BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Oil Ministry awarded seven oilfields to global oil majors this week, bringing its potential output capacity in six or seven years to a potential 12 million barrels per day. That would make Iraq a close second to the world's top oil producer, Saudi Arabia, and provide the billions needed to rebuild after decades of economic decline and war. But even as Iraq contemplates a dizzying increase in oil activity, questions persist about whether such plans will become a reality and, if so, what political and social changes they will bring to a country still battling to end years of conflict. WILL IT REALLY HAPPEN? It's one thing for Iraq to herald a multibillion-dollar deal in a flag-draped conference hall. It's another thing to actually implement a contract and, most importantly, for foreign firms to fulfill stated output goals.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's Oil Ministry awarded seven oilfields to global oil majors this week, bringing its potential output capacity in six or seven years to a potential 12 million barrels per day.
That would make Iraq a close second to the world's top oil producer, Saudi Arabia, and provide the billions needed to rebuild after decades of economic decline and war.
But even as Iraq contemplates a dizzying increase in oil activity, questions persist about whether such plans will become a reality and, if so, what political and social changes they will bring to a country still battling to end years of conflict.
WILL IT REALLY HAPPEN?
It's one thing for Iraq to herald a multibillion-dollar deal in a flag-draped conference hall. It's another thing to actually implement a contract and, most importantly, for foreign firms to fulfill stated output goals.
COPENHAGEN, Dec 12 (IPS/TerraViva) - Industrial agriculture may emit nearly half of climate-heating greenhouse gases, but that reality has gone unrecognised by negotiators at the climate treaty talks here, say farmers with La Via Campesina, an international movement of hundreds of millions of small-scale peasant farmers."Small-scale farmers use 80 percent less energy than large monocultures," said Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, a Haitian farmer with Mouvement de Paysan, through a translator. "Peasant farmers from La Via Campesina and others can help cool the planet," Jean-Baptiste told a press conference at the Klimaforum09, the alternative climate action talks being held here in Copenhagen Dec. 7-18. Unlike the official talks, set in a remote location surrounded by police and razor wire, Klimaforum09 is being held in the city's community centre and is free and open to the public. "System Change for Climate Change" - that's the phrase most often heard at the Klimaforum09 and in parts of Copenhagen. La Via Campesina's claim that industrial agriculture is by far the biggest source of carbon emissions is based on a recent study that looked at all emissions from the global food system. This includes oil-dependent industrial farming, together with the expansion of the meat industry, the destruction of world's savannahs and forests to grow agricultural commodities, the use of fossil fuel energy to transport and process food, and the extensive use of chemical fertilisers.
BRUSSELS, Dec 12 (IPS) - Some of the world's most polluting companies are receiving financial support from the European taxpayer to promote the continued use of the fuels that cause global warming, according to a new report.In 2005, the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, set up a group known as the Zero Emissions Platform (ZEP) to advise it on the possibility of capturing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants and burying it underground. Dominated by large energy firms, ZEP has secured 1.5 billion euros (2.2 billion dollars) in public subsidies and is busily lobbying for support from policy makers at the international climate change talks now under way in Copenhagen. Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), an organisation which monitors the influence of big business on the EU's institutions, deems it inappropriate that such vast sums are being allocated to carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects when the technology they employ has not yet proven to be environmentally benign. In a report titled 'Public funds used to lobby for fossil fuels in Copenhagen', CEO notes that the proponents of carbon storage admit that it will not be ready for use before 2020. As a result, it will not help realise the EU's objective of reducing by 20 percent its greenhouse gas emissions by the end of the next decade. Yet while the technology it is extolling is still in its infancy, ZEP is holding an event in the Danish capital this weekend to urge that carbon storage should be eligible for funding under the United Nations' clean development mechanism. This mechanism allows industrialised countries to invest in low- polluting projects in poorer nations as an alternative to cutting their own emissions of greenhouse gases. ZEP's 23 members mainly represent major energy companies including Shell, BP, Vattenfall, E.ON, Alstom, Siemens and Statoil.
Numerous companies and organizations, including Shell, have proposed capturing CO2 for storage underground; and scientists who were sceptical about the technique are now rallying to the cause. However, in view of the economic interests at stake, it is hard to tell the independent experts from the lobbyists. In early September, a 32-man line-up of big hitters including the CEOs of major industrial players such as Shell, Siemens, DSM (mines and chemicals), Nuon and Gasunie (power companies) and former prime minister Ruud Lubbers wrote to the Dutch parliament announcing that they were in favour of "Carbon capture and storage as an essential weapon in the fight against climate change." The open letter, which was published in the daily NRC Handelsblad, was also backed by a plethora of researchers and teachers from independent research centre TNO, and the universities of Delft, Groningen, Utrecht and Wageningen. With so many powerful and informed advocates onboard, you might be forgiven for thinking that this was one technical development that could not fail to make an impact, but it almost vanished without a trace in the Netherlands where authorities and inhabitants in the town of Barendrecht were none too happy about the creation of a CO2 storage facility underneath their homes [an experiment conducted by Shell and approved by the Friesian local government]. With the provision of grants both from the Dutch government and the European Union, CO2 storage may soon become a high stakes business--a potential that has not escaped the attention of Shell, which has abandoned wind and solar power to focus on CO2 capture and alternative fuels similar to oil.
Numerous companies and organizations, including Shell, have proposed capturing CO2 for storage underground; and scientists who were sceptical about the technique are now rallying to the cause. However, in view of the economic interests at stake, it is hard to tell the independent experts from the lobbyists.
In early September, a 32-man line-up of big hitters including the CEOs of major industrial players such as Shell, Siemens, DSM (mines and chemicals), Nuon and Gasunie (power companies) and former prime minister Ruud Lubbers wrote to the Dutch parliament announcing that they were in favour of "Carbon capture and storage as an essential weapon in the fight against climate change." The open letter, which was published in the daily NRC Handelsblad, was also backed by a plethora of researchers and teachers from independent research centre TNO, and the universities of Delft, Groningen, Utrecht and Wageningen. With so many powerful and informed advocates onboard, you might be forgiven for thinking that this was one technical development that could not fail to make an impact, but it almost vanished without a trace in the Netherlands where authorities and inhabitants in the town of Barendrecht were none too happy about the creation of a CO2 storage facility underneath their homes [an experiment conducted by Shell and approved by the Friesian local government].
With the provision of grants both from the Dutch government and the European Union, CO2 storage may soon become a high stakes business--a potential that has not escaped the attention of Shell, which has abandoned wind and solar power to focus on CO2 capture and alternative fuels similar to oil.
SOME homeowners consider a wind farm about as appealing a neighbour as a pig farm. Contrary to popular belief, however, it seems they have no effect on house prices. The findings should reassure wind-energy producers, property developers and homeowners that turbines and houses can happily coexist, says Ben Hoen, an analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. As part of a US government-funded study, Hoen's team recorded the sale price of around 7500 homes in nine states and then devised mathematical models to reveal how, all other things being equal, proximity to a wind farm affected their value. Not much, it turns out. Homes less than 1.5 kilometres from a wind farm sold for no less, on average, than homes 8 kilometres away. Similarly, home values tended to remain stable long after wind farms sprung up.
SOME homeowners consider a wind farm about as appealing a neighbour as a pig farm. Contrary to popular belief, however, it seems they have no effect on house prices.
The findings should reassure wind-energy producers, property developers and homeowners that turbines and houses can happily coexist, says Ben Hoen, an analyst at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.
As part of a US government-funded study, Hoen's team recorded the sale price of around 7500 homes in nine states and then devised mathematical models to reveal how, all other things being equal, proximity to a wind farm affected their value.
Not much, it turns out. Homes less than 1.5 kilometres from a wind farm sold for no less, on average, than homes 8 kilometres away. Similarly, home values tended to remain stable long after wind farms sprung up.
On Thursday, the government reached a decision on a comprehensive water management plan for the period from 2010 to 2015 that will cover all of Mainland Finland. The resolution is that further actions are needed in all sectors, and particularly in agriculture. At the moment, most of Finland's inland waters are in excellent or good ecological condition. However, there are problems mainly with rivers and coastal waterways. Some 60% of the surface area of the coastal waters and around 40% of the river lengths are only in satisfactory, below-average, or poor condition.
Reporting from Lieberose, Germany - It's another drizzly, dreary day in eastern Germany -- oddly perfect, it turns out, for demonstrating the potential of solar energy....Raindrops splotch their faces, and the steely gray clouds curtain the sun. But the panels remain busy absorbing solar radiation to convert into electricity. .... The energy generated by the Lieberose plant, which went fully on line in October, should be enough to supply electricity for 15,000 households a year while reducing the use of pollution-generating fossil fuels. The plant is the latest piece in the ever-expanding jigsaw puzzle of solar power in this often overcast and soggy country, which has emerged, somewhat incongruously, as the global leader in harnessing the sun for clean energy. Home to some of the world's largest solar parks and dozens of companies that manufacture, distribute and install photovoltaic panels, Germany proves you don't have to be blessed with Hawaii's weather to grow a thriving solar industry. What you do need, energy experts say, is a national government willing to foster the development of renewable energy. Leaving it purely to market forces -- or piecemeal local incentives, as in the U.S. -- doesn't work as well.
....
The energy generated by the Lieberose plant, which went fully on line in October, should be enough to supply electricity for 15,000 households a year while reducing the use of pollution-generating fossil fuels. The plant is the latest piece in the ever-expanding jigsaw puzzle of solar power in this often overcast and soggy country, which has emerged, somewhat incongruously, as the global leader in harnessing the sun for clean energy.
Home to some of the world's largest solar parks and dozens of companies that manufacture, distribute and install photovoltaic panels, Germany proves you don't have to be blessed with Hawaii's weather to grow a thriving solar industry. What you do need, energy experts say, is a national government willing to foster the development of renewable energy. Leaving it purely to market forces -- or piecemeal local incentives, as in the U.S. -- doesn't work as well.
