By Erica Werner
    The Associated Press

    Friday 08 February 2008

    Washington - A House committee chairman subpoenaed the Environmental Protection Agency on Friday seeking documents reviewed by the agency's administrator before he blocked a California tailpipe emissions law.

    More than 16 other states were also blocked from implementing the first-in-the-nation greenhouse gas emissions controls when the EPA rejected California's waiver request in December.

    In the wake of the controversial decision by EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson there have been indications he overruled EPA staff who recommended granting the waiver. Congressional investigators have released excerpts of an internal presentation made to Johnson that said California had a compelling need for the waiver, and that EPA was likely to lose in court if sued over denying it.

    The EPA has refused to release that presentation publicly although congressional aides have reviewed it in private with agency staff present. The subpoena issued Friday by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., seeks an unredacted version of the presentation. Waxman chairs the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.

    EPA spokesman Jonathan Shradar contended congressional investigators had already seen the documents in question and said the agency had concerns about releasing them publicly because of ongoing litigation. California and other states have sued EPA over its decision to deny the waiver.

    
    By Juliet Eilperin
    The Washington Post

    Friday 08 February 2008

    Clearing land to produce biofuels such as ethanol will do more to exacerbate global warming than using gasoline or other fossil fuels, two scientific studies show.

    The independent analyses, which will be published today in the journal Science, could force policymakers in the United States and Europe to reevaluate incentives they have adopted to spur production of ethanol-based fuels. President Bush and many members of Congress have touted expanding biofuel use as an integral element of the nation's battle against climate change, but these studies suggest that this strategy will damage the planet rather than help protect it.

    One study - written by a group of researchers from Princeton University, Woods Hole Research Center and Iowa State University along with an agriculture consultant - concluded that over 30 years, use of traditional corn-based ethanol would produce twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as regular gasoline. Another analysis, written by a Nature Conservancy scientist along with University of Minnesota researchers, found that converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or grasslands in Southeast Asia and Latin America to produce biofuels will increase global warming pollution for decades, if not centuries.

    Tim Searchinger, who conducts research at Princeton and the D.C-based German Marshall Fund of the United States, said the research he and his colleagues did is the first to reveal the hidden environmental cost of producing biofuels.

    "The land we're likely to plow up is the land that we've had taking up carbon for decades," said Searchinger, the lead author. Estimating that it would take 167 years before biofuel would stop contributing to climate change, he added, "We can't get to a result, no matter how heroically we make assumptions on behalf of corn ethanol, where it will actually generate greenhouse-gas benefits."

   
    By Michael Casey
    The Associated Press

    Monday 04 February 2008

EDITOR'S NOTE - December's Bali climate talks cleared the way for a last-ditch effort to preserve the world's rain forests, by turning trees into tradable securities. This is the last in a three-part series on the tropics' disappearing forests.

    Bali, Indonesia - For decades, a flood of aid and an army of conservationists couldn't save Indonesia's rain forests from illegal loggers, land-hungry peasants and the spread of giant plantations. Now the world is looking at a simpler approach: up-front cash.

    Whether it was arming forest police or backing schemes to certify legal logs, no tactic could silence the chain saws or douse the intentional fires that each day destroy 20 more square miles (50 more square kilometers) of Indonesia's rain forests, and an estimated 110 square miles (285 square kilometers) elsewhere in the world's tropics.

    The problem was pure economics: Neither local authorities nor the rural poor, in Indonesia and elsewhere, have a material incentive to keep their forests intact.

    That could now change because of a decision at December's U.N. climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate a deal, as part of the next international climate agreement, under which countries would be rewarded for reducing their galloping rates of deforestation, a big contributor to global warming.

    The cash might come directly from a fund financed by richer northern nations, or through "carbon credits" granted per unit of forest saved. The credits could be traded on the world carbon market, where a northern industry can buy such allowances to help meet its own required reductions in emissions of global-warming gases.

   
    By Steve Connor
    The Independent UK

    Tuesday 05 February 2008

    Nine ways in which the Earth could be tipped into a potentially dangerous state that could last for many centuries have been identified by scientists investigating how quickly global warming could run out of control.

    A major international investigation by dozens of leading climate scientists has found that the "tipping points" for all nine scenarios - such as the melting of the Arctic sea ice or the disappearance of the Amazon rainforest - could occur within the next 100 years.

    The scientists warn that climate change is likely to result in sudden and dramatic changes to some of the major geophysical elements of the Earth if global average temperatures continue to rise as a result of the predicted increase in emissions of man-made greenhouse gases.

    Most and probably all of the nine scenarios are likely to be irreversible on a human timescale once they pass a certain threshold of change, and the widespread effects of the transition to the new state will be felt for generations to come, the scientists said.

    "Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change. Our synthesis of present knowledge suggests that a variety of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under anthropogenic [man-made] climate change," they report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    
    By Lisa Lee
    Reuters

    Monday 04 February 2008

    New York - Three Wall Street banks said on Monday they will set environmental standards that factor in risks posed by carbon emissions when lending to power companies that seek to build coal-fired power plants.

    Citigroup Inc, JP Morgan Chase & Co and Morgan Stanley will form "The Carbon Principles," climate change guidelines for advisors and lenders to power companies in the United States.

    The standards do not preclude bank financing for building traditional coal-burning power plants, said Jeffrey Holzschuh, vice chairman at Morgan Stanley. Instead, they set up a more rigorous evaluation process, such as looking at the costs of storing carbon emissions and other risk factors.

    The principles are intended to be an industry-wide framework with more financial institutions jumping on board.

    "I think there will be several other banks that will join in over the next few weeks," Holzschuh told Reuters.

    Coal generates about half of U.S. electricity, but is the dirtiest emitter of the main greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Traditional coal-fired plants have come under pressure from states and environmentalists, while Congress considers several bills that would cap greenhouse gas emissions. Presidential candidates also say they favor regulating the gases.

   
    By Matt Richtel and John Markoff
    The New York Times

    Friday 01 February 2008

    San Francisco - The sun is starting to grow jobs.

    While interest in alternative energy is climbing across the United States, solar power especially is rising in California, the product of billions of dollars in investment and mountains of enthusiasm.

    In recent months, the industry has added several thousand jobs in the production of solar energy cells and installation of solar panels on roofs. A spate of investment has also aimed at making solar power more efficient and less costly than natural gas and coal.

    Entrepreneurs, academics and policy makers say this era's solar industry is different from what was tried in the 1970s, when Jerry Brown, then the governor of California, invited derision for envisioning a future fueled by alternative energy.

    They point to companies like SolarCity, an installer of rooftop solar cells based in Foster City. Since its founding in 2006, it has grown to 215 workers and $29 million in annual sales. "It is hard to find installers," said Lyndon Rive, the chief executive. "We're at the stage where if we continue to grow at this pace, we won't be able to sustain the growth."

    SunPower, which makes the silicon-based cells that turn sunlight into electricity, reported 2007 revenue of more than $775 million, more than triple its 2006 revenue. The company expects sales to top $1 billion this year. SunPower, based in San Jose, said its stock price grew 251 percent in 2007, faster than any other Silicon Valley company, including Apple and Google.