Beijing looks to neighboring provinces to help curb air pollution during Olympics

By The Associated Press

BEIJING: Beijing is ordering neighboring provinces to reduce industrial pollution this summer to help clean up the Chinese capital's air during the Olympic Games, state media reported Tuesday.

Beijing and surrounding areas are being told to cut back factory operations and increase the use of technology to clean their emissions, the China Daily newspaper said. It said authorities were hoping to avoid shutting down industries altogether in order to temper the economic impact. The full extent of pollution control measures, however, would depend on atmospheric conditions during the Aug. 8-24 Games, it said.

"The air quality of Beijing is definitely influenced by neighboring provinces and ... we have made this move to guarantee air quality," State Environmental Protection Agency official Wang Jian was quoted as saying by the paper. Concerns over heat, humidity and polluted air in Beijing have set national Olympic committees scrambling for ways to protect their athletes, especially those competing in outdoor endurance events.

Already, the capital has announced plans to shut down construction sites, gas stations and oil depots to reduce the amount of dust and harmful chemicals in the air, and has begun shutting down blast furnaces at the city's biggest steel maker.

Temporary traffic restrictions to ease congestion and reduce vehicle exhaust are also being mulled. Beijing hopes the Olympics will also build momentum behind longer-term pollution reduction plans, including rules to reduce use of plastic bags and tougher standards for power plants and the steel industry. Wang said more than 10 factories in Beijing and the surrounding province of Hebei that were scheduled to close over the next two years will now be shut by June. The newly announced rules apply to Hebei and the neighboring provinces of Shanxi and Shandong, along with the coastal city of Tianjin and the sprawling Inner Mongolia autonomous region to the north, the report said. It said reductions would be required starting in July, although other reports have said measures could begin taking effect as early as May.

Additional restrictions on vehicles, building sites and industry could be enacted in the event of bad weather, although positive forecasts appear to show those won't be needed, Wang was quoted as saying. "As long as the plan is carried out properly, we will have no problem in meeting the standard of air quality for the Olympics and Paralympics," Wang said, referring to the games for physically disabled athletes that follow the regular Olympics.

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(Jakarta, Rabu 27 February 2008)

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Virgin Atlantic flies jumbo jet powered by biofuel

By The Associated Press

LONDON: Virgin Atlantic carried out the world's first flight of a commercial aircraft powered with biofuel on Sunday in an effort to show it can produce less carbon dioxide than normal jet fuels. Some analysts praised the jumbo jet test flight from London to Amsterdam as a potentially useful experiment. But others criticized it as a publicity stunt and noted scientists are questioning the environmental benefits of biofuels.

"This breakthrough will help Virgin Atlantic to fly its planes using clean fuel sooner than expected," Sir Richard Branson, the airline's president, said before the Boeing 747 flew from London's Heathrow Airport to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. He said the flight would provide "crucial knowledge that we can use to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint," he said.

Sunday's flight was partially fueled with a biofuel mixture of coconut and babassu oil in one of its four main fuel tanks. The jet carried pilots and several technicians, but no passengers. Virgin Atlantic spokesman Paul Charles predicted this biofuel would produce much less CO2 than regular jet fuel, but said it will take weeks to analyze the data from Sunday's flight. "It's great that somebody like Richard is willing to put some of his billions into an experiment aimed at reducing the climate change impact of aviation," said James Halstead, an airline analyst at the London stockbroker Dawnay Day Lochart. "But there are a lot of unanswered questions about the usefulness of biofuels in the battle against global warming," he said. The flight is the latest example of how the world's airlines are jumping on the environmental bandwagon by trying to find ways of reducing aviation's carbon footprint.

These efforts have included finding alternative jet fuels, developing engines that burn existing fuels more slowly, and changing the way planes land. The experiment by Virgin Atlantic and its partners — Boeing, General Electric and Imperium Renewables — also comes at a time when high oil prices and the U.S. economic slowdown are promoting consolidation in the airline industry.

Aircraft engines cause noise pollution and emit gases and particulates that reduce air quality and contribute to global warming and global dimming, where dust and ash from natural and industrial sources block the sun to create a cooling effect. About a year ago, the European Commission, the executive of the European Union, said greenhouse gas emissions from aviation account for about 3 percent of the total in the EU and have increased by 87 percent since 1990 as air travel cheapened.

Charles said Virgin's Boeing 747-400 jet and its engines did not have to be redesigned to use biofuel on the test flight. He said CO2 emissions on a normal flight are generally three times the fuel burned, and that technical engineers on the test flight would take readings and analyze data to estimate its greenhouse gas emissions.

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(Jakarta, Rabu 27 February 2008)

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Aviation and global warming (Global climate change)

KEEPING THE SKIES FRIENDLY

Aviation and global warming

By Giovanni Bisignani

Is aviation a major contributor to global warming? Is it the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions? Hyperbole characterizes the debate on aviation and climate change. Who to believe? Politicians? Environmental activists? Airlines? Scientists?

So let's look at the facts. And let's take them from the world's most authoritative body on this issue, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC estimates that aviation today is responsible for 2 percent of global CO2 emissions with a total climate change impact of 3 percent. These figures have remained largely unchanged over the last two decades, despite the growth of air traffic.

Projecting forward to 2050, the IPCC has aviation at 3 percent of global CO2 emissions and 5-6 percent of climate change impact. We are and will remain a small part of the big problem of climate change. Nonetheless, aviation's carbon footprint is growing, and that is politically unacceptable for any industry. The challenge is to keep the many benefits of aviation - unprecedented global mobility that supports 32 million jobs and $3.5 billion worth of economic activity - while eliminating its negative impacts. The solution is not to return to the days when flying was reserved for the well-to-do by making it artificially expensive with even more taxes. Punitive economic measures like emissions trading will not have a big impact on aviation's environmental performance.

With 28 percent of costs coming directly from fuel, the airline industry has the strongest incentive of any industry to keep fuel consumption low. Positive measures - tax credits to encourage faster re-fleeting or grants to fund alternative fuel research - would deliver better results. Unilateral European proposals to include aviation into its emissions trading scheme have put economic measures at the center of a political debate, partially fueled by the approaching Kyoto deadlines. But regional initiatives are no way to solve a worldwide issue.

A meeting currently taking place in Montreal is our best opportunity for a global solution. Government leaders responsible for civil aviation are meeting at the Triennial Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Environment tops their agenda. If emissions trading is going to be imposed on airlines, we must make sure it is effective. The ICAO needs to work towards a global emissions trading scheme that states could implement on a mutual consent basis. This is what the drafters of Kyoto had always envisaged. But the industry is pushing governments for much loftier goals. In June, I proposed a vision for the industry to aim for carbon-neutral growth in the medium-term and to develop zero-carbon emissions technology within 50 years.

Since then, I have met with aircraft manufacturers, engine makers, fuel-suppliers and airlines. Nobody has all the answers, but no one said our goal was impossible. On the contrary, it is absolutely achievable. Remember, this is the industry that went from the Wright Brothers to the jet age in just five decades.

The critical question is: How do we turn the vision into reality? The first part of the answer is efficiency. It is the best way to take us to carbon neutral growth. Airlines are investing billions of dollars in new, more fuel-efficient aircraft. In the last four decades, fuel efficiency increased 70 percent and will improve a further 25 percent by 2020. Better air traffic control, including straightening air routes, and more efficient operations can reduce fuel burn by 18 percent.

Unfortunately, politics often gets in the way of good common sense. Uniting Europe's skies offers the biggest single opportunity to improve aviation's environmental performance. But after 15 years of talks, a Single European Sky is still just an idea. This political failure results in 12 million tons of unnecessary carbon emissions each year. The second part of our vision is technology. It is the only way to zero emissions. Quite simply we need to build better planes and more efficient engines powered by non-carbon sources. Some potential building blocks already exist - solar power, hydrogen cells and biofuel.

The world's airlines - IATA's 240 members - are committed to the vision. Manufacturers are aligned. All are working hard. It is now time for governments to come on board. Through ICAO, governments must set challenging but realistic targets in two important areas. First we need targets to improve air traffic management and eliminate unnecessary fuel burn. Then we need technology targets in a roadmap. This will provide regulatory certainty to back major investment decisions by manufacturers and airlines. So, please, less hyperbole and more concrete actions.

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(Jakarta, Jumat 22 February 2008)

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The Nobel committee takes on climate change (Global Warming Problem)

The Nobel committee takes on climate change

Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are certainly worthy of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. Coming from different directions, they have done a remarkable job of calling the world's attention to what Gore rightly calls "a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity." A lot of people will also see this as a serious slap to the Bush administration. They'll be right. The Nobel committee has, unsurprisingly, tried to minimize the political aspects of the Peace Prize. But this prize is in fact political, and there's no reason it should not be so. Alone among the Nobel prizes, the Peace Prize is meant to make a statement about the world.

The Bush administration should read a clear message in some of the committee's recent choices - the UN Secretariat; Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the UN nuclear monitoring agency, former President Jimmy Carter. This year's signal is even clearer, celebrating, as it does, the sort of global panel the administration abhors, and calling attention to an issue that Bush has essentially ignored, and even disparaged.

While every responsible institution and government has begun to take seriously the fateful ramifications of global warming, the Bush administration has adamantly dragged behind, conceding the obvious only when there is no remaining choice, boycotting any initiative that is not its own, avoiding any action that might reduce the profits of big business. Bush's people are bound to grumble that they are victims of an ideological smear, and there's little chance that the prize will convert them on climate change. But everything that contributes to building a coalition for action is good, and every alarm bell helps.

Looking back over recent years, it is clear that the former vice president has done very well with his time after losing the 2000 presidential contest to George W. Bush - far better than any other failed presidential contender that comes to our minds. It reminds us of what another Peace Prize winner once said. In the words of Theodore Roosevelt: "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood." A firefighter extinguishes a bushfire on Sydney's northern suburbs Wednesday.

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(Jakarta, Jumat 22 February 2008)

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The time for green roofs (Global Warming Problem)

The time for green roofs

By Elisabeth Rosenthal

In the past few years solar panels and wind turbines have become familiar friends, comforting images that give us hope for a greener future. Featured in the media and in corporate advertising, these new technologies have replaced cute pandas as an icon of environmental correctness. But how many people out there have heard of green roofs, which may be an equally powerful tool for dealing with climate change? Not many, I bet.

Why? Green roofs are often homely, not photogenic. They are made of plants, not zippy new technology. Most important, perhaps, it is hard for large corporations to make a profit installing green roofs - so they are not promoted or featured in glossy advertising. Creating a green roof, or living roof, involves putting down soil and plants on top of buildings - apartment blocks, corporate headquarters, even private homes - a practice that has multiple benefits for the environment.

A green roof is wonderful insulation for the building below, keeping it cool in summer and vastly reducing energy needs. In cities, green roofs help absorb CO2 and have a cooling effect. They soak water from rains, taking pressure off drainage systems. They give local species - plants, birds and insects - a place to roost, preserving biodiversity. "There are not many technologies that give you so many environmental benefits," said Dusty Gedge, founder of LivingRoofs, a group that promotes and provides advice for green roof installation in London. "But a living roof is not a piece of hardware that you can just install; it's an ongoing process. So architects and builders and consumers have a hard time dealing with it. It's not like a solar panel."

Ed Snodgrass owns Emory Knoll Farms in Maryland, the biggest nursery devoted exclusively to green roof plants in the United States. He said that green roofing was a difficult sell because it was hard for consumers to grasp and quantify the diverse benefits, and because it did not satisfy people's desire for a quick solution. "A solar panel fits into our need for problem solving: It increases capacity so you still get to have the SUV," Snodgrass said. "But a green roof is a living, complex system."

A handful of cities around the globe - like Linz, Austria; Potsdam, Germany, and Portland, Oregon - have promoted the planting of green roofs for more than a decade as a method to deal with excess rainwater runoff or simply to increase the green in the local environment. More recently, cities from Toronto to London to New York are exploring them too, but now as a way to blunt the effects of global warming. They are considering implementing plans that would require large buildings or new buildings to be topped off with green roofs. Or giving tax breaks to builders and developers who create them. These days, green roofs have some well-placed fans.

Green roofs "have a dramatic impact on energy use, greenhouse gas emission and parenthetically on the energy bills of every business and residence in all those buildings," said Bill Clinton, the former U.S. president, in a recent speech in New York. He called green roofs "a huge deal." In fact, Clinton suggested, green roofs could be a powerful source of jobs as well. "You cannot outsource these jobs. Someone has to be standing on that roof. This is not data processing. You've got to actually be there."

The fact that all green roofs are inherently local, however, also "makes it hard to develop an infrastructure," Gedge of LivingRoofs acknowledges. "There is no powerful economic driving force - like the companies that sell wind turbines - to promote green roofing." "If you call a company with experience in Stuttgart and say I want one in the Philippines, it won't work," Snodgrass said. While his company ships to Oregon, it is only because no one is growing green-roof plants there yet. "It would be far better to have a local nursery," he said.

While green roofs are relatively cheap to install, the building underneath must have a good seal and the garden needs to be maintained. For cities, some of the benefits of green roofs are simple math. When the sun shines on a tar roof, the temperature can go up to 170 degrees Fahrenheit (76 degrees Celsius). That absorbed heat not only roasts the apartments below, but also releases heat into the air, creating a "heat island" effect, raising urban temperatures 7 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit compared with the surrounding suburbs.

"That created a huge stress on the air-conditioning load, which has led both Chicago and Atlanta to look into green roofs," Snodgrass said. When a roof is sealed, covered with a layer of dirt and planted, it does not serve as a heat sink.

Once installed, developers have found other unanticipated benefits, fans say. When the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston installed green roofing on part of its building, it was initially for storm water management. But managers soon discovered that guests loved rooms overlooking the plants.

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(Jakarta, Jumat 22 February 2008)

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