New research shows that forests have the potential to earn substantially more from carbon offsetting if they are left intact.

Carbon trading could be the key to stopping the destruction of the rainforests, a new report claims. According to Telegraph.co.uk, in the past deforestation has been driven by the belief that a forest was worth more dead than alive.
But new research shows that the forests have the potential to earn substantially more from carbon offsetting if they are left intact.
Research for the Partnership for Tropical Forest Margins showed that forests torn down to make way for agriculture earned between $1-$5 per ton of carbon they released.`
But traders in the emerging European carbon market were currently paying up to five times that amount--$35--for an offset tied to a one-ton reduction in carbon.
The new research, issued to coincide with the Bali climate summit, said the comparison was important because industries in developed countries were looking to spend billions of dollars on carbon credits to meet new requirements for curbing greenhouse gases.
The study examined the money made from deforestation over the last 10-20 years in areas of Southeast Asia, Central Africa and the Amazon Basin which was mostly driven by the desire for farm land or timber.
Brent Swallow, leader of the study and Global Coordinator of the Partnership for Tropical Forest Margins, said: “Deforestation is almost always driven by a rational response to what the market values and for some time now, it has just made more financial sense to many people in forested areas to cut down the trees.
“What we discovered is that returns for deforestation are generally so paltry that if farmers and other land users were rewarded for the carbon stored in their trees and forests, it is highly likely that a large amount of deforestation and carbon emissions would be prevented.“
Halting deforestation, responsible for 20 per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions, is high on the agenda at Bali.
Confusion over how to value and monitor the large amounts of carbon stored in tropical forests has so far prevented forests being included in the carbon offset market.
Meine van Noordwijk, Southeast Asia Regional Coordinator of the World Agroforestry Center, said: “We understand that allowing people in forested regions of developing countries to participate in carbon markets presents major challenges, but it’s naive to think that conservation is going to occur absent a market incentive.
“Everyone has a stake in finding a way to make it work because it’s hard to see how any global effort to combat climate change will succeed if it ignores a major source of the problem.“
The study examined the trade-offs between carbon and financial returns in three areas in Indonesia, and one area each in Peru and Cameroon, all of which have undergone extensive deforestation.
They found that in most instances at the sites in Indonesia, deforestation returned less than $5 per ton of carbon released and in some areas, less than $1. In forested areas rich in peat, which is particularly efficient at trapping carbon, the figure was about $0.10 to $0.20 per ton.
An analysis of deforestation in the Amazonian forests of the Ucayali Province of Peru produced similar results. Most of the deforestation, which was mainly driven by a desire for crop land, generated less than US $5 per ton of carbon released.
The Cameroon study sites produced a better return. Deforestation returns about US $11 per ton of carbon emissions, which was mainly due to an increase in secondary forest and the fact that in Cameroon, cocoa production-which elsewhere has decimated tropical forests-has tended to occur within forests, and resulted in more in forest degradation than outright deforestation.
The study claimed that paying for the preservation of the rainforests not only encouraged conservation but could also help recoup some of the carbon already lost to deforestation through sustainable agriculture.
Dennis Garrity, Director General of the Nairobi, Kenya-based World Agroforestry Centre said that, “Not only does agroforestry have the potential to store carbon, it also addresses the need for alternative livelihoods amongst populations who currently benefit from deforestation.“
The report said that establishing a forest-based carbon market would be complicated.
Frances Seymour, Director General of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) based in Indonesia, said: “The challenge will be to ensure that payments for maintaining forests actually reach local people, and do not end up in the wrong pockets.
“For the system to be effective, we will need new mechanisms for allocating payments that are efficient as well as fair.“

It was during his State of the Union speech in 2003 that President George W. Bush laid out a challenge: Hydrogen-powered cars should be on showroom floors by the time babies born that year reach driving age.
Frequently labeled the Holy Grail of energy resources, hydrogen promises to one day help America kick its oil habit and clean up the environment. It is the most abundant chemical element and emits no greenhouse gases, only energy and water, BND.com reported.
But myriad technical hurdles remain to get hydrogen technology out of the lab and into driveways. Among those is making sure there is infrastructure to generate, handle and distribute the fuel, said John Sheffield, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla.
To help tackle those challenges, UMR is taking part in a public-private effort to establish Missouri’s first permanent hydrogen fueling station and using a pair of hydrogen-powered shuttle buses to transport soldiers along a 55-mile stretch of Interstate 44 between Rolla and Lebanon beginning next year.
The university received the twin E-450 Ford buses this summer. For now, it is using them to shuttle UMR students around campus.
The buses look not unlike those you would ride from the airport terminal to the rental car counter except for the bulky backside, where six cylindrical hydrogen tanks are stacked. In fact, the vans have modified internal-combustion engines, not fuel cells, to make sure they can meet the demands of constant travel up and down the interstate.
“We didn’t think the (fuel cell) power trains were ready to haul passengers up and down the Ozark hills at 70 mph,“ said Stephen Tupper, the university’s liaison to Fort Leonard Wood.
Because hydrogen isn’t available at the corner gas station, a portable fueling station a large trailer with several large tanks of pressurized hydrogen is kept in a parking lot at HyPoint Industrial Park just outside of Rolla. The trailer, supplied by Pennsylvania-based Air Products and Chemicals Inc., must be replaced with a new one once a month, delivered from Houston or Delaware.
Plans are to have a permanent fueling station established next year where hydrogen will be produced on site. While hydrogen is abundant in the universe, it doesn’t exist in free form, so it must be extracted from water or fossil fuels. UMR researchers say taking hydrogen from water via electrolysis is too expensive right now, so they’ll use natural gas.
An exact site for the station hasn’t been chosen, but it likely will be at the industrial park or near Fort Leonard Wood in St. Robert.
The project will benefit everyone, researchers say. Ford and Air Products are being remotely fed real-time information on how their equipment performs. And UMR, which becomes Missouri University of Science and Technology on Jan. 1, will get access to the same data to further its own research.
“We get information that Ford would not share with other people,“ Sheffield said.

In countries keen to reduce emissions and dependency on fossil fuels, offshore is the place to invest

Nearly 19,000 wind turbines cover Germany: dotted across the countryside, nudging to the edge of cities and whirring alongside motorways.
They generate 5 percent of Germany’s electricity--more than in any other country in the world. But with the best plots already taken, there are now few spaces left where companies are allowed to build more. And it’s not just a German problem.
“There’s not that much empty land space,“ said Steve Sawyer, secretary-general of the Global Wind Energy Council, which represents the industry. “Northern Europe is this little, crowded peninsula on the western tip of Asia with an awful lot of people, Reuters reported.
“The next big phase of development in places like Germany and Holland will be offshore, where the resources are so much better.“
With a target of generating around 30 percent of its electricity using renewable energy sources by 2020, Germany is one of several countries where investment is being poured into offshore wind technology. The first large sites are planned for next year in the North and Baltic seas.
In countries keen to reduce emissions and dependency on fossil fuels, offshore is the place to invest, analysts say.
Thanks to offshore investment, Germany’s environment ministry predicts wind power could generate around a third of electricity by 2030, more than currently generated using gas.
The country’s engineering association estimates there is 50 billion euros ($74.31 billion) worth of potential investment in offshore wind.
“At the moment I would buy German offshore wind projects,“ said associate William Young at consultant New Energy Finance. “There’s a sea-change going on in offshore at the moment which could allow some good money to be made for people who are willing to take calculated risks.“
It is not just a question of space. Offshore turbines can also work harder, generating at full capacity up to 50 percent of the time. Sheltered onshore turbines work at full tilt around 20 percent of the time.
In Britain, where around 1.5 percent of electricity is produced by wind, opposition to 50 meter-tall turbines near homes has meant companies are also looking out to sea.
“The land-grab has happened,“ said John-Marc Bunce, alternative energy analyst at broker Ambrian Partners.
“In places like the UK there was never really enough land anyway and the government was crazy thinking anyone would want to have a wind turbine next to their house.“
Also, as the European Union makes emitting carbon more costly, utilities once wary of investing in renewables are taking note. Under EU rules, companies have to buy extra emissions permits if they produce too much harmful carbon dioxide, making polluting more expensive.
Germany’s biggest power producer, RWE, said last month it plans to quadruple its generating capacity from renewables, investing 1 billion euros annually from 2008, mainly in onshore and offshore wind.
In countries which have space on land, investment is also wise, Bunce says: the United States alone could supply most of the world’s wind power growth in the next five years.
Recent research supports the theoretical potential of wind power.
Stanford University researchers have found that if only 20 percent of the world’s wind power could be captured, it would satisfy 100 percent of energy demands for all purposes and over seven times its electricity needs.
But offshore wind is not without drawbacks, and over the longer term, it could be upstaged by other sources.
“It costs a lot more and it’s a lot more difficult. The development of offshore technology is in the same place that onshore wind industry was eight, 10 years ago,“ said Sawyer at the Global Wind Energy Council.
Offshore turbines have to be installed and maintained in much harsher conditions, and while they can be bigger and more powerful, they need to be extra reliable.
“It’s almost like designing a ship. You can’t afford to have a 5 million euro machine standing offshore, and some 25-cent part breaks and have it sitting idle for a month,“ Sawyer said.
Germany is seeking to “repower“ its onshore sites with new, more powerful turbines and with offshore being riskier, it is wise to invest in other technologies too, analysts say.