One of the biggest challenges in the water arena is lowering the cost of wastewater purification, which is a heavy consumer of energy. Israeli start-ups Diffusaire and Mapal have developed technologies which bring dramatic cost-savings to wastewater treatment facilities.

Wastewater Treatment – Background

In advertising for home water purification systems we’re used to seeing pure, crystal clear water, but in reality the water only stays looking like this for a very short while, and actually all the water we use quickly turn to sewage water – drinking water, bath water, water used in industry …everything. Wastewater treatment is a very central activity in the water arena. Wastewater treatment uses up 1.5% of all the energy consumption in the U.S., so we’re talking about a big guzzler of energy.

Wastewater that remains untreated goes on to contaminate land and water sources. It is absolutely essential to treat wastewater, and in most of the world wastewater is converted into water for agriculture (Israel holds the #1 position in the world with 75% of wastewater reclaimed).

Wastewater is treated in wastewater treatment facilities which can be divided into two main types: open basins, large and shallow, situated in cheaper land outside residential areas, and the smaller, deep concrete pools, located in urban areas, on more expensive, more crowded land.

The purification of the contaminants that are dissolved in the water is done through bacteria which gobble them up (“biological purification”) and just as in fish tanks there need to be water bubbles so that the fish get oxygen, it’s also necessary to supply the bacteria with oxygen so that they can go on doing their job. Therefore, wastewater treatment facilities include aeration systems, which function is to bring oxygen into the pool. Today, the fine bubbles diffusers systems, which use advanced systems to insert small oxygen bubbles into them facility, are becoming more and more popular.

The diffusers are pipe systems which bring bubbles from the bottom of the facility pool. It’s possible to install such systems only in facilities with a concrete floor and not in open air pools. Open pools usually have a mechanical top layer device installed, and this system uses up a lot more energy, because it necessitates ongoing, costly maintenance. Therefore, the industry prefers bottom pool systems. Either way, we’re talking about an energy guzzler – about 50% of the energy expenditure of the entire facility.

Two Israeli start-ups are showing excellent progress in the race to develop winning solutions to make airing of wastewater facilities less costly: Diffusaire and Mapal. Diffusaire has developed a next generation diffuser, an innovative under-floor airing system for wastewater facilities with a concrete floor, and Mapal developed a technology for covering and upgrading existing diffusers, in order to utilize them in places where before it was impossible to do so (open air basins without a concrete floor). The bottom line is that both companies’ solutions bring dramatic reductions in operational costs.

First steps in the market:

Diffusaire works out of the water incubator Kinrot Ventures. The technology that the Company developed multiplies the length of time that the bubbles stay in the wastewater, thus significantly increasing the oxygen supply in the process. According to the Company, this creates a 25% reduction in costs in comparison with other diffusers.

According to Yuval Suskind, Diffusaire’s CEO, the Company has completed testing and is now signing first agreements with two Israeli water utilities – the “Tkua” utility in the Judean area, and the “Mei Reket” utility in Tiberius. Up until this point the Israeli government has invested about half a million dollars in the Company, which is entering its third year of activity in the Kinrot incubator and is seeking out private investment of $2 million. The objective of the investment is to finance the projects in Israel, as well as to market the solution in Europe, North America and India.

The second Israeli company active in this sphere, Mapal, targets a different kind of wastewater treatment facility, the open air basins, in which as mentioned, it’s not possible to install under-floor systems. Mapal enables use of diffusers in open air basins, using a patented covering of the basin. Its solution makes it unnecessary to build pools with a concrete floor in order to use the gentle bubbles system, thus enabling dramatic cost-savings.

“In this way we reduce energy consumption by almost 70% in comparison to top layer airing systems,” says Zeev Fisher, one of the founders and the VP Business Development of Mapal. The Company’s technology is installed in the wastewater treatment facility in Israel’s Ramat Hasharon, which treats 10,000 cube meters of wastewater every day, “And there we achieved an energy saving of almost 40%,” says Fisher. Additionally, the Company has systems installed in Netanya, which treats 40,000 cube meters per day, and is in the final stages of an agreement with a large water utility in the UK, as well as in negotiations with a facility which treats 200,000 cube meters per day, and negotiations for the upgrading of 18 facilities in Lima, Peru.
Up to date, Mapal has raised about $3 million in investments, more then half a million of which was invested by the founders, and is today entering a third round of investment, of $5 million, in order to fund projects.
Both of these companies target different segments in the wastewater purification arena, but they have an important common ground. For one thing, both claim that their solutions can be implemented on working facilities, without the need to suspend activity, and with the existing systems staying on as backup for some time.

The second thing they have in common is the method of financing. Both companies have selected a financing system in which the companies themselves fund the system for the facility, getting their pay through the savings that the new solution brings to the facility. In this way the facility is saved having to raise funds to upgrade its system.

These two approaches make entry into agreements with water utilities, which are often conservative and risk-averse, much easier and smoother.

Article appearing courtesy Israel NewTech.

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Valcent Products will build a super efficient 6,000 square-foot greenhouse in downtown Vancouver.

Valcent has revolutionized vertical farming with their hydroponic VertiCrop growing system. VertiCrop is a series of four-meter-high stacks of growing trays assembled on motorized conveyors. The conveyors move the plants through commercial greenhouses for maximum sun exposure.

The system also makes it easy to harvest. Like other hydroponic systems, VertiCrop is incredibly efficient, providing up to 20 times the yield of field agriculture and using less than a tenth of the water.

The upcoming Vancouver greenhouse will produce hydroponically the equivalent of about 16 acres of California field agriculture and can grow up to 20 different varieties of lettuces. Construction is planned to launch in January 2012 with the first crop harvest projected for April 2012.

Vancouver is striving to become the greenest city in the world by 2020. Utilizing an underused space in the city and growing food locally are important steps to creating a more sustainable city. A bicycle-based food delivery company is being discussed as a market option for the upcoming greenhouse product.

Article by Karen MacKay, appearing courtesy Crisp Green.

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The type of agriculture practiced in a given region depends heavily on the climate and weather that region receives. So naturally, with climate change, agriculture will be forced to change. Certain crops will have to be discarded for alternative crops which may grow better in the new climate. In other cases, agriculture will simply be no longer sustainable. Farms may have to close down or move to different latitudes or elevations. The unpredictable nature of climate change will make this quite a conundrum for farmers and the world at large.

One man has attempted to explain it all through a book which can help guide us through a potentially rocky transition. Ariel Dinar, director of the Water Science and Policy Center at the University of California (UC), Riverside, has co-edited the book, “Handbook on Climate Change and Agriculture.” The book has contributions from scholars around the world. It explores direct effects on agriculture, economic impacts, and farmer adaptation.

The writers of the book make the argument that climate change will likely have a significant impact on agriculture around the world. The changes will be in the form of temperature, precipitation, CO2 concentrations, and available water flows.

“Developing countries already face food problems,” said Dinar. “The effects of climate change on agriculture in these and other countries will depend on how well the agricultural sector can adapt through technology institutions, and better management practices. Developing countries are better able to engage in adaptation since mitigation is much harder for these countries to do.”

Dinar first began his studies on climate change in 1994 and realized the effects on agriculture were largely ignored. The effects could be particularly dire for developing countries where farming is still relatively low-tech and there is a strong reliance on steady climate. Livestock as well, would be particularly hard hit.

“It soon became clear to me that people did not know much about adaptation to the effects of climate change,” he said. “The net effect of climate change on agricultural production is still not well understood. It’s not just the production of food from crops that is involved, but also livestock. Agriculture suffers from climate change, but it also contributes to it through land use and abuse, as well as the adoption of practices that are unsustainable where climate change is concerned such as unsuitable cropping patterns and irrigation technologies.”

Article by David A. Gabel, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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Perhaps the largest impact of global climate change will be on agriculture, and there is no crop more sensitive to changes in climate than wine grapes. As temperatures rise and average precipitation levels change, the signature wine-making regions such as those in France and California will be forced to adapt. There have been studies conducted analyzing the influence of weather and climate on wine since long before climate change made the headlines. Recently, studies have modeled climate change’s effects up to 100 years into the future. The expected impacts are not bad at first, but in the end, they are not good.

In 2005, Gregory Jones, climatologist from the University of Southern Oregon, led a study which found that higher temperatures are good for wine. He examined 27 wine-making regions including France, Spain, Portugal, and parts of California and Washington state. The average growing-season temperature for the past 50 years has gone up 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and even up 4.5 degrees in some areas. In general, the quality of wine rose with the average temperature.

This is because higher temps produce a better quality harvest and faster ripening. It also produces grapes which contain more sugars which translate into more alcohol.

The downside is that regions that were already much warmer than others are already reaching the threshold where higher temperatures do not help. In fact, higher temperatures can cause a reduction in grape quality.

Spain in particular is worried how this will affect its wine industry. The largest winemaker, Bodegas Torres headquartered in Catalonia, is preparing to move its vineyards to keep up. “In the last four years, temperatures have increased 1 degree [Celsius] in the vineyards,” says president of the company, Miguel Torres. “The quality has not changed so far. Our concern is for the future. They say the temperature could go up 2 degrees — or 5 degrees. So we are moving vineyards from sea level to central valley, and from central valley to mountain areas.”

Different regions will be forced to cope in different ways. Europe has a thousand year tradition of growing wines. Each variety has been perfectly matched to a particular geography, soil, landscape, etc. The wine making culture is deeply ingrained, in that a certain type of wine is expected to come from a specific area. For example, a genuine French Sauvignon Blanc must come from Bordeaux. A genuine Pinot Noir must come from Burgundy.

Newer wine making regions will have an easier time coping because the traditions are not nearly as codified. Plus, unlike Europe which is almost fully developed, there is still room to expand in California, Oregon, Chile, Argentina, and Australia.

Nations are regions in Europe take great pride in the quality of their wine. It is perhaps climate change’s challenge to traditional wine culture which may be the most difficult to overcome.

Article by David A. Gabel, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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Farmers and horticulturists are being advised to act now in order to survive the years of drought ahead.

A recent report commissioned by the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE) shows that higher temperatures and lower annual rainfall in summer is likely to reduce river flow and subsequently reduce the availability of water for the agricultural and horticultural industries in England.

The report was carried out by scientists from the Walker Institute for Climate System Research and the School of Agriculture – both a part of the University of Reading.  Agri-Science Director for RASE, Ian Smith stated that the future likelihood of drought posed a challenge for “plant breeders, policy makers and planners as well as farmers.”

“For a long time, water management in the UK has concentrated on getting water off land and into rivers and drains and then into the sea. Perhaps we need to rethink some of these strategies and divert more of that water into storage for later use,” he said.

The report discusses how important it is that farmers recognize that climate change is a reality and that a readily available water supply is likely to be one of the first casualties of this change.

According to a Phys.org article other key messages of the report include:

• Finding ways of reducing demand and focusing production on enterprises which use water more efficiently or move some enterprises to areas where water is more readily available
• identifying the potential to move water from areas where there are fewer requirements to areas with higher demand
• better use of excess winter rainfall and flood water through capture and storage
• feasibility of water re-use and what is acceptable to the consumer
• emphasis in plant breeding programs on drought and water-logging resistance
• revising crop protection policy for new weed, pest and disease pressures

The report also notes that climate change is only one aspect that will influence agricultural behaviour, and that other factors like national and global drivers, political incentives, technological innovations and socio-economic will also play a vital role.

Mr Smith said that the report clearly identifies the importance of water management in the future and will feature strongly as an educational tool at RASE meetings.

Article by Kate R., appearing courtesy Celsias.

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Last week I took part in an American tradition: visiting the Wisconsin State Fair. The Wisconsin State Fair and state fairs throughout the country are a cherished summertime experience for rural America – a place where old friends and old traditions go hand-in-hand with the latest innovations. In a solar powered building, I sampled my first cheese curds. I visited Senator Herb Kohl’s family’s flavored milk stand and had some of the Fair’s famous cream puffs. And I saw the Fair’s “solar panel on a stick” – a rotating solar panel that follows the sun – an investment that has already paid for itself in utility savings.

Something else was on display as well: the value that our great outdoors and green spaces have for millions of Americans. The environment is the foundation of the economy for the farmers and ranchers I met at the fair, the people who live off the land. It’s part of the culture for the women and men who love to fish and hunt. And it’s a way of life for the 60 million Americans living in small towns and rural areas throughout the country. Though they may not call themselves “environmentalists,” these Americans are playing an important part in protecting critical natural resources, using sustainable techniques to preserve our environment, and leading the way in innovative clean energy technology.

Today rural America faces profound environmental challenges. While the State Fair was a place of celebration, I also had serious conversations about clean drinking water, chemicals in our products and our environment, and the effects climate change could have on American agriculture. The good news is, the development of new, green ideas has never been stronger, and rural America is helping to lead the way. That’s one of the reasons why I visited Wisconsin, to view some of the cutting-edge strategies being used in the state and to see some of the extraordinary clean water research taking place at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Freshwater Science. A few hours before visiting the Fair, I announced a strategy to open the way to green infrastructure solutions throughout the country. That strategy will help urban and rural communities use natural infrastructure — soil, vegetation, or the rain gardens at the Fair — to capture stormwater and agricultural runoff, to filter contaminants, and to conserve water.

Clean water, air and land are an American tradition. We’re traveling the country and speaking with everyone we can to get the best ideas from all over America. We’re even having a little fun, too, enjoying both the traditions and the innovations of state fairs in Wisconsin and across the nation. By building lasting partnerships and strong connections between our communities, our businesses and our government, we can work together to make America greener, healthier, and more prosperous.

Article by Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Empty rhetoric. That’s the verdict on the recently established New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) from Geoff Bertram and Simon Terry in their searching book The Carbon Challenge: New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme. It is something of a cautionary tale for others contemplating such schemes.

They present a picture of governmental processes captured by powerful groups pursuing their own interests at the expense of the rest of the community. Large industry and agriculture have won for themselves exemptions and delays of such an order as to make significant emissions reduction impossible in the first commitment period (CP1) of the Kyoto Protocol. At the same time the costs have been loaded disproportionately on to households and small industry. Those responsible for 30% of emissions will carry 90% of the cost. Agriculture with 49% of emissions will pay 3% of the costs.

New Zealand has an unusual emissions profile in that almost half of the country’s total emissions come from livestock farming. It is a common complaint of farmers that there is little they can do about the emissions resulting from their farming activity. The authors of the book don’t accept this. In fact they claim agriculture offers by far the biggest set of low-cost abatement opportunities. There are a number of options that are not only commercially available but profitable to undertake.

They instance means for reducing nitrous oxide emissions – nitrification inhibitors, stand-off pads, new grasses, supplementary maize feed, improved soil drainage. Selective breeding offers the possibility in due course of some reduction of methane as does the supplementary feeding of various plant matter. The processing of casual effluent from milking sheds through bio-digesters cuts both carbon dioxide and methane. Improved carbon storage in soils through pasture management appears possible as does sequestration through biochar burial.

In the longer run the ETS exemption is against farmers’ own best interests. It is shielding them from likely winds of change in world markets. The authors instance large companies in other countries seeking low-emissions milk, as Cadbury is doing in the UK, and point to the likelihood that New Zealand will surrender first-mover advantage to such countries if we continue with our present dogged denial.

There is self-defeat for large industry, also, in the favoured position they have gained for themselves. The ETS opens the possibility of production subsidies for high-emission industries by focusing on the intensity rather than the overall quantity of emissions. This could actually lead to the situation where a highly polluting industry centered around exploiting lignite coal for fertiliser would be entitled to subsidy because they reach a satisfactory level of intensity in their energy use.

By this provision New Zealand could provide a welcoming environment for industries wanting to relocate from other Annex I countries, via ‘carbon leakage’ from those economies. Such production subsidies will invite tariff retaliation from other countries and could shut New Zealand exports out of key markets.

New Zealand will emerge from CP1 with a level of emissions considerably higher than the 1990 benchmark to which we are expected to have returned. The possibility exists of plantation forests providing an considerable offset to the country’s emissions. This is the subject of close investigation in the book, which warns that if this path is followed there will be a reckoning when the trees are cut down. Potentially enormous deferred costs could be faced by the next generation when the final accounting is made.

Indeed, the costs may be so high as to raise questions about the country’s ability to meet them. This prospect may see the plantation forest offsetting practice being disallowed in successor arrangements after CP1. Permanent forests are a different matter, and the authors see these as a real key to balancing the country’s future carbon budgets. They lament the uncertainties the forestry sector faces by comparison with the government response to demands from large industrial operations.

The ETS is highly complex and often difficult to follow. I can well understand the authors’ claim that it’s a reasonable guess that no more than a handful of MPs understood the detail of what they were voting on. I often found myself struggling to get a proper hold on the ramifications of the various processes the book explores, even though the authors have been exemplary in the patience and thoroughness of their explanations.

It is the exhaustive care they bring to their task which makes the reader respectful of the summary statements which emerge from time to time in the course of their discussion, such as this one:

“The ETS has not been designed to promote economically efficient abatement. It has been designed firstly to protect and promote the position of vested interests that are unwilling to shoulder asset write-downs required to recognise a price on carbon, and secondly to transfer the costs of this to future generations.”

However there are countervailing forces at work against the formidable clout wielded by agricultural and other major emitter lobbies. The authors nominate three domestic factors which could upset the current political equilibrium. One is the possibility that the lack of trust in the forestry regulatory regime may deter new planting in general and permanent afforestation in particular; this would increase pressure for reform of the ETS.

The second is that sections of the population and the economy will become more concerned about climate change and the lack of any effective action at home to reduce emissions. The third is that the recognition of the size of the carbon debt we are passing to future generations by using plantation forest credits to cover excess emissions may become a moral issue.

They also point to international factors which will put our ETS under pressure. One is the pressure New Zealand will come under if international emissions targets move towards being set more on a per capita basis. It would be very risky for us to go forward with gross emissions far above any we could hope to defend in a global commons debate. Another is the risk of border taxes and other adjustments we could well face from other governments and from private-sector firms if our climate change policy is shown to be incapable of matching the climate change objectives it espouses.

An ETS must set an appropriate cap on emissions. If it shies away from the present costs of serious action it only lays up far greater future costs as the result of doing nothing now. That is the basic warning of the book. New Zealand is part of the developed world and will not be able to escape its fair share of responsibilities as we appear set on trying to do.

Article by Bryan Walker, appearing courtesy Celsias.

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(Reuters) – The messages are tense, angry, cajoling.

Written between 2008 and January 2010 and sent between lobbyists, scientists and high-ranking European civil servants, they hint at the intense emotions in the debate over one of Europe’s most contentious environmental issues: the use of biofuels, long touted as an alternative to carbon-emitting petroleum.

But it’s not how the emails are written that’s important. It’s what’s in them — and the fact that if it were not for transparency laws, Europe’s citizens would be unaware of how vested interests have influenced the science behind a cornerstone of the continent’s clean energy policy.

One of the mails calls the evolving science of biofuels “misleading”; another “arbitrary”. In one, sent last November, a European civil servant calls an attempt to quantify the damage from biofuels “completely flawed and incomplete”. Lobbyists pick holes in the evidence, using graphs, charts and tables. A worried official warns against “financial consequences” for farmers.

Most damaging for the European Commission is a leaked letter from the head of its own agriculture unit, Jean-Luc Demarty, in which he refers to mounting evidence that biofuels do serious harm to the climate. Unless handled carefully, Demarty writes, that scientific perspective could “kill biofuels in the EU”.

That it could. Read in their entirety, the documents — emails, letters and research reports released after Reuters invoked transparency laws — not only expose a huge rift in Brussels over biofuels policy, but also undermine Europe’s ambition of using alternative fuels to wean the continent off oil. Beyond this, they raise serious questions about whether some European Commission officials have deliberately skewed the findings of scientific studies to fit their policies.

It’s a war that pits the European Commission’s agriculture experts against its climate experts, and Europe’s auto and farming lobbies against environmentalists. The bottom line is this: Europe — committed to a goal of using biofuels to power 7 percent of its road traffic by the end of this decade — is seriously questioning the fuel’s use. That means the future of biofuels elsewhere must also be under threat, which will have huge implications not just for the way we tackle climate change, but for everything from the price of land, chemicals and commodities to foreign aid.

“I think it’s outrageous the Commission is hiding the science behind climate policy,” says Tim Grabiel of ClientEarth, a group of activist lawyers who have sued the European Commission for greater transparency on the issue. “The science generally confirms this is something we should be worried about.”

An Inconvenient Truth

Like many such tales, this story begins with good intentions.

Two years ago, Europe mandated that by 2020, 10 percent of transport fuels must come from renewable sources. Of that, some 70 percent would come from biofuels — those made from the oil of plants such as palms, soy beans or rape seed, or ethanol brewed from crops like wheat, sugar cane or sugar beet. Designed to help Europe cut carbon emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by the end of this decade, the plan foresaw a $17 billion-a-year biofuels market. Europe, the bloc’s leaders said, would lead the world away from carbon dioxide-emitting oil.

But even as European leaders committed themselves to that ambitious goal, questions were growing over how green biofuels really are. Environmentalists warned that promoting them might encourage farmers to rip out food crops or burn and clear forests to grow cash crops that could be turned into fuel. That could leave the world’s poor with even less food and actually add to the amount of carbon dioxide we emit.

“When citizens are filling up their cars with biofuels, they have the right to know whether they are encouraging deforestation on the other side of the planet,” says Grabiel. “These studies really contain the answers to those questions, and this is what our lawsuits seek to reveal.”

The basic assumption with biofuels is that plants absorb as much carbon dioxide while growing as they release when burned in an engine. If you use them as a fuel, their net impact on the climate is close to zero, except for emissions from farming machinery and fertilizers.

But this doesn’t take into account a relatively new concept that scientists call “indirect land use change”. Put simply, if you take a field planted with grain and switch that crop to something that can be used to make a biofuel, then somebody will go hungry unless the missing grain is grown elsewhere or farming yields are massively improved.

The rush to biofuels means the quantities of land needed are huge. Satisfying the EU’s demand alone will require an additional 4.5 million hectares of land by 2020, according to Reuters calculations based on an average of 15 of the studies for the Commission. That’s an area roughly equal to Denmark.

Burning forests to clear that land — which in theory could be found anywhere around the globe — would pump vast quantities of climate-warming emissions into the atmosphere, enough to cancel out many of the theoretical benefits the biofuels are supposed to bring in the first place. EU sources say an upcoming report will point to a one-off release of around 200 million metric tons of carbon due to land-use change from biofuels, paid back slowly as the fuels do their job over the following centuries. That one-off release is roughly the annual fossil fuel emissions of Germany.

As this inconvenient truth became apparent, obfuscation over the science increased. By the start of this year, more and more people were asking whether the EU had committed itself to biofuels before the science on them was settled.

A Palm Problem

The studies at the center of the email debate are meant to help clarify that confusion. They form part of an EU-sponsored strategy report that should provide the most detailed look yet at the complex global interactions between farming, biofuels and climate change.

The report, which will draw on work by researchers from Italy to Washington, is due later this year. But according to one of the studies that will feed into it, “many decades may be needed before the initial…carbon losses are compensated by the savings due to greater biofuel use.”

Not only are forests already being felled to grow biofuel crops, but fragile peatlands are also being drained, particularly in Indonesia, to make way for palm trees. That will create even bigger problems as the peat oxidizes, releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide. One report, published in 2008 by the EU’s Joint Research Center, said that if just 2.4 percent of European biodiesel came from palm oil grown on former peatlands, the entire climate benefits of EU biodiesel would be wiped out.

Palm oil currently accounts for 4-5 percent of Europe’s biofuels mix. Most of that still comes from non-peatland sources and ends up in food and cosmetics. But Europe’s demand for biofuels will treble over the next decade to meet the 2020 target. Could Europe be knowingly fuelling global warming under the guise of fighting climate change?

A Safeguard Against Corruption

The job of finding a way forward falls to Guenther Oettinger, Europe’s new energy commissioner, who on June 10 this year stood before reporters in the European Commission’s giant press auditorium to launch new environmental standards for biofuels. Oettinger took the prestigious energy post in February after five years as the Conservative governor of Baden-Wuerttemberg, a rich industrial area in the south of Germany and home to some of Germany’s leading companies, including Daimler and Porsche.

He is the man who has to defend Europe’s gas and oil supplies against wars on its borders, such as the Russia-Georgia conflict in 2008, or the “pipeline politics” that so often cut supplies of Russian gas entering Europe via Ukraine or Belarus.

Oettinger has made a forthright start on biofuels, promising to get tough on them if the science shows they are not providing the benefits they are supposed to. “If you want to exclude all abuse, you would have to exclude all biofuels to start with,” he told reporters in June.

The extent of the mess may have remained hidden but for the strict freedom of information rules that require the European Commission to share most of its internal documents with the public. “Studies that have been executed with taxpayers’ money have to be made available to the public…and as early and as clearly as possible,” says retired judge and former Commission official Ludwig Kraemer. “Openness and transparency is a safeguard against corruption and excessive lobbying.”

The problem is knowing what to ask for. The first signs of a problem came when Reuters got hold of the leaked letter from agriculture boss Demarty warning that the emerging scientific view could be the end of biofuels in the EU.

“That letter was the first real evidence,” says Nusa Urbancic, a tenacious Slovenian campaigner with the European Federation for Transport and Environment (T&E), a Brussels team set up to delve into the nitty-gritty of EU transport policy. “They had been delaying and delaying their reports, and we had heard they had found something wrong with biofuels.”

Last October, Urbancic filed an official request demanding access to the documents that apparently sparked Demarty’s fears. In February, with snow clinging to the glass and steel buildings of the Commission and Urbancic still waiting for her documents, Reuters filed an identical request. Three weeks later, a first tranche of documents was released to Reuters, Urbancic and her colleagues — 116 studies, data files and emails, amounting to thousands of pages.

Some of the studies showed evidence of ecological problems. “The simulated effects of EU biofuels policies imply a considerable shock to agricultural commodity markets,” wrote one group of researchers handling a complex computer-modeling exercise. “It carries the risk of significant and hardly reversible environmental damages,” warned others.

Worried that biofuels might actually aggravate climate change, officials in the Commission’s environmental unit argued for the strategy to be refined or reconsidered.

But agriculture officials, backed by colleagues in the energy unit, have painted the new science as unrefined. “Trying to establish the amount of indirect land use change caused by EU biofuels production is simply ridiculous,” wrote one, whose name was blacked out in the released documents. “These models…cannot be used as a regulatory instrument, which would imply financial consequences for the concerned industries,” Demarty warned in another.

Fraunhofer’s Disclaimer

Rumors started circulating among environmentalists and in the European Parliament of officials meddling with research. Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute, a 60-year old research organization with energy expertise, had been commissioned by the EU to look at Brussels’ biofuels policy. But when the final version of the institute’s report appeared, it carried a disclaimer saying the final presentation did not reflect the institute’s views. Some of Europe’s most respected energy technology scientists were unhappy with the way their work had been represented.

Reuters again invoked transparency laws to bring the disputed research to light, along with emails between Commission departments discussing whether the report should be published. These emails, released on June 18, show agriculture officials had been instrumental in cutting sections of the report that showed that biodiesel from soy beans could be four times more damaging to the climate than standard diesel or petrol.

The officials’ argument for doing so — the report used a scientific method that was widely disputed — may have been sound, but their intervention made it look like the Commission was tampering with the evidence to suit its political goals. The emails reveal a charged discussion between those in the frontline of biofuels research on whether indirect land use change was already taking place before 2007. In the end, it appears, the Commission’s energy czars cut the debate short. “We insist that the annex is deleted entirely,” one official, whose name has been blacked out, wrote on December 2, 2009.

“I’ve dealt with a lot of agencies in my time, and I can’t recall seeing one so opaque,” says Grabiel of ClientEarth.

Final Word — Or Not?

There were other eyebrow-raising incidents. Those following the biofuels debate had long awaited a report commissioned by the Commission’s trade unit. Researchers at the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) had fine-tuned a powerful global economic database called GTAP to help in their work, and promised the deepest exploration yet into the complex global ramifications of biofuels. This, several EU officials predicted, would be the final word in the debate.

Needless to say, it wasn’t. The report, which appeared on March 24, concluded that Europe’s biofuels strategy would do little of the damage it had been charged with. But when experts began to look at the data that had been fed into the study by the Commission’s energy officials, they were surprised by what they found.

For example, key assumptions played down the contribution traditional biofuels would make toward the EU’s 10 percent goal, while simultaneously pushing up the role of other types of less-damaging renewable energies, such as electric cars and advanced biofuels made from waste.

Most striking was the assumption that by 2020, 20 percent of all new cars sold would be electric — a figure which massively exceeds most reliable forecasts.

The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association predicts 3 to 10 percent of European cars will be electric in 10 years. The Commission itself launched its electric vehicle strategy in April with a forecast of a 1 to 2 percent share for electric cars and a similar figure for hybrids. When it comes to assessing the environmental damage of biofuels, the Commission had apparently asked its researchers to use a five-fold exaggeration of its own electric car forecasts.

Other problems emerged. The Washington researchers based their modeling on the assumption that about 15 percent of biofuels used in Europe in 2020 would be less-damaging “second generation” fuels brewed from straw and crop residues rather than grain. But numerous European Commission forecasts, most notably its Strategic Energy Technology plan of October 2009, predicted that the technology needed for second-generation biofuels production would only begin to come on stream “around 2015-20.”

“A public authority is always obliged to be factually correct,” says Bernhard Wegener, professor of law at Germany’s University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. “It is always a breach of that obligation if somebody willingly and deliberately feeds wrong information into the decision-making process.”

Last week, as Brussels baked under the hottest temperatures this year, the author of the IFPRI report, David Laborde, attempted to explain his methods to a fractious crowd of commission officials and critics, among them T&E’s Urbancic and Grabiel of ClientEarth.

Standing before his slideshow in a Commission meeting room, Laborde navigated a delicate line as Grabiel drilled into his research. No, said Laborde, he didn’t think European officials had fed him biased assumptions, or at least he wasn’t in a position to judge. And yes, he was “relatively optimistic” the policy would have a “slightly positive” effect on climate change.

But in one area, he clearly disowned the assumptions the Commission had given him — that almost half the EU’s new thirst for biofuels would be quenched with bioethanol, which has much better climate credentials than biodiesel. The Commission predicts a 55/45 split between biodiesel and bioethanol in 2020 but “if you look at the trends, we’re not going to reach this target,” Laborde said. “It would be more like 80/20.”

Some officials looked uncomfortably around them, or at the floor, apparently eager to move on.

Policy Change?

Rumors have now begun to emerge of a deliberate campaign. Two EU sources say Commission officials coached lobbyists on how best to attack the emerging science of indirect land use change.

The biofuels industry continues to argue that the science is so poorly understood that it would be premature for Europe to change its goal.

Environmentalists counter that amid such uncertainty it would be foolish to continue. “I was never happy with this 10 percent target, and I’m still not happy,” says Bas Eickhout, a Dutch Green group politician who previously worked as a renewable energy analyst. “We’ll have to consider how to deal with the factor of indirect land use change, and let’s put in place a review clause, acknowledging that the science will become more and more clear.”

The European Biodiesel Board says it is ready for a debate as long as the oil extraction industry comes under the same intense scrutiny as biofuels. “Let’s have that debate, but let it be fair,” says secretary general Raffaello Garofalo. “Nobody is talking about the indirect effects of oil. Look at what’s happening in the Gulf of Mexico with BP. Or we could talk about impacts in the Niger Delta.”

If a proper public debate does ever happen, even more difficult questions may emerge. What gives Europe the right to lecture developing countries on how they should use their land? After all, Europe has spent millennia deforesting its lands and is one of the major historical culprits behind climate change. Why impose tighter standards for the vegetable oils that are burned in cars than those that are used in the kitchen? How do we account for waste animal fats that are as likely to end up in cosmetics and beauty products as they are in the fuel tank of a car?

Biofuels have become the first real test-case for a post-oil era in which food, animal feed, fuel and chemicals compete for land in a new bio-economy. Whatever conclusion Europe reaches “may set the agenda for sustainable land use for the future”, says Eickhout. “It touches on social issues, environment issues, trade issues, energy issues and more.”

Even without a debate, the likelihood of a policy shift in Brussels has grown. After 20 years in German politics, Guenther Oettinger is the kind of man who loathes controversy and policy dysfunction. Many of the architects of the biofuels policy were replaced in an overhaul in January.

“We promote only sustainable biofuels and take the phenomenon of indirect land use very seriously,” he said in a written response to Reuters. “This is why we have launched several studies on this. If it is confirmed that indeed that there is a serious problem related to indirect land use, we may adapt our legislation.”

Article by Peter Harrison; Edited by Simon Robinson and Sara Ledwith; appearing courtesy Reuters.

photo: jurvetson

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The United States Department of Agriculture was tasked with tracking Farmers Markets beginning in 1994. The directory was updated every two years through 2008. In 2009, the process changed to a yearly rite. Here’s the breakdown:

• Number of Farmers Markets in 1994 – 1,755
• Number of Farmers Markets in 1996 – 2,410
• Number of Farmers Markets in 1998 – 2,746
• Number of Farmers Markets in 2000 – 2,863
• Number of Farmers Markets in 2002 – 3,137
• Number of Farmers Markets in 2004 – 3,706
• Number of Farmers Markets in 2006 – 4,385
• Number of Farmers Markets in 2008 – 4,685
• Number of Farmers Markets in 2009 – 5,274

The obvious striking detail in this list is the rising numbers in every year reported. In fact, the number of Farmers Markets has more than tripled since 1994. This is a very good trend indeed, but further examination appears to provide further reason for optimism. Note the years and numbers listed in bold. These represent the three reporting periods with the largest growth in numbers. The biggest increase occurred from 2004 to 2006 – 679 more markets – followed by 1994 to 1996 – 655 more markets.

Here’s where it gets more interesting. The year 2009 saw an increase of 589 markets, which puts it in a close third place on the list in terms of aggregate growth, but this number represents a mere one year reporting period, as opposed to all previous reporting periods, which covered two years. When projected over two years, under any reasonable scenario, the current growth rate obliterates all predecessors.

Here’s where you come in. Support your local Farmers Market as a customer and/or as a vendor. Local Harvest is one great tool to seek out markets in your area.

Article appearing courtesy Celsias.

photo: Sean Munson

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With subsidy support for corn ethanol under attack, algae and cellulosic look to secure federal support.  The result: a subsidy battle in the Capital that could dictate the direction of the U.S. biofuel industry over the next decade.

Has the transition to advanced biofuels turned the corner?

Probably not yet, but sustainable alternatives are beginning to get their day in the sun in Washington D.C.  The result: a subsidy brawl is taking shape that will likely dictate the direction of U.S. biofuels development over the next 5-10 years.

There are a few moving elements, but here are the recent highlights:

First, the EPA’s RFS 2.0 opened up opportunities for advanced biofuels to make up an increasing portion of renewable fuels in the U.S. transportation sector when President Obama, the EPA, and USDA jointly charted a biofuel pathway in early February 2010.

The standard relies on a greenhouse gas (GHG) lifecycle analysis of renewable fuels, which represents the first time a U.S. industry has been evaluated, monitored, and regulated based on GHG performance.  In so doing, it mandates that advanced fuels play a larger role in the U.S. fuel mix — biomass-based diesel, cellulosic, and biodiesel — so long as their lifecycle GHG emissions are at least 50 percent less than the petroleum-based fuel it displaces.

Second, stories are bubbling to the surface around subsidies that suggest corn ethanol will have to fight to maintain their favored-fuel position in the Capital, while heavy criticism levied towards corn ethanol around food v. fuel and indirect land use change have undermined the effort to divert increasing portions of the U.S. corn yield to biofuel production.  The result is a growing debate about whether subsidies should be extended past 2010 for the industry.

Most recently, Holly Jessen of Ethanol Producer Magazine explains that the U.S. ethanol industry is continuing to call for an extension of the U.S. tariff on imported ethanol, following an announcement by the Brazilian government that it is eliminating its 20 percent tariff on imported ethanol.  The Brazilian Chamber of Foreign Trade said the temporary reduction will become official this week and will remain at zero until the end of 2011.

Growth Energy and the Renewable Fuels Association, however, maintain that the U.S. tariff is needed. UNICA, the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association, calls the removal of the subsidy a “major step forward in building a global biofuels marketplace.”  Meanwhile, UNICA continues to lobby hard for the United States also to drop its tariff on imported ethanol.

Third, algae and cellulosic upstarts are beginning to flex some muscle.  Algae groups (BIO and ABO) have stepped up their calls for a tax subsidy of their own.  In a letter urging the Senate Committee on Finance (PDF) to move on the Algae-based Renewable Fuel Promotion Act of 2009 (S. 1250), the organizations point out that the timing is optimal given that Congress currently has legislation before it to modify the Internal Revenue Code Section 40 Cellulosic Biofuel Producer tax credit.

For its part, the Cellulosic Biofuels Producer tax credit bill recently introduced by Reps. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) and John Shimkus (R-IL) would extend subsidies by three years garnered significant praise for industry groups like BIO.

Finally, regional and state rules are starting to shape the industry as well.  California’s low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) significantly penalizes Midwest corn ethanol and soy-based diesel.  If the LCFS works its way East and is adopted by 11 Northeastern jurisdictions, Midwest corn and soy-based fuels would effectively be shut out of the population centers along the U.S. East and West coasts.

The issue thus far has been aligning commercial-ready conversion technologies that take advantage of efficiencies to keep costs low with available feedstocks.  Ethanol and biodiesel worked (albiet, through significant subsidization) because the technology was ready to go that and there was an abundance of corn and soy respectively in the United States.

The relative strength of the farm lobby in Washington played a roll as well.  Cellulosic conversion is considerably more difficult and scaling algae has proven elusive so far.  Nevertheless, look for advanced biofuels to step into the ring in a serious way with price parity inching closer.

Mackinnon is Editor & Publisher of Biomass Intel, a law and policy resource for sustainable energy, and co-author of Camelina Aviation Biofuels: Market Opportunity and Renewable Energy Report.

photo: SandiaLabs

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