BBC News (UK): Partnership to tackle Mediterranean forest threats

Reuters: AMSC warns of Q4 loss as top customer refuses shipments

5^th April 2011

Shares of AMSC tumbled about 50 percent in after-market trade, after China's Sinovel Wind, the world's third-largest wind turbine maker, refused to accept contracted shipments of some wind turbine components.

AMSC also said it is reviewing its books after Sinovel failed to pay for certain contracted shipments worth about $56 million, which it has already accounted for.

The company has posted a profit for eight straight quarters, and analysts were expecting it to post a 32-cent per share profit this quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

China's wind turbine sector, a stable source of growth for AMSC, experienced explosive growth in the past few years aided by hefty government subsidies. However, it is expected to be flat in 2011.

"They (AMSC) are still going to have to remain very focused on China, but obviously they are going to continue to diversify to more components with this market slowing down so significantly," Gleacher & Co analyst John Hardy told Reuters.

AMSC has been trying to diversify its customer base away from Sinovel, which accounts for about 75 percent of its revenue, through new wind turbine orders and emerging power grid opportunities.

Last month, AMSC said it was buying smaller Finnish rival, The Switch Engineering Oy, for $266 million to trim its dependence on China.

AMSC said it was taking actions to cut expenses as it continues to have active discussions with Sinovel to determine when the Chinese company would accept further shipments.

The company expects full-year revenue to be less than $355 million compared with its prior estimate of $430-$440 million.

AMSC also said full-year adjusted earnings would be well below its previous forecast of $1.31-$1.35 per share.
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AP: Does cap-and-trade work? Still a work in progress
6^th April 2011
In these days of concern over global warming, a cement factory in southern Belgium is abandoning coal and moving to more unorthodox fuels: old tires, plastics, sewage sludge, city garbage, ground cattle bones.

The result is less carbon dioxide wafting from the smokestack — and in Europe, less carbon is worth more cash under a much vaunted EU scheme that allows industries to swap CO2 pollution rights just like any commodity.

So, has cap-and-trade actually dented Europe's greenhouse gas emissions?

Views vary, but an evaluation today shows that the system has so far delivered more promise than results. But gradually, most analysts say, it is changing the way Europeans manufacture goods, produce energy and conduct business.

"It was not built to revolutionize our economy. It was meant to give impetus to long-term change," said Hans Bergman, a top official of the European Commission on Climate Action, the European Union's executive arm that drafts policy to fight climate change.

"It takes some time to create bigger things," Bergman told The Associated Press.

Europe has been attacking climate-changing pollution for 20 years, and boasts it has done more than any other economy to slash its greenhouse gases. By 2010 emissions were 17 percent less than the international benchmark year of 1990, and are easily on target to meet the EU commitment of a 20 percent reduction by 2020. If Europe boosts its energy efficiency, that decade-ending figure could even reach 25 percent.

Six years ago, stepping up the pressure on its heaviest polluters, the EU launched cap-and-trade, meant to compel power plants and heavy industries to reduce emissions — or make them pay. The European Trading Scheme, or ETS, covers about half of all emissions, with the rest coming from cars, houses, and the routines of daily life.

About 12,500 individual factories or power plants are given a set number of emission rights. They are supposed to receive fewer allocations than they need, driving them to invest in carbon-saving technology. Those that pollute more than allowed can buy credits from industries that emit less and have permits to spare.

Since then, carbon dioxide, an invisible, almost intangible waste product, has come to be traded like copper or corn futures. Last year more than $120 billion in pollution allowances changed hands through banks, traders and commodities exchanges. One credit, representing one ton of CO2, averaged about euro15 ($21) until Japan's nuclear disaster drove the price above euro17 ($24).

The result: Industries covered by the scheme are emitting 11 percent less carbon than in 2005, while production levels have climbed back to 98 percent of 2005 levels after a bruising two-year recession.

Point Carbon analyst Kjersti Ulset said that means pricing carbon is having a positive effect. "Emissions are increasing less than production ... and because of that we can see the ETS is working," she said by telephone from Oslo.

But critics say planning flaws, coupled with the 2008-2009 recession that slowed industry's pace, has stripped the system of much of the incentive to go green. The economic downturn, they say, is the real reason for the cleaner skies.

Oscar Reyes, of the Barcelona-based nonprofit group Carbon Trade Watch, said the system is merely directing funds to the wrong places. "It hasn't really reduced emissions," he said. "It has pushed money in the wrong direction and actually acted as a subsidy for the heaviest polluters."

Rather than feel a financial bite, some companies — including some of the worst polluters — are making windfall profits. Power companies were given free carbon permits, but they raised electricity fees anyway — as if they had paid the market price for their permits — and pocketed the markup. Many companies were allocated too many allowances, often the result of powerful industries lobbying the governments that give the permits.

"Overallocation, yes, that's a problem," said Bergman. "From the next phase the allocation will be more restrictive."

After 2013, free allocations will be sharply reduced, forcing companies to pay for their permits, and fewer will be distributed.

But companies can save against that day. They don't have to sell leftover allocations, but can "bank" them to use or sell in future years, allowing them to further delay carbon-reduction measures.

Many companies acknowledge that the downturn and fuel costs had more impact than energy innovation.

"In terms of being a driver for us to change our behavior, the answer is yes — but not as much as intended," says Ian Dobson, a carbon trader for Heidelberg Cement. "The bigger factor was the recession."

The factory in Lixhe, one of about 50 Heidelberg installations under the ETS, is an example of how the system works.

It began looking for cheaper fuel alternatives years ago, after the oil crisis of the 1970s, long before a price was put on carbon emissions.

Now, rather than pay for coal, Heidelberg gets paid for disposing of rubbish.

About 3,000 old tires are shoveled daily into the kiln of its factory in Lixhe. At another plant in Maastricht, 10 kilometers (6 miles) across the Dutch border, a crane grabs a claw-full of stuffing — a mixture of paper, shredded plastic, carpet threads and other textiles, for its oven. Nearby, a grinder prepares animal and bone meal to feed into the kiln, along with sewage sludge trucked from cities all over the southern Netherlands.

"CO2 is having quite an influence on our strategy to deal with alternative fuel," says Jan Theulen, the company's sustainability manager, who is always looking to increase the biomass component and further cut the CO2 content.

Because they were early to convert to low-carbon fuels, the Maastricht and Lixhe plants normally emit less than permitted. The Maastricht facility has an annual allowance of 716,000 tons, but emitted 528,000 tons in 2010.

It's up to people like Dobson, Heidelberg's Brussels-based trader, to make the most profit of that excess.

"It all depends on the price now and what your expectations are. Everyone's been saying for years the market is tightening and the price is going up to euro30 or euro40, but it hasn't," he said at a trader's meeting in Amsterdam.

Lotta Fogde, vice president of the Swedish mining company LKAB, says her energy-efficient company sought to lower its fuel bills, but not because of cap-and-trade.

"I wouldn't say that so far it has fueled so many investments that we wouldn't have made anyway," she said. "The price of CO2 has not been decisive so far," although it is a factor in long-term planning.

However, Jos Cozijnsen, a Dutch consultant on emissions trading, argues that the price of carbon has spurred many industries to action. For example, Dutch power company Essent keeps a daily chart showing the cost of coal, gas, and CO2 to help it decide what fuel is cheapest at any given time. Shell, Europe's largest oil company, diverts CO2 waste from a hydrogen factory to farmers' nearby greenhouses.

"If there were no premium for CO2 or penalty, then they would not have done this," he said.

Environmentalists say the process is not moving fast enough to avert the trend of a warming world.

The rule-makers at the European Commission "don't understand the nature of the crisis we're in," says Sanjeev Kumar, of the environmental watchdog E3G. Kumar says cap-and-trade should work, but only when companies are truly squeezed to emit less.

"We now have all the key bits of architecture in place," he said. "You just need to tighten the cap."
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Guardian (UK): Japanese nuclear engineers plug Fukushima leak
6^th April 2011
Workers stem flow of radioactive water into sea using mixture of sawdust, newspaper, concrete and a type of liquid glass

Engineers battling to contain the crisis at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant appeared to have turned an important corner last night after they stopped highly radioactive water from leaking into the ocean from one of the facility's crippled reactors.

Workers struggling to halt the leaks successfully used a mixture of sawdust, newspaper, concrete and a type of liquid glass to stem the flow of contaminated water near a seaside pit, said the plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco).

Earlier efforts involving cement, an absorbent polymer and rags were unsuccessful in plugging the leak, which was discovered on Saturday, while radiation of more than 7.5 million times the legal limit for seawater was found just off the earthquake-hit plant.

In a sign of Tepco's desperation, it breached its own regulations on Monday by beginning an intentional discharge of 11,500 tonnes of less contaminated water into the Pacific to make space for the highly radioactive liquid that was seeping out in an uncontrolled manner.

The company still needs to pump contaminated water into the sea because of a lack of storage space at the plant and will continue to release the 11,500 tonnes of low-level radioactive water until Friday. "The leaks were slowed yesterday after we injected a mixture of liquid glass and a hardening agent and it has now stopped," a Tepco spokesman told Reuters.

A 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami hit Japan's northeast coast on 11 March, leaving 28,000 people dead or missing and thousands homeless. It is the country's worst catastrophe since the second world war.

Samples of the water used to cool the plant's reactor No 2 were emitting 5 million times the legal limit of radioactivity, officials said on Tuesday, adding to fears that contaminants had spread far beyond the disaster zone. Workers are still struggling to restart cooling pumps – which recycle the water – in four reactors damaged by the earthquake and tsunami.

Until those are fixed, they must pump in water from outside to prevent overheating, and meltdowns. In the process, that creates more contaminated water that has to be pumped out and stored somewhere else or released into the sea.

The government is considering restrictions on seafood for the first time after contaminated fish were found. India is the first country to ban food imports from all areas of Japan over radiation fears.

Tepco has offered "condolence money" to those affected in the Fukushima region, but one city rejected the compensation and local mayors who came to Tokyo to meet the prime minister, Naoto Kan, demanded greater assistance. "We have borne the risks, co-existed and flourished with Tepco for more than 40 years, and all these years, we have fully trusted the myth that nuclear plants are absolutely safe," said Katsuya Endo, the mayor of Tomioka. He was one of eight Fukushima prefecture mayors seeking compensation and support for employment, housing and education for the tens of thousands of evacuees.

A total of 60,000 tonnes of highly contaminated water remains in the plant after workers poured in seawater when fuel rods experienced partial meltdown after the earthquake and tsunami hit on March 11.

The decision announced Tuesday comes just days after Transocean Ltd. disclosed the bonuses deep in a regulatory filing, triggering intense criticism.

Transocean justified the bonuses by calling 2010 an "exemplary" year for safety — despite the explosion on its rig that killed 11 people and spilled 200 million gallons of oil.

CEO Steven Newman and four other executives are now donating bonuses worth more than $250,000 to a fund set up by Transocean for the victims' families.

Newman says it was never the executives' intent to diminish the effect the disaster has had on those who lost loved ones.
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AP: Rights group urges halt to Brazil dam in Amazon
5^th April 2011
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is urging Brazil's government to halt work on a massive hydroelectric dam in the heart of the Amazon rain forest until it deals with concerns of the region's residents.

The commission's April 1 cautionary message said Brazil should stop the Belo Monte dam's licensing process until its developers consult with indigenous groups and other people in a culturally adequate way, give them access to environmental impact reports and adopt measures meant to protect their lives.

Indigenous groups celebrated Tuesday over the commission's recommendation.

"I am very moved by this news," Sheyla Juruna, an indigenous leader of the Juruna community in Altamira, said in a statement. "Today more than ever I am sure that we were right to expose the Brazilian government — including the federal judicial system — for violations of the rights of indigenous peoples."

The commission, which is an organ of the Organization of American States, issued its caution in response to a complaint filed in November by indigenous communities in the region that would be flooded by the dam.

Such messages are sent in urgent cases with a threat of irreparable damage to people, commission spokeswoman Maria Isabel Rivero said. The measure is not legally binding, however, and the commission cannot enforce it in any way.

The commission said people affected by the dam project should be given the opportunity to voice their concerns in a "free, informed, and culturally adequate" way.

To this end, the environmental impact report done on the project should be made available to these communities in an accessible format and in their own languages, the commission said. Finally, the project should include measures to protect the lives and health of indigenous groups who live in voluntary isolation in the area, it said.

Brazil's Ministry of Foreign Relations said the request was unjustified. Brazil has acted in an "effective and diligent" manner to respond to demands by environmentalists and local communities, the ministry said.

When permission to build the dam was granted by Congress, it came with a requirement to consult with people in the affected area. The federal agencies in charge of environmental and indigenous issues carried out the necessary impact reports and gathered comments from the indigenous groups affected, the ministry said.

In March, a construction consortium began preparing land where the $11 billion dam will be built after a court overturned a lower court's decision to stop building.

If completed as currently planned, Belo Monte would be the world's third largest dam, designed to produce 11,000 megawatts of electricity.

The government calls it a source of clean, renewable energy to fuel Brazil's growing economy. But residents say it would devastate the ecosystem and alter the way of life of approximately 40,000 people who live there.

Opposition to the dam has attracted a number of prominent celebrities, including film director James Cameron and rock star Sting.

Several dozen people including special forces soldiers swam and used boats to pull three rings of nets around the rare beast the size of a car door with a head as big as a human's, in Hoan Kiem Lake in the heart of the Vietnamese capital.

In recent months the turtle has surfaced almost twice as frequently as in previous years, according to state-run media, and what appear to be pink sores have been photographed on its shell, neck and feet, raising alarm.

Experts believe the turtle, weighing some 200 kg (440 lb), may be suffering the effects of pollution, snaggings by fish hooks, attacks from smaller red ear turtles that have proliferated in the lake, or all three.

"Generally, the turtle is fine and stable," turtle expert Ha Dinh Duc, part of the capture operation and a member of a steering committee set up to make decisions about the elderly animal, said after it was ensnared.

Thousands of people crowded around the lake to watch.

According to Vietnamese legend, a giant turtle in the same lake -- some believe even the same animal -- reclaimed a magic sword given to king Le Loi in the 15th century that he used to win independence from China's Ming Dynasty.

The lake was thereafter named 'Ho Hoan Kiem', or 'Lake of the Returned Sword', and Hanoi has been built up around it.

Scientists have said they believe the turtle caught on Sunday may be more than 100 years old and a member of the critically endangered 'Rafetus Swinhoei' family of turtles, although others have dubbed it an independent sub species, 'Rafetus Leloii'.

"You could say it is a representative of the country so bringing the turtle up for treatment is a necessity," said 78-year-old Hanoian Luu Tien Xuan.

"The people are concerned. The leaders are concerned... It would be sad if Ho Guom didn't have the turtle in it anymore."

The case has made headlines in the local media for months, sparking some criticism over the state of the environment in fast-developing Vietnam.

"We have been too apathetic with regard to the turtle in the past as we rolled along with the speed of industrialization and modernization and forgot to protect its habitat... Save Ho Guom, save the environment, save ourselves!" a person named Le Tuan posted on the popular news website Vnexpress.vn.

Critics also say it took scientists and the government too long to decide how to care for the animal.

"Nobody wanted to take responsibility if it died," said one Hanoi resident who lives near the local government office facing the lake and declined to give her name.

The reptile tore a hole in a net on March 8 and escaped when workers waded into the algae-green waters of the lake, also called Ho Guom, in a first attempt to catch it.

On Sunday the turtle appeared to get past two of the nets, but a shirtless swimmer believed to be from special forces grabbed the shell and rode the animal a short while to prevent it from getting past the third net, television footage showed.

It was put into a pen on an island in the middle of the lake that has been dubbed its hospital and sanitorium.

ROA MEDIA UPDATE