The Guardian, Friday 12 June 2009
Arizona
The Navajo nation is fighting uranium mining through the US courts. Radiation levels are 450 times the normal levels. Other uranium mines are opposed by indigenous groups in Australia, India, Canada, Niger and Botswana.
Botswana
The Bushmen of the Kalahari desert have been progressively pushed out of their traditional lands by the state to make way for mining.
Brazil, Paraguay, Peru
Five "uncontacted" tribes living deep in the forests of Peru, Brazil and Paraguay are at risk of extinction as oil companies, colonists and loggers invade their territories, says Survival International.
Canada
The giant oil tar fields in Alberta are some of the most polluting in the world, and will stretch over thousands of square kilometres. They are the centre of a legal battle between oil companies and the Beaver Lake Cree nation and other indigenous groups.
Colombia
Oil companies are moving into the western Amazon and prospecting indigenous land. Tribes are caught in the crossfire of a civil war between the state and guerillas.
Congo
Pygmy groups in the rainforest are threatened by logging and mining companies.
Guatemala
Thousands of indigenous people have been forced to move to make way for giant dams and other developments. Indigenous leaders are regularly faced with threats of assassination by the authorities. Death squads have re-emerged.
Indonesia
Palm oil companies in Sumatra have been expanding into the forests and grabbing land from indigenous communities. This, says Oxfam, is leading to conflict and more poverty.
Kenya
The indigenous Ogiek people who have lived for centuries in the Mau forest are being forced out to make way for logging, paper and tea companies.
Nigeria
The oil producing Niger Delta which accounts for 4% of all the world's oil, is now heavily militarised as ethnic militia groups resort to kidnapping and violence in response to generations of abject poverty.
Philippines
Tribal lands are being militarised and repression of indigenous groups is increasing as giant coal, gold and copper mines destroy traditional water sources and fields.
West Papua
Companies have dug around $100bn of copper and gold from West Papua in 40 years, but while the Indonesian government has richly benefited, local tribes have been dispossessed of land and livelihoods.
Saturday, 13 June 2009
'We are fighting for our lives and our dignity'
Across the globe, as mining and oil firms race for dwindling resources, indigenous peoples are battling to defend their lands – often paying the ultimate price
John Vidal
The Guardian, Saturday 13 June 2009
It has been called the world's second "oil war", but the only similarity between Iraq and events in the jungles of northern Peru over the last few weeks has been the mismatch of force. On one side have been the police armed with automatic weapons, teargas, helicopter gunships and armoured cars. On the other are several thousand Awajun and Wambis Indians, many of them in war paint and armed with bows and arrows and spears.
In some of the worst violence seen in Peru in 20 years, the Indians this week warned Latin America what could happen if companies are given free access to the Amazonian forests to exploit an estimated 6bn barrels of oil and take as much timber they like. After months of peaceful protests, the police were ordered to use force to remove a road bock near Bagua Grande.
In the fights that followed, at least 50 Indians and nine police officers were killed, with hundreds more wounded or arrested. The indigenous rights group Survival International described it as "Peru's Tiananmen Square".
"For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests," said Servando Puerta, one of the protest leaders. "This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity."
Yesterday, as riot police broke up more demonstrations in Lima and a curfew was imposed on many Peruvian Amazonian towns, President Garcia backed down in the face of condemnation of the massacre. He suspended – but only for three months – the laws that would allow the forest to be exploited. No one doubts the clashes will continue.
Peru is just one of many countries now in open conflict with its indigenous people over natural resources. Barely reported in the international press, there have been major protests around mines, oil, logging and mineral exploitation in Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America. Hydro electric dams, biofuel plantations as well as coal, copper, gold and bauxite mines are all at the centre of major land rights disputes.
A massive military force continued this week to raid communities opposed to oil companies' presence on the Niger delta. The delta, which provides 90% of Nigeria's foreign earnings, has always been volatile, but guns have flooded in and security has deteriorated. In the last month a military taskforce has been sent in and helicopter gunships have shelled villages suspected of harbouring militia. Thousands of people have fled. Activists from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta have responded by killing 12 soldiers and this week set fire to a Chevron oil facility. Yesterday seven more civilians were shot by the military.
The escalation of violence came in the week that Shell agreed to pay £9.7m to ethnic Ogoni families – whose homeland is in the delta – who had led a peaceful uprising against it and other oil companies in the 1990s, and who had taken the company to court in New York accusing it of complicity in writer Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution in 1995.
Meanwhile in West Papua, Indonesian forces protecting some of the world's largest mines have been accused of human rights violations. Hundreds of tribesmen have been killed in the last few years in clashes between the army and people with bows and arrows.
"An aggressive drive is taking place to extract the last remaining resources from indigenous territories," says Victoria Tauli-Corpus, an indigenous Filipino and chair of the UN permanent forum on indigenous issues. "There is a crisis of human rights. There are more and more arrests, killings and abuses.
"This is happening in Russia, Canada, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mongolia, Nigeria, the Amazon, all over Latin America, Papua New Guinea and Africa. It is global. We are seeing a human rights emergency. A battle is taking place for natural resources everywhere. Much of the world's natural capital – oil, gas, timber, minerals – lies on or beneath lands occupied by indigenous people," says Tauli-Corpus.
What until quite recently were isolated incidents of indigenous peoples in conflict with states and corporations are now becoming common as government-backed companies move deeper on to lands long ignored as unproductive or wild. As countries and the World Bank increase spending on major infrastructural projects to counter the economic crisis, the conflicts are expected to grow.
Indigenous groups say that large-scale mining is the most damaging. When new laws opened the Philippines up to international mining 10 years ago, companies flooded in and wreaked havoc in indigenous communities, says MP Clare Short, former UK international development secretary and now chair of the UK-based Working Group on Mining in the Philippines.
Short visited people affected by mining there in 2007: "I have never seen anything so systematically destructive. The environmental effects are catastrophic as are the effects on people's livelihoods. They take the tops off mountains, which are holy, they destroy the water sources and make it impossible to farm," she said.
In a report published earlier this year, the group said: "Mining generates or exacerbates corruption, fuels armed conflicts, increases militarisation and human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings."
The arrival of dams, mining or oil spells cultural death for communities. The Dongria Kondh in Orissa, eastern India, are certain that their way of life will be destroyed when British FTSE 100 company Vedanta shortly starts to legally exploit their sacred Nyamgiri mountain for bauxite, the raw material for aluminium. The huge open cast mine will destroy a vast swath of untouched forest, and will reduce the mountain to an industrial wasteland. More than 60 villages will be affected.
"If Vedanta mines our mountain, the water will dry up. In the forest there are tigers, bears, monkeys. Where will they go? We have been living here for generations. Why should we leave?" asks Kumbradi, a tribesman. "We live here for Nyamgiri, for its trees and leaves and all that is here."
Davi Yanomami, a shaman of the Yanomami, one of the largest but most isolated Brazilian indigenous groups, came to London this week to warn MPs that the Amazonian forests were being destroyed, and to appeal for help to prevent his tribe being wiped out.
"History is repeating itself", he told the MPs. "Twenty years ago many thousand gold miners flooded into Yanomami land and one in five of us died from the diseases and violence they brought. We were in danger of being exterminated then, but people in Europe persuaded the Brazilian government to act and they were removed.
"But now 3,000 more miners and ranchers have come back. More are coming. They are bringing in guns, rafts, machines, and destroying and polluting rivers. People are being killed. They are opening up and expanding old airstrips. They are flooding into Yanomami land. We need your help.
"Governments must treat us with respect. This creates great suffering. We kill nothing, we live on the land, we never rob nature. Yet governments always want more. We are warning the world that our people will die."
According to Victor Menotti, director of the California-based International Forum on Globalisation, "This is a paradigm war taking place from the arctic to tropical forests. Wherever you find indigenous peoples you will find resource conflicts. It is a battle between the industrial and indigenous world views."
There is some hope, says Tauli-Corpus. "Indigenous peoples are now much more aware of their rights. They are challenging the companies and governments at every point."
In Ecuador, Chevron may be fined billions of dollars in the next few months if an epic court case goes against them. The company is accused of dumping, in the 1970s and 1980s, more than 19bn gallons of toxic waste and millions of gallons of crude oil into waste pits in the forests, leading to more than 1,400 cancer deaths and devastation of indigenous communities. The pits are said to be still there, mixing chemicals with groundwater and killing fish and wildlife.
The Ecuadorian courts have set damages at $27bn (£16.5bn). Chevron, which inherited the case when it bought Texaco, does not deny the original spills, but says the damage was cleaned up.
Back in the Niger delta, Shell was ordered to pay $1.5bn to the Ijaw people in 2006 – though the company has so far escaped paying the fines. After settling with Ogoni families in New York this week, it now faces a second class action suit in New York over alleged human rights abuses, and a further case in Holland brought by Niger Delta villagers working with Dutch groups.
Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil is being sued by Indonesian indigenous villagers who claim their guards committed human rights violations, and there are dozens of outstanding cases against other companies operating in the Niger Delta.
"Indigenous groups are using the courts more but there is still collusion at the highest levels in court systems to ignore land rights when they conflict with economic opportunities," says Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. "Everything is for sale, including the Indians' rights. Governments often do not recognise land titles of Indians and the big landowners just take the land."
Indigenous leaders want an immediate cessation to mining on their lands. Last month, a conference on mining and indigenous peoples in Manila called on governments to appoint an ombudsman or an international court system to handle indigenous peoples' complaints.
"Most indigenous peoples barely have resources to ensure their basic survival, much less to bring their cases to court. Members of the judiciary in many countries are bribed by corporations and are threatened or killed if they rule in favour of indigenous peoples.
"States have an obligation to provide them with better access to justice and maintain an independent judiciary," said the declaration.
But as the complaints grow, so does the chance that peaceful protests will grow into intractable conflicts as they have in Nigeria, West Papua and now Peru. "There is a massive resistance movement growing," says Clare Short. "But the danger is that as it grows, so does the violence."
John Vidal
The Guardian, Saturday 13 June 2009
It has been called the world's second "oil war", but the only similarity between Iraq and events in the jungles of northern Peru over the last few weeks has been the mismatch of force. On one side have been the police armed with automatic weapons, teargas, helicopter gunships and armoured cars. On the other are several thousand Awajun and Wambis Indians, many of them in war paint and armed with bows and arrows and spears.
In some of the worst violence seen in Peru in 20 years, the Indians this week warned Latin America what could happen if companies are given free access to the Amazonian forests to exploit an estimated 6bn barrels of oil and take as much timber they like. After months of peaceful protests, the police were ordered to use force to remove a road bock near Bagua Grande.
In the fights that followed, at least 50 Indians and nine police officers were killed, with hundreds more wounded or arrested. The indigenous rights group Survival International described it as "Peru's Tiananmen Square".
"For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests," said Servando Puerta, one of the protest leaders. "This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity."
Yesterday, as riot police broke up more demonstrations in Lima and a curfew was imposed on many Peruvian Amazonian towns, President Garcia backed down in the face of condemnation of the massacre. He suspended – but only for three months – the laws that would allow the forest to be exploited. No one doubts the clashes will continue.
Peru is just one of many countries now in open conflict with its indigenous people over natural resources. Barely reported in the international press, there have been major protests around mines, oil, logging and mineral exploitation in Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America. Hydro electric dams, biofuel plantations as well as coal, copper, gold and bauxite mines are all at the centre of major land rights disputes.
A massive military force continued this week to raid communities opposed to oil companies' presence on the Niger delta. The delta, which provides 90% of Nigeria's foreign earnings, has always been volatile, but guns have flooded in and security has deteriorated. In the last month a military taskforce has been sent in and helicopter gunships have shelled villages suspected of harbouring militia. Thousands of people have fled. Activists from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta have responded by killing 12 soldiers and this week set fire to a Chevron oil facility. Yesterday seven more civilians were shot by the military.
The escalation of violence came in the week that Shell agreed to pay £9.7m to ethnic Ogoni families – whose homeland is in the delta – who had led a peaceful uprising against it and other oil companies in the 1990s, and who had taken the company to court in New York accusing it of complicity in writer Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution in 1995.
Meanwhile in West Papua, Indonesian forces protecting some of the world's largest mines have been accused of human rights violations. Hundreds of tribesmen have been killed in the last few years in clashes between the army and people with bows and arrows.
"An aggressive drive is taking place to extract the last remaining resources from indigenous territories," says Victoria Tauli-Corpus, an indigenous Filipino and chair of the UN permanent forum on indigenous issues. "There is a crisis of human rights. There are more and more arrests, killings and abuses.
"This is happening in Russia, Canada, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mongolia, Nigeria, the Amazon, all over Latin America, Papua New Guinea and Africa. It is global. We are seeing a human rights emergency. A battle is taking place for natural resources everywhere. Much of the world's natural capital – oil, gas, timber, minerals – lies on or beneath lands occupied by indigenous people," says Tauli-Corpus.
What until quite recently were isolated incidents of indigenous peoples in conflict with states and corporations are now becoming common as government-backed companies move deeper on to lands long ignored as unproductive or wild. As countries and the World Bank increase spending on major infrastructural projects to counter the economic crisis, the conflicts are expected to grow.
Indigenous groups say that large-scale mining is the most damaging. When new laws opened the Philippines up to international mining 10 years ago, companies flooded in and wreaked havoc in indigenous communities, says MP Clare Short, former UK international development secretary and now chair of the UK-based Working Group on Mining in the Philippines.
Short visited people affected by mining there in 2007: "I have never seen anything so systematically destructive. The environmental effects are catastrophic as are the effects on people's livelihoods. They take the tops off mountains, which are holy, they destroy the water sources and make it impossible to farm," she said.
In a report published earlier this year, the group said: "Mining generates or exacerbates corruption, fuels armed conflicts, increases militarisation and human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings."
The arrival of dams, mining or oil spells cultural death for communities. The Dongria Kondh in Orissa, eastern India, are certain that their way of life will be destroyed when British FTSE 100 company Vedanta shortly starts to legally exploit their sacred Nyamgiri mountain for bauxite, the raw material for aluminium. The huge open cast mine will destroy a vast swath of untouched forest, and will reduce the mountain to an industrial wasteland. More than 60 villages will be affected.
"If Vedanta mines our mountain, the water will dry up. In the forest there are tigers, bears, monkeys. Where will they go? We have been living here for generations. Why should we leave?" asks Kumbradi, a tribesman. "We live here for Nyamgiri, for its trees and leaves and all that is here."
Davi Yanomami, a shaman of the Yanomami, one of the largest but most isolated Brazilian indigenous groups, came to London this week to warn MPs that the Amazonian forests were being destroyed, and to appeal for help to prevent his tribe being wiped out.
"History is repeating itself", he told the MPs. "Twenty years ago many thousand gold miners flooded into Yanomami land and one in five of us died from the diseases and violence they brought. We were in danger of being exterminated then, but people in Europe persuaded the Brazilian government to act and they were removed.
"But now 3,000 more miners and ranchers have come back. More are coming. They are bringing in guns, rafts, machines, and destroying and polluting rivers. People are being killed. They are opening up and expanding old airstrips. They are flooding into Yanomami land. We need your help.
"Governments must treat us with respect. This creates great suffering. We kill nothing, we live on the land, we never rob nature. Yet governments always want more. We are warning the world that our people will die."
According to Victor Menotti, director of the California-based International Forum on Globalisation, "This is a paradigm war taking place from the arctic to tropical forests. Wherever you find indigenous peoples you will find resource conflicts. It is a battle between the industrial and indigenous world views."
There is some hope, says Tauli-Corpus. "Indigenous peoples are now much more aware of their rights. They are challenging the companies and governments at every point."
In Ecuador, Chevron may be fined billions of dollars in the next few months if an epic court case goes against them. The company is accused of dumping, in the 1970s and 1980s, more than 19bn gallons of toxic waste and millions of gallons of crude oil into waste pits in the forests, leading to more than 1,400 cancer deaths and devastation of indigenous communities. The pits are said to be still there, mixing chemicals with groundwater and killing fish and wildlife.
The Ecuadorian courts have set damages at $27bn (£16.5bn). Chevron, which inherited the case when it bought Texaco, does not deny the original spills, but says the damage was cleaned up.
Back in the Niger delta, Shell was ordered to pay $1.5bn to the Ijaw people in 2006 – though the company has so far escaped paying the fines. After settling with Ogoni families in New York this week, it now faces a second class action suit in New York over alleged human rights abuses, and a further case in Holland brought by Niger Delta villagers working with Dutch groups.
Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil is being sued by Indonesian indigenous villagers who claim their guards committed human rights violations, and there are dozens of outstanding cases against other companies operating in the Niger Delta.
"Indigenous groups are using the courts more but there is still collusion at the highest levels in court systems to ignore land rights when they conflict with economic opportunities," says Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. "Everything is for sale, including the Indians' rights. Governments often do not recognise land titles of Indians and the big landowners just take the land."
Indigenous leaders want an immediate cessation to mining on their lands. Last month, a conference on mining and indigenous peoples in Manila called on governments to appoint an ombudsman or an international court system to handle indigenous peoples' complaints.
"Most indigenous peoples barely have resources to ensure their basic survival, much less to bring their cases to court. Members of the judiciary in many countries are bribed by corporations and are threatened or killed if they rule in favour of indigenous peoples.
"States have an obligation to provide them with better access to justice and maintain an independent judiciary," said the declaration.
But as the complaints grow, so does the chance that peaceful protests will grow into intractable conflicts as they have in Nigeria, West Papua and now Peru. "There is a massive resistance movement growing," says Clare Short. "But the danger is that as it grows, so does the violence."
Chevron fights Ecuador pollution lawsuit
By Naomi Mapstone in Nueva Loja
Published: June 12 2009 18:01
After almost 40 years of drilling, this stretch of Amazon jungle on Ecuador’s border with Colombia is pockmarked with long, deep pits of viscous black crude or blended oil and earth that the locals call “swimming pools”.
About 916 pits were used by Texaco Petroleum, the US oil major, and PetroEcuador, the state company, for the 23 years before Texaco’s exit from the country in 1992.
Now they are at the centre of what is shaping up to be the biggest environmental lawsuit in history, with $27bn (€19bn, £16bn) in potential damages sought against Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001. That is almost seven times the damages awarded against ExxonMobil for its 1989 Alaska spill.
“The only other oil problem that might be comparable is the first Gulf war, in which Iraq trashed Kuwait’s oil fields,” says Douglas Beltman, an environmental scientist for the plaintiffs, rubbing crude-tainted mud from a riverbank between his fingers. “That’s the scale of contamination we are looking at.”
The fact that this rough, impoverished frontierland is heavily polluted is not at issue. The region is home to marginalised indigenous tribes, “colonisers” from other parts of Ecuador, Colombian refugees and the occasional leftwing guerrilla from across the border looking for rest and recreation.
But after 15 years of litigation, almost every other aspect of the case is contested. Lawyers who brought the class-action suit against Chevron say Texaco operated below environmental standards of the day to maximise profits.
They allege the company released 18.5bn gallons of produced water – the hot salty byproduct of drilling – into waterways instead of reinjecting it deep into the earth; that it used unlined earthen pits for permanent rather than temporary storage of waste; and that it chose not to report many spills. They allege widespread contamination of waterways and high levels of associated sickness, including cancer.
Chevron, the world’s third biggest oil company, denies the charges, accusing the plaintiffs of a blatant “shakedown” and the court of bias.
It says its responsibility ended when it cleaned up 37.5 per cent of the well sites as part of a $40m remediation agreement with the Ecuadorean government in 1995. PetroEcuador, Texaco’s consortium partner, which continues to operate in Lago Agrio, has responsibility for the remaining sites, it argues. PetroEcuador declined to comment.
In the 15 years that Chevron has been fighting the charges in both US and Ecuadorean courts, it has seen the damages claim shoot up to exceed its estimates of the $490m profit it says Texaco made over 26 years as operator of the consortium.
The company has lobbied US Congress to withdraw trade preferences over the suit and, even before the Ecuadorian trial judge, Juan Nuñez, hands down his decision this year, it is planning to exhaust all avenues of appeal.
“We feel the court process in Ecuador is so badly tainted it is virtually irredeemable at this point,” says James Craig, a Chevron spokesman, standing on a site he says Texaco successfully remediated. “We are being pursued under a law that did not exist until nine years after Texaco ceased to operate in the country . . . They [the plaintiffs] illegally abandoned the evidential phase of the trial, which required both sides to present scientific evidence to a panel of five experts for assessment.
“It was only after intense pressure and two appeals by the plaintiffs’ lawyers that the court relented and appointed [its own expert].”
Mr Craig says the plaintiffs have not submitted medical records to the court to support the claims of cancer deaths.
“Chevron has absolutely no intention of paying this extortion or writing a cheque to these trial lawyers to settle this case,” he said.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Nuñez, denied bias, saying the only pressure he felt was that of his own conscience.
“People say this is the case of the century, that what happens here is important not just for Ecuador but for all humanity . . . I see with my eyes. I see the damage; I see the contamination in the rivers.”
Away from the courtroom, locals have seen little of the vast wealth that has flowed from the ground.
“All of our water in contaminated,” said Leonor Velasquez, a diminutive woman waiting in a health clinic. “We all have rashes, I am so itchy all the time.”
Donald Moncayo, an activist who conducts “toxic tours”, illustrated her point at a creek behind a nearby abandoned house, digging into the bank to reveal blackened soil reeking of oil. “Before it was worse,” he said. “This river was black, and the animals passed by and drank the water . . . the chickens and pigs were black.”
Roberto Poncé believes his son Jose Luis’s death from leukaemia seven years ago was linked to contamination by the oil industry. Jose Luis died the day after his 17th birthday.
Hacking his way through a tangle of vines to an old pit beside his house, Mr Poncé says the family has stopped using the well on their property.
“Just because there are plants here doesn’t mean it is safe,” he said.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: June 12 2009 18:01
After almost 40 years of drilling, this stretch of Amazon jungle on Ecuador’s border with Colombia is pockmarked with long, deep pits of viscous black crude or blended oil and earth that the locals call “swimming pools”.
About 916 pits were used by Texaco Petroleum, the US oil major, and PetroEcuador, the state company, for the 23 years before Texaco’s exit from the country in 1992.
Now they are at the centre of what is shaping up to be the biggest environmental lawsuit in history, with $27bn (€19bn, £16bn) in potential damages sought against Chevron, which bought Texaco in 2001. That is almost seven times the damages awarded against ExxonMobil for its 1989 Alaska spill.
“The only other oil problem that might be comparable is the first Gulf war, in which Iraq trashed Kuwait’s oil fields,” says Douglas Beltman, an environmental scientist for the plaintiffs, rubbing crude-tainted mud from a riverbank between his fingers. “That’s the scale of contamination we are looking at.”
The fact that this rough, impoverished frontierland is heavily polluted is not at issue. The region is home to marginalised indigenous tribes, “colonisers” from other parts of Ecuador, Colombian refugees and the occasional leftwing guerrilla from across the border looking for rest and recreation.
But after 15 years of litigation, almost every other aspect of the case is contested. Lawyers who brought the class-action suit against Chevron say Texaco operated below environmental standards of the day to maximise profits.
They allege the company released 18.5bn gallons of produced water – the hot salty byproduct of drilling – into waterways instead of reinjecting it deep into the earth; that it used unlined earthen pits for permanent rather than temporary storage of waste; and that it chose not to report many spills. They allege widespread contamination of waterways and high levels of associated sickness, including cancer.
Chevron, the world’s third biggest oil company, denies the charges, accusing the plaintiffs of a blatant “shakedown” and the court of bias.
It says its responsibility ended when it cleaned up 37.5 per cent of the well sites as part of a $40m remediation agreement with the Ecuadorean government in 1995. PetroEcuador, Texaco’s consortium partner, which continues to operate in Lago Agrio, has responsibility for the remaining sites, it argues. PetroEcuador declined to comment.
In the 15 years that Chevron has been fighting the charges in both US and Ecuadorean courts, it has seen the damages claim shoot up to exceed its estimates of the $490m profit it says Texaco made over 26 years as operator of the consortium.
The company has lobbied US Congress to withdraw trade preferences over the suit and, even before the Ecuadorian trial judge, Juan Nuñez, hands down his decision this year, it is planning to exhaust all avenues of appeal.
“We feel the court process in Ecuador is so badly tainted it is virtually irredeemable at this point,” says James Craig, a Chevron spokesman, standing on a site he says Texaco successfully remediated. “We are being pursued under a law that did not exist until nine years after Texaco ceased to operate in the country . . . They [the plaintiffs] illegally abandoned the evidential phase of the trial, which required both sides to present scientific evidence to a panel of five experts for assessment.
“It was only after intense pressure and two appeals by the plaintiffs’ lawyers that the court relented and appointed [its own expert].”
Mr Craig says the plaintiffs have not submitted medical records to the court to support the claims of cancer deaths.
“Chevron has absolutely no intention of paying this extortion or writing a cheque to these trial lawyers to settle this case,” he said.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Nuñez, denied bias, saying the only pressure he felt was that of his own conscience.
“People say this is the case of the century, that what happens here is important not just for Ecuador but for all humanity . . . I see with my eyes. I see the damage; I see the contamination in the rivers.”
Away from the courtroom, locals have seen little of the vast wealth that has flowed from the ground.
“All of our water in contaminated,” said Leonor Velasquez, a diminutive woman waiting in a health clinic. “We all have rashes, I am so itchy all the time.”
Donald Moncayo, an activist who conducts “toxic tours”, illustrated her point at a creek behind a nearby abandoned house, digging into the bank to reveal blackened soil reeking of oil. “Before it was worse,” he said. “This river was black, and the animals passed by and drank the water . . . the chickens and pigs were black.”
Roberto Poncé believes his son Jose Luis’s death from leukaemia seven years ago was linked to contamination by the oil industry. Jose Luis died the day after his 17th birthday.
Hacking his way through a tangle of vines to an old pit beside his house, Mr Poncé says the family has stopped using the well on their property.
“Just because there are plants here doesn’t mean it is safe,” he said.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Ofgem regulator resigns over 'anti-competitive' pricing proposals
The Times
June 13, 2009
Robin Pagnamenta, Energy and Environment Editor
One of Britain's leading energy market regulators has resigned abruptly from Ofgem, the industry watchdog, after a pricing dispute.
George Yarrow stepped down after a disagreement over the regulator's decision to force energy companies to scrap regional pricing in the UK.
Ofgem initiated an investigation into competition in Britain's gas and electricity markets last year after a string of steep retail price increases left consumers facing soaring gas and electricity bills.
One of the changes Ofgem has proposed is to abolish “unfair pricing” — different charging structures levied on consumers depending on where they live — unless these can be justified on the ground of cost.
However, Professor Yarrow, chairman of the Regulatory Policy Institute, who has served as a non-executive member of the Gas and Energy Markets Association (Gema), Ofgem's supervisory board, since 2006, said he believed that the recommendations represented “bad policy” that would harm more consumers than they would help.
He asserted that by forcing all energy companies to adopt similar pricing structures, there would be less competition among suppliers and prices would be forced up.
Critics of the policy say that energy companies seeking new customers in regions outside their local area will be unable to offer lower prices, diminishing the incentive for consumers to switch suppliers.
The formal minutes from Gema's meetings show that the dispute between Professor Yarrow and other members of the authority, including Alistair Buchanan, the chief executive of Ofgem, came to a head at a stormy special meeting on March 5 to discuss the controversial pricing arrangements.
At the next meeting, two weeks later, Professor Yarrow did not attend, and at the subsequent meeting, six weeks ago, board members were informed that he had submitted his resignation.
The minutes also reveal that Professor Yarrow had been pressing for the issue to be referred to the Competition Commission for a second opinion.
Ofgem defended the policy changes yesterday but said that it regretted Professor Yarrow's resignation. The group said: “Professor Yarrow was a valued member of Ofgem's authority. His contribution will be missed.”
In comments to Utility Week, the industry journal, Professor Yarrow said that the changes reflected a “deep incoherence/inconsistency” in Ofgem policy with profound implications for the health of the energy market.
He was not alone in his views. Sir John Vickers, the former chairman of the Office of Fair Trading, and Stephen Littlechild, the former electricity regulator, have written to Ofgem to express their concern that the policy will have “harmful anti-competitive” effects.
June 13, 2009
Robin Pagnamenta, Energy and Environment Editor
One of Britain's leading energy market regulators has resigned abruptly from Ofgem, the industry watchdog, after a pricing dispute.
George Yarrow stepped down after a disagreement over the regulator's decision to force energy companies to scrap regional pricing in the UK.
Ofgem initiated an investigation into competition in Britain's gas and electricity markets last year after a string of steep retail price increases left consumers facing soaring gas and electricity bills.
One of the changes Ofgem has proposed is to abolish “unfair pricing” — different charging structures levied on consumers depending on where they live — unless these can be justified on the ground of cost.
However, Professor Yarrow, chairman of the Regulatory Policy Institute, who has served as a non-executive member of the Gas and Energy Markets Association (Gema), Ofgem's supervisory board, since 2006, said he believed that the recommendations represented “bad policy” that would harm more consumers than they would help.
He asserted that by forcing all energy companies to adopt similar pricing structures, there would be less competition among suppliers and prices would be forced up.
Critics of the policy say that energy companies seeking new customers in regions outside their local area will be unable to offer lower prices, diminishing the incentive for consumers to switch suppliers.
The formal minutes from Gema's meetings show that the dispute between Professor Yarrow and other members of the authority, including Alistair Buchanan, the chief executive of Ofgem, came to a head at a stormy special meeting on March 5 to discuss the controversial pricing arrangements.
At the next meeting, two weeks later, Professor Yarrow did not attend, and at the subsequent meeting, six weeks ago, board members were informed that he had submitted his resignation.
The minutes also reveal that Professor Yarrow had been pressing for the issue to be referred to the Competition Commission for a second opinion.
Ofgem defended the policy changes yesterday but said that it regretted Professor Yarrow's resignation. The group said: “Professor Yarrow was a valued member of Ofgem's authority. His contribution will be missed.”
In comments to Utility Week, the industry journal, Professor Yarrow said that the changes reflected a “deep incoherence/inconsistency” in Ofgem policy with profound implications for the health of the energy market.
He was not alone in his views. Sir John Vickers, the former chairman of the Office of Fair Trading, and Stephen Littlechild, the former electricity regulator, have written to Ofgem to express their concern that the policy will have “harmful anti-competitive” effects.
Friday, 12 June 2009
British 'Searaser' invention promises green power revolution on the waves
The 'Searaser' uses the power of the ocean to pump water inland for electricity generation. Mark Anslow reports on the simple invention that could soon be making waves in renewables. From the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Mark Anslow, the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 11.15 BST
Alvin Smith had his eureka moment not in the bath, but in the swimming pool. 'I was swimming round the pool, making little waves, and it struck me how much power there was in the displacement of the water,' he remembers. 'You think of a 500-tonne boat: a wave comes along, lifts that whole boat, and then drops it down again. You must be able to harness some of that, I thought.'
His subsequent invention would have made Archimedes proud, and should be making the renewables industry very excited.
Dubbed 'Searaser', it consists of what looks like a navigation buoy, but is in fact a simple arrangement of ballast and floats connected by a piston. As a wave passes the device, the float is lifted, raising the piston and compressing water. The float sinks back down on the tail of the wave on to a second float, compressing water again on the downstroke.
What is particularly clever about Searaser, however, is its simplicity. Where most marine energy devices have sealed, lubricated innards and complex electronics, Searaser is lubricated entirely by seawater, has no electronic components and is even self-cleaning. Smith describes it as 'Third-World mechanics', but this belies the sophistication of the concept.
'The beauty of it is that we're only making a pump, and bringing water ashore,' he explains. 'All the other technology needed to generate the electricity already exists.'
Searaser is designed to pump water either straight through a sea-level turbine to generate electricity, or up to a clifftop reservoir, where the water could be stored until needed, then allowed to flow back down to the sea through turbines, generating electricity on demand.
The second option is the one about which Smith is most passionate. By effectively storing the energy generated by Searaser to be used on demand, his system would solve a problem that dogs almost all renewable technologies – their variability. Energy that can be summoned at will is not only more valuable, but also allows the grid to compensate for other, less easily controlled renewables such as wind and solar.
Early trials of the prototype Searaser, one of which was completed in April, have proved encouraging. Despite being less than a tenth of the size of the version he hopes will eventually be supplying power to our homes, Smith's homemade machine managed to pump some 112,000 litres of water a day during the trial, at times operating from waves a mere 6in high.
The eventual machine will be capable of generating 1 megawatt of electricity – enough to supply some 1,700 homes – at prices that the team behind Searaser believe will be lower than most other renewable technologies.
As an intermediate step, a trial of two midsize machines should go ahead towards the end of this year, with a university invited to monitor the trial and provide independent accreditation of the results. Although these machines won't generate electricity (they will simply pump water through a flow meter to determine their potential) they will demonstrate whether the technology can work for prolonged periods and in rough conditions.
For Smith, however – a man who could use a welder by the age of eight – the incremental steps between prototype and commercial deployment seem almost an irritation. His vision is already far advanced, and includes using the pressurised saltwater generated by Searaser to produce drinking water, using the same reverse osmosis process used in conventional, energy-hungry desalination plants.
'All you'd have to do is reduce the size of the piston and increase the size of the floats to increase the pressure,' he explains.
He has also put plenty of thought into how he would persuade planners and landowners to allow him to build reservoirs on top of cliffs to provide the energy storage for Searaser.
'The planning will frighten everyone,' he says, 'but if you were trying to produce as much energy from wind turbines, they'd be very visible; a reservoir you'd only see from above.'
Smith has also put thought into how the reservoir could be made as water-tight as possible – vital to avoid saltwater leaching into soils. By double-lining the reservoirs and including an outlet pipe in between the two linings, you would instantly be able to see if the uppermost lining had a puncture by watching the end of the outlet pipe.
'If you saw any water coming out, you'd know you had a leak and you could drain down the reservoir and sort it out,' he says.
Beyond being simply functional, however, Smith believes the reservoirs could be beautiful, providing recreational spaces for watersports or sites for shellfish farmers. 'I bet the birds would love it, too,' he adds.
Although Searaser is clearly a commercial project and Smith hopes to see a return on his patents, he is also keen to see the technology deployed abroad, given that its simplicity lends itself to installation and maintenance in the less-industrialised world.
'It's a modular system: a community could start off with two or three machines, and expand as necessary. It can go round the globe, it really can,' he says.
• Mark Anslow is the Ecologist's News Editor. This article appeared in the June issue of the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Mark Anslow, the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 11.15 BST
Alvin Smith had his eureka moment not in the bath, but in the swimming pool. 'I was swimming round the pool, making little waves, and it struck me how much power there was in the displacement of the water,' he remembers. 'You think of a 500-tonne boat: a wave comes along, lifts that whole boat, and then drops it down again. You must be able to harness some of that, I thought.'
His subsequent invention would have made Archimedes proud, and should be making the renewables industry very excited.
Dubbed 'Searaser', it consists of what looks like a navigation buoy, but is in fact a simple arrangement of ballast and floats connected by a piston. As a wave passes the device, the float is lifted, raising the piston and compressing water. The float sinks back down on the tail of the wave on to a second float, compressing water again on the downstroke.
What is particularly clever about Searaser, however, is its simplicity. Where most marine energy devices have sealed, lubricated innards and complex electronics, Searaser is lubricated entirely by seawater, has no electronic components and is even self-cleaning. Smith describes it as 'Third-World mechanics', but this belies the sophistication of the concept.
'The beauty of it is that we're only making a pump, and bringing water ashore,' he explains. 'All the other technology needed to generate the electricity already exists.'
Searaser is designed to pump water either straight through a sea-level turbine to generate electricity, or up to a clifftop reservoir, where the water could be stored until needed, then allowed to flow back down to the sea through turbines, generating electricity on demand.
The second option is the one about which Smith is most passionate. By effectively storing the energy generated by Searaser to be used on demand, his system would solve a problem that dogs almost all renewable technologies – their variability. Energy that can be summoned at will is not only more valuable, but also allows the grid to compensate for other, less easily controlled renewables such as wind and solar.
Early trials of the prototype Searaser, one of which was completed in April, have proved encouraging. Despite being less than a tenth of the size of the version he hopes will eventually be supplying power to our homes, Smith's homemade machine managed to pump some 112,000 litres of water a day during the trial, at times operating from waves a mere 6in high.
The eventual machine will be capable of generating 1 megawatt of electricity – enough to supply some 1,700 homes – at prices that the team behind Searaser believe will be lower than most other renewable technologies.
As an intermediate step, a trial of two midsize machines should go ahead towards the end of this year, with a university invited to monitor the trial and provide independent accreditation of the results. Although these machines won't generate electricity (they will simply pump water through a flow meter to determine their potential) they will demonstrate whether the technology can work for prolonged periods and in rough conditions.
For Smith, however – a man who could use a welder by the age of eight – the incremental steps between prototype and commercial deployment seem almost an irritation. His vision is already far advanced, and includes using the pressurised saltwater generated by Searaser to produce drinking water, using the same reverse osmosis process used in conventional, energy-hungry desalination plants.
'All you'd have to do is reduce the size of the piston and increase the size of the floats to increase the pressure,' he explains.
He has also put plenty of thought into how he would persuade planners and landowners to allow him to build reservoirs on top of cliffs to provide the energy storage for Searaser.
'The planning will frighten everyone,' he says, 'but if you were trying to produce as much energy from wind turbines, they'd be very visible; a reservoir you'd only see from above.'
Smith has also put thought into how the reservoir could be made as water-tight as possible – vital to avoid saltwater leaching into soils. By double-lining the reservoirs and including an outlet pipe in between the two linings, you would instantly be able to see if the uppermost lining had a puncture by watching the end of the outlet pipe.
'If you saw any water coming out, you'd know you had a leak and you could drain down the reservoir and sort it out,' he says.
Beyond being simply functional, however, Smith believes the reservoirs could be beautiful, providing recreational spaces for watersports or sites for shellfish farmers. 'I bet the birds would love it, too,' he adds.
Although Searaser is clearly a commercial project and Smith hopes to see a return on his patents, he is also keen to see the technology deployed abroad, given that its simplicity lends itself to installation and maintenance in the less-industrialised world.
'It's a modular system: a community could start off with two or three machines, and expand as necessary. It can go round the globe, it really can,' he says.
• Mark Anslow is the Ecologist's News Editor. This article appeared in the June issue of the Ecologist, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Lamborghini emits some V12-powered nonsense
Carbon emissions from Italian sports cars are so great that even a 35% C02 reduction still leaves them bottom of the class
Fred Pearce
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 10.13 BST
A green Lamborghini. It doesn't sound likely, does it? I can't quite imagine a car with a V12 engine and maximum speed of 350kph having an emissions bypass.
But last week, the Italian sports car maker announced plans to cut 35% from the carbon dioxide emissions of its cars by 2015. And meanwhile it is putting 17,000 square meters of solar panels on the roof of its main factory at Sant'Agata Bolognese near Bologna, and introducing other measures such as better insulation to cut factory emissions by 30%.
Stephan Winkelmann, the president and chief executive of Lamborghini, said: "We have an objective to reduce CO2 emissions to the greatest possible degree." The goal is to make the company's cars "more considerate of the environment, in terms of emissions and the use of resources".
The announcement harvested some handy headlines. Not least in the Daily Telegraph in Britain, which announced that "Lamborghini's green pledge" would commit the "Italian supercar maker" to a "low-CO2 future". The company said its investment shows its "sense of social responsibility regarding the environment".
Well, hold your horsepower. The big question is: how bad are the emissions now? Just what is being reduced by 35%?
Check the European Union's list of emissions from all cars sold in the UK and it turns out that, of more than 4,800 models on sale, Lamborghini's models cluster right at the bottom, with the worst emissions, and various versions of its Murcielago occupy the bottom four places. In the standard EU test drive, they emit 495g of CO2 for every kilometre driven.
That's more than three times the emissions from a typical saloon and five times that from the lowest carbon petrol cars.
The Murcielago easily beats off gas-guzzling challengers like Ferraris, Aston Martins, Bentleys and even Hummers. In fact it's in a class of its own. The next worst, the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, makes do with emitting 470g.
It is so bad that even if the "supercars" designers cut its emissions by 35% tomorrow, the filthy four would still be among the 2.5% most-polluting models on the market. "More considerate of the environment"? Well not much.
Still, Lamborghini's greenwash is a turn-round of sorts. This time last year, Winkelmann dismissed out of hand EU calls for him to make emissions cuts. He claimed he made so few cars that it didn't make any real difference to the climate what they emitted. Now, however, Winkelmann insists that his company is "committed to its policy of environmental management".
And don't forget that the 495g rating only applies to emissions from the European Union's standard test, which is designed to mimic regular day-to-day motoring by regular day-to-day vehicles. Any vehicle with 6,500cc of engine capacity is unlikely to be driven like a shoppers' hatchback. So we can be fairly sure the actual emissions of a Murcielago roaring through the French riviera or hurtling up the autobahn will be even higher than suggested in the EU charts.
I guess nobody expects the Lamborghini to be like others cars – nor that their owners will treat them like regular vehicles. Batman drove the top-polluting Murcielago 640 in the movie The Dark Knight. And last summer an owner in Qatar reportedly air-freighted his Lamborghini to London for a service. But these people do share the same planet as the rest of us, even if they'd probably rather they didn't.
Trying to put a green halo on this ultimate gas guzzler is like giving Jack the Ripper a medal for taking a night off.
• Do you know of any green claims that deserve closer examination? Email your examples to greenwash@guardian.co.uk or add your comments below
Fred Pearce
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 10.13 BST
A green Lamborghini. It doesn't sound likely, does it? I can't quite imagine a car with a V12 engine and maximum speed of 350kph having an emissions bypass.
But last week, the Italian sports car maker announced plans to cut 35% from the carbon dioxide emissions of its cars by 2015. And meanwhile it is putting 17,000 square meters of solar panels on the roof of its main factory at Sant'Agata Bolognese near Bologna, and introducing other measures such as better insulation to cut factory emissions by 30%.
Stephan Winkelmann, the president and chief executive of Lamborghini, said: "We have an objective to reduce CO2 emissions to the greatest possible degree." The goal is to make the company's cars "more considerate of the environment, in terms of emissions and the use of resources".
The announcement harvested some handy headlines. Not least in the Daily Telegraph in Britain, which announced that "Lamborghini's green pledge" would commit the "Italian supercar maker" to a "low-CO2 future". The company said its investment shows its "sense of social responsibility regarding the environment".
Well, hold your horsepower. The big question is: how bad are the emissions now? Just what is being reduced by 35%?
Check the European Union's list of emissions from all cars sold in the UK and it turns out that, of more than 4,800 models on sale, Lamborghini's models cluster right at the bottom, with the worst emissions, and various versions of its Murcielago occupy the bottom four places. In the standard EU test drive, they emit 495g of CO2 for every kilometre driven.
That's more than three times the emissions from a typical saloon and five times that from the lowest carbon petrol cars.
The Murcielago easily beats off gas-guzzling challengers like Ferraris, Aston Martins, Bentleys and even Hummers. In fact it's in a class of its own. The next worst, the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, makes do with emitting 470g.
It is so bad that even if the "supercars" designers cut its emissions by 35% tomorrow, the filthy four would still be among the 2.5% most-polluting models on the market. "More considerate of the environment"? Well not much.
Still, Lamborghini's greenwash is a turn-round of sorts. This time last year, Winkelmann dismissed out of hand EU calls for him to make emissions cuts. He claimed he made so few cars that it didn't make any real difference to the climate what they emitted. Now, however, Winkelmann insists that his company is "committed to its policy of environmental management".
And don't forget that the 495g rating only applies to emissions from the European Union's standard test, which is designed to mimic regular day-to-day motoring by regular day-to-day vehicles. Any vehicle with 6,500cc of engine capacity is unlikely to be driven like a shoppers' hatchback. So we can be fairly sure the actual emissions of a Murcielago roaring through the French riviera or hurtling up the autobahn will be even higher than suggested in the EU charts.
I guess nobody expects the Lamborghini to be like others cars – nor that their owners will treat them like regular vehicles. Batman drove the top-polluting Murcielago 640 in the movie The Dark Knight. And last summer an owner in Qatar reportedly air-freighted his Lamborghini to London for a service. But these people do share the same planet as the rest of us, even if they'd probably rather they didn't.
Trying to put a green halo on this ultimate gas guzzler is like giving Jack the Ripper a medal for taking a night off.
• Do you know of any green claims that deserve closer examination? Email your examples to greenwash@guardian.co.uk or add your comments below
US wind farm energy up in the air over climate change, says study
Measurements from wind towers across the midwest show average and peak winds may have been slowing since 1973
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 12.48 BST
The great gusting winds of the American midwest – and possibly the hopes for the most promising clean energy source – may be dying, in part because of climate change, according to a new report.
A study, due to be published in August in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research, suggests that average and peak winds may have been slowing across the midwest and eastern states since 1973.
The authors of the study note that their findings are preliminary and some of their data is ambiguous. But the study, based on measurements gathered from wind towers across the midwest raises the possibility of yet another new side effect from global warming: declining wind speeds.
"We have noted there have been some periods in the past ... where there was a pretty substantial decrease in wind speed for 12 consecutive months," Eugene Takle, the director of the climate science initiative at Iowa State University and one of the authors of the study, said. "We suspect that it's some large-scale influence that we don't yet understand."
Areas of the midwest have seen a 10% decline in average wind speed over the past decade. Some places – such as Minnesota – have seen a jump in the number of days where there was no wind at all.
Takle said climate modelling suggested a further 10% decline in wind levels could occur over the next four decades. "Generally we expect there will probably be a decline in wind speeds due to climate change."
The sharpest fall off in wind speeds recorded in the study occurred in the eastern United States including Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Illinois, Louisiana, northern Maine, western Montana and Virginia.
Other areas, like west Texas, which is the heart of America's wind power industry have been relatively unaffected, the study found.
The yet-to-be-published study was first reported by the Associated Press which also noted that the research was preliminary.
Takle noted that data could be skewed by changes in instruments for measuring wind, or reforestation, which could also slow wind speeds.
Other scientists have also raised doubts about the findings.
But if the findings are borne out, the dying winds could deliver a serious setback to plans to expand the use of the renewable energy.
The US is the world's largest producer of wind power, and investment in the sector had explosive growth before the economic downturn, hitting $17bn last year. Wind turbines are now a common sight on high rises across many American states.
But a 10% fall in peak winds could translate into a 27% reduction in energy, Takle said. "On moderately windy days when wind turbines are struggling to get as much as they can out of the wind available and they are not letting any extra power go through that could make a big difference."
Wind industry analysts downplayed the potential impact of a reduction in wind levels in some regions of the US. "I don't think that at this point you could definitively say there are going to be across the board decreases in wind," said Michael Goggin, an industry analyst for the American Wind Energy Association. "The abundance and diversity of wind resources in the United States is so great. We are called the Saudi Arabia of wind for a reason. There are enough different climate regimes that even if some are negatively affected – and at this point that is speculative – others could do better."
Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, told the Guardian the study had yet to establish a clear pattern of declining winds, and that it was too soon to be thinking of the effects on wind energy industry.
"It's still very preliminary. My feeling is that it is way too premature to be talking about the impact that this makes.
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 12.48 BST
The great gusting winds of the American midwest – and possibly the hopes for the most promising clean energy source – may be dying, in part because of climate change, according to a new report.
A study, due to be published in August in the peer-reviewed Journal of Geophysical Research, suggests that average and peak winds may have been slowing across the midwest and eastern states since 1973.
The authors of the study note that their findings are preliminary and some of their data is ambiguous. But the study, based on measurements gathered from wind towers across the midwest raises the possibility of yet another new side effect from global warming: declining wind speeds.
"We have noted there have been some periods in the past ... where there was a pretty substantial decrease in wind speed for 12 consecutive months," Eugene Takle, the director of the climate science initiative at Iowa State University and one of the authors of the study, said. "We suspect that it's some large-scale influence that we don't yet understand."
Areas of the midwest have seen a 10% decline in average wind speed over the past decade. Some places – such as Minnesota – have seen a jump in the number of days where there was no wind at all.
Takle said climate modelling suggested a further 10% decline in wind levels could occur over the next four decades. "Generally we expect there will probably be a decline in wind speeds due to climate change."
The sharpest fall off in wind speeds recorded in the study occurred in the eastern United States including Ohio, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Illinois, Louisiana, northern Maine, western Montana and Virginia.
Other areas, like west Texas, which is the heart of America's wind power industry have been relatively unaffected, the study found.
The yet-to-be-published study was first reported by the Associated Press which also noted that the research was preliminary.
Takle noted that data could be skewed by changes in instruments for measuring wind, or reforestation, which could also slow wind speeds.
Other scientists have also raised doubts about the findings.
But if the findings are borne out, the dying winds could deliver a serious setback to plans to expand the use of the renewable energy.
The US is the world's largest producer of wind power, and investment in the sector had explosive growth before the economic downturn, hitting $17bn last year. Wind turbines are now a common sight on high rises across many American states.
But a 10% fall in peak winds could translate into a 27% reduction in energy, Takle said. "On moderately windy days when wind turbines are struggling to get as much as they can out of the wind available and they are not letting any extra power go through that could make a big difference."
Wind industry analysts downplayed the potential impact of a reduction in wind levels in some regions of the US. "I don't think that at this point you could definitively say there are going to be across the board decreases in wind," said Michael Goggin, an industry analyst for the American Wind Energy Association. "The abundance and diversity of wind resources in the United States is so great. We are called the Saudi Arabia of wind for a reason. There are enough different climate regimes that even if some are negatively affected – and at this point that is speculative – others could do better."
Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at Nasa's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, told the Guardian the study had yet to establish a clear pattern of declining winds, and that it was too soon to be thinking of the effects on wind energy industry.
"It's still very preliminary. My feeling is that it is way too premature to be talking about the impact that this makes.
EU power lines 'too old to deliver 2020 renewables target'
Ageing grid cannot transfer energy over the long distances demanded by renewable power stations, say academics
Alok Jha
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 11.45 BST
A concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Spain, similar to those proposed for north Africa. Photograph: AP
Europe's electricity grid needs a radical overhaul if it is to distribute the renewable energy capacity that governments have committed to building by 2020, according to Europe's leading science academies. They argue that the continent's ageing grid infrastructure is incapable of transferring energy over the long distances demanded by renewable power stations, which are often built in remote locations, far from population centres.
In a report for the European Commission, published today by the the European Academies Science Advisory Council (Easac), experts called on national governments to co-ordinate their grids and invest in new technologies such as high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines to better prepare Europe for a future of green electricity.
"The whole transmission and distribution system needs redesigning," said Mike Sterling, an electrical engineer and fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK, who chaired the electricity grid working group on behalf of Easac.
The EU has committed to sourcing 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 but experts said this generating capacity will be wasted unless it can be distributed properly.
"The change in the generating sources is well known and, unless we can get clean coal or nuclear back up again, there will be a dramatic change in the distribution of the energy sources," said Sterling. Renewable energy for the UK, he said, might come from remote locations in the North Sea or off the west coast of Scotland and the power sector needs to work out how to bring that power to the places it is needed.
"We must make major changes to the current delivery systems in the EU and become more co-ordinated if we are to meet these targets," said John Holmes, secretary to the Easac working group, "This report gives the EU Directorate General a blueprint for a brighter, greener future in Europe."
Upgrading the grids in individual countries should be done to common standards, said the report, and eventually the movement of electricity across Europe might even be managed centrally. Any extensions to the grid could incorporate HVDC transmission lines so that electricity could be moved from, say, solar plants in the Sahara to northern Europe whenever there is no wind. These lines are preferred because they lose less of their energy during long-distance transmission compared to standard AC cables, but they are also more expensive to build.
Scandinavian countries potentially have excess capacity in hydroelectric plants that could, ideally, be sold to places such as Germany. If agreements can be made with north African countries, solar power collected in the Sahara desert could be transported up into southern Europe. "In order to do that, you need to design the transmission system so it can cope with the large power flows through existing countries' networks [but] Italy's transmission system is not designed for that, nor is Spain's."
Electricity companies warned a committee of MPs in April that the government was in danger of missing its target on renewables without substantial investment in a new national energy grid.
Last year, EU scientists also proposed a plan for a Europe-wide supergrid that could share Europe's renewable energy resources across the continent. They said the grid could allow countries such as the UK and Denmark ultimately to export wind energy at times of surplus supply, as well as import from other green sources such as geothermal power in Iceland.
The scientists working on the project envisaged that, by 2050, solar power plants in north Africa could produce 100 GW, more than the combined electricity output from all sources in the UK, with an investment of around €450bn. But they also said this could not be transferred to northern Europe without a major restructuring of grid infrastructure in the transfer countries such as Italy and Spain or Greece or Turkey.
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 11.45 BST
A concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Spain, similar to those proposed for north Africa. Photograph: AP
Europe's electricity grid needs a radical overhaul if it is to distribute the renewable energy capacity that governments have committed to building by 2020, according to Europe's leading science academies. They argue that the continent's ageing grid infrastructure is incapable of transferring energy over the long distances demanded by renewable power stations, which are often built in remote locations, far from population centres.
In a report for the European Commission, published today by the the European Academies Science Advisory Council (Easac), experts called on national governments to co-ordinate their grids and invest in new technologies such as high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines to better prepare Europe for a future of green electricity.
"The whole transmission and distribution system needs redesigning," said Mike Sterling, an electrical engineer and fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK, who chaired the electricity grid working group on behalf of Easac.
The EU has committed to sourcing 20% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 but experts said this generating capacity will be wasted unless it can be distributed properly.
"The change in the generating sources is well known and, unless we can get clean coal or nuclear back up again, there will be a dramatic change in the distribution of the energy sources," said Sterling. Renewable energy for the UK, he said, might come from remote locations in the North Sea or off the west coast of Scotland and the power sector needs to work out how to bring that power to the places it is needed.
"We must make major changes to the current delivery systems in the EU and become more co-ordinated if we are to meet these targets," said John Holmes, secretary to the Easac working group, "This report gives the EU Directorate General a blueprint for a brighter, greener future in Europe."
Upgrading the grids in individual countries should be done to common standards, said the report, and eventually the movement of electricity across Europe might even be managed centrally. Any extensions to the grid could incorporate HVDC transmission lines so that electricity could be moved from, say, solar plants in the Sahara to northern Europe whenever there is no wind. These lines are preferred because they lose less of their energy during long-distance transmission compared to standard AC cables, but they are also more expensive to build.
Scandinavian countries potentially have excess capacity in hydroelectric plants that could, ideally, be sold to places such as Germany. If agreements can be made with north African countries, solar power collected in the Sahara desert could be transported up into southern Europe. "In order to do that, you need to design the transmission system so it can cope with the large power flows through existing countries' networks [but] Italy's transmission system is not designed for that, nor is Spain's."
Electricity companies warned a committee of MPs in April that the government was in danger of missing its target on renewables without substantial investment in a new national energy grid.
Last year, EU scientists also proposed a plan for a Europe-wide supergrid that could share Europe's renewable energy resources across the continent. They said the grid could allow countries such as the UK and Denmark ultimately to export wind energy at times of surplus supply, as well as import from other green sources such as geothermal power in Iceland.
The scientists working on the project envisaged that, by 2050, solar power plants in north Africa could produce 100 GW, more than the combined electricity output from all sources in the UK, with an investment of around €450bn. But they also said this could not be transferred to northern Europe without a major restructuring of grid infrastructure in the transfer countries such as Italy and Spain or Greece or Turkey.
China shakes off image as climate criminal with green revolution
Coal-hungry China's low-carbon ambitions are to its economic advantage as it jostles for position at Copenhagen with the US
Isabel Hilton
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 15.29 BST
China's intentions to set new and ambitious targets for renewable energy, revealed in the Guardian yesterday might come as a surprise. It is China's dependence on coal that has claimed our attention, and China's status as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases make its image as a climate change criminal hard to shed. But despite its poor reputation for climate policy, a quiet revolution is underway as China positions itself for a low carbon future.
China and the US are the two elephants in the climate change room, the two economic powers that between them account for half of the world's annual emissions of greenhouse gases. Both have been judged major obstacles to the global effort to reduce emissions, and each has used the other as its prime excuse: US conservatives argue that the US should only reduce emissions once China and other major developing countries have also pledged to do so. China insists that the problem was created by rich countries and they have the means and the responsibility to fix the problem.
The finger pointing continues: the US points to China's gross emissions; China to the US's world-beating per capita emissions, 20 tonnes per head each year compared with China's two. More recently, as the pace has quickened in the global climate negotiations that culminate in Copenhagen in December, China has suggested that since exports to developed countries generate a substantial proportion of China's emissions, they should be attributed to the purchasing countries.
On the surface these attitudes seem to spell deadlock. But behind the public posturing a different process is unfolding, triggered by the departure of George Bush from the White House and China's ambitions to increase the manufacture of high-value technologies. The US is back in the global climate game, even, belatedly, claiming leadership. China is obliged to respond, or risk bearing all the opprobrium.
Today, the world's biggest emitters are led by governments that understand the climate threat and their own exposure to future risks and international hostility. Each has the power to wreck agreement on a deal, but together they have a huge potential to drive the real reductions in emissions that the world needs. As the Copenhagen deadline approaches, all eyes are fixed on the possibility of a bilateral deal that could transform the future.
With Obama's election, the way was opened for the US and China to look for the mutual benefits of cooperation on climate, instead of clinging to mutually assured destruction. The question now is whether thesynergies offered by China's potential for large-scale manufacturing and deployment and American technological innovation can overcome the rivalry between the incumbent superpower and its biggest economic rival. At the end of a two-day visit by Obama's chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, the mood music in Beijing this week was promising.
Both have much to gain. The Chinese leadership is well aware of the dangers that climate change poses to its future development. China is highly vulnerable to sea level rise and to falls in agricultural production. Above all, it is haunted by the water shortage which already grips north China and which threatens to become Beijing's most intractable crisis as the melting glaciers of the Himalayas wreak havoc with Asia's rivers and monsoon patterns.
Beijing is looking for the chance to move beyond the exhausted and wasteful model of export-led manufacturing and into high-value technologies. The rewards of becoming a leader in the clean, low-carbon technologies of the future are perhaps better understood in Beijing than in some western capitals. As GM collapses, strangled by its attachment to old models, China is developing electric cars.
In this fast moving game, both powers know that the chances of striking a global deal in Copenhagen in December that will prove sufficiently radical are slim. A new climate treaty remains vital, but a treaty alone will not produce the radical emissions reductions the crisis demands. Both risk being seen as selfish powers indifferent to the threat climate change poses to humanity. Each faces substantial domestic opposition: the US labours to discard the legacy of eight wasted years under Bush. Today, despite his claim of climate leadership, Obama's ambitions remain constrained by a recalcitrant domestic opposition. Beijing has to negotiate with powerful regional leaders who need to deliver jobs and growth at home, Obama with powerful oil and coal interests stirred into action by the change in the US position.
But despite China's ambitions to continue its rapid growth, Beijing knows that the carbon-heavy path it is following would render the efforts of the rest of the world to reduce global emissions futile. A leading economist, Hu Angang, recently proposed, in a radical article, that China should take on early emissions reduction targets for its own interests. For the two big emitters, the prize is to find a bilateral deal that enables them to share profits rather than sacrifice them, and that promise has to be convincing enough to overcome the doubts of domestic constituencies that see the other as the main strategic rival.
China is already the world's leading investor in renewable technologies and government encouragement has produced a surge in installed wind power. Now that China's target of 15% renewable energy by 2020 will be upgraded to 20%, China can argue that its efforts to avoid dangerous climate change are at least on a par with the EU, currently the leader in declared targets. Although under the Kyoto treaty China is not obliged to take on reduction targets, Beijing does aim to stabilise emissions by 2020. Given China's soaring energy needs, advanced technology and energy efficiency will be key components of that effort.
China might achieve this alone. In partnership with the US, both have the potential to become the solution rather than the problem.
Isabel Hilton is editor of www.chinadialogue.net
Isabel Hilton
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 11 June 2009 15.29 BST
China's intentions to set new and ambitious targets for renewable energy, revealed in the Guardian yesterday might come as a surprise. It is China's dependence on coal that has claimed our attention, and China's status as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases make its image as a climate change criminal hard to shed. But despite its poor reputation for climate policy, a quiet revolution is underway as China positions itself for a low carbon future.
China and the US are the two elephants in the climate change room, the two economic powers that between them account for half of the world's annual emissions of greenhouse gases. Both have been judged major obstacles to the global effort to reduce emissions, and each has used the other as its prime excuse: US conservatives argue that the US should only reduce emissions once China and other major developing countries have also pledged to do so. China insists that the problem was created by rich countries and they have the means and the responsibility to fix the problem.
The finger pointing continues: the US points to China's gross emissions; China to the US's world-beating per capita emissions, 20 tonnes per head each year compared with China's two. More recently, as the pace has quickened in the global climate negotiations that culminate in Copenhagen in December, China has suggested that since exports to developed countries generate a substantial proportion of China's emissions, they should be attributed to the purchasing countries.
On the surface these attitudes seem to spell deadlock. But behind the public posturing a different process is unfolding, triggered by the departure of George Bush from the White House and China's ambitions to increase the manufacture of high-value technologies. The US is back in the global climate game, even, belatedly, claiming leadership. China is obliged to respond, or risk bearing all the opprobrium.
Today, the world's biggest emitters are led by governments that understand the climate threat and their own exposure to future risks and international hostility. Each has the power to wreck agreement on a deal, but together they have a huge potential to drive the real reductions in emissions that the world needs. As the Copenhagen deadline approaches, all eyes are fixed on the possibility of a bilateral deal that could transform the future.
With Obama's election, the way was opened for the US and China to look for the mutual benefits of cooperation on climate, instead of clinging to mutually assured destruction. The question now is whether thesynergies offered by China's potential for large-scale manufacturing and deployment and American technological innovation can overcome the rivalry between the incumbent superpower and its biggest economic rival. At the end of a two-day visit by Obama's chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, the mood music in Beijing this week was promising.
Both have much to gain. The Chinese leadership is well aware of the dangers that climate change poses to its future development. China is highly vulnerable to sea level rise and to falls in agricultural production. Above all, it is haunted by the water shortage which already grips north China and which threatens to become Beijing's most intractable crisis as the melting glaciers of the Himalayas wreak havoc with Asia's rivers and monsoon patterns.
Beijing is looking for the chance to move beyond the exhausted and wasteful model of export-led manufacturing and into high-value technologies. The rewards of becoming a leader in the clean, low-carbon technologies of the future are perhaps better understood in Beijing than in some western capitals. As GM collapses, strangled by its attachment to old models, China is developing electric cars.
In this fast moving game, both powers know that the chances of striking a global deal in Copenhagen in December that will prove sufficiently radical are slim. A new climate treaty remains vital, but a treaty alone will not produce the radical emissions reductions the crisis demands. Both risk being seen as selfish powers indifferent to the threat climate change poses to humanity. Each faces substantial domestic opposition: the US labours to discard the legacy of eight wasted years under Bush. Today, despite his claim of climate leadership, Obama's ambitions remain constrained by a recalcitrant domestic opposition. Beijing has to negotiate with powerful regional leaders who need to deliver jobs and growth at home, Obama with powerful oil and coal interests stirred into action by the change in the US position.
But despite China's ambitions to continue its rapid growth, Beijing knows that the carbon-heavy path it is following would render the efforts of the rest of the world to reduce global emissions futile. A leading economist, Hu Angang, recently proposed, in a radical article, that China should take on early emissions reduction targets for its own interests. For the two big emitters, the prize is to find a bilateral deal that enables them to share profits rather than sacrifice them, and that promise has to be convincing enough to overcome the doubts of domestic constituencies that see the other as the main strategic rival.
China is already the world's leading investor in renewable technologies and government encouragement has produced a surge in installed wind power. Now that China's target of 15% renewable energy by 2020 will be upgraded to 20%, China can argue that its efforts to avoid dangerous climate change are at least on a par with the EU, currently the leader in declared targets. Although under the Kyoto treaty China is not obliged to take on reduction targets, Beijing does aim to stabilise emissions by 2020. Given China's soaring energy needs, advanced technology and energy efficiency will be key components of that effort.
China might achieve this alone. In partnership with the US, both have the potential to become the solution rather than the problem.
Isabel Hilton is editor of www.chinadialogue.net
Blitz spirit revived for the climate change war
Published Date: 11 June 2009
By MARK McLAUGHLIN
DURING the Second World War it was a campaign to prevent Britian going hungry, but now the city's tenement dwellers are being urged to "Dig For Victory" once more.
The Edinburgh Community Backgreens Association (ECBA) is set to revive the wartime spirit that turned thousands of green spaces into temporary allotments in a bid to battle global warming.The project is the brainchild of ECBA founder Greig Robertson, 39, who started the ECBA with a small pilot project in Gorgie/Dalry in 2005, and has recently expanded into Shandon, Polwarth, Marchmont, Newington, Easter Road and Leith Walk.The aim of the association is to turn Victorian tenement backgreens – many of which are used as drying areas or bin stores and are overgrown with weeds – into mini-village greens.Boosted by lucrative grants from community charities and green groups, including £80,000 from the Tudor Trust and £73,000 from Climate Challenge, the association hopes to revive another ten backgreens by the end of the year. In keeping with the wartime theme they are now currently recruiting for the "Backgreen Blitz", a bid to attract more than 100 people from every community to transform their backgreens.Mr Robertson said: "The original Dig For Victory campaign was a necessity when the trade routes were blockaded and shipping was reserved for the transport of armaments, so the government turned gardens, lawns, parks, bowling greens and sports pitches into allotments."The world is under threat again, not from war but from global warming, and one of the main causes of this is the obscene amount of food miles racked up by supermarket products."As well as providing the means to help people grow their own food, which has become very popular in recent years through chefs like Hugh Fernley Whittingstall, we give advice on buying locally grown produce."The funding the group has received so far will allow it to install and equip ten community sheds – known as Co-Sheds – in each of the backgreens, with all the tools the community needs to create and maintain the area.The ECBA will supply soil and timber to create a raised bed to grow vegetables, provide help with landscaping and may eventually see the installation of picnic tables and barbeque areas.Mr Robertson added: "Some of these tenements have up to 300 families living in them, and if you were to flatten them out and transport them to the suburbs they would resemble small villages."We'd like to see these backgreens turned into the tenement equivalent of village greens, where the community can come together to maintain and enjoy a beautiful green space."The ECBA is already running classes for greenfingered residents every week in each of the backgreen areas, and has also started a monthly "grow your own" class on the last Saturday of every month.
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