Public utilities: Market reforms move power to the people

When the citizens of the small south German town of Schönau took over the local power grid in 1997, few outsiders believed it would work. Yet today, the co-operative sells its renewable energy mix all over the country. Last year’s profits were €1.3m.

More than a decade after the liberalisation of the sector, the number of such public utilities continues to rise – and they are likely to take on more significance as Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Energiewende, or “energy transition” away from nuclear, advances.

The lack of public acceptance makes a big task bigger. Germany’s nuclear plants were built near the industrial centres in the south, and electricity flowed locally or regionally. Replacing them with offshore wind parks will require hundreds of kilometres of high-voltage lines to be built – 3,800km by 2022, plus 1,600km of lines such as those mapped out around Stadtilm but not yet built. The only way to avoid the extension, which many opponents say will expose more people to harmful magnetic fields, will be to build more carbon dioxide-emitting gas and coal-fired power stations.

The danger of a crisis of public confidence is compounded by other aspects of energy policy. In mid-October, for example, the government will almost certainly have to raise the renewable-energy surcharge, used to pay producers a guaranteed price, from 3.5 cents to about 5.3 cents per kWh. This would raise household electricity bills by about 7 per cent.

Fears are growing in the ruling centre-right coalition that the levy, combined with opposition to the networks, could provoke a backlash against the energy switch in the run-up to the election. Although Ms Merkel last year pledged to keep the surcharge at 3.5 cents, pushing through reform would involve Germany’s often fractious states. Indeed, she has signalled that she is happy to leave the complex talks to the next legislative period. But she has no such luxury when it comes to new transmission lines: her cabinet has to sign off plans by the end of the year to allow construction to begin on the first projects between 2015 and 2017.

The man Ms Merkel hopes will persuade the likes of Mr Schulze – or prove him wrong – is Jochen Homann, the head of the federal networks agency that oversees the upkeep and expansion of electricity lines. Last year, Mr Homann acquired powers to speed the planning process and make it more transparent and democratic.

If he thinks those are contradictory tasks, Mr Homann does not show it. His agency is in the midst of an eight-week consultation process, which allows the public to critique the initial plans of the network companies – Tennet of the Netherlands, and Germany’s Amprion, 50Hertz, and TransnetBW. Based on a national “energy scenario” agreed last year, they have sketched what they think the country needs without pinpointing exactly where lines might go. Four direct-current “electricity motorways”, each up to 600km long, dominate the scheme.

In the past, the agency would have reviewed the plans behind closed doors, with the public being given a voice only as detailed transmission line corridors were being fixed in land-use decisions – a process that starts in 12 months. Now, the agency wants early input to help determine the need for each project and to compile an early-stage environmental impact study. The results will provide the basis of a national networks law.

“This kind of lengthy and early participation is unique,” says Mr Homann, standing on the fringes of the first “citizens’ dialogue” in Bonn in September. “I’m working on the premise that there will be public acceptance for the energy switch – and this will help.” The intention is to halve the planning, approval and litigating phases from the current 10-12 years. “If we can’t start building some of these lines in five years, we’ll have a problem in 2022.”

The all-day town hall meeting looks into the way the agency reviews the transmission companies’ proposals and compiles the environmental impact study. Many visitors are impressed. “I’d say this is exemplary,” says Elke Weingärtner, who has travelled from Berlin, where she works for an environmental consultancy. “People can make themselves heard – early and continuously.” But, she adds, electricity is a complicated subject and not everyone will be able to follow the discussions. “The draft environmental study is 500 pages long. Who will make time to read that – especially as the networks agency wants to speed the process up?”

Only about 120 people attend the first of the six conferences spanning a country of about 80m. Some are pensioners; the rest are local and state bureaucrats, energy sector professionals or, like Mr Schulze, members of local protest groups.

The networks agency does not seem surprised. “Participation picks up as the planning process gets less abstract, when it’s about specific projects,” says Mr Homann. His officials stress the agency’s independence from the transmission companies and its keenness to “hear about any one new project that could make three others irrelevant”. They also say “we shouldn’t kid ourselves” about the direct-current motorways: they will be overhead cables. Asked why they dismiss underground cables, officials note that these, too, emit magnetic waves and cost a lot more – and that this question has been dealt with at a public “technology workshop”. When local protest groups challenge aspects of the lines they are fighting, they are reminded they are here to discuss future projects.

“It could have been better organised,” says Helmut Klein, representing a local forest owner. “Much of what the agency said was very abstract, and many participants wanted to discuss older projects on their doorsteps. That’s why 90 per cent of the questions missed the point of the event.”

Then again, as the networks agency stresses, the town hall meetings are just one part of the public consultation process. Citizens can also propose changes by email or phone. When the transmission companies asked for public input last year, they received about 2,000 suggestions.

One group that says it has made “a great effort” to put pen to paper is Bund, the German arm of Friends of the Earth, the environmental lobby group. But Thorben Becker, Bund’s energy expert, says there is no sign that external contributors have had any impact on the national networks law. “You have to question the process if many qualified suggestions change nothing in the transmission companies’ plans.”

Such doubts could prove corrosive to the consultation process. One of the best ways the agency could prove its independence is to make big changes as it drafts a final network development plan for submission to the government. It has already signalled that it will make minor changes, and is considering shortening the westernmost direct-current transmission line.

But Mr Schulze is having none of it. In a written submission on behalf of the protest campaign called Danger: High Voltage, which he says speaks for 10,000 citizens in the area around Stadtilm, he laments the overt influence of the transmission companies.

Given that the agency guarantees them a 9 per cent return on their investments, the companies have a natural bias towards building “as many lines as possible” and not “as many lines as necessary”, he says. Six years of fighting to have other lines upgraded rather than a new one built have left Mr Schulze cynical about the planning process. Even before the final court review of the construction permission that has already been granted, expected in the next few weeks, the first pylons are – quite legally – being built around Stadtilm. The construction of the 380kv line seems likely, he says – which could in turn lead to the national authorities trying to run the easternmost of the new direct-current lines alongside.

Ms Merkel and the state governments have already agreed that the federal networks agency will have the power to decide land use for such projects. Berlin also hopes to wrest power to grant final construction ap­proval from the 16 state governments.

That means Mr Schulze and Mr Homann, or probably his officials, could meet in court in three or four years. “And then they’ll say we already had every opportunity to make our voice heard – beginning with this public consultation period,” says Mr Schulze.

Manipulators of quantum world win physics Nobel

• 
  15:26 09 October 2012 by Jacob Aron
  
• 
  For similar stories, visit the Quantum World Topic Guide The New Scientist
  

Wineland's work has already helped him build the world's most precise clock for studying Einstein's theory of relativity.

Haroche was awarded the prize for his work on optical cavities, small superconducting mirrors placed just a few centimetres apart and cooled to just above absolute zero. A photon entering the cavity can bounce between the mirrors for more than a tenth of a second, long enough to travel 40,000 kilometres.

Atomic drive-by

Caging photons in this way lets you investigate their quantum behaviour. Haroche fires rubidium atoms one by one into the cavity, where they interact with the photon before passing out the other side. This atomic drive-by shifts the atom's quantum state but, crucially, does not destroy the photon. In this way Haroche can measure the atom and learn about the detailed evolution of the photon's state over time.

Wineland's work takes the opposite approach: he traps charged atoms or ions within electric fields and fires lasers at them to force the ions into a particular quantum state.

The lasers cool the ions by suppressing random motion due to heat, forcing them into their lowest energy state. Precise laser pulses can then boost the energy of the ions by a tiny amount, creating a quantum superposition in which the ion has an equal chance of occupying both the lowest energy state and the next one up.

"Until the last decade or two, some of these results were nothing more than ideas in science fiction or, at best, the wilder imaginations of quantum physicists," says Jim Al-Khalili at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK. "Wineland and Haroche and their teams have shown just how strange the quantum world really is and opened up the potential for new technologies undreamt of not so long ago."

Aluminium clock

Those technologies include a quantum computer. In 1995, Wineland's group demonstrated the first quantum logic gate , an essential precursor to quantum computing.

His technique is also key to the world's most precise clock, which keeps time via the regular oscillations of a trapped aluminium ion. The clock is so precise that, had it started ticking at the dawn of the universe, it would have only lost about 4 seconds by now.

Such clocks are precise enough to measure the slowing of time caused by changes in gravity, as predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity.

Neither laureate appeared in a list of predictions released ahead of the Nobel announcement, but Haroche got a warning of a sort. Speaking via phone line at the Nobel Prize press conference, he said he was out walking with his wife when his phone rang. The country code displayed, 46, alerted him that the call was from Sweden. "I was in the street and passing near a bench. I was able to sit down immediately," he says.

TranshumanTech

This blog is an experiment in automated filtering. It consists of posts from the public TranshumanTech mailing list, automatically filtered for relevance to humanity-transforming technology. Expect the filtering to get better as I work on the algorithms.

[tt] NS 2817: Tribal wars: DNA testing divides American Indians

I could tick off a long list of the legal issues, just barely skirted upon
here. The basic idea is that the feds cheated the Indians and have been
making amends, like giving tribes special privileges, like operating
casinos. This creates incentives to declare one belongs to a specific
tribe and for the tribe to resist diluting its advantage by questioning
the applicants. But the fact is, historically, tribes augmented their
members by accepting those with loose connections, sometimes more than
other times. (Same with the Jews.) So one big legal issue is whether to
make amends to those who belonged to the tribe a long time ago. And what
about those trying to join. (I don't know the extent to which the amends
are proportionate to the claimants.)

In any case the taxpayers are being socked for injustices neither they nor

I could continue.

NS 2817: Tribal wars: DNA testing divides American Indians
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21028173.900-tribal-wars-dna-testing-divides-american-indians.html
* 15 June 2011 by Linda Geddes, Coarsegold, California
[Editorial, "DNA and the need to belong," added.]

When American Indian identity is based on culture as much as blood,

BLASTED from arid, rocky land where rattlesnakes once thrived, the

Though business is booming, the casino has opened up wounds in the

Membership disputes are nothing new in Indian country. The

Introducing genetics to solve enrolment disputes is a new twist in

Those fighting expulsion suspect the proposed Chukchansi paternity

Currently, there are 565 federally recognised tribes representing

That American Indian tribes have embraced DNA technology may seem

The Chukchansi aren't alone. Other tribes, such as the Ho-Chunk in

Those tribes already using DNA testing say it is perfectly

At the Creating Stronger Nations conference in Las Vegas last month,

The Chukchansi tribal council, which also attended the conference,

"We know that at first there will be an emotional issue between

Few members are willing to discuss the matter openly, though

"DNA testing undermines the notion of what it is to be tribal," says

Cathy Corey, who was expelled from the Chukchansi tribe in 2005,

TallBear also cautions that focusing too narrowly on DNA could

Not Indian Enough for the Ho-chunk

Daria Powless, 20, was brought up by her grandmother within the
Ho-Chunk tribe in Wisconsin. So when her right to belong to the
tribe was challenged by three other members, she thought nothing of
volunteering a DNA sample to prove that she was related to her
father, making her ¼ Ho-Chunk blood and eligible for membership.

Her DNA told a different story, revealing that her father was not in

This scenario is being repeated across the US (see main story), but

In 2009 the Ho-Chunk Nation inserted a requirement for the DNA

This is what happened in the Powless case. "There is no implication

Powless is waiting for the tribe to put her expulsion to a ballot,

While Powless declined to comment on the matter, Cathy Corey, who

Genetics should be kept out of discussions on race and tribe

HOW would you feel if your government declared that you had to
emigrate if your father wasn't your biological parent? This
unpalatable scenario is already playing out within some American
Indian tribes.

Once upon a time they were groups of indigenous people united by

Deluged with applications for membership, governments of some tribes

Leaving aside the emotional turmoil caused when paternity testing

At first glance, it may seem reasonable to rely on genetic rather

What next? What if tribes demanded genetic markers associated with

These moves should be resisted. The notion of a tribe is a social

Latest images from Nasa's rover show trail of pebbles that were once dragged by water from crater rim to base of mountain

• 
  Ian Sample, science correspondent The Guardian, Friday 28 September 2012 13.58 BST
  

A shallow river once coursed through a great crater on Mars according to the latest images from the surface that suggest the dusty planet was a more hospitable world in ancient times.

Photographs from Nasa's Curiosity rover revealed clear signs of an ancient waterway winding from the northern edge of the Gale crater towards the base of Mount Sharp, a mountain that rises 3.1 miles (5km) from the crater floor.

The dried-up riverbed left a trail of pebbles and sand grains that over time became weathered and locked in rock. Their size and shape point to a river somewhere between ankle and waist deep that flowed through the landscape at a speedy metre a second.

The $2.5bn (£1.6bn) trundling science lab began its mission on Mars after a dramatic arrival last month in which the rover was winched to the surface from a spacecraft hovering overhead on rocket thrusters.

Powered by radioactive plutonium and lithium-ion batteries, the rover will spend one Martian year, or 687 Earth days, exploring the Gale crater and its central mountain. For much of the mission, the rover will sample rocks on the gentle flanks of Mount Sharp, following a path worked out from pictures snapped by orbiters overhead.

Curiosity is searching not for signs of life past or present, but for evidence that Mars was once habitable. Scores of earlier missions have found evidence for water. Spacecraft orbiting Mars have beamed back images of ancient lakes and gullies, though none that still flows today. The north and south poles are largely frozen water.

The latest pictures are the first to show stones and gravel that have been dragged along the Martian surface by a river in the planet's distance past. Nasa geologists said the rounder shape of some of the pebbles suggested they had travelled long distances from above the crater rim.

The rover took the images with a telephoto camera on its central mast, downhill from a pattern of sediments called an alluvial fan created by several water streams perhaps billions of years ago. The stones vary from angular to smooth and range from golf ball-sized to grains of sand.

"The shapes tell you they were transported and the sizes tell you they couldn't be transported by wind. They were transported by water flow," said Rebecca Williams, who works on the Curiosity mission at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona.

The rover's prime destination is the slope of Mount Sharp where regions rich in clays and sulphates have been mapped from orbit. These minerals can preserve organic material that is thought to be crucial for life to thrive.

"We have gravels of different sizes cemented into rock and at some points we can see they are weathered out and rounded, and that tells us this was a stream bed with violently flowing water," said Susanne Schwenzer, a postdoctoral researcher at Open University. "It's the first time we've really had this from Mars. This is basically the same as we would see in a terrestrial flow, with violently flowing and transporting these gravels,"  There is not enough information yet to date the ancient riverbed, she added.

Some of the earliest evidence for water on Mars was beamed back to Earth from Nasa's Mariner 9 orbiter in the 1970s. The probe arrived amid a spectacular month-long storm that obscured the whole planet. But as the dust settled, the spacecraft's cameras looked down on a landscape carved by ancient river systems.

More recent evidence for water on Mars came from Nasa's Phoenix lander which explored the geology and chemistry of the planet's Arctic region. Instruments onboard the lander scanned clouds that formed several kilometres high in the Martian sky and even noticed a gentle fall of snow.

As Curiosity climbs Mount Sharp the layers of rock it encounters will become younger and younger, from perhaps 3.5bn years old at the base, to modern times at the summit. Through analysing rocks along the way, the rover can build up a picture of the planet's geological history, and when water that may have sustained life was there.

"A long-flowing stream can be a habitable environment. It is not our top choice as an environment for preservation of organics, though," said John Grotzinger, a project scientist and geologist on the mission at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. "We're still going to Mount Sharp, but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment."

 

Bill Gates : "Taxer les transactions financières servirait l'aide au développement"

Le Monde.fr | 11.10.2012 à 11h55 • Mis à jour le 12.10.2012 à 09h50

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