Dutch turning off quake-zone gas for 200 firms

France24 – AFP, 23 January 2018

A total of 180,000 homes and farms near Groningen have suffered damage
 in recent years. This photo was taken on a farm in the area in 2013

THE HAGUE (AFP) - The Dutch government has ordered more than 200 of the country's biggest businesses to stop using gas from the quake-prone northern Groningen region, Europe's largest gasfield, officials confirmed Tuesday.

Instead, firms must transition by 2022 to using sustainable sources of energy, or use gas from elsewhere, Economics Minister Eric Wiebes wrote in a letter to each of the companies, which came to light late Monday.

"The government wants to eliminate the consumption of 'low calorific gas' by big businesses, so that in principle no large industrial organisation is still using Groningen gas by 2022," he said.

The economics ministry confirmed to AFP that Wiebes had told parliament that about 200 businesses used some 5.5 billion cubic metres of Groningen gas, and that each of them would be visited to discuss a way forward.

The letters came after more than 900 homes were damaged in early January when Groningen province was hit by a 3.4 magnitude quake -- its largest since 2012.

The new government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte has pledged to wean the country off Groningen gas, and this "gradual reduction" is "inevitable," added Wiebes.

A further alternative for businesses was to move towards using higher calorific gas which is not produced in Groningen and comes mainly from abroad.

NAM, the energy company responsible for the gas extraction, is half-owned by Shell and ExxonMobil and has been extracting gas from the massive Groningen field since 1963.

But the area has been plagued by relatively low magnitude quakes said to result from huge air pockets left underground because of gas extraction.

"This government wants during its term to swiftly reduce the demand for Groningen gas," added Wiebes, saying this "ambition had only been reinforced by the most recent earthquake".

Meanwhile, an appeals court in northern Leeuwarden on Tuesday upheld a 2015 decision under which NAM must compensate property owners for the falling prices of damaged homes.

A study by the University of Groningen counted a total of 180,000 damaged houses, with a collective value of 950 million euros ($1.16 billion), the Dutch news agency ANP said.

In recent years, the Netherlands has drastically scaled back Groningen gas production in stages from 53.9 billion cubic metres in 2013 to 21.6 billion in April 2017.

Related Articles:

Minister tells big firms to stop using Groningen gas by 2020

NAM ordered to pay Groningen home owners compensation now

Coca-Cola sets 100% recycling goal for 2030

Yahoo – AFP, January 19, 2018

Coca-Cola has introduced its World Without Waste campaign to collect the
equivalent of 100% of its bottles, and make new bottles completely recyclable
(AFP Photo/Cindy Ord)

Washington (AFP) - Coca-Cola is launching a campaign to collect and recycle 100 percent of its packaging by 2030, part of a drive to reduce consumer waste globally, the company announced Friday.

The Georgia-based company, which markets more than 500 brands of sodas, juices, water and teas, said it also is working to make all of its packaging 100 percent recyclable worldwide.

"The world has a packaging problem -- and, like all companies, we have a responsibility to help solve it," Coca-Cola President and CEO James Quincey said in a statement.

The iconic brand is calling the new campaign "World Without Waste," and through it "we are investing in our planet and our packaging to help make this problem a thing of the past," he said.

By 2030, the company said it will help reclaim one bottle or can for every one sold by the company and its independent bottlers, wholesalers and retailers.

It also is working to reduce waste by using an average of 50 percent recycled content in its drinks bottles by 2030, developing plant-based resins and reducing the plastics used in packaging.

As of 2016, Coca-Cola claimed its brands accounted for nearly two billion daily servings of soft drinks in more than 200 countries.

Last three years hottest on record: UN

Yahoo – AFP, Ben Simon, January 18, 2018

The planet's record-breaking hot weather has caused severe drought in places
like here in South Africa. (AFP Photo/Rodger BOSCH)

Geneva (AFP) - The last three years were the hottest on record, the United Nations weather agency said Thursday, citing fresh global data underscoring the dramatic warming of the planet.

Consolidated data from five leading international weather agencies shows that "2015, 2016 and 2017 have been confirmed as the three warmest years on record", the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said.

It added that 2016 remains the hottest year ever measured, due to the warming effect of El Nino, while 2017 was the warmest non-El Nino year beating out 2015 by less than one hundredth of a degree.

"The long-term temperature trend is far more important than the ranking of individual years, and that trend is an upward one," WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

The 21st century has so far been a period of the hottest weather, accounting for 17 of the 18 warmest years on record.

"And the degree of warming during the past three years has been exceptional," Taalas added.

The WMO also highlighted the intensification of weather and climate related disasters, which hit record levels in the United States last year, while multiple countries were devastated by cyclones, floods and drought.

The WMO findings were based on data provided by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, US space agency NASA, Britain's Met office, the European Centre for medium range weather forecasts and the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Using those inputs, the UN said that the average global surface temperature last year was 1.1 degrees Celsius (1.98 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

"Basically, all of the warming in the last 60 years is attributable to human activities," said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

The warmth also led to the second smallest average annual sea ice coverage on record in the Arctic, NOAA said.

Reacting to the results, experts warned that the planet is moving closer to a set of red lines laid out in the historic 2015 Paris climate agreement.

That treaty calls for capping global warming at "well under" two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

"When even 'colder' (non-El Nino) years are rewriting the warmest year record books we know we have a problem," said Dave Reay, the Carbon Management chair at the University of Edinburgh.

"Global temperatures will continue to bob up and down from year to year, but the climate tide beneath them is rising fast."

'Focus' needed

There is mounting global consensus on the need to slash CO2 and methane emissions, improve energy efficiency, and develop technologies to remove CO2 from the air.

But US President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris accord has rattled the international community and complicated efforts at forging joint action -- even though many US state governments insist they remain committed to cut emissions.

Since industrialisation took off in the early 19th century, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have increased by nearly half, from 280 parts per million to 407 parts per million.

Trump will head to the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, an annual gathering of global elite, where he will confront some of the political and civil society leaders who fought hard for the Paris deal.

"Collaborative efforts" to combat unprecedented shared challenges will be a major theme of meeting, WEF boss Klaus Schwab said this week.

"The record temperature should focus the minds of world leaders, including President Trump, on the scale and urgency of the risks that people, rich and poor, face around the world from climate change," said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the London School of Economics.

The World Meteorological Organization consolidated data from five leading international weather agencies, highlighting the intensification of weather and climate related disasters https://t.co/gZSJE8m1wM pic.twitter.com/ntfk5qvNo1

— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 18, 2018

EU sets 2030 target for recyclable plastic packaging

Yahoo – AFP, January 16, 2018

The European Commission wants to transform the way plastic products are
designed, produced and recycled (AFP Photo/John MACDOUGALL)

Strasbourg (France) (AFP) - The European Union unveiled plans Tuesday for all plastic packaging in Europe to be recyclable by 2030 and phase out single-use plastic like coffee cups to fight pollution.

The strategy announced by the European Commission, the EU-executive, follows China's decision to ban imports of foreign waste products for recycling, including huge quantities from Europe.

"The commission aims to increase plastic recycling and for all plastic packaging to be reusable or recyclable by 2030," the executive body said.

The Commission said its proposals also aim to create business opportunities by transforming the way plastic products are designed, produced and recycled in Europe.

The EU currently exports half of its collected and sorted plastics, 85 percent of which goes to China.

Commission First Vice President Frans Timmermans said: "We must stop plastics getting into our water, our food, and even our bodies. The only long-term solution is to reduce plastic waste by recycling and reusing more."

"The Chinese decision is undoubtedly a big challenge but let's turn that challenge into an opportunity," he added.

Map of the European Union showing the average plastic waste per inhabitant 

in 2015 (AFP Photo/Thorsten EBERDING)

The Commission's strategy aims to rid the seas and oceans from the "700 kilogrammes" of plastics it says get washed up each day, and it "will take measures to limit the use of microplastics" found in cosmetics and detergents.

Proposed new rules on ports and the shipping industry are aimed at making sure waste generated at sea by ships is not released into the water.

An additional 100 million euros was also promised to fund research into promoting technical innovations for tackling the problem.

The Commission has already taken a number of steps to try to reduce plastic, particularly single-use shopping bags.

'500 years to degrade'

The proposals did not contain plans for a tax on plastic packaging, which budget commissioner Guenther Oettinger proposed last week to fight pollution and to help plug a hole of around 13 billion euros in the bloc's budget caused by Brexit.

"We have not found a way to introduce a European-wide plastic tax yet," Vice President Jyrki Katainen, who is responsible for jobs and investment, told reporters.

"It is too early to promise anything."

Britain's Prince Charles and others held an EU-backed conference last year for drastic action to stop eight million tonnes of plastic waste polluting the world's oceans annually.

The Commission said Europeans generate 25 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, but less than 30 percent is collected for recycling.

In 2015, the plastics industry was worth 340 billion euros in the EU, and 

employed more than 1.5 million people (AFP Photo/Justin TALLIS)

Timmermans called for promoting awareness, urging parents to tell their children that a plastic straw takes only a second to produce but 500 years to degrade, and said the commission ultimately wants to ban microplastics.

No fixed recycling standards

Katainen said the strategy is "a great opportunity for European industry to develop global leadership in new technology and materials."

He added Europe does not yet have a functioning single recycling market for plastic as there are no set standards.

According to Plastics Europe, the Brussels-based association of European plastics manufacturers, the industry is worth 340 billion euros (2015 figures) in the EU, and employs more than 1.5 million people.

Its executive director Karl-H. Foerster said: "We... are committed to ensuring high rates of reuse and recycling with the ambition to reach 60 percent for plastic packaging by 2030. This will help achieve our goal of 100 percent reuse, recycling and recovery of all plastics packaging at European level by 2040."

He added: "Only a legally binding landfill restriction on all recyclable and other recoverable post-consumer waste will put an end to the landfilling of all waste which can be used as a resource."

Related Article:

Bali declares 'garbage emergency' amid sea of waste

The Indonesian holiday island has become an embarrassing poster child for the
country's trash problem (AFP Photo/SONNY TUMBELAKA)

Fossil fuels blown away by wind in cost terms: study

Yahoo – AFP, 13 January 2018

Fossil fuels blown away by wind in cost terms: study

Paris (AFP) - New onshore wind and solar energy projects are set to deliver electricity more cheaply than fossil fuels plants, with other green technologies also rapidly gaining a cost advantage over dirty fuels, a report published Saturday said.

According to a new cost analysis from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), within two years "all the renewable power generation technologies that are now in commercial use are expected to fall within the fossil fuel-fired cost range, with most at the lower end or undercutting fossil fuels".

It expects renewables will cost between three and 10 US cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) by 2020, while the current cost spectrum for fossil fuel power generation ranges from five to 17 US cents per kWh.

"This new dynamic signals a significant shift in the energy paradigm," said IRENA's Director-General, Adnan Amin, in a statement.

"Turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now -- overwhelmingly -- a smart economic one," he added.

Continued technological advancements are not the only factor helping drive down prices. The report found that the market was becoming more competitive and a number of experienced project developers had emerged in the sector.

The best onshore wind and solar PV projects are expected to deliver electricity for three US cents or less by next year.

But onshore wind and solar are not the only sectors becoming more competitive rapidly. The study found that new bioenergy and geothermal projects commissioned in 2017 had global weighted average costs of around seven US cents per kWh.

IRENA said auction results suggest that two other technologies --concentrating solar power (CSP) and offshore wind -- will provide electricity for between 6-10 US cents per kWh by 2020.

"These cost declines across technologies are unprecedented and representative of the degree to which renewable energy is disrupting the global energy system," said Amin.

The report was released on the first day of the eighth assembly of IRENA, which aims to be a global hub for renewable energy cooperation and information exchange by its 154 member countries.

Green technologies now the 'smart economic' decision, according to International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA)

* Renewables will cost 3-10 US cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) by 2020
* Fossil fuel power generation ranges from 5-17 US cents per kWhhttps://t.co/qMLpf6FlNZ

— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 13, 2018

Ukraine to launch its first solar plant at Chernobyl

Yahoo – AFP, Oleksandr SAVOCHENKO, January 10, 2018

Solar power is a way to make use of the area around Chernobyl that is still
heavily polluted after the 1986 catastrophe (AFP Photo/Genya SAVILOV)

Chernobyl (Ukraine) (AFP) - At ground zero of Ukraine's Chernobyl tragedy, workers in orange vests are busy erecting hundreds of dark-coloured panels as the country gets ready to launch its first solar plant to revive the abandoned territory.

The new one-megawatt power plant is located just a hundred metres from the new "sarcophagus", a giant metal dome sealing the remains of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, the worst nuclear disaster in the world.

"This solar power plant can cover the needs of a medium-sized village", or about 2,000 flats, Yevgen Varyagin, the head of the Ukrainian-German company Solar Chernobyl which carried out the project, told AFP.

The solar installation is to go on stream within weeks, the company says.

The group has spent one million euros on the structure which has about 3,800 photovoltaic panels installed across an area of 1.6 hectares, about the size of two football fields, and hopes the investment will pay for itself off within seven years.

Return of industry

Eventually, the region is to produce 100 times the initial solar power, the company says.

The amount of sunshine "here is the same as in the south of Germany," says Varyagin.

Ukraine, which has stopped buying natural gas from Russia in the last two years, is seeking to exploit the potential of the Chernobyl uninhabited exclusion zone that surrounds the damaged nuclear power plant and cannot be farmed.

Reactor Number Four of the Chernobyl plant exploded April 26, 1986 and the fallout contaminated up to three quarters of Europe, according to some estimates, especially hitting Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Following the disaster, Soviet authorities evacuated hundreds of thousands of people and this vast territory, over 2,000 square kilometres wide, has remained abandoned.

The plant continued to operate the remaining reactors, the last of which was shut down in 2000, ending industrial activity in the area.

People cannot return to live in the zone for "more than 24,000 years", according to the Ukrainian authorities, who nevertheless argue that a prudent industrial use can be possible again.

"This territory obviously cannot be used for agriculture, but it is quite suitable for innovative and scientific projects," Ostap Semerak, Ukrainian Minister of the Environment and one of the promoters of placing solar projects in Chernobyl, told AFP in 2016.

The installation of a huge dome above the ruins of the damaged reactor just over a year ago made the realisation of the solar project possible.

Solar power production at Chernobyl will start off with one megawatt but is to 

rise 100-fold eventually (AFP Photo/Genya SAVILOV)

Special price

Funded by the international community, it covered the old concrete structure which had become cracked and unstable, to ensure greater isolation of the highly radioactive magma in the reactor.

As a result, radiation near the plant plummeted to just one-tenth of previous levels, according to official figures.

Even so, precautions are still necessary: the solar panels are fixed onto a base of concrete blocks rather than placed on the ground.

The soil remains contaminated, explains Varyagin, whose group is a joint venture between the Ukrainian firm Rodina Energy Group and Germany's Enerparc AG.

"We can not drill or dig here because of the strict safety rules," he says.

Last year the consortium completed a 4.2-megawatt solar power plant in the irradiated zone in neighbouring Belarus, not far from Chernobyl.

Ukrainian authorities offered investors nearly 2,500 hectares (25 square kilometres) for potential construction of solar power plants in Chernobyl.

Kiev has received about 60 proposals from foreign companies - including American, Chinese, Danish and French - who are considering participating in future solar developments in the area, according to Olena Kovalchuk, spokeswoman of the State Administration for the zone of Chernobyl.

Investors are attracted by the price that Ukraine has set for solar electricity, which "exceeds on average by 50 percent of that in Europe", Oleksandr Kharchenko, executive director of the Energy Industry Research Center, told AFP.

He adds that cheap land and the proximity of the power grids makes Chernobyl particularly attractive, though there is still no rush of western investors to the region.

Safety concerns and Ukraine's notorious bureaucracy and corruption has put some off.

"It is very important to have guarantees that working in the Chernobyl zone will be safe for those who will be doing it," says Anton Usov, adviser to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

The bank does not currently foresee any investment to Ukraine in this field.

Ukraine set to launch its first solar plant at Chernobyl #SolarChernobyl pic.twitter.com/osS3twULPH

— AFP news agency (@AFP) January 10, 2018

Bacteria makes blue jeans green

Yahoo – AFP, 8 January 2018

Indigo leaves used to dye materials by Nung ethnic women at Phuc Sen
village, in the northern province of Cao Bang

They can be tight, flared, ripped at the knee.

Jeans come in all styles and colours these days, but one hue will always be synonymous with the world's favourite garment: indigo blue.

To satisfy the world's seemingly insatiable demand for blue denim, more than 45,000 tonnes of indigo dye are produced every year, with much of the waste making its way into rivers and streams, conservationists say.

On Monday, scientists announced they had developed a greener method to produce the coveted tint -- using lab-grown bacteria.

While not yet commercially viable, the technique holds promise for a "much-needed update to the historic, but unsustainable, indigo dyeing process," researchers wrote in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

"Demand for the dye is higher than ever before, making its ecological consequences unsustainable," they warned.

Originally extracted from plants, indigo is one of the oldest dyes, with evidence of its use in textile colouring going back some 6,000 years.

It is prized for being vibrant and long-lasting, and was an important cash crop until humans started making synthetic indigo in the early 1900s.

Indigo crystals cling easily to the cotton fibres used in jeans and are resistant to laundry detergents, yet flake off slightly with wear-and-tear to yield the sought-after worn-in look.

Some four billion denim garments are produced every year, the vast majority indigo-tinted, said the study authors, and warned of "a serious sustainability problem".

The first danger: producing indigo dye requires the use of toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.

Furthermore, synthesised indigo is insoluble in water, meaning chemicals are needed to make it suitable for dyeing.

'Not currently feasible'

One such chemical is sodium dithionite, which decomposes into sulfate and sulfite which can corrode equipment and pipes in dye mills and wastewater treatment plants.

"Many dye mills avoid the additional cost of wastewater treatment by dumping the spent dye materials into rivers, where they have negative ecological impacts," said the research team.

The new method mimics the workings of the Japanese plant Persicaria tinctoria.

Instead of a plant, "we engineered a common lab strain of Escherichia coli, a bacteria found in our gut, to be a chemical factory for the production of indigo dye," study co-author John Dueber of the University of California's bioengineering department told AFP.

Like the plant, the bacteria produces a compound called indoxyl, which is insoluble and cannot be used as a dye. By adding a sugar molecule, the indoxyl is turned into indican -- a precursor of indigo.

Indican can be stored and transformed into indigo direcly on the cloth when dyeing, by adding an enzyme to the mix.

The lab is working to make the process commercially feasible, Dueber said.

For now, producing five grammes of indigo to colour one pair of jeans would require "several litres of bacteria," he said, and would be more expensive.