U.S. researchers have developed broadband acoustic systems that they say will improve the ability to count and classify fish and zooplankton, an advance they liken to jumping from black and white television to high-definition TV.

While oceanographers have long used acoustic measurements to determine what lies under the sea, existing technologies use sound waves that measure only one or a few frequencies, producing data that can be ambiguous and open to different interpretations, particularly for small fish and zooplankton. (more…)

In Africa and elsewhere, burgeoning population growth threatens to overwhelm already over-stretched food supply systems. But the next agricultural revolution needs to get local — and must start to see rising populations as potentially part of the solution.

I bring good news from Machakos, a rural district of Kenya, a couple of hours drive from Nairobi. Seventy years ago, British colonial scientists dismissed the treeless eroding hillsides of Machakos as “an appalling example” of environmental degradation that they blamed on the “multiplication” of the “natives.” The Akamba had exceeded the carrying capacity of their land and were “rapidly drifting to a state of hopeless and miserable poverty and their land to a parched desert of rocks, stones and sand.”

Since independence in 1963, the Akamba’s population has more than doubled. Meanwhile, farm output has risen tenfold. Yet there are also more trees, and soil erosion is much reduced. The Akamba still use simple farming techniques on their small family plots. But today they are producing so much food that when I visited, they were selling vegetables and milk in Nairobi, mangoes and oranges to the Middle East, avocados to France, and green beans to Britain.

What made the difference? People. (more…)

China’s surging wind power industry will increasingly move offshore, experts say, as the nation’s first offshore wind farm reaches full power this month and government officials push several additional projects.

The 102-megawatt Shanghai wind farm is the first of several offshore wind projects planned by China, which last month opened bids for three to four large-scale offshore wind farms that officials say could generate 1,000 megawatts of electricity.

Beijing-based energy consultants Azure International predict that by 2020 China will have invested $100 billion to install 30,000 megawatts of capacity off the Chinese coast. (more…)

MP2 Capital is a San Francisco firm that develops, finances and invests in distributed generation and small-scale utility solar projects throughout North America, selling the electricity produced by its projects to commercial, government and utility customers under power purchase agreements and feed-in tariffs.

Its latest project is a 445-kilowatt solar photovoltaic array in Winsted, Connecticut. MP2 Capital has entered into a power purchase agreement to sell all of the electricity generated to the Regional School District No. 7 for 20 years under a grant from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund.

The system, which sits atop multiple rooftops of the school district, was built by groSolar and is composed of 1,937 photovoltaic panels from Canadian Solar. It is expected to produce approximately 492,000 kilowatt hours of clean solar electricity and save the school district $26,000 in energy costs during the first year of operation. Over the term of the agreement, the system is expected to produce approximately 9,380,000 kilowatt-hours to offset the school’s energy use.

Brad Bauer, co-founder and managing director of MP2  Capital, talked with CleanTechies about the project. (more…)

Meegan Jones has been the sustainability coordinator for such famous U.K. festivals as Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds.  She’s put together her experiences in a new book, Sustainable Event Management: A Practical Guide, which talks about the ways to understand and manage the environmental impact of any event.

Using her U.K. experiences and examples from around the world, including the Burning Man, Coachella and Bonnaroo festivals in the United States, Jones discusses energy, zero emissions options, carbon and waste management and other aspects of handling the small to mid-sized cities that spring up during festival season and quickly dissolve in days.

CleanTechies:  Do sustainable events cost more than non-sustainable ones?  Tell us what the differences are between the two. (more…)

Government subsidies that helped fuel Europe’s most successful solar markets continue to be slashed, raising concerns that the region’s burgeoning renewable sector will be unable to compete with China and the U.S., according to a report on Greenwire.

Germany, the world’s largest market for solar power, will cut the price paid for electricity from roof-mounted panels by 16 percent and electricity from larger solar power stations by 15 percent.

Analysts say the government simply underestimated how quickly the renewable sector would grow. From 2000 to 2008, the production of photovoltaic energy in Germany rose from 32 million kilowatt hours to 4.4 billion kilowatt hours. Government subsidies in Germany now cost nearly €1.5 billion annually. (more…)

The four year-old crisis of the disappearing bee is deepening.  Harsh winter conditions led to a massive bee die-off and a new study found bee pollen and hives laced with pesticides.

Bee populations have been on the decline for years, but in 2006 scientists noticed an alarming drop in population and found that entire colonies were being abandoned as bees went off to die elsewhere, a phenomenon labeled “colony collapse disorder.”

With bees disappearing, farmers are scrambling to find enough of the little guys to pollinate their crops.  The seriousness of the situation became clearer this spring when a hive shortage threatened the almond crop in California, which supplies the bulk of the world’s almonds.

Many culprits could possibly be behind the bees demise including viruses, bacteria, mites, chemical exposure and poor nutrition, but scientists are now zeroing in on pesticides. (more…)

The Asilomar conference on geoengineering had been touted as a potentially historic event. What emerged, however, were some unexpected lessons about the possibilities and pitfalls of manipulating the Earth’s climate to offset global warming.

In the beginning, I had my doubts. The Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies, held last week at the Asilomar conference grounds near Monterey, Calif., was touted as an “unprecedented” gathering of 175 scientists, environmental groups, philosophers, and public policy wonks to discuss the governance of geoengineering — that is, large-scale, intentional manipulation of the Earth’s climate to offset rising temperatures.

The meeting was obviously set up to channel the spirit of the first Asilomar conference in 1975, during which biologists drew up voluntary guidelines to help reassure the public that genetically modified organisms would not be released into the world. Asilomar 1.0 is remembered as a landmark event in the evolution of scientific ethics and a turning point in the public acceptance of biotechnology.

Asilomar 2.0 seemed to pale in comparison. For one thing, geoengineering may be a scary idea, but the dangers were nowhere near as immediate as the unintentional release of genetically modified organisms. (more…)