Carbon capture needed

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies are very much needed to reduce one-third of the world's global carbon dioxide emissions, according to a report from the Boston Consulting Group.

"CCS technology offers substantial benefits, but high cost and uncertainty have been a major roadblock so far in applying it. A carbon market price of €30 ($47.8) per ton, combined with worldwide subsidies, could offset the cost. Because of the long-term payback, private companies and government authorities need to begin promoting the development of CCS today."

The consulting group said an initial subsidy of €100 billion would proceed CCS development as the carbon price stabilized.

The effort for CCS technology development has just begun, according to BCC Research. The market research firm estimated the market for CCS technologies last year was worth $88.7bn.

BCC estimated the market to increase to over $236.3bn by 2012 with compound annual growth rate of 22%.

"By 2025 more than 10 billion metric tons of CO2 will need to be captured each year and CO2 emissions will still continue to grow. A global infrastructure that will ultimately cost more than $15 trillion will need to be installed over the next century to accomplish that ever increasing annual task."

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Living Our Lives Without Chocolate?

Future generations may never have a sweet tooth to feed. John Mason, the executive director and founder of the Ghana based organization Nature Conversation Research Council (NCRC) believes that in 20 years times, chocolate will be much like caviar today.

"[Chocolate] will become so rare and so expensive that the average joe won't be able to afford it."

This fate of chocolate is terrifying news for two parties. The chocoholics of the world, but more importantly the producer countries that depend greatly on the sale of the cocoa beans as a portion of their GDP.

The main cause for the decline in cocoa bean growth is unsustainable farming in Ghana and other nations known for their cocoa plants. Also cocoa is naturally a rainforest plant that grows in shady conditions surrounded by a high biodiversity, until recently. Now, hybrid varieties have been grown on cleared land as mono-cultures and in full sun.

Although this hybrid seeds fills the demand for the short term, the soil quickly becomes degraded and the lifespan of plants can be cut from 75 or 100 years, to 30 or less. When the trees die and the land is exhausted, farmers must move on and clear more rainforest to plant cocoa.

The decline in West African cocoa is not only a problem for farmers and chocolate producers, one of which is Cadbury who uses 100 percent of West African cocoa beans to produce their chocolate, but environmentalists are increasingly concerned about the destruction of the rainforest for short-term gain.

These three groups soon realized they were all fighting the same issue, and with the help from the international environmental charity, Earthwatch, a new program has been implemented to help the cocoa plant. Earthshare combines the efforts of Cadbury and the NCRC with continual support from Earthwatch. Earthshare a scientific research project that aims to explore ways of creating sustainable cocoa farming. Currently it works with 60 farms with negotiations underway to increase the initiative.

Earthshare is addressing two problems faced by cocoa farming. One being the ever degrading unsustainable soil and other habitat issues. Intensively farmed landscapes need a lot of inputs, such as water and chemical fertilizers and their fertility tends to degrade rapidly. So Earthshare has advised another plan where a mixed farming landscape, where other flora can shade the cocoa trees and provide habitats for the birds, mammals, reptiles and invertebrates that both eat pests on the cocoa and help pollinate the crop, not only increases biodiversity, it reduces the need for inputs and retains its fertility.

The second issue is the declining number of people wanting to be cocoa farmers. "They're coming at sustainable supply from two angles," says Mark Harper, Program Manager for Earthwatch. "It's not just about increasing yields; it's also about decreasing the number of farmers leaving the business.

"They are focused on making it a more attractive crop by improving the livelihoods of cocoa farmers, whether that's by providing better sanitation, improved access to markets to get a better price for their crop, or helping establish new revenue streams, such as eco tourism."

With these two issues being investigated by all the parties involved in Earthshare, John Mason feels that the cocoa crop can be avoided. "The funny thing is we can reverse this," he says. "It will cost, certainly, but we can do it." Action is the way to save the cocoa plant and to know for certain that future generations can enjoy the richness of pure chocolate.

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Off shore wind farm locations found via satellite

With oil and energy prices skyrocketing, more people around the world are starting to look at green and renewable energy sources. Wind power, which was found to be a true green alternative to fossil fuels, has gotten a recent boost thanks to a bet by oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens. His company, Mesa Power, is planning a $2 billion investment in what will be the world's largest wind farm ever built, set to be located in west Texas. According to Pickens, if the US were to take advantage of what he calls the wind corridor that runs from western Texas to the Canadian border, the country could have 20 percent of its energy supplied by wind power.

Image credit: NASA/JPL

20 percent is not bad, but where else could large scale wind farms be built? A Publication in the current issue of Geophysical Research Letters by a team of scientists from NASA's JPL uses satellite data to measure the surface stresses over the oceans. Recent technological advances have made floating wind farms possible, but the key is putting them in the right locations. The article examined eight years of data from the QuikSCAT data to determine the energy distribution over the world's ocean. The research identified three causes of regional variations in the power carried by the winds: "land mass deflection of the surface flow, the gap wind channeled by land topography, and surface stress variation produced by atmospheric buoyancy driven by ocean front."

From the data, the researchers found that high wind areas over the ocean could be used to harness between 500 and 800 W/m². That's less than solar power can generate under ideal conditions, which is 1000 W/m², although ideal solar conditions are rare. Given the higher efficiency of wind power over solar, however, the cost per kWh of electricity produced would be less. The research identified a host of locations where the winds blow continually almost year round due to various combinations of geographical and physical effects. High wind areas highlighted by the JPL were Cape Mendocino off the coast of northern California, the seas around Tasmania and New Zealand, in the south Pacific, and off Tierra del Fuego in South America.

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