A new analysis calculates that vegetation in the world’s tropical regions stores about 229 billion tons of carbon, which is about 21 percent more carbon than previously believed.

Using remote sensing satellite data — including cloud-penetrating LiDAR — and field observations from forests, woodlands and savannas across Africa, Asia, and South America, researchers say they were able to create the first “wall-to-wall” map depicting carbon density.

According to their results, Brazilian rainforests store about 53.2 billion tons of carbon, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (22 billion) and Indonesia (18.6). “For the first time we were able to derive accurate estimates of carbon densities using satellite LiDAR observations in places that have never been measured,” said Alessandro Baccini of the Woods Hole Research Center the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The results could help improve the accuracy of reporting carbon emissions as part of the UN-based REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative, which provides incentives to developing nations to prevent large-scale deforestation.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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A new study of land use in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso shows that deforestation rates decreased significantly from 2006 to 2010 even as agricultural production in the region reached an all-time high.

The study found that growers in Mato Grosso, where more than a third of forest loss in the Brazilian Amazon occurred in the 1980s, have increasingly used previously cleared pasture land. Using satellite data and government statistics on deforestation and production, researchers from Columbia University calculated that 26 percent of the increase in soy production within Mato Grosso from 2001 to 2005 was the result of cropland expansion into forested areas, accounting for 10 percent of total deforestation; during the second half of the decade, however, soy expansion accounted for just 2 percent of total deforestation.

According to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, this shift coincided with a drop in commodity markets, as well as a series of high-profile policy initiatives to reduce deforestation and improved methods in monitoring illegal clearing, including satellite-based tracking systems.

photo: Martin Benavides

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A recent auction held by the Brazilian National Electric Energy Agency (ANEEL), resulted in 42 new electricity generation projects with a total installed capacity of 1,211.5 megawatts (MW), to meet the projected demand of distribution companies in 2016. Of this total, 39 projects were wind farms, totaling 976.5 MW, or 81 percent of the total power traded in the auction.

The average price per MWh was R$102.18 (approx. US$ 55 per MWh), which included an average discount of 8.77 percent. According to Brazil’s Energy Research Company (EPE), the auction fully met the demand of energy distribution companies.

New wind energy plants will be installed in different regions of the country: in the northeast (Bahia, Ceará, Maranhão and Rio Grande do Norte), in the heartland (Goiás), in the south (Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina) and southeast (São Paulo). The total projected investment is R$4.3 billion (approx. US$2.3 billion).

Apart from wind, the San Roque hydroelectric power plant (135 MW) was allocated to the state of Santa Catarina at the price per MWh of R$91.20 (approx. US$49.1 per MWh), which was a 25.85 percent discount to the original price, with expected investments of R$652 million (approx. US$351.1 million).

According to EPE, Brazil’s wind energy potential is estimated to be 143,000 MW, with the ability to reach 300,000 MW with the use of modern generators. Between 2009 and 2010, the country’s wind power generation increased by 50.5 percent; and currently accounts for 0.4 percent of the total electricity produced in Brazil.

Renewable energy accounts for 87.1 of Brazil’s electricity matrix, mainly from hydropower. But there’s pressure in the country for government to bring online wind and solar projects as the hydropower industry eyes the Amazon region for future projects, such as the controversial Belo Monte dam.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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Fernando de Noronha is one of Brazil’s eco hot spots, famous for its breathtaking geography, surf and marine life. The archipelago lies 220 miles off Rio Grande do Norte state and is a UN World Heritage Site.

An agreement signed on December 26 will bring solar power to the island in 2012, thanks to a new partnership between Grupo Neoenergia and utility company Companhia Energética de Pernambuco (Celpe), under the supervision f the Brazilian Navy. The agreement will see the installation of solar panels to generate grid-connected photovoltaic energy. The project’s budget is US$2.7 million.

“We would like to stimulate the development and application of this new technology on the island and contribute to the preservation of its environment”, said Neoenergia’s president Marcelo Corrêa. When finished, the solar energy system will be able to supply 60 percent of the island’s energy demands, or 600 MWh per year.

Industry specialists will be monitoring the energy generation process closely during the first year in order to identify possible shortcomings that may require improvements. The PV solar panels will occupy an area of around 20,000 square feet on land that belongs to the Brazilian Navy.

Until now there has been only solar thermal energy on the island, providing hot water for inns and a dolphin research center.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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Mexico City has announced plans to close one of the world’s largest open-air garbage dumps as part of an initiative to convert more of the city’s waste into reusable materials or energy.

By the end of the year, garbage trucks will no longer be allowed to drop trash at the Bordo Poniente, a massive dump that has received more than 76 million tons of trash since it opened after the devastating 1985 earthquake.

At its peak, the dump received about 12,700 tons of garbage daily. A recycling separation facility and composting plant will remain open at the site. According to a plan announced by city officials, a large concrete company, Cemex SAB, will buy 3,000 tons of trash daily to convert into energy.

Mexico City is searching for other sites to dump the remaining garbage until a new recycling program is instituted in 2012. Meanwhile, Seattle became the latest U.S. city to ban plastic grocery bags, and city officials also passed a 5-cent fee on paper bags in an attempt to reduce its waste stream.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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At the IBM Smarter Cities forum in Rio de Janeiro last week, I had the chance to go behind the scenes and take a first-hand look at Rio’s smart city project. My main impression is that the project represents one of the purest emerging examples of a smart city project that is simultaneously developing smart solutions on multiple fronts – natural disaster management, public safety, health, utilities, to mention a few – and is starting to achieve a true “system of systems” – nirvana in smart city terms. This level of integration and interoperability across city agencies – and the successes Rio has had so far – bodes well for the smart city opportunity not only in emerging markets but worldwide.

The City of Rio de Janeiro has accomplished this by deploying smart technologies ranging from broad, continental-scale weather tracking down to mobile device-enabled notification systems for potholes and burnt-out streetlights. The centerpiece, of course, is the Rio Operations Center, which features Latin America’s largest screen and dozens of stations that provide visualizations of real-time data feeds. Within the center, 35 city agencies work together to synergize their responses to city events. (One interesting detail is that the operators wear uniforms modeled after NASA that create a sense of camaraderie and homogeneity across the historically separate city agencies, which creates something of a spectacle.)

To provide an example of how this works: If heavy rains cause flooding in a specific portion of the city, the operations center coordinates teams that notify citizens ahead of time via text message, close down the streets, mobilize ambulances, and shut down electricity distribution systems in the neighborhood to prevent electrocution. These processes are all pre-determined via standard operating procedures (SOPs). On the city side, bringing all these agencies under one roof helps break the silos that perennially plague the smooth delivery of city services. And, on the citizen side, it certainly helps that Brazil’s mobile device and networks are exploding, providing the platform for vigorous smart city app development and citizen involvement.

But technology is only one part of the winning recipe for a smart city. One persistent barrier echoed many times at the event is that smart city projects often rely heavily on the vision and initiative of specific mayors and administrations, which typically face four-year election cycles. The timetables required for certain types of infrastructure – particularly those involving high-tech and high initial capital expenditures – don’t always fit neatly into mayoral terms. Indeed, Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, who spoke at the event, described the challenges of making progress on the project despite his uncertain future as mayor. Selecting smart city technology measures that optimize in terms of high net-present value, ease of deployment within a tight timeframe, and high PR benefits for the mayoral office seem to be emerging as the most pragmatic smart city solutions that address this challenge.

What differentiates Rio from other smart cities is the added challenge of managing its favelas – shantytowns perched on steep hillsides throughout the city that have historically received little in the way of city services or regulation – and integrating them with Rio’s urban fabric. These areas are among the most vulnerable to disasters such as mudslides as well as important symbolic testing grounds for Rio’s ability to serve even its poorest citizens as scrutiny of the city mounts in the lead-up to the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. From the perspective of a smart city, the favelas also provide opportunities for infrastructural “leapfrogging,” installing smart systems that could catapult these portions of the city to levels found in the rest of the city using state-of-the-art technology.

All in all, though, the event provided a clear picture of the concrete progress that’s being made on the smart city front and, in particular, the unique opportunities afforded by cities in emerging markets.

Article by Eric Bloom, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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Another oil spill is taking place in the world right now from an off-shore drilling operation.

The incident was at Chevron’s deep-sea drilling operation off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state in Brazil. The country’s federal police says information released by Chevron does not match what they have seen, that is, the spill is larger, and they only saw one cleanup ship.

Chevron said the oil spill was between 400 and 650 barrels of oil and that it had contained the leak. But Brazil’s oil regulator National Petroleum Agency estimated 1,000 barrels had leaked to the surface and until earlier this week said it was not sure whether the well had been plugged (apparently, it has been by now).

Non-profit SkyTruth, which uses satellite imagery to detect environmental problems, went further and said the oil spill extended 918 square miles and on Tuesday on the spill rate was at least 3,738 barrels per day.

The organization wrote on its blog yesterday that it hopes that next satellite image it will get will reveal a much smaller spillage area now that the leak has been stopped. The last image was from November 12th as SkyTruth hasn’t been able to get new images since then due to cloudy weather.

Brazil’s federal police has launched an investigation into the incident while Brazil’s Energy Minister Edison Lobão said the company will “severely punished” if it has not done what it should have to contain the spill.

The incident illustrates once again the dangers of deep-sea oil drilling and why we should be moving towards alternative energy.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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The numbers surrounding urbanization worldwide are staggering. In 2008, the number of people living in cities, for the first time in civilization, surpassed the number of people living in rural settings. Although urbanization is happening on every continent, the story could not be more dramatic in China, where urban migration will add 350 million people – more than the entire U.S. population – to cities by 2025.

This will result not only in a swelling of the built environment, which will grow by 26 percent over the next ten years. It will also create unprecedented levels of demand for city services on a scale that most city governments have never experienced before, especially in the developing world. This realization is driving city leaders and technology innovators to launch an effort to leverage information and communications technology (ICT) systems to make it easier for cities to deliver services and foster innovation. Pike Research documented these efforts in our recent report, Smart Cities.

Next week, worldwide experts on smart cities will descend upon Rio de Janeiro for IBM’s SmarterCities forum to examine IBM’s work on implementing ICT technologies to improve Rio’s urban infrastructure. IBM and the Rio de Janeiro city government have been working hard on the Rio Operations Center to manage its burgeoning investments in infrastructure and prevent the urban disasters that have plagued the city in the past.

The Operations Center emerged largely in response to pervasive mudslides in Rio in 2010, which claimed the lives of more than 200 Cariocas. In an effort to avoid such disasters in the future, Rio is first investing in smart city infrastructure that tracks weather patterns and identifies likely vulnerabilities. In the long term, however, the Operations Center will be used to monitor a broader range of city services. And as attention turns to Brazil in anticipation of the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics, Brazil is particularly keen on demonstrating its ability to become a 21st-century nation.

The drive for smart city infrastructure takes a different tone in the developing world compared with modern cities. Many of the most prominent smart city projects, in places such as Amsterdam and Boulder, are focused on improving city infrastructure in a way that makes a city more competitive (for families and for businesses), reduces costs, and improves environmental sustainability. While these objectives certainly apply in emerging markets such as Brazil, urban infrastructure is being built out for the first time in many developing cities like Rio, and city governments in emerging markets are finding themselves more responsible for the welfare of their citizens than ever.

Cities in emerging markets are coming of age right on the cusp of a technological revolution. Even just a few years ago, smart cities were more the stuff of science fiction than reality, but as costs for information and communications technology infrastructure have come down and the concept has been proven, dozens of cities worldwide have started to adopt smart city technology. First-world city governments, though, remain constrained by governmental structures, entrenched bureaucracies, existing last-generation e-government systems, and ingrained processes for city service delivery. Emerging markets are more of a blank slate; they provide the opportunity to build out smart systems from the ground up. Augmenting city services is inevitable in cities looking to develop and attract businesses and investment; it’s a question of how you do it, and the most ambitious cities, like Rio, will be looking to leapfrog to smart-city technologies.

Pike Research forecasts total smart city investment in Latin America to grow to $2.8 billion by 2020. Much of this investment will land in Brazil, though city governments in other countries such as Mexico and Colombia are already starting to develop smart city projects of their own. I’m looking forward to discussing the evolution of smart cities next week in Rio and getting a better sense for the course of urban development in Latin America and other emerging markets.

Article by Eric Bloom, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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Four water districts in the western U.S. are working with Mexican officials to develop two huge desalination plants in Playas de Rosarito, a coastal city located in the Mexican state of Baja California, as communities on both sides of the border look to wean themselves from the drought-prone Colorado River.

One group — including the water agencies that provide water to much of Southern California, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Tijuana — is now studying the costs of a plant that would provide about 50 million gallons daily, while a second project would provide nearly 100 million gallons daily to the U.S. via a new pipeline, with operation set to begin in 2014.

While some environmental groups have expressed concerns about the proposals, including charges that American water agencies are targeting Mexico to avoid stricter U.S. review, proponents say the plants could provide a freshwater alternative to the Colorado River, which for decades has been the lifeblood for seven U.S. states and northwest Mexico but has been running increasingly low in recent years as a result of rising demand.

photo: Wolfgang Staudt

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360

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The controversial $10 billion Patagonian HidroAysen hydroelectric mega-dam approved in May by the Chilean government has recently had a Chilean appeals court in Puerto Montt vote 3 to 1 to reject seven lawsuits filed against it, with supporters of blocking it vowing to appeal to the country’s Supreme court.

The lawsuits were brought querying the legality of the government’s environmental review process and cited numerous procedural irregularities and alleged conflicts of interest.

After the Puerto Montt appeals court ruling was made public, Patagonia Sin Represas, a citizen’s group opposed to the project, said that the court decision would now be appealed to the Supreme Court, Coyhaique’s daily Diario el Divisadero reported.

The Patagonian HidroAysen hydroelectric project is a joint venture between Chilean energy company Colbun and the Spanish Endesa energy company, a part of Enel. The HidroAysen hydroelectric facility would install five dams on two of Chile’s largest rivers, the Baker and Pascua rivers in Patagonia’s southern Aysen Region XI, and would be the largest dam project ever built in Chile.

In addition to the hydroelectric cascades, the project also includes constructing 1,243 miles of electrical transmission lines to convey HidroAysen electricity to central and northern Chile.

Article by Charles Kennedy, appearing courtesy OilPrice.com.

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