industry looks set to focus on so-called "unconventional oil production", which has greater environmental and social impacts than conventional fossil fuels. The evidence is already there that the trend of traceability is playing out in the purchasing decisions of some leading businesses. Retailers such as Timberland, Walgreens,and Bed Bath & Beyond have pledged to avoid using unconventional oil derived from oil sands. The Royal Bank of Canada, often criticised for its involvement with oil sands, has recently responded to pressure by adopting more stringent social and environmental standards on its lending policy.

To date the oil and gas industry has taken a rather predictable line of defence: crude oil is fungible and traded as a commodity, and it is not practical to trace a final product back to its source. The position has been enabled by the lack of disclosure from the oil and gas companies themselves regarding the derivation of their products. But this looks set to change as non-governmental organisation campaigns gather speed, developments in science and technology unfold and regulation kicks in.

ForestEthics is helping companies trace the fuel their shipping suppliers use back to specific refineries. Players like Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth and The Pembina Institute are highlighting the damaging environmental and social consequences of unconventional oil, and are pressuring both businesses and consumers on the oil sands issue.

Newspapers such as the Financial Times have reported on the participation of BP and Shell in unconventional oil production and the resulting shareholder inquiries into these plans. High street campaigns have also been targeting retailers, especially those that trade off ethical claims.

In parallel, emerging technology is enabling the traceability of crude oil back to its origin based on the product's very specific chemical composition. The science has already been proven in the Gulf of Mexico where the chemical "fingerprinting" of oil following Deepwater Horizon, enabled investigators to determine that it indeed come from the Macondo well.

Regulatory action is another potential challenge to the sector. The European fuel quality regulation is set to designate transport fuel from tar sands as resulting in 22% more greenhouse gas emissions than from conventional fuels. According to the Guardian, this would "make suppliers, who have to reduce the emissions from their fuels by 10% by 2020 very reluctant to include in in their fuel mix". Low-carbon fuel standards are emerging in markets around the world.

The overriding risk for oil companies is that, as traceability develops through market or regulatory action, they will be caught on the back-foot, defensively attempting to minimise the reputational and financial loss that can come from investment in unconventional oil. In the worst case unconventional assets will be downgraded by investors or even entirely stranded if markets discriminate against them.

The key message is to jump before you are pushed and competitive advantage is likely to emerge for those companies that sell "oil sands free" fuels with appropriate branding and verified sourcing. Either way, oil companies and indeed all sectors, would do well to explore the issue of traceability before it emerges as a major force in customer and consumer choice.

Geoff Lye is chairman of SustainAbility. The full white paper by SustainAbility can be downloaded here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/traceability-oil-supply-chain?newsfeed=true

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Malaysian biomass programme to promote work with Europe

2011-12-14T07:23:00.001-08:00

http://www.bioenergy-news.com/index.php?/Industry-News?item_id=4368

Malaysian biomass programme to promote work with Europe
12 December 2011

Malaysia says it wants to export more biomass products to Europe under a new EU-funded deal. Currently RM300 million (€71.5 million) is exported to the region from Malaysia but the head of the EU delegation to Malaysia Vincent Piket says this estimate is only based on enquiries from Europe.

Under the initiative, 45 SMEs have been chosen to work under the EU-Malaysia Biomass Entrepreneurs Nurturing Programme which has been formed to promote long-term business and investment between the two regions.

Under the programme, training will be available for SMEs chosen that are working in the biocomposite, biofertiliser, biopellet, biocharcoal, biobriquette, biomass fibre, eco-product, biochemical, animal feed and green building material industries.

Piket says: `Investors also are interested in wood pellet production plant, biomass power plant and methane capture biogas projects.'

`The governments of EU nations and Malaysia are making good efforts in moving towards low carbon green growth. The European firms are world leaders in the ecological industry and we feel that the green technology sector is showing great potential in Malaysia.'

Representatives from 50 European companies are planning a trip to Malaysian to organise potential business deals.

`They will come to Malaysia to explore business and environmental collaborations with Malaysian biomass stakeholders, inclusive of SMEs and major biomass owners such as plantation companies and palm oil mills,' Piket adds.

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PANGEA report on biofuels and land grabbing

2011-12-13T07:04:00.001-08:00

http://www.ascension-publishing.com/BIZ/LandgrabStudy.pdf

New report from something called PANGEA, on biofuel growing and land grabbing. For the businesses and are involved in growing biofuels.

--------------
Most significant bit I can see says, in advice to investors:

4. If the costs of sustainable and fair production are not economically viable, then perhaps the project should not be carried out.
----------------------------

Exec summary says:

PANGEA considers land tenure systems in Sub-Saharan Africa to be one
of the greatest challenges underpinning the land grabbing debate. PANGEA prepared this analysis for its members in order to inform them of the enormous and often overlooked role land tenure systems play in the contentious issue of land grabbing, which is currently prevalent in developing countries and more speciﬁcally in Sub-Saharan Africa. It therefore seeks to illustrate how biofuels themselves are not at the root of the land grabbing quandary and simultaneously aims to identify steps investors, governments and civil society must take to improve the quality of land deals in these Sub-Saharan countries.

By analysing the tenure systems of three countries in distinct political regions in Sub-Saharan Africa: Ethiopia, Mali and Sierra Leone, PANGEA identiﬁed the following weaknesses that facilitate instances of land grabbing in these countries:

1. Lack of secure land rights
2. Lack of functional and consistent institutional framework
3. Lack of transparency between the various stakeholders in land deals
4. Lack of consistent community consultation
5. Lack of environmental and social impact assessments

PANGEA analysed these weaknesses and recommends that the following
steps be taken by the various stakeholders (the government, then investors and the community or civil society) in order to avoid the occurrence of land deals that may be classiﬁed as land grab:

Recommendations for Host Governments:

1. Strengthen the country's tenure system by: carrying out comprehensive land use planning; strengthening land rights via land certiﬁcation and registration; improving monitoring and enforcement of laws and investment requirements; ensuring transparency and public scrutiny of deals.

2. Ensure accountability to the people they represent

Recommendations for Investors:

1. Understand local tenure system, including its weaknesses;

2. Conduct inclusive and extensive social and environmental assessments and follow its recommendations;

3. Sign up to recognised certiﬁcation schemes to make sure product was
produced sustainably and contributed to the development of local
community;

4. If the costs of sustainable and fair production are not economically viable, then perhaps the project should not be carried out.

Recommendations for Host Communities and Civil Society

1. Work with local groups to help inform, educate and support their claims to land and to make sure they have representation;

2. Create incentives for skill transfer – legal, representative – so locals can advocate on behalf of vulnerable communities;

3. It is necessary that local communities embrace their voice and capacity to inﬂuence land deals.

==========================
and here is how Biofuels Digest sells it:

http://biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2011/12/13/the-big-land-grab-whats-at-stake-for-biofuels-and-you/

The Big Land Grab: what's at stake for biofuels, and you?

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Jonathon Porritt piece on supporting the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil.

2011-12-13T05:02:00.001-08:00

I am afraid I added this comment to it:
"This is all very well and good, as far as it goes. I can believe there are many good and clever people doing all they can to ensure that the millions and millions of tonnes/gallons of palm oil that the world uses as food are produced so called "sustainably" avoiding the worse of biodiversity and habitat loss. But this article conveniently glosses over the massive and looming problem of more palm oil being used as FUEL. Not as food. And the volumes being contemplated are vast. I am not convinced that the quantities of palm oil that would be grown to produce either fuel for power stations, or for transport, could even approach being environmentally "sustainable".

Jonathon needs to deal with this problem, and not just skirt round it."
=================================

http://www.jonathonporritt.com/blog/rspo-coming-age#comment-1259

2. 12. 2011

RSPO Coming of Age

by Jonathon Porritt

I've followed the story of the Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil pretty much from its inception ten years ago. It was high risk for all those involved at that time (particularly WWF, Unilever and the Malaysian Palm Oil Association), and it's still high risk today, ten years on.

Just by way of background, palm oil is an extremely versatile edible oil, produced mostly in Malaysia and Indonesia, used as a highly-valued raw material in many processed foods, hygiene and healthcare products, industrial feedstocks, and (albeit at a relatively low level still) liquid fuels.

It's so much more productive, in terms of yield per hectare, than any other rival product that it's a literal no-brainer that we should be doing everything in our power to ensure that every tonne of palm oil delivered into those different supply chains achieves the highest possible sustainability standards.

And that's exactly what the RSPO is all about – as I discovered recently when I was invited out to Malaysia to give the keynote address to this year's Round Table. For me, it was an astonishing experience. There were roughly 900 delegates present, including growers, smallholders, processors, retailers, trade associations, academics, consultants, politicians, lobbyists and NGOs covering every aspect of the palm oil supply chain from human rights and local economic empowerment, governance and traceability, biodiversity and ecosystem services, through to greenhouse gases and renewable energy.

The level of expertise focussed exclusively and intensely on the dynamics of sustainable palm oil was mindboggling. If intellectual firepower was all that was needed, genuinely sustainable palm oil would have been a done deal years ago. I know of no other single feedstock or commodity initiative that has created such a comprehensive process to improve standards, create markets and generate increased economic value whilst demonstrating "best practice" on both social and environmental issues.

I'm not sure the full value of this is properly recognised by people outside the charmed inner circle of the RSPO itself. A lot of NGOs that are not involved (as well as some of those that are!) remain pretty sniffy about the RSPO, with all the usual canards about unacceptable compromise and cop-out.

To be fair, there are indeed many serious problems that remain regarding the implementation of the RSPO's principals, when it comes to human rights and a host of land use and biodiversity issues. (Think orang-utan here – the poster-species for campaigners seeking to bring an end to continuing deforestation.) And there are also problems on the other side: lots of retailers and food processors in the UK and elsewhere have made bold commitments to using Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO), but have then delayed and prevaricated in the most disgraceful way even as sufficient quantities of CSPO became available.

But all these problems are being now addressed, either informally or through a formal grievance procedure.

More problematic, in my opinion, is the prevailing view amongst some (but not all) of the big palm oil companies that the continuing focus on palm oil, given all today's pressing agriculture, commodity and forestry issues, is disproportionate and downright unfair. At their most paranoid, some representatives of the industry will even surface the suggestion that those NGOs which are most hostile to continuing growth in palm oil production are somehow in the pay of their big competitors – soy, sunflower and rapeseed or whatever. Fantastical, of course, but it plays well with certain audiences.

I described this in my Lecture as "Palm Oil Exceptionalism" – the perception that palm oil has been "singled out" by sustainability zealots for special attention.

As it happens, there's some truth in this. The journey the RSPO has taken on over ten years is indeed unique. Whilst both fisheries and forest have benefitted greatly from their respective Stewardship Councils, no other globally-traded commodity feedstock has been subjected to the same scrutiny or required to meet such high standards for its basic products to qualify as "certified sustainable".

That's changing now – with the Round Table on Responsible Soy, the Better Cotton Initiative and Bon Sucro (for sugar cane) but palm oil has been out ahead for a long time, and the resulting change in the industry has been extraordinary.

Which is why I went on to suggest that now is the time to celebrate this exceptional status, rather than moaning about it. The RSPO has given the industry some very powerful first-mover advantages: shared definitions and methodologies around different sustainability issues; tried and tested stakeholder engagement processes, including impressive Social Impact Assessments; a robust financial model (each tonne of Certified Sustainable Palm Oil generates a small levy to help fund research and market development); an understanding of the nexus between land use, energy and climate change; a science-driven research programme to improve yields; a deep understanding of their markets (and consumer sensitivities) in the West as well as in China and India; and a set of resilient risk management systems to help the industry cope with some of the dramatic changes coming down the track.

Every single commodity and agricultural crop in the world will have to go through exactly the same kind re-positioning process as palm oil has done over the last ten years. As the "perfect storm" of converging sustainability pressures – high and volatile energy prices, water shortages, accelerating climate change, commodity price hikes, degradation of productive farm land, loss of biodiversity, human rights and so on – bears down upon them, many companies in those other areas will be completely unable to cope.

The RSPO therefore deserves a lot of credit for pioneering these more sustainable management practices. There may still be those who can't see the benefits of what they've been through so far, but it won't be long before people recognise that the RSPO is as much about competitiveness, resilience, and fit-for-purpose business models as it is about sustainability as such.

And what a turning point that will be.

------------------------------------

Thousands of sugar cane workers die as wealthy nations stall on solutions

2011-12-12T09:53:00.001-08:00

www.iwatchnews.org/2011/12/08/7578/thousands-sugar-cane-workers-die-wealthy-nations-stall-solutions

[Please go to the page above for a list of key findings and a slide show.]

Thousands of sugar cane workers die as wealthy nations stall on solutions

By Sasha Chavkin and Ronnie Greene, 12/12/2011

LA ISLA, Nicaragua — Maudiel Martinez is 19 years old and has a shy smile, a tangle of curly black hair and a lean, muscular build shaped by years of work in the sugarcane fields. For most of his adolescence, he was healthy and strong and spent his days chopping tall stalks of cane with his machete.

Now Martinez is suffering from a deadly disease that is devastating his community along with scores of others in Central America, where it has decimated the ranks of sugarcane workers. The same illness killed his father and his grandfather and affects all three of his older brothers.

"This disease eats our kidneys from inside us," Martinez said. "We don't want to die, and we feel grief because we already know that we're hopeless."

Martinez' illness stands at the heart of a lethal mystery — and legacy of neglect by industry and governments, including the United States, which have resisted pleas for aggressive action to spotlight the malady and find a remedy. Wealthier nations are more focused on spurring biofuels production in the region's sugarcane industry and keeping up the heavy flow of sugar to U.S. consumers and food manufacturers than the plight of those who harvest it.

Little noticed by the rest of the world, chronic kidney disease (CKD) is cutting a swath through one of the world's poorest populations, along a stretch of Central America's Pacific Coast that spans six countries and nearly 700 miles. Its victims are manual laborers, mostly sugarcane workers.

Each year from 2005 to 2009, kidney failure killed more than 2,800 men in Central America, according to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists` analysis of the latest World Health Organization data. In El Salvador and Nicaragua alone over the last two decades, the number of men dying from kidney disease has risen fivefold. Now more men are dying from the ailment than from HIV/AIDS, diabetes and leukemia combined.

"In the 21st Century, nobody should die of kidney disease," said Ramon Trabanino, a physician from El Salvador who has studied the epidemic for a decade.

The surge of kidney disease is overwhelming hospitals, depleting health budgets, and leaving a trail of widows and children in rural communities. In El Salvador, CKD is the second leading cause of death for men. In the province of Guanacaste, Costa Rica, the regional hospital had to start a home dialysis program because it was overwhelmed with so many CKD victims that it began running out of beds to treat patients with other ailments.

So many men have died in some parts of rural Nicaragua that Maudiel Martinez's community, called The Island, now is known as the Island of the Widows — La Isla de las Viudas.

At first glance, the lush community bounded by vast sugarcane fields looks like many places in Latin America: children ride bicycles over dirt roads and play alongside dogs, pigs and chickens. But now there are few men in the front yards. Indoors, framed photographs of dead husbands, fathers and brothers adorn tables and countertops. No older men converge in small groups, trading gossip and news, as one often sees in communities farther inland from the Pacific coast. Here, women struggle to make at least a little money doing odd jobs. Some are now in the sugar-cane fields they believe claimed their husbands.

"My children have suffered a lot," said Paula Chevez Ruiz, a widow from La Isla whose husband Virgilio died in 2009, leaving her to support four children on her own. When she can find customers, she sells fruit and enchiladas. "It is sad to want to give to your children, but not to have anything. Sometimes not even enough to buy a bag of salt."

Deadly enigma and a handful of researchers

In the U.S., leading causes of chronic kidney disease are diabetes and hypertension. But the ailment — leading to a progressive decline in kidney function — is typically a manageable condition that can be effectively controlled with treatment. Doctors understand its causes and cures.

In Central America, the disease's origins are more of an enigma, and more frequently lethal. Afflicted laborers in the sugar cane fields near the Pacific generally have neither diabetes nor hypertension.

Some scientists suspect that exposure to an unknown toxin, potentially on the job, may trigger onset of the disease. Researchers agree that dehydration and heat stress from strenuous labor are likely contributing factors — and they may even be causing the illness. Laborers, typically paid not by the hour or day but based on the amount they harvest, often work to the point of severe dehydration or collapse, potentially harming their kidneys with each shift.

CKD usually attacks small blood vessels in the kidney called the glomeruli; the Central American epidemic attacks the kidney's tubules. CKD generally affects older people with equal distribution between sexes; this epidemic overwhelmingly affects working-age men, mostly sugarcane workers but also miners and other agricultural laborers.

A growing community of researchers is calling for recognition of a new illness not yet included in medical manuals: "Mesoamerican nephropathy," "endemic agricultural nephropathy" or "sugarcane nephropathy." The director of El Salvador's national CKD program has written of a "Mesoamerican Regional Nephropathy" that would one day be internationally recognized.

"It is important that the chronic kidney disease afflicting thousands of rural workers in Central America be recognized as what it is: a major epidemic with a tremendous population impact," said Victor Penchaszadeh, a clinical epidemiologist at Columbia University and frequent consultant to the Pan American Health Organization on chronic diseases in Latin America.

Dr. Ramon Vanegas, a nephrologist who assesses applications by workers to Nicaragua's Institute of Social Security for occupational illness pensions, said cases which he defines as occupational CKD follow a pattern of tubular kidney damage combined with a history of heat stroke.

"Usually they have been working, and they had muscle spasms, they've gotten fever, they have collapsed," Vanegas said of the patients whose applications he approves. "Then they return to work, they face the same exposures, and the cycle repeats. Then, two or three years later, the patient has [CKD]."

While physicians mull labels and diagnoses, the mystery persists: Why does this particular form of CKD attack men in a particular way — and in this specific region?

Some studies suggest risk factors, from pesticide exposure to alcohol abuse to frequent use of anti-inflammatory drugs, may play important roles in CKD's onset. Others show that miners, stevedores and field workers in affected regions also have high CKD rates; a study in Nicaragua found a mining town to have one of the highest prevalence rates in the country.

"The evidence points us most strongly to a hypothesis that perhaps heat stress — hard work in a hot climate without sufficient replacement of fluids — might be a cause of this disease," said Daniel Brooks, lead researcher of a scientific team from Boston University that is among a handful of groups conducting early studies.

During days the team observed sugar cane workers, mean temperature in the fields was 96 degrees. Their report noted that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which oversees safety at U.S. workplaces, calls for 45 minutes of rest for every 15 minutes of work at that heat stress level.

The team's preliminary research bolsters the heat stress hypothesis; blood and urine samples taken from different types of sugarcane workers during the course of a harvest season show more evidence of kidney damage among those who did strenuous labor outside. Earlier, the team identified a number of work practices and chemicals at the company that could potentially damage the kidneys. Brooks said more research is needed before conclusions can be drawn.

Internal studies by Nicaragua Sugar, owners of one of Central America's largest sugar plantations, provided by the company to ICIJ, show that the company has long had evidence of an epidemic tied to heat stress and dehydration. In 2001, company doctor Felix Zelaya conducted an internal study on the causes of CKD among its workers. "Strenuous labor with exposure to high environmental temperatures without an adequate hydration program predisposes workers to heat stress syndrome [heat stroke], which is an important factor in the development of CKD," Zelaya concluded.

Nicaragua Sugar and other companies say they have acted voluntarily to protect workers by improving hydration, reducing work hours, and strengthening oversight of labor contractors.

Even so, Nicaragua Sugar disputes the existence of a unique kidney ailment affecting its workers. "We're convinced that we have nothing to do with kidney disease," said spokesman Ariel Granera. "Our productive practices do not generate and are not causal factors for CKD."

Signs of trouble

In 2000, Salvadoran physician Trabanino noticed large numbers of young and middle-aged men coming into his hospital in El Salvador, all with advanced cases of chronic kidney disease. "For some reason, to the rest of the world this seemed normal," he recalled. "To me it seemed strange and curious."

In 2002, Trabanino published one of the first studies of the disease, a profile of 205 new patients admitted to his hospital with end-stage renal disease. Two thirds of these cases lacked the usual risk factors for chronic kidney disease — and had some common features.

"They were almost all men who lived in the low-lying zones of the country, close to the coast, near a major river," Trabanino wrote in the Pan American Journal of Public Health. A large group of these patients also described "frequent occupational contact without adequate protection with insecticides and pesticides."

Another study of kidney patients from northern Costa Rica — again from a sweltering, low-lying region near the Pacific Coast — described a similar pattern.

"All are young men, between the ages of 20 and 40 years," wrote Dr. Manuel Cerdas of Costa Rica in the journal Kidney International. "The most interesting feature of these patients is epidemiologic—all of them are long-term sugar-cane workers."

Cerdas later found that victims of the epidemic shared another condition: the disease attacked a part of their kidneys called the tubules. Tubulo-interstitial disease is usually rare — accounting for only 3.7 percent of cases of end-stage renal disease in the United States. Known causes include toxic exposure and dehydration.

Today El Salvador promotes blood testing in hard-hit rural areas to try to catch cases in treatable stages. Trabanino, who has studied the epidemic for over a decade, said he believes screening, public education campaigns and improved worker safety could stop the ailment's spread — if only resources were available.

Researchers in Central America, meanwhile, face an uphill battle. The few CKD studies done so far had been conducted in hospitals and affected communities, where people were already sick. Theories about the role toxic chemicals may play in causing the disease are difficult to test because scientists need access to the epidemic's victims as they are falling ill.

Silence on CKD; fast action on biofuel

Central American sugar companies have been reluctant to open their doors to outside health researchers. Advocates believe the industry fears designation of the disease as an occupational illness. Resistance has begun to soften — notably at Nicaragua Sugar's Ingenio San Antonio plantation, where the Boston University team is working. But the industry typically has barred independent scientists from company property, employees or records.

Aurora Aragon, an occupational health specialist at the University of Leon in Nicaragua, said that in 2004 researchers from an international NGO called SALTRA asked Nicaragua's leading sugar companies to collaborate on a study of worker safety. She said that the Ingenio San Antonio and Ingenio Monte Rosa ignored the request.

In 2007, Aragon said another request for access by her colleagues was rejected by the Ingenio San Antonio. "Ultimately, that was the conclusion," she said. "Not one sugar company gave us permission to study the problem."

Mario Amador, a spokesman for the Nicaraguan sugar industry trade group that represents plantations approached by SALTRA, said the industry has allowed studies by doctors, medical students and health authorities, but must exercise caution in sharing information with outsiders.

"People with bad intentions have tried to connect CKD with work in the sugar industry, because this industry was the first to find high rates of CKD in the labor force that came to the plantations seeking work," Amador said. "It is because of these constant attacks that plantations and their staff are very careful about the information they provide to any person or institution."

Central American producers play a significant role in the global sugar business; in 2011 the US imported more than 330,000 metric tons of sugar from the region, representing 23% of total raw sugar imports.

Beyond the kitchen table, the U.S. government has heavily promoted the sugar industry — in the areas affected by the epidemic — as a source of biofuel from ethanol. The U.S. funded conferences to promote biofuels in both Nicaragua and El Salvador as late as 2008, according to embassy cables released by WikiLeaks. Its ambassadors met repeatedly with the leaders of both nations' sugar industries, and fretted that failure to develop ethanol production would drive these nations toward dependence on oil imports from Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

In 2007, then-Ambassador Paul Trivelli notified the U.S. State Department of Ingenio San Antonio's first ethanol shipment and wrote that the company had embraced "the potential to develop the industry and the positive aspects of biofuels." But he expressed concern that Nicaragua's leftist president, Daniel Ortega, might be swayed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's opposition to biofuels.

The following year, Trivelli wrote that the State Department had designated Nicaragua as a "high-priority country" for biofuels. The embassy in El Salvador, Nicaragua's northern neighbor, also forcefully promoted ethanol: ambassadors met with sugar industry leaders, shared concerns with the State Department about the political effects of oil imports from Venezuela, and sponsored a conference to promote biofuels.

The World Bank, meanwhile, has provided more than $100 million in loans to promote biofuel production at two heavily affected plantations, which it approved without formal consideration of kidney disease. After workers complained, the Bank granted $1 million to sponsor the ongoing Boston University study.

Before receiving the loans, the companies needed to assure the Bank that they lived up social and environmental standards. Appraisal teams published glowing assessments of the Ingenio San Antonio and Monte Rosa's practices in September 2006 and May 2007. Neither report mentioned CKD.

In October 2006, the board of the International Finance Corporation (IFC) — the World Bank's lender for private-sector projects — approved a $55 million loan to Ingenio San Antonio. A $50 million loan to Monte Rosa was approved in June 2007.

With the money, the companies expanded, sending more workers into the cane fields.

Edgar Restrepo, a senior investment officer for the IFC, said his team did consider CKD when it appraised the Ingenio San Antonio, but that the content of its deliberations is privileged. IFC spokeswoman Adriana Gomez said the IFC had "complied with its strict social and environmental standards in the due diligence process."

A standoff in Mexico City

While governments in Central America have committed few resources to combating CKD, they have begun sounding alarms.

El Salvador's government has been forceful in calling for international research help. At a United Nations summit of health ministers this February in Mexico City, El Salvador Health Minister Maria Isabel Rodriguez declared that chronic kidney disease was "wasting away our populations" across Central America. She called on fellow health ministers to include CKD among the top chronic illnesses in the Americas, a step that could attract U.N. funding for studies.

Rodriguez's proposal ran into strong opposition from the summit's most powerful participant: the United States.

Rodriguez said the U.S. delegation refused either to include the disease on the list of the continent's most serious chronic illnesses, or to accept language suggesting that the epidemic had distinct causes related to exposure to toxic chemicals.

Central American representatives said they felt so strongly they refused to sign the conference's final declaration unless CKD was included. For several tense moments, the dispute threatened to derail the consensus of the summit. Result: A single phrase mentioning chronic kidney disease in Central America.

David McQueen, a United States delegate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told ICIJ that the U.S. opposed mentioning CKD to keep the focus on diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

"Declarations that are made are rarely successful unless they are very targeted," he said.

McQueen, who has since retired, said he wasn't aware of the dramatic spread of chronic kidney disease until it was raised at the conference. "The chronic kidney thing sort of caught everybody by surprise," he said. "Why is this being pushed so hard?" McQueen learned at the meeting that it "is a significant problem," spurring "a major drain on resources" for physicians and hospitals in Central America.

Yet even after learning of the issue, the U.S. has taken little action. CDC spokeswoman Kathryn Harben said that at a dinner on the night of the Mexico City summit, the CDC informally offered to help Central American health ministries. It has not yet done so, she said, because those ministries have not submitted a formal request. The top U.S. health official at the summit, Dr. Howard K. Koh, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services, declined to be interviewed for this story.

Get sick, lose your job

Ingenio San Antonio and Ingenio Monte Rosa, Nicaragua's largest plantations, now regularly test workers' blood to measure creatinine, a chemical that indicates kidney function. Workers with elevated creatinine levels are dismissed, a step the companies say is necessary to prevent sick workers from further risking their health in the fields.

Dismissal also cuts off workers from care at company hospitals, and often from company pensions.

The Ingenio San Antonio said it has reduced work hours, provided more water and hydrating solution and hired social workers to accompany contractors in the fields to ensure adequate hydration. Currently, the workday is no more than eight hours for demanding physical jobs, and the company provides eight liters of water and 2700 milliliters of hydrating solutions daily to each field worker, said spokesman Granera.

In November 2009, Maudiel Martinez boarded a company bus one morning and headed for the fields. He was 17 and starting his fourth year with the Ingenio San Antonio. Harvest season was about to begin and, following routine, the company had conducted blood tests to see if workers were healthy enough for field work.

Martinez was on the bus when he got the news: he'd failed the creatinine test. He had the disease.

"I cried because of my grief," Martinez said. "I was such a child — at the age of 17 you're still an adolescent."

The diagnosis meant that Martinez was formally prohibited from working for the company. With his family struggling financially and no alternative job in sight, Martinez assumed a fake name and Social Security number and went back to work in the same fields, for independent labor contractors who, he said, don't care that he provides a woman's name and Social Security number.

At least some contract workers are still going out on longer, riskier shifts. An ICIJ reporter in June 2011 noted that buses picking up Ingenio San Antonio contract workers started at 5:25 a.m. and returned at 5:31 p.m. Workers said about 10 of those hours were spent in the fields.

A collapse in the fields

On June 10, 2011, Martinez was assigned to cut four rows of cane. His task was to strip off the leaves, chop them into pieces, and tie them into bundles. About forty pieces make up a bundle. For this labor, he earned one cordoba per bundle – less than a nickel.

By 8:30 in the morning, he had cut two rows. He was starting to feel sick, but continued to cut in the sweltering heat. "The sun was too strong, and I had sweated through my shirt like someone had thrown water on me," Martinez recalled.

By the time he finished his rows, at about 11, Martinez was feverish and nauseous. He rested some 15 minutes, but still had to tie his pieces into bundles. Another worker came to help.

Martinez said they finished about 1 p.m., and the bus came to bring the workers home about half an hour later. When it arrived, Martinez felt desperately ill. "I got onto the bus and I couldn't walk anymore," he said.

Since Martinez was a contract worker, he could not go to the company hospital. He took the bus toward home and on board began to vomit. The bus did not stop. "The guys gave me a chance to stick my head out the bus window," he said.

The road where the bus left him is separated from his home by a shallow river. His mother and brother carried him across the river to bring him to his bed.

Soon after his collapse, Martinez learned that his creatinine levels were up. He had gone for days with no appetite, wanting only cold drinks to soothe the sensation of fever.

"If death is coming, we have to resign ourselves to wait for it," Martinez said. "Resigning yourself means waiting for what the disease is going to give you. Because you look at me and I look normal now, but inside I feel like I'm burning."

------------------------------------

Biofuels Watch

Re: [biofuelwatch] Digest Number 1686

Messages In This Digest (1 Message)

Message

Bagasse for cellulosic ethanol

Posted by: "Sarah" sarah.clayton7@ntlworld.com sarah.clayton7

Wed Jan 4, 2012 4:01 am (PST)

[biofuelwatch] Another biofuelled flight

[biofuelwatch] US EPA: Palm oil flunks the climate test

[biofuelwatch] FAO: Corn Prices Rise Worldwide Due to U.S. Ethanol Policy

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-21/use-of-corn-for-fuel-in-u-s-is-increasing-prices-globally-fao-chief-says.html

Corn Prices Rise Worldwide Due to U.S. Ethanol Policy, FAO Says

[biofuelwatch] Fwd: New Video Reveals Global Resistance to Forest-Carbon Projects

http://globalforestcoalition.org/?p=1953

New Video Reveals Global Resistance to Forest-Carbon Projects: A Darker Shade of Green Documents Critical Perspectives on REDD

[biofuelwatch] 'Peak timber' concerns in tropics

[biofuelwatch] Another article about palm iol and land conflicts in Bajo Aguan

[biofuelwatch] Campesino Land Struggles in the Aguán Valley, Honduras

[biofuelwatch] Biofuels full environmental impacts not yet understood

Biofuel Research Suffers From Gaps

[biofuelwatch] GM microbe breakthrough paves way for large-scale seaweed farming for biofuels | Environment | guardian.co.uk

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[biofuelwatch] International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)

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[biofuelwatch] Ironbridge coal power station to use biomass

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[biofuelwatch] Fwd: ENB Vol. 30 No. 6 - Second Session of the Assembly of the International Renewable Energy Agency - Summary and Analysis [1 Attachment]

[biofuelwatch] Biogas Boom: Germany needs grains from abroad

[biofuelwatch] Include trees in climate modelling, say scientists

Include trees in climate modelling, say scientists

[biofuelwatch] "Sustainable" biomass could help rare UK plants - report

Managing English woodlands could help rare plants, report finds

[biofuelwatch] A Cycle of Death: Inside Nicaragua's Sugar Cane Fields

[biofuelwatch] Cargo boat and US navy ship powered by algal oil in fuel trials

Cargo boat and US navy ship powered by algal oil in marine fuel trials

[biofuelwatch] Region’s growers look at beet washer for ‘green’ bio gas - Farming news - Eastern Daily Press

[biofuelwatch] Uskmouth B to go 100% Biomass?

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[biofuelwatch] Study finds a better way to gauge the climate costs of land use changes

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-gauge-climate.html

Study finds a better way to gauge the climate costs of land use changes

[biofuelwatch] Kilimanjaro jatropha

[biofuelwatch] Maersk testing algae biofuel

[biofuelwatch] Re: Public Eye 2012 - nominations include Syngenta

[biofuelwatch] Public Eye 2012 - nominations include Syngenta

[biofuelwatch] DtE's latest agrofuels articles online

[biofuelwatch] Bagasse for cellulosic ethanol

[biofuelwatch] China and Nigeria integrated biorefineries

Profiles in Scale-up: China, Nigeria ink deal to invest $2.55B in 15 integrated biorefinery projects

Chinese government to invest $1.78B in Nigerian biofuels, the latest in a series of projects announced in West Africa.

Nigerian Export-Import Bank:$695M

Dangote Group, $7.7B

Global Biofuels: $91M

The Bottom Line

[biofuelwatch] Disappearing Brazilian Cerrado

[biofuelwatch] Canal network could be used to transport biomass for power plants | World news | The Guardian

[biofuelwatch] Thetford biomass plant could be rejected - Environment - Eastern Daily Press

[biofuelwatch] Corn ethanol subsidy due to expire in U.S.

Subsidies' end

A new year in ethanol

[biofuelwatch] Brazilian Eucalyptus research wins award

World Bioenergy Award boosted research in Brazil

The World Bioenergy Award, presented every two years, has given a lift to the work of the Brazilian researcher Laércio Couto, whose team has been studying the use of eucalyptus for bioenergy.

Spreads important knowledge

Key future issues in bioenergy

[biofuelwatch] Norway's Statoil invests in biofuels from seaweed

[biofuelwatch] Wood trading exchange stokes green energy row

Wood trading exchange stokes green energy row

[biofuelwatch] Wood trading exchange stokes green energy row

Wood trading exchange stokes green energy row

[biofuelwatch] Cellulosic Biofuels Fall Short-Wall St. J.

New Forms of Biofuel Fall Short

By RYAN TRACY

[biofuelwatch] Making cellulosic biofuels out of wood chips and grass just loses money

[biofuelwatch] Indonesia grants exemption from logging moratorium for 3.6m ha of forest

Nicaragua: Video about the Chronic Kidney Disease epidemic

Small success for Stop Burning Our Trees campaign against power station subsid

Indonesia to investigate beheadings allegedly conducted by palm oil security

[biofuelwatch] Biofuels full environmental impacts not yet understood