After 18 months of negotiations, an agreement has been signed today between the ITER parties to build the experimental fusion reactor in Cadarache, France.

The 10 billion project will be the most expensive joint scientific collaboration since the International Space Station.

Nuclear fusion extracts energy from same reaction that powers our sun. It is much cleaner than nuclear fission and fossil fuels, producing very little radioactive waste with no risk of meltdown.

Temperatures of over 100 million degrees celcius (many times the temperature of the centre of the sun) are required to sustain a fusion reaction capable of producing large amounts of energy. The ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) will be the first fusion reactor to produce thermal energy comparable to the levels of conventional power stations.

Relevant stories

France gets nuclear fusion plant (BBC)

France wins fusion project (Nature.com)

Europe beats Japan to ITER prize (physicsweb)

The 189 member governments of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer will decide this week on how best to manage the phase-out of methyl bromide, an effective fumigant and pesticide for strawberries, flowers and other high-value crops that also damages the Earth’s protective ozone shield.

They will also consider the level of funding that should be made available during the three-year period 2006-2008 to enable developing countries to continue complying with their numerous reduction obligations under the Protocol.

After successfully eliminating virtually all uses of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) – historically the greatest cause of ozone destruction – a number of developed countries have struggled to phase out Methyl bromide by the agreed 1 January 2005 deadline.

Many farmers have eliminated or greatly reduced the use of Methyl bromide by switching to other fumigants and to non-chemical measures, such as grafted plants and barrier films. However, 16 countries are requesting ‘critical use exemptions’ in 2006 for certain crops in order to buy more time for adopting more technically or economically feasible alternatives.

Eleven countries received a total of 13,438 metric tonnes of exemptions for the first post-phase-out year of 2005. At the Protocol�s regular high-level conference last November, developed countries were granted 11,000 tonnes of exemptions for 2006. Another 3,000 tonnes were approved on an ‘interim basis’.

Because they were unable to complete the list of 2006 exemptions as expected, governments decided to reconvene for a one-day Extraordinary Meeting of the Parties (EXMOP-2) on 1 July to finalize the status of the 3,000 tonnes. A similar situation occurred last year, for the first time in the Protocol’s history.

The countries that have requested exemptions for 2006 are Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the UK and the US.

“Governments need to ensure that the trendline for exemptions points downward year by year,” said Executive Director Klaus Toepfer of the United Nations Environment Programme, under whose auspices the Protocol was negotiated.

“This will not only accelerate the ozone layer’s return to health but will send the right signal to their own farmers and to developing countries, whose Methyl bromide phase-out has already begun and is to conclude by 2015,” he said.

The Extraordinary Meeting will be preceeded from 27 – 30 June by a preparatory session for the next regular annual conference. The Open-Ended Working Group will consider additional requests for 2006 exemptions totalling 325 tonnes and requests from 15 countries for 2007 exemptions totalling 8,088 tonnes. It will also review a recent survey of how methyl bromide is used in the quarantine and pre-shipment of agricultural exports (which is not covered by the Protocol).

In addition, the Working Group will consider a report by the Protocol’s Assessment Panel that recommends nearly $420m in funding to support developing country efforts to phase-out all of their ozone-depleting substances. This funding would constitute the fifth replenishment of the Montreal Protocol’s innovative Multilateral Fund.

During its first 15 years, the Multilateral Fund has supported over $1.8 billion in projects and activities in 139 developing countries. This support has helped to phase-out over 200,000 tonnes of ozone-depleting substances. The next replenishment will help developing countries to further eliminate the use of these substances as they look forward to their 2010 target for eliminating CFCs, halons and other major ozone depletors.

The Working Group’s recommendations on all of these issues will be forwarded for final decision to the 12-16 December 17th Meeting of the Parties in Dakar, Senegal.

Original press release: Exemptions & $420m Phase-out Support Considered in Ozone Meeting (UNEP)

A new project aimed at helping the Amazon Basin and its 10 million inhabitants conserve and better manage the region�s economically important waters, forests and wildlife was announced today.

Pollution hot spots and damaged habitats and ‘ecosystems’ are to be identified. Measures will be drawn up to reduce the threats and restore the damage.

Other aims include moving to harmonized laws covering the management of the Amazon Basin.

A regional vision on how to achieve true sustainable development across the eight countries concerned will also be drawn up.

An important part of the project will be helping vulnerable countries and communities adapt and cope with acute climatic change.

Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said he believed the new project would play an important part in helping the region meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

These internationally-agreed goals cover issues such as poverty reduction and reversing the spread of diseases like malaria to the empowerment of women and the provision of safe and sufficient quantities of drinking water.

“This new project, funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), fundamentally acknowledges the crucial economic value of nature and the goods and services provided by river systems, forests and other ecosystems,” said Mr Toepfer.

“It reflects the fact that the environment is not a luxury good, affordable only when other issues have been resolved, but is ‘natural capital’ on a par with human and financial capital. Indeed, this project underlines that sustainable development and the achievement of the MDGs will only be possible through respect and good stewardship of the Earth’s natural resources,” he added.

The new Amazon project, announced at the GEF Third Biennial International Waters Conference taking place in Salvador Bahia, Brazil, is being implemented by UNEP/GEF.

It is being undertaken by the Organization of American States with the Oganization of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty as the regional body. The nearly two year project will cost just under $1.5 million.

The people, the land and the wildlife of the Amazon Basin are becoming increasingly vulnerable to climatic phenomenon, health concerns and a declining natural ‘capital’ as a result of deforestation, mining, urbanization and other land use changes.

This was graphically underlined in the severe El Nino year of 1997. The drought was so severe it led to millions of acres of forest going up in flames triggering respiratory and other health calamities.

Lagoons dried up affecting wildlife such as turtles and the region experienced power rationing and a reduction in the transport carrying capabilities of the Amazon and its tributaries.

Experts are worried that climate change, linked with rising global emissions of carbon dioxide and other so called greenhouse gases, are set to aggravate the basin’s problems making it harder and harder for people and wildlife to cope.

Meanwhile, there is also an urgent need to deal with other environmental issues including pollution of rivers from activities such as agriculture and mining which have impacts on drinking water and human health.

The new project, covering Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela, will aim to coordinate the numerous but fragmented national efforts currently underway designed to better manage and conserve the basin�s natural resources and natural ‘capital’.

It will also draft a shared, long term strategy on how to more effectively achieve sustainable development for current and future generations living in this vast and diverse region.

Five pilot projects, designed to show how different communities can cost effectively deal with climatic extremes, are to be undertaken.

The project is designed as a preparation or corner stone for an even bigger and more wide-ranging $10 million ‘mega-basin project’ scheduled to commence in 2007.

Original press release: Amazon Waters Project Gets Green Light (UNEP)

What if all the vehicles now on the road in the United States were suddenly powered by hydrogen fuel cells? Stanford researchers say in a June 24 article in the journal Science that such a conversion would improve air quality, health and climate�especially if wind were used to generate the electricity needed to split water and make hydrogen in a pollutionless process.

Similarly to how gas is pumped into tanks, hydrogen would be pumped into fuel cells, which rely on chemistry, not combustion, to power vehicles. (As hydrogen flows through fuel-cell compartments, it reacts with oxygen to produce water and energy.) Associate Professor Mark Z. Jacobson and postdoctoral fellow Whitney Goldsborough Colella (both in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department) and Consulting Professor David M. Golden (Mechanical Engineering Department) report that annually such a conversion could prevent millions of cases of respiratory illness and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and save more lives than were lost in the World Trade Center attacks.

“Converting all the current vehicles to fuel cell vehicles powered by wind would save 3,000 to 6,000 lives in the United States annually, and it could be done at a fuel cost that’s comparable to the cost of gasoline, and less than the cost of gasoline when you consider the health effects of gasoline,” said Jacobson, who has no financial interest in any wind or hydrogen endeavor but whose commitment to clean air is manifest in his choice of car (a Toyota Prius), house (it’s solar-powered) and career (atmospheric scientist).

Sponsored by the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford and by NASA, the Science study compared emissions that would be produced in five cases: if all vehicles on the road were powered by 1) conventional internal-combustion engines, 2) a combination of electricity and internal combustion of gasoline, as in hybrid vehicles, 3) hydrogen generated from wind electrolysis, 4) hydrogen generated from natural gas and 5) hydrogen generated from coal gasification.

“Wind is the most promising means of generating hydrogen,” said Jacobson, who with former postdoctoral fellow Cristina Archer recently published a study that mapped global winds and showed the world, especially the United States, has more than enough wind to meet all its energy needs. Jacobson envisions wind turbines generating electricity on wind farms that are linked in a network to ensure energy production even when parts of the grid have windless days. The electricity would travel through transmission lines to a filling station; similar to today’s gas stations. There, it would enter an electrolyzer, passing through water and splitting it into oxygen, which would be released into the air, and hydrogen, which would get compressed and stored.

A lot of hydrogen is currently produced by another method Jacobson’s group analyzed: steam reforming of natural gas. If you take methane, the main component of natural gas, and expose it to steam, the final products are primarily carbon dioxide and hydrogen. While the production of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is undesirable, the process produces about 55 percent less carbon dioxide than does internal combustion, Jacobson said. Other pollutants result as well, such as oxides of nitrogen and carbon monoxide, but these are still far lower than emissions from gasoline combustion. Steam reformers could be placed at individual filling stations, and methane could be piped in through existing natural gas lines. But natural gas supplies are limited and subject to price fluctuations that hurt the long-term feasibility of this option.

The third hydrogen production method the researchers analyzed is coal gasification, in which hydrogen could be produced at centralized plants, compressed and most likely transported in trucks. Coal is mostly carbon, but also contains hydrogen and sulfur. Exposed to water at high temperature and high pressure, it chemically reacts to yield carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Oxygen from additional water vapor turns carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide. So the end products are primarily carbon dioxide and hydrogen gas. Since coal contains more carbon per unit energy than does natural gas, making a given amount of hydrogen from coal produces a lot more carbon dioxide than does making it from natural gas.

Hybrid vehicles were better at reducing carbon dioxide than vehicles using hydrogen from coal gasification, Jacobson said. But health costs were lower with coal gasification compared with hybrids, which produce more pollutants since they employ a combustion process.

A hydrogen economy

“Switching from a fossil-fuel economy to a hydrogen economy would be subject to technological hurdles, the difficulty of creating a new energy infrastructure, and considerable conversion costs but could provide health, environmental, climate and economic benefits and reduce the reliance on diminishing oil supplies,” the Stanford authors wrote.

While envisioning such a switch may seem like a purely academic exercise, it’s not. Such exercises inform policy, albeit sometimes too late. Currently congress is debating an energy bill that contains a $4,000 tax credit for diesel vehicles – the same break hybrid vehicles get – because of their perceived higher mileage compared to gasoline vehicles. But a study led by Jacobson and published in 2004 by Geophysical Review Letters showed that converting the US vehicle fleet from gasoline to diesel vehicles – even with advanced emissions and particle control technologies – would actually increase photochemical smog, particularly in the Southeastern United States. The reason is that even advanced diesel vehicles may emit more oxides of nitrogen than do gasoline-powered vehicles, and these oxides spur ozone production. Jacobson believes such a tax break may provide an unintentional incentive to damage people’s health.

Computer simulations that model the effects of future vehicle fleets may help society assess its best energy options. “Going down the hydrogen pathway is a good thing overall and it’s a practical thing, and it’s going to be beneficial in terms of air pollution and climate and health,” Jacobson said.

The hydrogen economy is on the horizon. California already has several hydrogen filling stations, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed an ambitious network of hydrogen filling stations by 2010. Most car manufacturers have prototype hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. California even has a test fleet of hydrogen buses.

While some are concerned about hydrogen’s explosiveness, Jacobson said another property of hydrogen – its lightness – may lessen this danger. He cited an example of two cars – one conventional, one hydrogen-powered – that were hit from behind. The car powered by an internal combustion engine became engulfed in flames when its gas tank was punctured. But when the hydrogen car’s fuel cell was punctured, since hydrogen is 14 times lighter than air, the flames just shot straight up. The car was saved.

Hydrogen’s volatility, however, underscores the need to develop tight seals to prevent leakage from storage tanks, filling stations and the fuel cells themselves.

Because wind generation of hydrogen provided the best health and climate benefits, the researchers did a cost analysis to compare the cost of a gallon of gasoline with that of a gallon of hydrogen generated by wind electrolysis. The cost of making hydrogen from wind is $1.12 to $3.20 per gallon of gasoline or diesel equivalent ($3 to $7.40 per kilogram of molecular hydrogen): on par with the current price of gas. But gasoline has a hidden cost of 29 cents to $ 1.80 per gallon in societal costs such as reduced health, lost productivity, hospitalization and death, as well as cleanup of polluted sites. So gasoline’s true cost in March 2005, for example, was $2.35 to $3.99 per gallon, which exceeds the estimated mean cost of hydrogen from wind ($2.16 equivalent per gallon of gasoline).

The Stanford study, unprecedented in its detail, used an inventory of more than 600,000 pollution sources reported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from August 1999. Colella altered the EPA emission inventory in response to each of the different scenarios. Her work led to a separate paper as well, now in press at the Journal of Power Sources. Golden contributed expertise in atmospheric chemistry, and Jacobson plugged Colella’s new emission scenarios into his own computer model to run simulations and analyze the resulting costs and effects.

“We believe the results are conservative since health costs associated mostly with particles are now thought to be greater than those used in our study,” Jacobson said. “In addition, in the future we will have more fossil [fuel] vehicles than we currently have. So the future health benefit of switching will be greater than in our current study, which assumes an instantaneous switch.”

But no matter how many vehicles are on the road, fuel-cell vehicles using hydrogen from wind are not going to produce any real pollution, he emphasized.

“Hybrids are a stepping stone, but they can’t be the final destination because even though they result in an improved efficiency over the current vehicle fleet, their numbers will increase,” Jacobson said. “Carbon dioxide and other pollutant emissions associated with hybrids will increase as well. So this is not a viable, long-term solution in the presence of a growing population and the desire of many developing countries to industrialize.”

Next the group plans to look at the effects of converting all power plants to hydrogen fuel cell power plants. They also plan to explore the long-term effects of switching to a hydrogen economy on global climate change and the ozone layer.

‘Apollo Program’

Jacobson advocates an ‘Apollo Program’ for generating electricity from wind and producing hydrogen using wind-generated electricity. Such a program would involve fossil sources paying their true health and climate costs. For example, some old coal-fired plants are exempt from modern performance standards required by Clean Air Act amendments and therefore run inexpensively while saddling society with huge hidden costs. An Apollo Program would provide additional subsidies for wind and other renewable energy sources. While wind subsidies are on the order of $100 million per year, Jacobson said, other energy sources hog subsidies of $15 to $20 billion. He advocates supporting the infrastructure needed for wind production of hydrogen to a level similar to the $20 billion recently proposed for a new natural gas pipeline from the continental United States to Alaska.

“If you want to encourage hydrogen and [wind-produced] hydrogen, then you do need to undertake an Apollo Program because even though the cost of a new wind turbine averaged over a long time is similar to a new coal or natural gas power plant, there’s no incentive to replace these other sources with wind.”

Original press release: ‘Apollo Program’ for hydrogen energy needed, Stanford researcher says (Stanford University)

The annual G8 Heads of State Summit in Gleneagles, Scotland will focus on two themes – climate change and Africa.

On climate change, there is a serious risk that the US President will prevent the Summit from agreeing to realistic and timely actions, and that the rest of the G8 will let him.

Tony Blair, the UK prime minister and Chair of the G8 Summit, and the other six countries at the Summit must defend and push the climate agenda forward, disregarding President Bush’s stance. Despite bi-partisan and business support it is highly unlikely that Bush will change his stance on climate change but instead be successful at watering down G8 initiatives.

What the Summit should decide:

Recognise that overall global warming must be kept below 2 degrees Celsius. Unless the global temperature increase is kept well below an average rise of 2 degrees Celsius in comparison with pre-industrial levels, climate change will bring devastating impacts such as more frequent and extreme weather events such as heat waves, droughts and floods which will have dramatic impacts on people and nature.

Reduce C02 emissions. G8 countries produce over 65% of global GDP and emit 47% of global CO2 emissions. In order to effectively cut CO2 emissions, the countries need to confirm their targets for emission reductions, and create an ambitious policy framework to ensure much deeper reductions in the short, medium and long-term.

Launch a Clean Energy Initiative. Renewable energy sources and energy efficiency measures are the most effective way of cutting C02 emissions and keeping the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, but have been ignored in the G8. Additional funds and political will should ensure that these technologies are commercialized immediately.

Original press release: The G8 and Climate Change – What The Leaders Must Do (WWF)

Leaders at the G8 meeting next week must commit to helping Africa counter the predicted negative impacts of climate change on crop production, according to a Royal Society report published today (20 June 2005).

The report, based on a meeting of experts on climate change and crop production which was held at the Royal Society in April, points out that Africa is consistently predicted to be among the worst hit areas across a range of future climate change scenarios. It also indicates that new data suggest the impact on crop yields and quality may be more severe than previously thought.

Professor Brian Hoskins, a Fellow of the Royal Society and one of the organisers of the meeting, said: “The threat of climate change to an already vulnerable Africa cannot be underestimated. The changes in weather patterns which we expect to see, such as more extreme temperatures and changes in rainfall, have potentially disastrous consequences for a continent which relies so heavily on rain-fed agriculture. Some of the knowledge and expertise needed to reduce the negative impacts of these changes already exists. The scientists of Africa need to be trained and equipped now, through partnerships with those in the developed world, so that they can provide their policymakers with the information required to take the most effective action.”

“Recent experiments call into doubt the possibility that better crop growth due to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will compensate for the negative impacts on crop yield of an overall rise in temperatures. Tests on crops in the field rather than in the greenhouse suggest that the increases in yield from higher carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be less than half what was originally predicted. The fertilisation effect of carbon dioxide will also depend on the availability of water and nitrogen, which may be limited.”

Professor Hoskins continued: “Advances in seasonal weather forecasting are increasingly leading to predictions that should be useful for agricultural decision-making. This can only happen if African scientists are given the resources to collect data and to evaluate forecasts for their regions. Farmers can then take action before a crop fails rather than just trying to pick up the pieces afterwards. With the right warning systems in place, and sufficient resources, they can decide to try growing different kinds of crops or save resources and not grow anything for a season. They can also capitalise on forecasts of good growing conditions by applying fertiliser only in these years.”

Professor Hoskins added: “But there are also many research programmes that need to be undertaken to build resilience to climate change in the long-term. Continuing to develop models and carrying out further field studies is needed so that we can more confidently and accurately predict how a changing climate will affect the growth of crops. Alongside this, crop scientists needed to look at breeding plant types that have higher thresholds of tolerance for extreme weather events so that yields are less vulnerable.”

The report’s call for the need to build science capacity in Africa echoes the contents of a joint statement issued by the science academies of the G8 nations and the Network of African Science Academies last week. It called for a clear commitment from the G8 leaders to build development of science, technology and innovation capacity into international assistance programme and ensure that these initiatives are African-led and sensitive to cultural diversity.

Original press release: G8 must help Africa counter impact of climate change (Royal Society)

Relevant BBC story: Climate ‘key to African future’ (BBC)