The packaging directive are not met

Several environmental organizations have submitted a formal complaint with the European Environment Commissioner by what they see as serious irregularities in packaging data recycled Spain delivered to the European Union.

Recycling containers

Associations that have reported this fact are tothe Earth migos, ecologists in action, Ecologistes of GOB, Greenpeace, Catalunya and Fundación Global Nature. According to these environmental organizations the real figures are lower than that officially recycles our country.

Recycling of paper

Along with the complaint they claim to the Commissioner of the environment to open an investigation to determine whether there had been irregularities in these data.

They argue that most of these data come from government agencies really have no systems to have a reliable calculation of the amounts collected.

Truck collected waste

In addition could be including, calculation recycled packaging tons of other materials which do not fall within this classification such as paper and cardboard, resulting materials of incineration can not distinguish if really are packaging and even have including data goods recycled through the traditional Metalworkers.

Many other materials that are collected in specific containers for the recycling of packaging waste would not correspond to this type of material and on the other hand if they are counted in the figures for collected material. The data for this circumstance are around 2% in the case of the glass and up to 25% in light packaging. These materials are separated into recycling plants that can not be recycled for what it should not be counted.

More Oil From Macondo?

Oil Spill From BP's Deepwater Horizon Macondo Field Disaster

The Macondo Prospect, where British Petroleum’s ill fated offshore drill rig exploded and sank last year killing eleven men is a reservoir of oil in the Mississippi Canyon area of the northern Gulf of Mexico about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast.

The rig was actually owned by Transocean, built by South Korean giant Hyundai and under lease to BP at the time of its catastrophic demise. In the high stakes world of oil poker, details of ownership and registry are kept deliberately muddied and overly complex, the better to avoid taxes, laws and other liability and responsibilities.

The prospect which BP bid on in 2008 was estimated to contain 50 million barrels of oil which sounds like quite a lot. Sold at current prices that amount of oil would bring bring in gross revenue of 5 billion dollars and that’s just the cost of the crude. Major oil companies also own the pipelines, refineries and the gas pumps where we go to fill our tanks and pick up a six pack so in addition to the profits at the well they make great chunks of money all the way downstream to our front door and beyond.

50 million barrels of oil is about what we use in this country every 60 hours. That’s right, we use about twenty million barrels every day. The eleven dead, the despoliation of 500 miles of the Gulf’s coast, the crippling of the fishing and tourist industries, the physical destruction of people and wildlife, the damage to their lives and their future well being was all about keeping us cruising the roads and cursing at bubble packaging for a long weekend.

A year ago the NOAA, the Coast Guard, the administration and, of course, BP was telling us that the oil was 70% gone and they were working very hard to make things right. I don’t have to crawl very far out on the limb to say that they were lying then and they continue to lie today.

In the world of business, they’ve grown so accustomed to lying that the truth is no longer necessary.

The oil, BP’s crude gate crasher, appears to be back. In addition to the continual beaching of tarballs from the missing oil at the roiled bottom of the Gulf, expected with the onset of another season of warming waters, tropical storms, and hurricane activity it appears that something is leaking large in the vicinity of the Deepwater Horizon well.

According to an article in Al Jazeera “The return of the BP disaster? “on Thursday, reporting on animal rescue organization Wings of Care and in another piece this morning “Oil Still Gushing From BP Well In Gulf,” September, the most active month of hurricane season is likely to begin uncovering the ugly truth.

It is entirely possible that the coalition of irresponsible and incompetent corporations who gave us the tragic deaths of eleven men and the worst oil spill in our history are no more capable of safely capping a well than they are of safely drilling one, transporting its products, or refining them. They are after all, to be found spilling, gushing, leaking, spraying and otherwise carelessly spewing crude oil all over the Earth.

The reports come at us every month, from the Gulf, Alaska, the North Sea, small towns in Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania and from the Yellowstone River. There is no place on earth that these greaseheads will not despoil and are not actively and zealously engaged in destroying. Make a note that these are only the events that get reported or otherwise discovered.

Following the reports linked above, BP is already making noises about “natural oil seeps,” the expression being a large part of the literature that comprises their canned media response.

It’s likely that 60-70 percent of the oil from last year’s spill, rather than conveniently disappearing is laying on the bottom of the Northern Gulf mixed with toxic Corexit. Just laying in wait for a direct hit by something on the scale of last month’s Irene, to spread its filthy fingers all over the southern coast.

As for the current leaks being from natural seeps, I don’t know, but I don’t buy it. There are 4000 active oil and gas platforms in the Gulf and 27,000 that have been plugged and abandoned by actors like BP.

In addition to BP’s giant screw up in the Macondo prospect, the Deepwater Horizon disaster, that’s a lot of unnatural holes.

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Need Rain? Try Lasers

Desperate people have tried everything from firing cannons into the sky to lacing clouds with silver iodide. Now researchers have attempted to make it rain with lasers.

On the banks of the Rhone River in 2009 and 2010, Swiss researchers fired ultrashort pulses of a powerful mobile laser into the sky 28 different times. The laser shots created nanometer-sized particles in the air. These particles then allowed water molecules to bind together, forming droplets and avoiding re-evaporation.

The researchers reported their results in the online journal Nature Communications.

The droplets were too small to fall as rain, perhaps because the laser just wasn't strong enough or did not hit enough material in the sky. But the scientists note that their technique might also be used to prevent rain, by creating more of the smaller water droplets that stay airborne. And the laser system apparently works in temperatures ranging from 2 degrees Celsius up to 36 degrees C, though the laser bursts become less effective as it gets warmer.

Of course, this finding is preliminary. But, given crippling drought in Texas and catastrophic rains in Vermont, controlling the weather--especially rain--remains an attractive prospect for a laser light show.

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Mitsubishi Building Green in the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor

The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor is an ambitious project, and it’s no surprise that Japan wanted in. One of its companies slated to participate in construction projects is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. MHI’s angle is the promotion of eco-friendly cities – which it calls “Smart Communities” – built from the ground up. MHI is currently conducting studies on economic feasibility along with India’s leading business conglomerate, the Tata Group.

The idea is to proceed with the infrastructure development project somewhere within the massive area between Delhi and Mumbai. MHI submitted its initial report at the end of 2010, which must have been favorable — companies in Gujarat in northwest India became local partners in the venture and accelerated it considerably. MHI will further assess the feasibility of constructing such eco-friendly cities in Japan at the request of the Ministry of Economy.

What will they build? Construction will include such projects as industrial parks, power plants, airports, ports, railways, roads, and other commercial facilities. Research will be conducted on energy conservation and energy management systems for factories, wastewater disposal systems (also for factories), energy storage systems, the construction and use of electric vehicles, and use of solar power. MHI will also look into reducing CO2 emissions. All told, the investment will total about $90 billion USD.

MHI will summarize its study results in March of 2012 — at which point Japan may or may not start building smart communities of its own.

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NREL Data Set Shows Clouds’ Effect on Solar Power System in 1-Second Intervals

Photo credit: Saving Oahu's Solar LLC

The US Dept. of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has produced and made publicly available a data set that shows in greater than ever detail the effect of clouds passing over a solar PV power installation. The data set captures second-by-second over the course of one year the effects of clouds passing over 17 measurement stations near Hawaii’s International Airport on Oahu.

The extremely granular nature of the data set can provide utilities, solar PV system operators and project developers, researchers, forecasters and others empirical data in heretofore unobtainable detail on the effects clouds have on the power output and overall performance of solar PV installations. This can in turn enable them to construct models that can help them forecast electrical power output based on varying cloud conditions and help manage fluctuations in the flow of electricity.

‘What happens when clouds pass between the sun and a large solar PV installation?’ and ‘How much is lost in the effort to convert the sun’s photons into electrons for electricity?’ were questions that remain largely unanswered until recently, NREL points out in a press release. The information in the NREL data set can be used to predict probable PV power outputs at 1-second intervals for medium- and large-scale installations.

Smoothing out fluctuations in voltage are critical to ensuring stable, grid-quality flows of electricity. Solar PV system operators can stabilize electricity flows by storing electricity or by using infrastructure and software packages, according to NREL.

“Clouds can cause pretty significant jumps or ramps over a very short period of time,” NREL senior scientist David Renne noted, adding that as solar power becomes a bigger part of the energy mix, such jumps can cause fluctuations in the grid, which can cause surges, fluctuations, and headaches for the utility operator if unmitigated.

Researchers from NREL’s Solar Radiation Research Laboratory designed the equipment so that a global positioning satellite system can be used to provide concurrent 1-second measurements for each of the 17 stations, a degree of precision necessary as solar PV systems respond quickly to shadows, Renne explained.

Funded by the DoE in support of the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative (HCEI), the measurement system and data set enabled the NREL team “to set up a solar-monitoring network that simulates exactly how clouds would impact a large photovoltaic system,” that can be used to model solar PV systems’ output for installations as large as 30 megawatts (MW), Renne said.

“The time-synch data are unique. All 17 stations make a 1-second measurement at exactly the same time. This allows the array to ‘see’ clouds moving through and simulates how a PV system might behave. Each of the 17 measurement stations measure the solar energy in the sun’s visible spectrum that reaches a horizontal surface at ground level.”

In addition, very large arrays of solar PV panels smooth out fluctuations caused by cloud shadows to a greater degree than is the case for single panels of small rooftop arrays, the research team found.

The data was collected for the Oahu Solar Energy Study, the partners of which include HCEI, General Electric, the Hawaiian Electric Company and the Hawaiian National Energy Institute.

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U.S. Campus Microgrids

Hurricane Irene, which knocked out power for approximately six million customers in 13 states and the District of Columbia last week, raises a question: What smart grid technology could have enabled homes, businesses, and mission critical institutions to have played a more vital role in providing reliability, security, and emergency services?

The simple answer is a microgrid, as all of the sensors and sophisticated IT systems that been receiving so much hype would have, for the most part, been rendered useless once power went out. As this moniker implies, a microgrid is a small version of the larger utility grid, but with an important distinction. When there is an emergency – whether that is a huge storm or a terrorist attack – microgrids can keep the lights on, maintaining power internally by sealing themselves off from the large grid, creating islands of energy self-sufficiency.

That’s one reason the U.S. military is so enamored by the technology. In terms of actual online capacity, however, it is college and university campuses that are leading the way, according to a new report from Pike Research. By 2017, for example, Pike Research forecasts the North American education campus environment segment will reach 1,281 MW at a CAGR (2011-2017) of 17.5% in the average scenario. Overall, the North American campus environment sector will reach 1,572 MW out of a global total of 1,642 MW, a world market share that exceeds 95% in the same average scenario.

Typically, these educational institutions already manage energy in a comprehensive way, often integrating within the confines of existing technology for on-site electric and thermal generation and loads. Thus, the leap up to a microgrid configuration is the next logical step in achieving greater autonomy and control of energy futures for these financially secure enterprises. This sector is the largest of the global microgrid market sectors. Like the military sector, it is also dominated by the United States. Annual revenue is projected to reach almost $800 million by 2017 in Pike Research’s average scenario.

One of the two leading states for campus environment microgrids is New York, where three such microgrids have come online since 2009:

The 38 MW Cornell University microgrid

The 13.4 MW New York University Washington Square Park microgrid

The 3.6 MW Burrstone Energy Center microgrid (which encompasses Utica College, and St. Luke’s Hospital and Nursing Home)

Indeed, New York City, due to transmission constraints and a utility – Consolidated Edison – that views microgrids as an opportunity to sell natural gas to combined heat and power (CHP) units, may be the best single urban market for microgrids in the world. The impacts of Irene throughout Con Ed’s service territory may only accelerate efforts to expand this energy management platform through the Eastern seaboard, as well as throughout the United States where hurricanes can cut traditional power supplies.

Nevertheless, the most active state market for this college microgrid segment is on the other side of the country. The 23-campus California State University (CSU) system has, for example, adopted policies mandating renewable energy purchases and installations, conservation, and green buildings. At present, virtually all of the CSU campuses feature some form of a microgrid, though most are fairly primitive, first generation manual systems. At least four CSU campuses are currently entertaining proposals to develop state-of-the-art microgrids incorporating carbon-free renewable distributed energy generation (RDEG), as well as smart grid demand response (DR) and other energy efficiency upgrades.

The vision of General Microgrids, which is negotiating to develop the first four CSU microgrid upgrades incorporating new RDEG, CHP, fuel cell, and advanced storage systems, is to develop a network of microgrids that could serve as the basis for a secondary market for grid operators such as the California Independent System Operator (CAISO). Under this compelling but provocative vision, microgrids can protect and service the larger utility-operated grid and cooperate with adjacent microgrids. Moreover, these microgrids can work independently as well as aggregate their capabilities, thereby becoming integrated systems.

Note that meeting California’s 33% by 2020 Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) goals will require 20,000 MW of new generation capacity. Governor Jerry Brown has signaled that roughly 12,000 MW of this total could be distributed renewable energy resources, an extremely difficult integration challenge for CAISO. Certainly, distribution utilities, primarily the investor-owned utilities (IOUs), have no capability to leverage their distribution circuits in the same fashion as transmission circuits, providing two-way power flow. Thus, to reduce the risks attached to integrating distributed renewables, storage, and load management, General Microgrids is offering the concept of building a secondary market for microgrids, adjacent to CAISO, to support grid reliability. The CSU system could serve as the backbone of this groundbreaking aggregation and optimization network.

Yet according to Len Pettis, Chief of Energy and Utility Operations in CSU’s Chancellor’s office, it is utilities that are standing in the way of progress. He gave this quick example: “A stand-by service charge by a utility is worthless in time of a natural disaster and is a luxury we can no longer afford.” These charges are often rendered by utilities under the presumption that they need to back-up any on-site customer owned power supplies due to their legal obligation to serve. But these charges are also used to make alternatives to utility service uneconomic. During a storm or earthquake, utilities often cannot provide back-up as that is when their grid is most likely to go down.

“We need to develop contract partnerships with utilities, because we’ll be here for decades to come,” said Pettis, noting that at present, CSU is doing grid upgrades on a piecemeal basis. “Instead, our college campus network could integrate excess capacity and islanding functions and solve many of the problems linked with integration of new renewables for the next two decades. We’ve got the technology, but we have a bunch of knuckleheads in Sacramento and San Francisco,” he added, referring to the locations of the State Legislature and California Public Utilities Commission, respectively. With the right regulations in place, college campuses could add two to three times as much new supply as needed on-site, and then export that power locally within the community, reducing the 15% of power lost today due to long-distance transmission of electricity.

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Photovoltaics Among Fastest Growing Industries In The World

The tenth edition of the JRC PV Status Report indicates that in 2010, the photovoltaic (PV) industry production more than doubled and reached a world-wide production volume of 23.5 gigawatt (GW) of photovoltaic modules. Since 1990, photovoltaic module production has increased more than 500-fold from 46 megawatts (MW) to 23.5 GW in 2010, which makes photovoltaics one of the fastest-growing industries at present.

Photovoltaics is a method of generating electrical power by converting solar radiation into direct current electricity . It is one of the most promising technological options to realise the shift to a decarbonised energy supply.

Current solar cell technologies are well established with sufficient efficiency and energy output for at least 25 years of lifetime. This reliability, in addition to the increasing potential of electricity interruption from grid overloads, and the rise of electricity prices from conventional energy sources, add to the attractiveness of photovoltaic systems.

In 2010, the world-wide photovoltaic production more than doubled, driven by major increases in Europe. For 2010 the annual market volume of newly-installed solar photovoltaic electricity systems varies between 17 and 19 GW, depending on estimates. This represents mostly the grid-connected photovoltaic market, as there are no reliable estimates available for the non grid-connected market. The report, published by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) shows that with a cumulative installed capacity of over 29 GW, the European Union is leading in PV installations. By the end of 2010, European photovoltaic installations provided more than 70% of the total world-wide solar photovoltaic electricity generation capacity.

The photovoltaic industry has changed dramatically over the last few years. China has become the major manufacturing centre for solar cells and modules followed by Taiwan, Germany and Japan. Amongst the twenty biggest photovoltaic manufacturers in 2010, only four had production facilities in Europe, namely First Solar (USA, Germany, Malaysia, Vietnam), Q-Cells (Germany and Malaysia), REC (Norway and Singapore) and Solarworld (Germany and USA).

A special feature is the dramatic price reduction for solar modules by almost 50% over the last three years. This can be explained by the evolution from a supply to a demand-driven market and the resulting over-capacity for solar modules. Business analysts predict that investments in PV technology could double from € 35-40 billion in 2010 to over € 70 billion in 2015, while they expect prices for consumers to continuously decrease.

Even with current economic difficulties, the number of market implementation programmes is still increasing world-wide. Examples of such measures to promote the use of PV technology include renewable portfolio standards, and feed-in tariff tax incentives. Coupled with the overall rising energy prices and pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this will continue to keep demand for solar systems high.

In the long-term, growth rates for photovoltaics are expected to remain high. The study concludes that in order to maintain the high growth rate of the photovoltaic industry, different pathways have to be pursued. There is a need to reduce the material consumption per silicon solar cell because the cost of silicon is one of the main price factors of such solar cells. In parallel, the manufacturing of thin-film solar cells should be increased and the introduction of concentrated photovoltaics (CPVs) should be accelerated. Concentrated photovoltaics (CPVs) is a new technology which substitutes semi-conductor material with cheaper concentrating lenses, typically of plastics.>

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