Ballard waves goodbye to fuel cell unit

There’s a bit of spring cleaning over at Ballard Power Systems - the company is doing the enteprise equivalent of taking its old clothes down the charity shop and flogging off its fuel cell division to Daimler and Ford.The deal was approved by 97.8 percent of its shareholders and the deal will close on the 31st January.

“This transaction lowers Ballard’s risk profile by addressing the realities of the high cost and long timeline for automotive fuel cell commercialization,” said John Sheridan, Ballard’s President and CEO. “It enables us to concentrate on growth in fuel cell applications which provide clean energy solutions in commercial markets such as materials handling, backup power and residential cogeneration.”

Film - algae-based biofuel

Environment reshaping world economy

More lovely, lovely raw data on just how much environmental considerations are affecting businesses of all stripes. Have a guess. Go on. Think of a number… is it $100 billion? That’s how much the Worldwatch Institute reckons.

“Once regarded as irrelevant to economic activity, environmental problems are drastically rewriting the rules for business, investors, and consumers, affecting over $100 billion in annual capital flows,” say project co-directors Gary Gardner and Thomas Prugh.

The report describes a host of new economic opportunities that are attracting capital. An estimated $52 billion was invested in renewable energy in 2006, up 33 percent from 2005. Preliminary estimates indicate that the figure reached $66 billion in 2007. Carbon trading is growing even more explosively, reaching an estimated $30 billion in 2006, nearly triple the amount traded in 2005.

And there more. It looks like this:

State of the World 2008 cites two major economic modeling studies that find that the damage from global climate change could equal as much as 8 percent of global economic output by the end of this century. Citing World Bank data, the report also notes that some 39 countries experienced a decline of 5 percent or more in wealth when accounting measures also included factors such as unsustainable forest harvesting, depletion of non-renewable resources, and damage from carbon emissions. For 10 countries, the decline ranged from 25 to 60 percent.

FTC examines rights and wrongs of offsets

When you spend your cash, don’t you want to know where it goes? Asked the FCC this week. Greenbang would suggest her local might account for a not insignificant amount, but it’s not consumption but carbon the FTC is probing, according to the NYTimes.com.

It’s getting all good-cop-bad-cop on ‘green’ advertising, and is updating its Green Guides, which govern environmental claims in ads for the first time in a decade.

The FTC. has not accused anyone of wrongdoing — neither the providers of carbon offsets nor the consumer brands that sell them. But environmentalists say — and the FTC’s hearings suggest — that it is only a matter of time until the market faces greater scrutiny from the government or environmental organisations. […]

Carbon offsets are essentially promises to use money in a way that will reduce carbon emissions. Panelists at the FTC’s session on Tuesday raised a number of questions about certifications behind the claims, wondering if the offset companies might be double-counting carbon reductions that would have happened even without their efforts.

Britian not meeting targets. Carbon emissions still too high

Britain looks set to fall short of its target to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent in the next two years (from levels in 1990), according to Hilary Benn, Environment Secretary.

Reuters report:

Giving evidence to parliament’s all-party Environment Audit Committee, Benn said the actual figure in 2010 was likely to be a 16 percent cut — and that only with a significant quantity of carbon emission credits purchased overseas.

“We are not making fast enough progress on carbon reductions. We have got a long, long way to go. We have a very big task on our hands,” he said, highlighting the Climate Change Bill now going through parliament.

He acknowledged that extra measures would be necessary to obtain the necessary cuts in emissions of climate warming carbon gasses from burning fossil fuels for power and transport, but declined to go into detail.
Pressed on whether it was right for a country to be able to buy carbon credits from abroad to make its own performance look better, Benn said that it was a global problem so the solution had to be equal in scope.

It is a global problem, Hilary. Do you know what percent means?

With scientists predicting that average temperatures will rise by up to 4.0 degrees Celsius this century because of global warming, this is not going away.

Norfolk residents encouraged to recycle vegetable oil

Cromer’s Christmas lights will be shining especially bright this year, meaning the Grinch of Greenbang present certainly won’t be visiting. Kudos to Norfolk County Council though for initiating a scheme that encourages residents to save any unused vegetable oil for one of the 18 recycling points. It will then be turned into biofuel.

EDP24 is the site where Norfolk REALLY matters

Tonnes of old cooking oil that would otherwise clog up plug-holes or be dumped will soon be used in Norfolk to generate enough electricity to power a town the size of Cromer.

Bah humbug…

But Norwich residents will not yet be able to recycle oil and will either have to drive to a rural drop-off point - and therefore undo the green objective - or find some other means of discarding oil.

The best laid plans, Norfolk.

If this was all collected and refined, the resulting biofuel could generate more than 13,000 megawatt hours of electricity per year, the equivalent to the annual average consumption of around 2,200 households.

More about that here:

IT industry is bad for the environment - it’s official

Yes Mr IT manager sitting next to your whirring servers, this means you pal.

The Global Action plan just told us the following, as they prepare to talk with MPs and journalists this afternoon at Westminster.

Trewin Restorick (pictured), director of Global Action Plan and chair of the Environmental IT Leadership Team, says:

“The shock statistic is that ICT is responsible for two per cent of man-made carbon emissions. The sector is growing at a faster rate than aviation. It will be a larger carbon emittor.

IT has always been perceived as a clean technology, but a server pumps out the same amount of carbon as a Chelsea tractor.

We are also running out of space for server farms.

We don’t want to go into scare stories about the lights going off but we are talking about switching off coal-powered stations in 15 years with no real alternative.”

The idea that computers can create a paperless offices is also poppycock, he said.

In 1980, 70m tonnes of paper was used in offices. In 1997, that was 150m tonnes. But the stats didn’t show more recent findings.

Nuclear - the answer to clean water?

In a bit of ‘and the lion shall lie down with the lamb’ news, Greenbang has learnt this week that nuclear could apparently be the answer to future shortages of clean water.

According to Science Daily, researchers are already on the case using “waste energy” from power stations for desalination:

“A. Raha and colleagues at the Desalination Division of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, in Trombay, point out that Low-Temperature Evaporation (LTE) desalination technology utilizing low-quality waste heat in the form of hot water (as low as 50 Celsius) or low-pressure steam from a nuclear power plant has been developed to produce high-purity water directly from seawater. Safety, reliability, viable economics, have already been demonstrated.”

Greenbang is inspired by this unlikely pairing and is off to try and get a whale to adopt a tiger.

Nine states sign up to corn ethanol

Like Coldplay, golf and Marmite, the use of corn ethanol as a fuel source seems to provoke a love it or hate it reaction.

Still, it seems, nine US states have got bored of waiting for the Federal government and decided to plough on down the corn route unaided. It’s all part of a green drive which the state governors have signed up to, embracing all the usual suspects including solar and wind.

The full lowdown as follows, from Venture Beat:

“Some of the more specific targets the states are calling for include 15 percent of gas stations to mix ethanol with their gasoline, a two percent reduction per year in energy consumption, and for 10 percent of all electricity generation to come from renewable sources, with a 30 percent target by 2030.

London, hydrogen, buses, rejoice.

Green buses are on their way to the Big Smoke.

And, as well has having a ‘vert’ paint job, they will be good for the environment too.

The hydrogen powered beauties will be on the streets of London, whizzing silently over its cobbled roads, avoiding dandies, artful dodgers and the like, by 2010.

And the £9.65m cost shows that it is a serious venture too.

The BBC, hopeful telling the truth, has the story:

The makers (Wrightbus and the ISE Corporation) say the new bus offers a “sustainable, safe and clean power source”, ideally suited for a densely populated city.

“As there is no carbon in the fuel, hydrogen-powered vehicles produce no carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide or particulate emissions,” said Wrightbus business development director Jonathan Poynton.

“By the time of the London Olympics in 2012, Mayor of London Ken Livingstone wants to have hundreds of these hybrid vehicles on the roads.

Greenbang tracks the explosion of the environmental industry, reporting on news of green innovation and thought leadership.

We blog on this rather than the environmental problems of the world because we are interested in the answers to climate change.