Tesla announces low-cost batteries for homes

Elon Musk claims at launch that two billion large batteries could provide enough electricity to meet the world’s needs

The Guardian, Michael Safi, Friday 1 May 2015

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla Motors, announces the company’s 

entry into the energy market

The electric car company Tesla has announced its entry into the energy market, unveiling a suite of low-cost solar batteries for homes, businesses and utilities, “the missing piece”, it said, in the transition to a sustainable energy world.

The batteries, which will retail at $3,500 in the US, were launched on Thursday at a Tesla facility in California by the company’s ambitious founder, Elon Musk, who heralded the technology as “a fundamental transformation [in] how energy is delivered across the earth”.

Wall-mounted, with a sleek design, the lithium-ion batteries are designed to capture and store up to 10kWh of energy from wind or solar panel. The reserves can be drawn on when sunlight is low, during grid outages, or at peak demand times, when electricity costs are highest.

The smallest “Powerwall” is 1.3m by 68cm, small enough to be hung inside a garage on or an outside wall. Up to eight batteries can be “stacked” in a home, Musk said, to applause from investors and journalists at the much-anticipated event.

The batteries will initially be manufactured at the electric car company’s factory in California, but will move production to its planned “gigafactory” in Nevada when it opens in 2017.

The Nevada facility will be the largest producer of lithium-ion batteries in the world, and it is hoped its mass-production scale will help to bring down costs even further.

It is not the only battery storage system on the market, but the Powerwall boasts a relatively high storage capacity, a competitive price, and the heft of investment and excitement generated by Musk’s vision.

The entrepreneur, who helped to invent the online payment system, PayPal, has also founded a private space company, Space X, and is experimenting with a high-speed public transportation system called Hyperloop.

Musk also unveiled a larger “Powerpack”, a 100kWh battery block to help utilities smooth out their supply of wind and solar energy - which is generated intermittently - or to pump energy into the grid when demand soars.

He said on Thursday about two billion Powerpacks could store enough electricity to meet the entire world’s needs. “That may seem like an insane number,” he said. “But this is actually within the power of humanity to do.”

Deutsche Bank estimates sales of battery storage systems for homes and businesses could yield as much as $4.5bn in revenue for Tesla. The energy storage industry is expected to grow to $19bn by 2017, according to research firm IHS CERA.

Tesla is currently taking orders for the systems, with the first units expected to shift in August.

Screenshot from YouTube user thegatesnotes

Related Articles:

Bill Gates drinks cup of water that used to be human poop (Video)

"2013 - What Now ?" – Jan 6, 2013 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Text version)

“… New ideas are things you never thought of. These ideas will be given to you so you will have answers to the most profound questions that your societies have had since you were born. Inventions will bring clean water to every Human on the planet, cheaply and everywhere. Inventions will give you power, cheaply and everywhere. These ideas will wipe out all of the reasons you now have for pollution, and when you look back on it, you'll go, "This solution was always there. Why didn't we think of that? Why didn't we do this sooner?" Because it wasn't time and you were not ready. You hadn't planted the seeds and you were still battling the old energy, deciding whether you were going to terminate yourselves before 2012. Now you didn't…. and now you didn't.

It's funny, what you ponder about, and what your sociologists consider the "great current problems of mankind", for your new ideas will simply eliminate the very concepts of the questions just as they did in the past. Do you remember? Two hundred years ago, the predictions of sociologists said that you would run out of food, since there wasn't enough land to sustain a greater population. Then you discovered crop rotation and fertilizer. Suddenly, each plot of land could produce many times what it could before. Do you remember the predictions that you would run out of wood to heat your homes? Probably not. That was before electricity. It goes on and on.

So today's puzzles are just as quaint, as you will see. (1) How do you strengthen the power grids of your great nations so that they are not vulnerable to failure or don't require massive infrastructure improvement expenditures? Because cold is coming, and you are going to need more power. (2) What can you do about pollution? (3) What about world overpopulation? Some experts will tell you that a pandemic will be the answer; nature [Gaia] will kill off about one-third of the earth's population. The best minds of the century ponder these puzzles and tell you that you are headed for real problems. You have heard these things all your life.

Let me ask you this. (1) What if you could eliminate the power grid altogether? You can and will. (2) What if pollution-creating sources simply go away, due to new ideas and invention, and the environment starts to self-correct? (3) Overpopulation? You assume that humanity will continue to have children at an exponential rate since they are stupid and can't help themselves. This, dear ones, is a consciousness and education issue, and that is going to change. Imagine a zero growth attribute of many countries - something that will be common. Did you notice that some of your children today are actually starting to ponder if they should have any children at all? What a concept! ….”

Church of England ends investments in heavily polluting fossil fuels

Move by church’s £9bn fund to divest £12m from tar sands oil and thermal coal reflects more interventionist stance and sets lead for other institutional investors

The Guardian, Adam Vaughan, Thursday 30 April 2015

Mining lorries carry loads of tar sands in Alberta, Canada. One climate scientist
warned that it would be “game over” for efforts to stop global warming if
Canada’s tar sands were fully exploited. Photograph: Jeff Mcintosh/AP

The Church of England has pulled its money out of two of the most polluting fossil fuels as part of what it called its moral responsibility to protect the world’s poor from the impact of global warming.

In a move approved by the church’s board on Thursday, it divested £12m from tar sands oil and thermal coal – the first time it has ever imposed investment restrictions because of climate change.

The church’s huge £9bn investment fund and leadership on climate change has made it the target of a global campaign calling for organisations to divest from fossil fuel companies. Campaigners hailed the move, which they said in effect “read the last rites” to the two industries.

“This policy is sending a very clear signal about the church’s investments,” said Edward Mason, head of responsible investment for the Church Commissioners. “[This] is a really comprehensive policy, which aspires to put the church at the forefront of institutional investors, highlighting the urgency of the transition to a low-carbon economy and playing our part as investors in that.”

The CoE’s climate-change policy has been in place since 2008 but the new policy, the result of a two-year review, marks a much bolder and more interventionist stance by the church.

It has now divested and ruled out future investments in any company that makes more than 10% of its revenues from thermal coal – used for electricity generation – and oil from the tar sands. One leading climate scientist, Prof James Hansen, has warned that it would be “game over” for efforts to stop dangerous global warming if Canada’s tar sands, the world’s third biggest oil reserve, are fully exploited.

The church argued that it had not been minded to divest from all fossil fuels as some campaigners had wanted, because engagement with some oil and gas companies produced results, such as the adoption of a church-led resolution on climate change by BP at its annual meeting earlier this month.

“Companies like the oil and gas majors are significant players in the business world and political world, and we’d like them to be part of a constructive call for the transition to the low-carbon economy,” said Mason. The church has about £101m invested in Shell and £91.9m in BP.

But the church made clear that it would divest when engagement did not work.

“Engagement is something that we will be looking to demonstrate success. If engagement with companies isn’t productive, the policy does make clear divestment is there as a last resort,” Mason said.

Rev Canon Prof Richard Burridge, deputy chair of the ethical investment advisory group that undertook the review, said: “The church has a moral responsibility to speak and act on both environmental stewardship and justice for the world’s poor who are most vulnerable to climate change.”

Christine Allen, director of policy and public affairs at the development charity Christian Aid, said she welcomed the move but hoped the church would address its investments in other fossil fuels in the future. “The Church of England has effectively read the last rites to the coal and tar sands industry. The message must be heard loud and clear: they have no place in a sustainable future, and ultimately other fossil fuels don’t either,” she said.

Bill McKibben, a prominent environmentalist who has previously chastised the CoE for dragging its feet and not heeding calls by the Anglican archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu that organisations divest, applauded the new policy.

“This is the first great turnaround in the divestment fight, an institution which initially refused to move and then, in good Christian fashion, saw the light.

“Much credit to the CoE – they’re studying the signs of the times, as the good book says, and starting to show their concern for the poorest and most vulnerable parts of humanity and of creation,” he said.

The Guardian is currently running its own climate change campaign, calling on the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to divest from fossil fuels.

Dutch saltwater potatoes offer hope for world's hungry

Yahoo – AFP, Maude Brulard, 29 April 2015

A worker sorts potatoes before packaging them at the Salty Potato Farm, 

in Den Horn, Netherlands (AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand)

Den Hoorn (Netherlands) (AFP) - A small field on an island off the Netherlands' northern coast promises one answer to the problem of how to feed the world's ever-growing population: potatoes and other crops that grow in saltwater.

Every day, swathes of farmland somewhere in the world become unusable because of salty soil, but farmers on windswept Texel are finding solutions using traditional methods.

The team headed by farmer Mark van Rijsselberghe has planted around 30 types of potato and their approach is simple: anything that dies in the saline environment is abandoned, and anything that lives "we try to follow up on," said Van Rijsselberghe. "It's faster."

Dutch farmer Mark van Rijsselberghe, 

who launched the Salty Potato Farm

(AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand)

The experiments do not just target potatoes, but also look at how other crops grow in saltwater, including carrots, strawberries, onions and lettuce.

The plants are irrigated using pumps that manage water down to the drop, so the plant and soil salinity can be accurately measured and the effect of "sweet" rainwater taken into account.

Van Rijsselberghe, 60, started the "Salty Potato Farm" around 10 years ago in the hope of helping the world's malnourished.

The team, supported by Amsterdam University, uses neither genetically modified organisms nor laboratories in their quest for food that grows in salty environments.

With more than 5,000 varieties, the potato is the world's fourth most popular food crop, according to the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO).

Plants whose ancestors grew near or on the sea, but have moved inland with human populations, are likely still to have the necessary genes.

"It could be a hundred, it could be 1,000 years ago, they still are capable of coping with saline surroundings," said Van Rijsselberghe.

Food security

A worker sorts potatoes before packaging 

them at the Salty Potato Farm in Den Horn,

 in the Netherlands (AFP Photo/

Emmanuel Dunand)

While today much research is focused on improving the yield of crops, the Dutch team has taken the opposite approach: trying to grow crops on land previously considered unusable.

The bespectacled farmer jokes that in a country where much of the land lies below sea level, "we are so afraid of the sea that until 10 years ago we didn't dare to do anything with sea water and growing plants".

The world loses around 2,000 hectares (just under 5,000 acres) of agricultural land a day to salt-induced degradation in 75 countries, caused by bad or absent irrigation, according to the UN's Institute for Water, Environment and Health.

The problem today affects an area the size of France -- about 62 million hectares or 20 percent of the world's irrigated lands, up from 45 million hectares in the early 1990s.

Solutions to make the land cultivable once more are too expensive for most of the areas, including the basin of the Yellow River in China, the Euphrates in Syria and Iraq or the Indus Valley in Pakistan.

A testing field used by the Salty Potato

 Farm project to experiment with crops 

(AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand)

The Team on Texel has already sent thousands of its potatoes to Pakistan where they were "successful", said Van Rijsselberghe, who will send more plants next year.

These "salt" potatoes could transform the lives of thousands of farmers in affected regions and, in the long term, those of around 250 million people who live on salt-afflicted soil.

The potato was introduced to Europe from Peru in the 16th century and became popular because of its ability to feed people during the continent's frequent famines.

However, over-reliance on the crop was potentially disastrous, with a blight leading to the devastating 19th-century Irish potato famine.

Today, about 800 million people in the world are under-nourished, according to the FAO, with salt degradation threatening 10 percent of the global cereal crop.

Sweet taste not price

The potatoes grown here taste sweeter than those grown on normal land, because the plant produces more sugars to compensate for the salty environment.

Packaged pototoes at the Salty Potato

Farm (AFP Photo/Emmanuel Dunand)

The salt absorbed by the plant stays in the leaves, not in the flesh.

But the price of the potatoes is for now prohibitive, with one kilo (around two pounds) selling for five euros (just over $5), compared to less than a euro for the same amount of "normal" potatoes.

"We grow around 30,000 kilos per hectare, a farmer with good conditions around 60,000 kilos," said Robin Konijn, the farm's financial director.

Countries ranging from Egypt to Bangladesh and India have already asked for advice on planting their own salt-proof crops.

The team is also soon to start trying to cultivate potatoes in the salty wetlands of the Camargue in the south of France -- the so-called "Miss Mignon" (French for "Miss Cutie Pie").

China, Kenya launch solar technology transfer center

English.news.cn   2015-04-25

NAIROBI, April 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese and Kenyan investors on Friday launched a technology transfer and training center to promote assembling of solar lighting systems so as to meet a huge demand for green energy sources in the East African nation.

Executives said the China-Kenya Solid State Lighting Technology Transfer Center, based in an industrial park near the capital Nairobi, will spur growth of a homegrown solar industry in the country.

"Our partnership with a Chinese firm will facilitate the establishment of a local assembly plant for solar products. The new center will expose Kenyan technicians to the latest solar solutions," said Maina Maringa, Director with Sunyale Africa Limited, which launched the center in partnership with a Beijing- based company.

Established 2014, Sunyale Africa is a leading player in the nascent solar technology market in Kenya. Both Chinese and Kenyan investors have stakes in the company that supplies affordable and high quality solar lighting systems to households, schools, hospitals and business premises.

"The Chinese are really helping us in terms of technology and information sharing. We think after some time doing this, we can gain a lot," said Robert Kipkorir, an engineer and one of eight trainees currently at the newly-launched center.

"If I earn the chance and capital, I would like start something for myself. With the knowledge I've gained from here, I would be able to do things of my own in this field," he added.

Newton Mhae, another trainee, said the technology is updated at the center, which can prepare them to learn the new machinery as well as develop new skills.

"I am going to use the technology I learned here to impart the community, especially on the solar panels," said Mhae.

Chinese investors are optimistic about the growth of renewable energy sector in Kenya thanks to a friendly policy and regulatory environment.

Dang Song, CEO of Sunyale Africa, said the nascent solar industry in Kenya has potential for growth given its foreign direct investments and availability of skilled workforce.

"We import solar products and assemble them in a factory outside Nairobi. Our partnership with Kenyan investors has made it possible to train local technicians on assembling solar lighting systems," Dang said, adding that the center will enable Kenya to realize green aspirations in line with vision 2030 blue print.

"There is a huge market for solar solutions in rural areas and urban slums. The new center will help meet this demand through assembling of state-of-the-art solar lighting systems for households and institutions," he said.

Maringa told Xinhua Sunyale Africa has a strong presence in seven Kenyan counties where solar energy has transformed livelihoods.

"Our goal is to fill renewable energy gap in the country through supply of cheap but durable solar solutions. Government incentives that include waiver on import duty for solar panels has made this possible," said the director.

He revealed that demand for large scale solar lighting systems among small factories has spiked recently in Kenya, and Sunyale Africa has adopted social entrepreneurship model to promote access to solar energy among the rural and urban poor.

"We are keen on the east African market where demand for solar products is on the rise," said Maringa, adding that they also plan at advanced stage to venture into neighboring countries.

Editor: xuxin

Government to Kick-Start $56b in ‘Green’ Investments

Jakarta Globe, Tabita Diela, Apr 23, 2015

Photovoltaics on the eastern islands of Sumba are being used for electricity
generation. (Antara Photo/Hafidz Mubarak)

Jakarta. Indonesia will hold a global renewable energy summit next week, marking the launch of the country’s initiative to attract $56 billion in investment in environmentally friendly power generation over the next five years.

The “Tropic Landscape Summit 2015,” next Monday and Tuesday, will bring together government representatives and investors in the renewable energy industry from Australia, Switzerland, China, France, the United States, Britain and Singapore.

“Indonesians will account for 3.5 percent of the world population in 2025, but our fossil fuel reserves are much less than our needs,” Sudirman Said, the minister for energy and mineral resources, said at a press conference in Jakarta on Wednesday.

“If we rely only on fossil fuels, we will run out when the time comes. We don’t have any choice other than to shift to renewable energy,” he said. GA

Related Articles:

Sumba Renewable Energy: A Bright Future Where the Lights Don’t Go Out

Sumba powers up with renewables

In Mataram Declaration, Belated Recognition of Indigenous Rights

Jakarta Globe, Kennial Caroline Laia,  Apr 23, 2015

The government is finally getting serious about recognizing Indigenous
groups’ forest rights. (Antara Photo/Ahmad Subaidi)

Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara. Proponents of the rights of indigenous groups have hailed a pledge by the Indonesian government to do more to recognize their stewardship of forests, seen as crucial in efforts to stave off deforestation.

Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar made the so-called Mataram Declaration last weekend in a belated response to a May 2013 Constitutional Court ruling relinquishing the state’s default claims to forested areas settled and used by indigenous groups.

“Long before this, civil society organizations and local communities were struggling for the recognition and protection of customary land,” said Abetnego Tarigan, the executive director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment, or Walhi. “Now the government has shown good faith, and we really appreciate it.”

He said the central and local governments often violated indigenous people’s land rights because the latter lacked title deeds to their land. In many cases, he noted, the people were disenfranchised of their rights, and their land given over to logging, plantation or mining operators.

“There are a few policies that regulate the rights of local communities to the land, such as the 2012 law on customary forests, but they don’t cover the recognition of people’s customary territory, so we need another framework to guarantee it,” Abetnego said. “This declaration should really be a form of political will for all stakeholders to push the recognition and protection of customary forests managed by the people.”

Civic-centered development

At the signing of the declaration on Saturday in Mataram, in West Nusa Tenggara province, Siti said the government and other stakeholders were committed to expediting the process to craft policies that improved the welfare and protection of local communities and conserved the environment.

“These policies are really important,” she said. “President Joko Widodo’s government has indicated that the citizenship concept is a democratic one, in which we seek to bring welfare to the people.”

She said the government was making efforts to involve people, especially indigenous groups, in environmental protection.

“Here, our development must be civic-centered,” Siti said. “This issue has been echoed by the people and environmental organizations, and now the government is listening.”

Under Joko’s 2015-2019 National Mid-Term Development Plan, the administration plans to designate 12.5 million hectares of land for “social forestry,” in which indigenous groups and local communities will commit to sustainable forestry practices, and nine million hectares for agriculture.

“These [social] forests can be developed as community forests, village forests and customary forests,” Siti said, adding that the agricultural land, to be staked out from former logging concessions, would go primarily to subsistence farmers.

Collaborative effort

Siti said it was important for all stakeholders — the central government, regional administrations, civil society organizations and local communities — to work closely together.

“The policy is ready to go, but we can’t do it alone. We need help from other stakeholders to cooperate. For example, I hope the Home Affairs Ministry will help us identify indigenous communities and their problems to ensure that all land is distributed rightly and fairly,” she said.

“We also need civil society organizations to work with the people on mediation, community building and others. Access to welfare for all Indonesians is our responsibility.”

Zudan Arif Fakrulloh, an adviser to the Home Affairs Ministry, said the institution was open to cooperating with the other stakeholders.

“But the identification process isn’t easy. There are a few requirements to meet before we can definitively say that a given community is an indigenous one,” he said. “The process must be really selective. And this is the task of regional leaders.”

Zudan said that for a forest community to qualify, it would have to show some kind of environmentally sustainable practice in its interactions with the forest.

“Here we need experts and help from civil society organizations,” he said.

People first

Siti said the new policy, unlike previous ones, prioritized the role of people in economic development through the exploitation of forests and other natural resources.

“I believe the system will be no longer like the past, when government didn’t put the people at the front of its development plans. Now, we must use dialogue in our approach to developing the economy of this country,” Siti said.

West East Nusa’s Deputy Governor Muhammad Amin welcomed the declaration, but said further talks on the issue were still needed between the central government and regional administrations.

“We realize there hasn’t been a regional policy that recognizes the territorial rights of indigenous people. However, with this declaration, we hope that the people will receive greater consideration in the policy-making process,” he said. “Should the synergy run smoothly, we may be able to achieve an environment-oriented development framework.”

Yansen T.P., the head of Malinau district in North Kalimantan, who was among the more than 30 regional heads attending the Mataram Declaration, said an increasing number of regions across the country were beginning to prioritize land rights protections when crafting new policies.

“We’ve been done a lot for several years now to show our support for our environment,” he said. “We have vast areas of natural resources and considerable local wisdom. The forest we have is the forest we must hold on to. We understand that people depend on the forest and they will try to maintain it. But to do that, we in the regional government have to provide them with legal certainty.”

Yansen said he hoped that future investments would “take the side of the people.”

“We don’t need to exploit all of our natural resources right away. We have to think about our children, grandchildren and our future generations,” he said. “Hopefully the central government’s policy will accelerate the recognition of indigenous people’s right to the forest.”

Test cases

Adi Rozal, the head of Kerinci district in Sumatra’s Jambi province, said his administration had designated 12 swaths of forest as customary forests.

“Now we’re waiting for coordination from the central government to issue a policy that fully mandates the forests for use by the local community,” he said.

Mathius Awoitauw, the head of Jayapura district in Papua province, agreed that while the central government had a key role to play, it was local governments that would serve as the test cases for various frameworks on the issue.

“All we need to do to establish nationwide synergy is to hold regular dialogues to test how capable regional governments and people are in managing their forests. In addition, there should be a regulation that truly guarantees the rights of each region to map its own customary forests,” he said.

In prioritizing the rights of forest-dwelling communities, the government has switched from an earlier paradigm that served large corporations, said Chalil Muhammad, the chairman of the Association for Community and Ecology-Based Law Reform, or Perkumpulan HuMa.

“There’s a need to create a scheme to build rights coordination between the central government, regional governments and the people in an effort to prevent forests from rampant exploitation,” he said. “These stakeholders need to change their mind-set. We need to increase human resource capacity and fix existing forestry policies.”

Edited by Hayat Indriyatno

Experts call for China-US cooperation on renewable energy

Want China Times, Xinhua 2015-04-21

A solar farm in Hubei province. (File photo/Xinhua)

As a new study on China's renewable energy by 2050 was released here Monday, experts called for more cooperation between China and the United States to pursue the development of renewable energy.

By 2050, renewable energy could meet more than 60% of China's energy demand, according to the report "China 2050 High Renewable Energy Penetration Scenario and Roadmap Study," which was completed by the Energy Research Institute of National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of China in cooperation with other institutes.

"We hope our study can influence the (Chinese) government's 13th five-year plan and 2030 energy strategy. That's very important," said Wang Zhongying, deputy director general of the Energy Research Institute at the launch of the report.

Experts said to realize the ambitious goal of renewable energy development, China needs the cooperation of the United States, which could provide "a really good future" for the world.

"For this target we need to work together, especially the US and China," said Li Junfeng, director general of the National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation under the NDRC, given the fact that the two countries are the world's two largest economies with huge population and big energy market as well as large renewable energy market.

"Thirty years ago, when I traveled to the US, I learned a lot from the US," said Li, adding that if China and the US can solve their energy problems by 2050 through working together, it will set "a good example" for other countries to follow.

"It's very exciting to see the study of China. I am eager to see the details of it. It's tremendous hard work but it really opens up enormous opportunities," said Samuel Baldwin, chief science officer of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy in the US Energy Department.

Chinese enterprises and scholars now have "frequent exchanges and cooperation" with their US counterparts on renewable energy, Wang told Xinhua.

The Chinese version of this study was published in Beijing on April 16.

World's mountain of electrical waste reaches new peak of 42m tonnes

The biggest per-capita tallies were in countries known for green awareness, such as Norway and Denmark, with Britain fifth and US ninth on the UN report’s list

The Guardian, AFP, Sunday 19 April 2015

A fridge dump in Manchester. Almost two-thirds of global e-waste was made
up of discarded kitchen and laundry devices. Photograph: Phil Noble/PA

A record amount of electrical and electronic waste was discarded around the world in 2014, with the biggest per-capita tallies in countries that pride themselves on environmental consciousness, a report said.

Last year, 41.8m tonnes of so-called e-waste – mostly fridges, washing machines and other domestic appliances at the end of their life – was dumped, the UN report said.

That’s the equivalent of 1.15m heavy trucks, forming a line 23,000km (14,300 miles) long, according to the report, compiled by the United Nations University, the UN’s educational and research branch.

Less than one-sixth of all e-waste was properly recycled, it said.

In 2013, the e-waste total was 39.8m tonnes – and on present trends, the 50-million-tonne mark could be reached in 2018.

Topping the list for per-capita waste last year was Norway, with 28.4kg (62.5lbs) per inhabitant.

It was followed by Switzerland (26.3kg), Iceland (26.1kg), Denmark (24.0kg), Britain (23.5kg), the Netherlands (23.4kg), Sweden (22.3kg), France (22.2kg) and the United States and Austria (22.1kg).

The region with the lowest amount of e-waste per inhabitant was Africa, with 1.7kg per person. It generated a total of 1.9m tonnes of waste.

In volume terms, the most waste was generated in the United States and China, which together accounted for 32% of the world’s total, followed by Japan, Germany and India.

Waste that could have been recovered and recycled was worth $52bn, including 300 tonnes of gold – equal to 11% of the world’s gold production in 2013.

But it also included 2.2m tonnes of harmful lead compounds, as well as mercury, cadmium and chromium, and 4,400 tonnes of ozone-harming chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases.

“Worldwide, e-waste constitutes a valuable ‘urban mine’ – a large potential reservoir of recyclable materials,” UN under secretary-general David Malone said.

“At the same time, the hazardous content of e-waste constitutes a ‘toxic mine’ that must be managed with extreme care.”

Almost 60% of e-waste by weight came from large and small kitchen, bathroom and laundry appliances.

Seven percent was generated by discarded mobile phones, calculators, personal computers and printers.

Related Articles:

Toxic 'e-waste' dumped in poor nations, says United Nations

GMO wheat not allowed in Taiwan: FDA

Want China Times, CNA 2015-04-18

A farmer harvests wheat at a farm in Hsinchu, March 29. (File photo/Chen Yu-hsien)

Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration on Friday dismissed concerns of genetically modified wheat grown in the United States entering Taiwan's market, saying Taiwan bans imports of such wheat.

Taiwan allows genetically modified soybeans and corn but does not allow imports of genetically modified wheat, said Lee Wan-chen, a section chief at the FDA.

During a recent check on packaged food products, the FDA did not find any genetically modified wheat on the local market, Lee added.

The statement was made as bakeries and wheat mills face doubts from local customers that wheat from the US might be genetically modified and are receiving requests to purchase wheat from Japan and Canada.

Concerns about US wheat first arose in 2013 when GMO wheat tested by US seed company Monsanto without approval from US regulators contaminated a regular wheat farm in Oregon, prompting Japan to suspend some wheat imports.

The US Wheat Associates' Taiwan office dismissed the suspicions, saying the US does not produce genetically modified wheat.

The US Department of Africulture has worked to remove any genetically engineered wheat that remained at the site of Monsanto's experiment, which is no longer used by the company, said Ron Lu, head of the association's Taiwan office.

It has also conducted a check on wheat products in the country and found that none of them had been contaminated by Monsanto's genetically engineered wheat, Lu said.

In addition, all US-grown wheat sold to Taiwan comes with certificates verifying that it is non-GMO, he said.

US-sourced wheat accounts for 80% of Taiwan's total wheat imports. Another 18% of its wheat imports come from Australia and the remaining 2% comes from Canada.

Related Article:

Dutch farmers grow barley for the Scottish whisky industry

China's struggle for water security

Yahoo – AFP, April 18, 2015

China's struggle for water security

Daegu (South Korea) (AFP) - Way back in 1999, before he became China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao warned that water scarcity posed one of the greatest threats to the "survival of the nation".

Sixteen years later, that threat looms ever larger, casting a forbidding shadow over China's energy and food security and demanding urgent solutions with significant regional, and even global, consequences.

The mounting pressure on China's scarce, unequally distributed and often highly polluted water supply was highlighted in a report released at the World Water Forum this week in Daegu, South Korea.

Published by the Hong Kong-based NGO, China Water Risk (CWR), it underlined the complexity of the challenge facing China as it seeks to juggle inextricably linked and often competing concerns over water, energy supply and climate change.

"There are no one-size-fits-all solutions to China's water-energy-climate nexus," the report said.

"More importantly, China's energy choices do not only impact global climate change, but affect water availability for Asia," it said, warning of the danger of future "water wars" given China's upstream control over Asia's mightiest rivers.

The Qinghai-Tibetan plateau is essentially the world's largest water tank and the origin of some of Asia's most extensive river systems including the Indus, Brahmaputra and Mekong.

The most significant link in the nexus the report describes is the fact that 93 percent of China's power generation is water-reliant.

"Chinese officials are starting to say water security comes first," the report's author Debra Tan told AFP in Daegu. "Because without it, there is no energy security and, of course, no food security."

Kung Pao potato

Agriculture accounts for between 65 and 70 percent of China's water use and vast amounts are wasted by inefficient irrigation.

This is especially true in northern regions that, despite being some of the most arid in the country, are the production focus for water-hungry crops like corn and wheat.

"They even grow corn in Inner Mongolia, which is incredibly dry," said Li Lifeng, director of the WWF International Freshwater Programme.

"I recently talked to a farmer there who had been growing corn for just three years," Li said in Daegu. "His well started off three metres (10 feet) deep, but now it already goes down 50 metres."

Efforts to change the crop mix have included a recent campaign to promote the harvesting of potatoes, which require far less water.

Given the traditional taste preference for rice and wheat, the state broadcaster CCTV has tried to prod things along by publishing recipes on its Weibo account, including one for Kung Pao potato.

Northern China's thirst for water -- the coal industry is centred there as well -- extends to its rapidly growing and increasingly affluent urban populations.

The need to meet the rising demand from these cities resulted in one of the world's most ambitious engineering projects, with an overall estimated cost of more than $80 billion.

The central phase of the massive South-North Diversion Project opened in December, as water began flowing to Beijing through more than 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) of channels and pipes -- the distance from London to Madrid.

But experts stress that China cannot simply engineer its way out of its water crisis with headline mega-projects that will never be big enough to keep pace with increasing demand.

'Good water after bad'

A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal in January warned that large-scale water transfers would actually exacerbate problems in the long-run.

"China needs to shift its focus to water demand management instead of a supply-oriented approach," said the study's co-author, Dabo Guan, a professor at the University of East Anglia.

"The current transfer programme is pouring good water after bad: the problems of water-stressed regions aren't being alleviated and the provinces sharing their water are suffering greatly," Guan said.

Years of declining rainfall in southern China means it now regularly sees droughts of its own.

China is in fact implementing an extremely ambitious water management strategy, albeit one that risks being undermined by inter-departmental rivalries, corruption and incentives that favour economic development over sustainable resource use.

In 2011, it issued its "three red lines" policy establishing strict limits on water quantity usage, efficiency and quality, while this year a new Environment Law came into force with harsh fines for polluters.

State media reported last year that 60 percent of China's groundwater and more than half its major freshwater lakes were polluted.

"Before, there wasn't much of a stick for punishing wastage and polluting," said CWR's Tan. "Now there are strict standards and a very big stick."

Having experimented with charging urban residents for water in order to encourage conservation, the government is reportedly set to roll out a tiered pricing system for residential users in all cities and some towns nationwide later this year.

Related Articles:

California governor orders water restrictions amid historic drought

Time now to act on looming water crisis, UN warns

Wind-powered desalination project targets world market

Alfredo Zolezzi: how a plasma water purifying system is saving lives

"Recalibration of Free Choice"–  Mar 3, 2012 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Caroll) - (Subjects: (Old) Souls, Midpoint on 21-12-2012, Shift of Human Consciousness, Black & White vs. Color, 1 - Spirituality (Religions) shifting, Loose a Pope “soon”, 2 - Humans will change react to drama, 3 - Civilizations/Population on Earth,  4 - Alternate energy sources (Geothermal, Tidal (Paddle wheels), Wind), 5 – Financials Institutes/concepts will change (Integrity – Ethical) , 6 - News/Media/TV to change, 7 – Big Pharmaceutical company will collapse “soon”, (Keep people sick), (Integrity – Ethical)  8 – Wars will be over on Earth, Global Unity, … etc.) - (Text version)

“…  4 - Energy (again)

The natural resources of the planet are finite and will not support the continuation of what you've been doing. We've been saying this for a decade. Watch for increased science and increased funding for alternate ways of creating electricity (finally). Watch for the very companies who have the most to lose being the ones who fund it. It is the beginning of a full realization that a change of thinking is at hand. You can take things from Gaia that are energy, instead of physical resources. We speak yet again about geothermal, about tidal, about wind. Again, we plead with you not to over-engineer this. For one of the things that Human Beings do in a technological age is to over-engineer simple things. Look at nuclear - the most over-engineered and expensive steam engine in existence!

Your current ideas of capturing energy from tidal and wave motion don't have to be technical marvels. Think paddle wheel on a pier with waves, which will create energy in both directions [waves coming and going] tied to a generator that can power dozens of neighborhoods, not full cities. Think simple and decentralize the idea of utilities. The same goes for wind and geothermal. Think of utilities for groups of homes in a cluster. You won't have a grid failure if there is no grid. This is the way of the future, and you'll be more inclined to have it sooner than later if you do this, and it won't cost as much.

Water

We've told you that one of the greatest natural resources of the planet, which is going to shift and change and be mysterious to you, is fresh water. It's going to be the next gold, dear ones. So, we have also given you some hints and examples and again we plead: Even before the potentials of running out of it, learn how to desalinate water in real time without heat. It's there, it's doable, and some already have it in the lab. This will create inexpensive fresh water for the planet. 

There is a change of attitude that is starting to occur. Slowly you're starting to see it and the only thing getting in the way of it are those companies with the big money who currently have the old system. That's starting to change as well. For the big money always wants to invest in what it knows is coming next, but it wants to create what is coming next within the framework of what it has "on the shelf." What is on the shelf is oil, coal, dams, and non-renewable resource usage. It hasn't changed much in the last 100 years, has it? Now you will see a change of free choice. You're going to see decisions made in the boardrooms that would have curled the toes of those two generations ago. Now "the worst thing they could do" might become "the best thing they could do." That, dear ones, is a change of free choice concept. When the thinkers of tomorrow see options that were never options before, that is a shift. That was number four. ….”

Japan court blocks restarting of two nuclear reactors

Yahoo – AFP, April 14, 2015

Japan court blocks restarting of two nuclear reactors

Tokyo (AFP) - A Japanese court on Tuesday issued a landmark injunction against the restarting of two atomic reactors, after the country's nuclear watchdog had given the green light to switch them back on.

The district court in the central prefecture of Fukui made the temporary order in response to a bid by local residents to halt the restart of the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the Takahama nuclear power plant, a court official said.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) last December approved the restarting of the reactors, saying they met tougher safety standards introduced after Japan's tsunami-sparked nuclear disaster at Fukushima in 2011.

But "the safety of the reactors hasn't been secured", the court ruled, saying the watchdog's new standards were "lacking rationality", according to public broadcaster NHK.

Plant operator Kansai Electric Power described the injunction as "extremely regrettable and utterly unacceptable" and said it would appeal against the decision.

A lawyer representing the plaintiffs called the ruling a "perfect victory".

"This is the best decision that we could have expected," he told supporters outside the courthouse.

Two other reactors at Takahama also remain offline.

A separate court ruling on the restart of two other reactors in southern Japan is expected later this month.

Pro-nuclear Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has backed an industry push to return to nuclear -- which once supplied more than one quarter of Japan's electricity -- as a plunging yen sent the country's energy import bill soaring.

But Japan has seen a groundswell of public opposition to the technology since Fukushima, where reactors went into meltdown after a tsunami swamped their cooling systems -- setting off the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986.

Japan's entire stable of nuclear power stations was gradually switched off following the disaster, while tens of thousands of people were evacuated due to concerns about radiation exposure.

Many are still unable to return to their homes and scientists have warned that some areas around the plant may remain uninhabitable for decades or more.

Related Article:

Experts reject Japan's new whaling plan