[NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE] FORATOM, afirma que la solución energética para España es la construcción de centrales

El director general de la Asociación de Industrias Nucleares Europeas (FORATOM), Santiago San Antonio, señaló hoy que para que España solucione su problema energético, la clave se encuentra en la construcción de nuevas centrales, ya que ahora tiene que importar grandes cantidades de energía de otros países.

Así, San Antonio indicó que España se encuentra 'retrasada energéticamente', mientras que en Europa se están apoyando en ello, y apostó por alcanzar una producción de energía nuclear equivalente a la media europea, que actualmente supone un 30 por ciento del mix energético.

Por otro lado, señaló que en España se ha dado un giro 'satisfactorio' en las políticas energéticas, tras la decisión del presidente del Gobierno, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, de actuar de acuerdo a las normativas europeas, y además señaló que el desfase energético español influirá negativamente en el déficit económico, para lo que 'habrá que definir el futuro energético en un plan a largo plazo (20 ó 30 años)'.

DECISIONES POLÍTICAS.
En la misma línea, este experto destacó que es necesario 'sacar del debate político el abastacemiento nuclear', porque el problema que tiene España es que las decisiones energéticas 'se sitúan en los votos', e hizo referencia a la buena situación tecnológica española para la producción de reactores de 'IV Generación'. 'Es la solución del futuro que dará paso a una energía sostenible, ya que las renovables, no son sustitutivas de la energía nuclear', dijo.

En cuanto a Europa, San Antonio señaló la voluntad política de muchos países de la UE, como Suecia, 'país que mayor conocimiento y apoyo concede a la energía nuclear'. Por el contrario, advirtió de que España se sitúa entre los países que 'menos conocimiento tiene sobre energía nuclear' y donde 'los riesgos cuentan más que las ventajas'.

Respecto a la política energética europea aprobada en 2007, recordó que esta prevista una reducción de las emisiones de CO2 de un 20 por ciento para el año 2020, junto con un incremento de hasta el 20 por ciento en el uso de energías renovables, y un aumento del 20 por ciento en ahorro energético.

Source: Terra

Found this post useful? Consider subscribing to
Sustainable Affairs Feed/RSS.

[TECHNOLOGY] Futuros dispositivos de Apple podrían utilizar energía solar

Empleados de Apple han solicitado una patente para integrar celdas solares dentro de los dispositivos portátiles colocándolos bajo las capas de la pantalla sensible al tacto, de acuerdo con la solicitud. La energía solar le ayudaría a hacer dispositivos verdaderamente portátiles, liberándose de la necesidad de cables para conectarlos a la fuente de energía.

Cuando se genera electricidad con paneles solares, cuanto más grande sea el panel mejor, pero la patente advierte “de paneles solares en dispositivos portátiles”, luego de permitir espacio para los botones, pantalla y una manera de alojar el dispositivo, solo un a pequeña área se deja en la mayoría de los dispositivos para las celdas solares.

Una de las maneras sugirió que la patente es para colocar una capa sensible al tacto, una pantalla y un panel solar uno encima del otro. Esto haría del iPhone y el iPod Touch de Apple buenos candidatos para dichas fuentes de energía, ya que la pantalla ocupa casi toda la carátula de estos aparatos.

El uso de carga con energía solar en aparatos portátiles está comenzando a tomar más atención para uso más inmediato de consumidores.

Cuando Vodafone anunció su plan en abril para reducir las emisiones del gas invernadero CO2 en un 50 por ciento para el 2020, también anunció planes para cargadores de teléfono alimentados por luz solar y cargadores universales para teléfonos de los aparatos de marca Vodafone.

En la reciente conferencia ITU Telecom Africa 2008, el ministro ugandés de comunicaciones y tecnologías de información y comunicación, Ham-Mukasa Mulira habló sobre los acuerdos de uso de carga con energía solar, que había prometido.

Source: PC World|By Mikael Ricknäs (IDG News Service)

Found this post useful? Consider subscribing to
Sustainable Affairs Feed/RSS.

CLIMATE CHANGE: China and India called keys in climate change battle

If the world is going to truly combat greenhouse gas emissions, China and India have to be part of the fight, the chief economist for the Paris-based International Energy Agency said Tuesday. Fatih Birol told oil and gas executives at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston that the economies of China and India are growing at such a pace that they'll keep needing more energy, much of it from coal. Even if Europe cuts emissions by 20 percent in the next dozen years as pledged, it won't be enough to overcome emissions anticipated to increase in the developing giants, he said.

But don't blame China, the bigger of the two, he said.

China's growth is "simply imitating" what developed countries have already done. Americans love their cars, and increasingly the Chinese do as well, driving most of the increase in that country's demand.

The nation is expected to overtake the U.S. in terms of car ownership in seven to eight years. And by 2030, 14 percent of Chinese will have cars, as opposed to 2 percent today.

By 2015, Birol said three countries will be key to denting climate change: China, India and the United States. Together they'll release half of the world's emissions, and without cooperation among them, he said, "we have no chance to make" a difference.

High oil prices no longer can be expected to shrink demand as it did during spikes in the past, when a vast majority of usage occurred in developed countries, Birol said. Growth in China, India and the Middle East more than offsets flat or shrinking demand in the U.S.

As prices have risen since 2004, global demand has risen alongside them. "Oil demand is much less responsive to high crude prices than in the past," he said.

Changing energy security
Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy analyst with Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, said the run-up in oil prices has changed the nature of energy security, which once focused on protection against oil shocks.

After the 9/11 attacks, the term began referring more to dependence on oil regimes whose interests aren't necessarily U.S.-friendly. And government-run oil producers are flexing more muscle in terms of controlling their own resources in the high price environment.

Jaffe said she expected the world to increasingly rely on the Persian Gulf and unconventional oil, such as heavy bitumen from Canada's oil sands. Other unconventional sources include coal or natural gas turned to liquid, and oil found in shale.

However, while high oil prices make unconventional sources more economical to tap, they're also carbon-intensive to produce, Jaffe said.

"So climate security and energy security are not always two sides of the same coin," she said.

More coastal access
Randall Luthi, director of the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore U.S. production, said the security picture needs to include more access to U.S. areas currently off-limits — such as off the West and East coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.

"We're so dependent on adequate, affordable energy," he said, noting that the federal government predicted in January that the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline would climb to $3.50 by this month. It reached $3.60 last week and now is expected to top $3.70 nationally by June.

Fossil fuel reliance
Despite growth in alternative and renewable fuels, the federal government and the International Energy Agency predict the vast majority of energy use to stem from fossil fuels through 2050. With that in mind, Luthi said, the only way to lower dependence on imports is to raise U.S. production.

In February the MMS opened the Chukchi Sea off Alaska's north coast for a lease sale. The agency received 667 bids on 488 tracts, and 292 leases have been issued. Companies that bought leases include ConocoPhillips, Italy's Eni, Spain's Repsol, Shell, and Norway's StatoilHydro.

"But the Gulf of Mexico remains the workhorse" of offshore U.S. production, and 85 percent of the nation's coastlines remain unavailable to the industry, he said.

Source: The Houston Chronicle|By KRISTEN HAYS

Found this post useful? Consider subscribing to
Sustainable Affairs Feed/RSS.

BRASIL: The brazilian government rejects biofuels criticism

The Brazilian president has rejected criticism that his country's production of biofuels has forced a surge in global food prices and harms the environment. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva accused critics of being driven by economic and political interests, and failing to highlight soaring oil prices and increased demand as a factor in pushing up food production costs.

"Don't tell me, for the love of God, that food is expensive because of biodiesel," he told reporters.

"Food is expensive because the world wasn't prepared to see millions of Chinese, Indians, Africans, Brazilians and Latin Americans eat. We want to discuss this not with passion but rationality and not from the European point of view."

Lula made his comments following a week of protests in Brazil and Europe against the fuels made from food crops and their supposed environmental and social consequences.

This week, the EU's environmental chief, Stavros Dimas, said that biofuels, which Brazil hopes to export to the EU, must now meet social and environmental conditions, and that "the issue of sustainabilty criteria is of crucial importance."

Scientists from the European Environment Agency urged the 27-nation bloc to drop its 10% biofuel target for road transport fuels.

Lula rebuffed accusations by Jean Ziegler, the UN's special rapporteur for the right to food, that biofuels were a "crime against humanity".

"The real crime against humanity is to discredit biofuels a priori and condemn food-starved and energy-starved countries to dependence and insecurity," Lula said.

Some of Brazil's neighbours, led by oil-rich Venezuela, warned this week that biofuels could increase malnutrition in Latin America. Lula said he was "shocked" that biofuel critics failed to mention the impact that high oil prices had on food production costs.

"It's always easier to hide economic and political interests behind supposed social and environmental interests," he said.

The growing criticism has placed Brasil at the centre of the global biofuels debate. The country has enjoyed an agricultural export boom, and has become the world's largest exporter of ethanol, which is derived from sugar cane. Critics say the increased production of crops for ethanol and biodiesel, which is derived from oil seeds, competes for land with food crops, and is pushing cattle ranchers and farmers further north in Brasil, contributing to the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.

But the Brazilian government has argued that it has plenty of unused land to plant crops for biofuels and that current production was still too small to affect food prices.

Source: The Guardian| by Anil Dawar

Found this post useful? Consider subscribing to
Sustainable Affairs Feed/RSS.

ENERGY CRISIS: Food shortages and incredible arguments

I find this talk of genetically modified food being necessary to feed the world's population incredible ('As the world begins to starve it's time to take GM seriously', Comment, last week). Yes, it would get us out of a scrape in the short term, but we have to realise that we cannot carry on expanding the population and consuming resources without consequences. If the population continues to grow, we will reach a situation where even GM cannot feed everyone, never mind competing for space, water, a clean environment and the chance for other species to exist. Overpopulation is the biggest single cause of our environmental woes and we cannot make significant improvements without addressing this.
Ryan Taylor, London SW9

Crop yields need to increase by 1.6 per cent per year (compounded) to avoid mass starvation. From the mid-Sixties to the mid-Nineties, soybean, canola, maize, wheat and rice did just that, but in the last 10 to 15 years, wheat and rice have fallen badly below this threshold.

The difference? Wheat and rice are not yet 'biotech' crops whereas breeding tools have been successfully applied to the others. Robin McKie's timely article highlights that this important new breeding tool is not only safe and effective but also desperately needed.

We simply cannot afford to throw GM out if we are to double crop production in the next 40 years in a sustainable fashion. Ironically, pressure from some NGOs has engendered overly restrictive regulations that price out GM breakthroughs from small companies and publicly funded research institutes. Such breakthroughs could make major contributions to enhancing yield.
Professor Chris Lamb, John Innes Centre, Norwich

Your article trots out the old line that GM crops can give the world higher-yielding crops using fewer pesticides. On what evidence? A report last week from the United Nations World Food Programme said GM was not a quick fix to feed the world's poor. The authors saw little role for it in feeding the poor.
Roger Mainwood, Wivenhoe, Essex

Robin McKie addresses the criticism of the biotechnology industry, based on assumptions that it is driven by 'international conglomerates', which is not always the case.

For Hawaiian farmers whose papaya crop was ravaged by the ringspot virus in the Nineties, GM technology was a saving grace. Not through big business, but scientists at Cornell University who used GM technology to create a crop resistant to ringspot virus that saved the Hawaiian papaya industry from collapse. One would hope that if a similar event were to occur on our shores, environmental campaigners would support British farmers' access to such beneficial technology.
Julian Little , chair, Agricultural Biotechnology Council, London WC1

Robin McKie presents a stimulating but flawed solution to feeding a rising population at a time of climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fourth assessment report: 'Globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase with increases in local average temperature over a range of 1 to 3 degrees C, but above this it is projected to decrease', so it is possible that global food production may actually increase, making the case for GM hardly compelling.

We should beware the siren calls from GM conglomerates.
Mike Frost, Bristol

Julius Nyerere once said: 'When people go hungry, it is not food that is short, but justice.' Until that is corrected, no amount of new technologies will be enough.
Frank Jackson, Harlow, Essex

Source: The Observer

Found this post useful? Consider subscribing to
Sustainable Affairs Feed/RSS.

UNITED KINGDOM: Ethical bank offers wind of change for green consumers

You are keen to play your part in tackling climate change and have a bit of money to invest. You are distrustful of some of the big financial institutions but would like to earn a decent return on your cash if possible.

If that sounds like you, then you may be interested to hear that Tuesday sees the launch of a public share issue aimed at raising £8.5m to invest in wind farms and other renewable energy projects across the country. Ethical bank Triodos is offering people the chance to become shareholders in Triodos Renewables, a public limited company which came into being 13 years ago as the Wind Fund. This is its fourth share issue - the last was in 2005.

Triodos Renewables invests mainly in small and medium-sized wind farms, hydroelectric schemes and emerging renewable energy technology companies in the UK. It owns and operates two wind farms, Caton Moor in Lancashire and Haverigg II in Cumbria, and two single turbines, Gulliver in Lowestoft, Suffolk, (recently out of action for a few months following lightning strikes) and Sigurd in the Orkney Islands. It also owns the Beochlich hydroelectric project in Argyll, Scotland, and it has a stake in Marine Current Turbines, a tidal energy company whose first commercial turbine will begin operating off the coast of Northern Ireland later this year, and is a partner in Connective Energy, which is developing ways to capture and re-use waste heat from industry.

Triodos Renewables plans to use the money raised by the new share issue to more than double the amount of green electricity it produces in the next two to three years. It is issuing up to 5.5m new shares at £1.65 per share.

A spokesman says an investment in the company's last share issue in 2005 would have returned 22.9%. It adds: "The directors believe the company can reasonably be expected to achieve or exceed this performance in the coming years."

But you need to be aware that this is a long-term investment in a single share, with all the risks that entails. You may not get back the full amount invested, and it may be hard to sell the shares, though Triodos runs a service to match sellers with buyers.

The minimum investment is £825 (500 shares). The spokesman says an investment of £2,970 "will produce renewable energy output equivalent to the average person's annual carbon footprint".
Triodos Renewables is managed by Bristol-based Triodos Bank, which is headquartered in the Netherlands and has more than 20,000 customers here.

Whatever you think about wind farms, we are probably going to see a lot more turbines springing up if Britain is to stand any chance of meeting its targets for renewable energy. But with all the variables at play - the unpredictability of planning decisions, rising steel prices and so on - investing in them may not be suitable for the faint-hearted. A less risky bet may be an ethical fund investing in lots of different companies.

Source: The Guardian| by Rupert Jones

Found this post useful? Consider subscribing to
Sustainable Affairs Feed/RSS.

UNITED KINGDOM: El Reino Unido instala la mayor turbina de energía generada a partir de las mareas. Abastecera a mas de 1000 hogares

A finales de marzo, en Londres, los grupos ecologistas asistían con preocupación al acuerdo en materia de energía al que habían llegado Nicolas Sarkozy y el primer ministro británico, Gordon Brown: ambos países, según acordaron los mandatarios, colaborarán estrechamente en el lanzamiento de una nueva generación de centrales nucleares.

Pocos días después de que Nicolas Sarkozy y Gordon Brown culminasen su ‘entente nuclear’, sin embargo, un carguero, el Rambiz, zarpaba de los astilleros de Belfast (Irlanda del Norte) con una carga esperanzadora para quienes desean que la respuesta al cambio climático no sea la energía nuclear: el SeaGen, una inmensa turbina destinada a aprovechar la fuerza de las mareas para producir energía limpia.

Ese mismo día, el 30 de marzo, el Rambiz llegaba a su destino: las aguas cerca de la costa de Strangford Lough, un 'lago' –entiéndase fiordo- que se extiende en la orilla más oriental de Irlanda del Norte. Desde entonces, los ingenieros han trabajado a fondo para ‘anclar’ el SeaGen, la primera turbina comercial de este tipo, al lecho marino, perforándolo unos nueve metros para enterrar sus cuatro ‘patas’. Salvo sorpresas de última hora, esta fase final de la instalación culminará hoy.

Aún quedan otras 12 semanas de pruebas, pero hacia julio, si todo marcha como está previsto, sus dos rotores (16 metros de diámetro) trabajarán a pleno rendimiento, unas 20 horas al día. Proporcionarán entonces 1,2 MW, energía suficiente para alimentar a más de 1.000 hogares. Según cálculos de la compañía que está detrás de SeaGen, Marine Current Turbines, este tipo de ingenios pueden proporcionar en una década el 10% de la energía de todo el país.

Con un peso de 1.000 toneladas, y una anchura de 43 metros de punta a punta, la turbina funciona como un gigantesco molino de viento sumergido. Con una ventaja importante, según ha destacado Martin Wright, director general de la firma: las mareas son, a diferencia del viento, predecibles, lo que permite calcular y sacar el máximo rendimiento de la energía que generan.

En este sentido, el emplazamiento de SeaGen es uno de los mejores de Europa: las mareas en esta zona cercana a Belfast, que se abren paso entre la deshilachada costa norirlandesa, son poderosas (desplazan hasta 350 millones de m3 cada una) y veloces (unos 4 metros por segundo). De hecho, en un monasterio situado en una de las muchas islas que jalonan Strangford Lough, la de Mahee, reposan los restos de un molino de agua –uno de los más antiguos de los que se tiene noticia- con el que los lugareños aprovechaban, ya en el siglo VIII, la potencia de este recurso natural.

Impacto ambiental
Como se ve, la idea de sacar partido de la marea no es, ni mucho menos, nueva. En los últimos años, sin embargo, al hilo de la creciente preocupación por el cambio climático, los expertos están volviendo su mirada hacia los océanos. Ahí está el proyecto del Severn Barrage, también en el Reino Unido, que estudia crear una gigantesca presa en el Bristol Channel, entre Gales e Inglaterra, o la construcción, ya en marcha, de una ‘central flotante’ que aprovechará la energía de las olas en Portugal (proyecto Pelamis).

La cuestión que aún queda por resolver sobre algunos de ellos es si son tan verdes como aparentan. En el caso del SeaGen, su problema puede ser el mismo, bajo el agua, que tienen sobre ella los molinos de viento: mientras éstos suponen un peligro para las aves, que pueden chocar contra sus aspas, el SeaGen todavía tiene que demostrar que es compatible con la riquísima vida marítima que habita las aguas de Strangford Lough.

Para ello, la propia compañía ha invertido dos millones de libras en la vigilancia del impacto ambiental de la turbina, lo que incluye la presencia permanente de un observador de mamíferos marinos (en la zona abundan las focas) durante la fase de puesta en marcha de SeaGen, así como la instalación de un sistema de sónar que controlará la St. Andrew’s University.

Aunque el movimiento de sus aspas no es excesivamente rápido (14 revoluciones por minuto), el a veces polémico precedente de la energía eólica invita a ser precavido: «Estoy convencido de que esta tecnología va a funcionar, pero lo que aún no sabemos es qué impacto tendrá en el medio ambiente», ha recalcado David Irwin, uno de los conservacionistas locales, encargado de uno de los equipos encargados de la supervisión del proyecto.

Si el SeaGen da buenos resultados, Marine Current Turbines piensa instalar una ‘granja’ de turbinas en la costa de Anglesey (Gales), con una capacidad de 10,5 MW, que esperan comience a funcionar hacia 2011, y otras empresas han anunciado planes similares. Serán las primeras de toda una flota llamada, quizá -si la política lo permite y la tecnología lo hace posible-, a constituir una alternativa a lo nuclear.

Source: El Mundo|Ana Goñi

Found this post useful? Consider subscribing to
Sustainable Affairs Feed/RSS.