Monthly Archives: May 2010

China clean energy goal will require hydro projects: official

Posted on by
Reply

Reuters in Beijing

(Reuters) - China will not achieve its clean energy development targets for 2020 unless it starts building big hydropower projects soon, China’s top energy official said, supporting industry calls for fast project approvals.

“For new hydropower projects to play a role in China’s move toward energy saving and emission reduction in 2020, their construction must be started before 2015,” Zhang Guobao, head of the National Energy Administration, said in remarks published on Monday.

“Considering current hydropower capacity, projects under construction, and building cycles, China needs to start building around 120 gigawatts (GW) of hydropower projects in the six years through 2015,” said Zhang, who is also a deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission, which is in charge of approving large projects.

China has 197 GW of hydropower generating capacity, or 23 percent of its total installation. Coal is the source of more than three quarters of electricity.

China pledged ahead of the Copenhagen summit last year that it would cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of national income by 40-45 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels.

The world’s top emitter of the gas also aimed to boost the proportion of non-fossil fuels in overall energy consumption to 15 percent by 2020.

Read article…

Visit Reuters

25 Years of Protecting Rivers and Rights

Posted on by
Reply

International Rivers was founded in 1985 by people working for social and environmental justice. We work to address destructive dams and their legacies in over 60 countries. Follow International Rivers’ timeline here illustrating key moments in the movement to protect rivers from destructive dams.

Congratulations to all the Staff at International Rivers.

Agatha Weakens Over Central America; Storm Leaves 99 Dead

Posted on by
Reply

By Blake Schmidt for Bloomberg

May 31 (Bloomberg) — Agatha, the first tropical storm of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season, weakened to a tropical depression over the mountains of Guatemala after killing at least 99 people in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Landslides and flooding triggered by Agatha’s rains killed 82 people and left 53 missing mostly in western and central Guatemala, said David de Leon, a spokesman for Guatemala’s national disaster agency. At least 112,000 were moved to shelters as rains near Mexico caused rivers such as the Motagua to flood, he said.

Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes declared a “red alert,” the highest level of emergency, yesterday after rains from Agatha set off at least 140 landslides, according to a statement on the presidential website.

“It rained so much the risk of landslides and river flooding is very high,” Funes said, “The cup is so full that one more drop can be fatal.”

Read article…

Visit Business Week

BP's massive spill threatens Gulf's vast undersea life

Posted on by
Reply

BY RENEE SCHOOF for MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON — As the magnitude of BP’s oil spill becomes clearer, scientists fear the volume of oil, the depth of the leak and the chemical dispersants the company is using will combine to threaten a vast array of undersea life for years.

At risk are such endangered species as Kemp’s ridley sea turtles and the Atlantic bluefin tuna, as well as the Gulf of Mexico’s 8,300 other creatures from plankton to birds. The contamination, some say, is likely to undo years of work that brought some wildlife, such as the brown pelican, back from the brink of extinction.

“It’s probably going to be one of the worst disasters we’ve ever seen,” said Paul Montagna, a professor of ecology at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University in Corpus Christi.

“Instead of creating a typical spill, where the oil goes to the surface and you can scoop it up, this stuff has been distributed throughout the water column, and that means everything, absolutely everything, is being affected,” he said.

Read article…

Visit The Miami Herald

'Top kill' fails, BP moves on 'to next option'

Posted on by
Reply

By the CNN Wire Staff

Robert, Louisiana (CNN) — Three attempts to pump mud and 16 tries to stuff solid material into a breached Gulf of Mexico oil well failed to stop the flow, top BP executives said Saturday, and engineers and executives with the oil giant have decided to “move on to the next option.”

That option: Place a custom-built cap to fit over the “lower marine riser package,” BP chief operation officer Doug Suttles said. BP crews were already at work Saturday to ready the materials for that option, he said.

Suttles said three separate pumping efforts and 30,000 barrels of mud — along with what chief executive officer Tony Hayward described as “16 different bridging material shots” — just didn’t do the trick.

“We have not been able to stop the flow,” a somber Suttles told reporters. ” … Repeated pumping, we don’t believe, will achieve success, so we will move on to the next option.”

Suttles and other officials said that the “top kill” attempt to stop the flow did so — but only as long as they were pumping. When the pumping stopped, the oil resumed its escape. And Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said that BP would resume using undersea dispersants for the new attempt to trap the oil.

Read article… with more links and breaking stories here.

Visit CNN