Europe may ban plastic bags...

With each European using 500 plastic bags per year, and tonnes of plastic littering the Mediterranean, the European Commission may ban them from stores or tax them to combat pollution.

Europe produced 3.4 million tonnes of plastic carrier bags in 2008 - the equivalent in weight of 2 million cars, according to the European Union's executive arm.

The bags often end up in the sea, taking hundreds of years to decompose, it said.

About 250 billion plastic particles weighing a total 500 tonnes litter the Mediterranean, threatening sea life, which can suffocate eating them.

In some EU states, plastic bags are banned from stores or consumers must pay for them in supermarket lines, but there is no EU-wide regulation.

The EU Commission on Wednesday launched a public consultation which will run until August to decide the best course of action to reduce the use of plastic bags.

"Fifty years ago, the single-use plastic bag was almost unheard of - now we use them for a few minutes and they pollute our environment for decades," said European environment commissioner Janez Potocnik.

"But social attitudes are evolving and there is a widespread desire for change. That's why we are looking at all the options, including a Europe-wide ban on plastic carrier bags," Potocnik said.

The EU executive said it also wants to gather opinions on increasing the visibility of biodegradable packaging products and boosting the biodegradability requirements for packaging.

mini-turbine battery chargers for New Jag hybrid Supercar

Stunning C-X75 hybrid supercar concept confirmed for production. 322km/h. 0-100km/h in 3 seconds. Emissions below 100g/km.

Jaguar will build one of the fastest cars in the world after announcing its stunning C-X75 hybrid supercar concept will become a new halo model for the brand.

The British brand will make the star of the 2010 Paris motor show an exclusive proposition with just 250 C-X75s to be produced between 2013 and 2015, with a price tag for Australian buyers set to be as high as $2 million.

Jaguar is partnering with Formula One team Williams to create the supercar, which it says will be capable of speeds in excess of 320km/h and acceleration from 0-100km/h in less than three seconds.

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A hybrid drivetrain will allow the C-X75 to be driven 50km on electric power alone with average emissions expected to be 99 grams per 100km, the company says.

The production model will initially not feature the helicopter-inspired micro-turbines that powered the concept’s batteries, though Jaguar says it is continuing to develop the technology and later examples of the C-X75 could employ the jet-powered propulsion system.

The C-X75 will instead be powered by a small-capacity “highly boosted” petrol engine combined with “powerful” electric motors on each axle that make the supercar all-wheel drive.

Jaguar says Williams’ expertise in aerodynamics, carbon composite construction and hybrid technology – the latter through the use of the kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) used in F1 racing - will be key to the C-X75’s success.

The C-X75 will be made of carbon-fibre to ensure the supercar is both incredibly light and rigid.

“People expect Jaguar to be innovators - that is when Jaguar is at its best," says Jaguar brand director Adrian Hallmark. “The C-X75 received an incredible reception as a concept car.

“We've been building on that momentum and there is a clear business case for this exclusive halo model. No other vehicle will better signify Jaguar's renewed confidence and excellence in technological innovation than this.”

The styling of the production C-X75 is not expected to stray far from the radical shape of the concept car.

Jaguar to build £700,000 hybrid supercar with Williams

Jaguar has unveiled plans to build a £700,000 ($1.15m) petrol-electric hybrid supercar in the UK.

It will build 250 cars in partnership with Formula 1 team Williams F1.

The C-X75's ultra-light chassis and two electric motors will help it accelerate from nought to 60mph in three seconds.

It will have an all-electric range of 50km and its overall emissions of less than 100g CO2 per kilometre will be one of the lowest in the industry.

The car will have a top speed of more than 200mph, while the hybrid engine will extend the car's range well beyond 50km.

The move is part of a £5bn investment plan, announced by Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) in March at the Geneva motor show, to launch 40 "significant new products" over the next five years.

Production of the C-X75 will create more than 100 highly-skilled jobs in the UK. These will be split between Jaguar and Williams, which is based in Grove in Oxfordshire.

The model will be built from 2013 until 2015, although it has not yet been decided where production will take place.

Jaguars are currently manufactured at Castle Bromwich, near Birmingham, although JLR's headquarters are in Warwickshire.

'Clear business case'

The car offers proof that if they are well-engineered, efficient cars with low CO2 emissions can also deliver high performance.

The partnership is part of Williams F1's plan to extend the number of business areas it operates in

This points to "a sustainable future, but not a boring future", Mr Forster said.

As such, it marks a shift from the past when manufacturers would build high-performance flagship models to show off their capabilities to buyers of frugal, ordinary versions of the same cars.

The logic that anyone who can build a high-performance car should also be able to build good cars with small engines no longer holds, as there is a growing realisation that it is much more difficult to build a car that combines speed and handling with low fuel consumption.

"There is a clear business case for this exclusive halo model," Jaguar brand director Adrian Hallmark said.

Capabilities and skills

The car is central to the Indian-owned luxury car company JLR's plan to establish itself as a technology-inspired carmaker.

The C-X75 was first displayed in Paris in October with an experimental gas-powered jet engine

"It is a showcase of our capabilities and of the hi-tech engineering skills that exist within Jaguar and Williams F1," said Carl-Peter Forster, chief executive of JLR's parent company Tata Motors.

"This is a showcase of what can be done in this country if we all pull together."

The partnership between JLR and Williams F1 is part of the Formula 1 team's plan to extend the number of business areas from which it earns revenue, following hot on the heels of rival McLaren's expansion into, among other things, road car production and GT3 racing.

"In recent years, hybrid technology has been an area of acute development in Formula 1," said Williams F1 chairman Adam Parr, insisting it is only one example of F1 technology that could prove useful in other industries.

Williams F1 is in the process of creating subsidiaries that will sell its technology to companies elsewhere in the motor industry, or even in other industries such as energy, aerospace or health.

SEA levels will rise higher and faster than the United Nations predicted just four years ago

SEA levels will rise higher and faster than the United Nations predicted just four years ago, a major international study has found.

The new data suggests that, on average, the seas will rise by up to 1.6 metres by the year 2100 - a finding that has serious implications for Australian governments grappling with coastal planning.

The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, based in Norway, found that the Greenland ice sheet is melting four times as fast as it was a decade ago.

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''The past six years have been the warmest period ever recorded in the Arctic,'' the authors of the report said in a statement. ''In the future, global sea level is projected to rise by 0.9 metres to 1.6 metres by 2100 and the loss of ice from Arctic glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland ice sheet will make a substantial contribution.''

Each centimetre of sea-level rise roughly translates to one metre of beach erosion, meaning that the coastline can be expected to move 160 metres further inland.

The most recent assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released in 2007, put the projected rise at 59 centimetres by 2100. It acknowledged the views of many researchers that this figure was conservative.

In the past few years, sea levels have risen an average of about 3 millimetres a year, with 40 per cent of this attributed to melting Arctic glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland ice sheet.

The rate is expected to accelerate as the world warms this century and the process will be compounded as more ice cover is lost. White ice fields reflect sunlight away from the Earth's surface, whereas the darker oceans absorb more of the sun's heat, amplifying global warming.

Australia's Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency said its 2009 report into the effects had taken into account the possibility of high sea-level rises.

"There is growing consensus in the science community that sea-level rise at the upper end of the IPCC estimates is plausible by the end of this century, and that a rise of more than 1.0 metre and as high as 1.5 metres cannot be ruled out," its report said.

The report found that as many as 247,000 residential buildings with a value of $63 billion may be at risk of inundation from a sea-level rise scenario of 1.1 metres by 2100.

The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage said it would monitor scientific developments and provide new advice to coastal councils in 2014, when the UN is expected to finalise its next assessment.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/sea-levels-rising-higher-and-faster-20110504-1e8j7.html#ixzz1LQEneLLK

You want to buy Green - but you don't. Why?

Eco conscious consumers are not putting their money where their mouths are, according to new research which has found a ‘weak link’ between the intention of purchasing eco friendly electronic appliances and actually doing so.

The results of the survey suggests consumers don't think green products are inferior, but also reveals that while consumers are thinking green only 20 per cent are actually buying green, which Professor Tim Flannery, Panasonic Chair in Environmental Sustainability, Macquarie University, said needs to change.

“Awareness of environmental issues is extremely high and our next challenge is to turn that into everyday action,” Flannery said. “People are going to continue to purchase and use products such as consumer electronics and need to make sure they’re making the best possible decisions.”

Steve Rust, managing director, Panasonic Australia, said the results were disappointing considering the investment into developing environmentally friendly products.

“The message just isn’t translating into action. Consumers are making all of the right noises but at the end of the day they just aren’t buying green – at least with consumer electronics,” Rust said in a statement.

“The single best thing we can do to encourage more businesses to adopt better environmental behaviour is to make it more commercially attractive. We simply have to work out what is stopping consumers from buying green and overcome it.

Otherwise it is back to business as usual. Cheap bad quality products made overseas that affect us all.

From Current.com.au

Apple biggest user of coal and nuclear power

'Dirty data' centres put Apple last on green list:

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple has come bottom of the most comprehensive green league table of technology companies because of its heavy reliance on ''dirty data'' centres.

The list, compiled by Greenpeace and released in San Francisco on Thursday, shows the company relies heavily on highly polluting coal power at the sites that house its servers.

Greenpeace's report, How Dirty Is Your Data?, reveals the company's investment in a new North Carolina plant will triple its electricity consumption, equivalent to the electricity demand of 80,000 US homes.

Advertisement: Story continues below The power will be a mix of 62 per cent coal and 32 per cent nuclear.

The lead author of the report, Greenpeace's IT policy analyst, Gary Cook, said: ''Consumers want to know that when they upload a video or change their Facebook status they are not contributing to global warming or future Fukushimas.''

The report estimated dependence on coal for Apple's data centres at 54.5 per cent, followed by Facebook at 53.2 per cent, IBM at 51.6 per cent, Hewlett-Packard at 49.4 per cent, and Twitter at 42.5 per cent. Top marks in another table, Greenpeace's clean energy index, went to Yahoo, followed by Google and Amazon.

Greenpeace is also campaigning for Facebook to ''unfriend coal'' and use cleaner energy to power its servers.

Mr Cook said: ''Many companies treat their energy consumption a bit like the Coca-Cola secret formula, because they don't want competitors knowing how much they spend on energy … they don't really want this story to be told.''

Data centre energy demand already accounts for 1.5 to 2 per cent of world electricity consumption and is set to quadruple over 10 years.

But Jonathan Koomey, a project scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, whose work was cited in the study, said the IT industry wrongly attracted criticism: ''The use of IT often reduces environmental impacts. When we compared greenhouse gas emissions for downloading music to buying it on a CD … downloads reduced emissions by 40 to 80 per cent.''

Guardian News & Media

Power bills going up AGAIN

Huge Rise In Your Bills Coming Again...

Household electricity bills in NSW are set to rise by up to 18.1 per cent, or $316 a year following price rises outlined today by the pricing regulator.

A year ago, IPART approved rises of up to 13 per cent to be implemented from the middle of this year, with another round of rises of up to 11 per cent approved from the middle of next year.

At that time, it anticipated the average power bill for residents in rural NSW would reach $1900 a year, compared with between $1500 and $1600 for those living in Sydney, Wollongong and Newcastle.

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Electricity prices are being forced higher as electricity companies boost their networks to avoid further blackouts, and are set to rise much faster if the federal government succeeds in introducing a carbon tax, which will force up prices.

When reviewing electricity prices in the middle of last year, IPART allowed rises of up to 36 per cent over the three years to 2012, warning prices would rise by as much as 60 per cent if the earlier planned carbon tax under consideration by former prime minister Kevin Rudd was introduced.

The likely impact of the carbon tax being considered by Prime Minister Julia Gillard on power prices is not yet clear, since no decision has been taken on the likely carbon price.

The state government said earlier the electricity companies would not pass on the blow-out in the cost of the government's solar panel scheme to households, instead raiding money from the Climate Change Fund to pay for the impact of these costs.

Under the latest changes, residential customers of EnergyAustralia will face rises of 17.9 per cent from July 1 (or $1513 over a year), Integral Energy 16.4 per cent ( $1619 over a year) and Country Energy 18.1per cent ($2063 over a year).

What can you do? Well, nothing about the rises, but you CAN start reducing your power usage by using some simple devices that can really reduce your bills. Click on this link to find out more:

http://www.greendemon.com.au/electricalenergysavingenergysavingdevices-c-12_53.html