Daily Archives: December 7, 2006

Brown’s Green Budget?

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Chancellor, Gordon Brown released his pre-budget in the UK. Brown is expected to be the next PM for UK. After the Stern Report on Climate Change, at least the UK seems to be going full-flow on the Green way. It remains to be seen if it is political talk or substance follows.

Brown released his pre-budget report today.

  • From February, air passenger duty will rise from £5 to £10 for most flights.
  • There will be an inflation rise in fuel duty from midnight. The fuel duty escalator will not be restored. The rise will come to 1.25 pence a litre.
  • Tax discounts for biofuels will be extended.
  • From next year, most new carbon-zero homes will be exempt from stamp duty.
  • A further 300,000 households are to be offered free insulation and free central heating.

    • The tories are not happy with his green initiatives, the liberals and greens think he has not gone enough.

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    Warner Bros and the Environment

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    WorldChanging has this wonderful interview with Shelly Billik of Warner Bros. She has been working on the Environmental Initaitives at Warner Bros for 14 years. This is news about Warner Bros for me.

    Shelly Billik says the following:

    So again, it starts with knowing more about your impact. Just like an individual who starts to look at the utility bill at home, or starts to map it on a spreadsheet and sees the month-to-month. And maybe their first step is to change all their lights to compact fluorescents, and maybe they lower their thermostat a little bit, and maybe they shut things off when they leave for the weekend or they leave for work. And then they see their utility bill the next month and they say, wow, that actually did make a difference. So I think there is a financial incentive to be climate neutral because the first step is to minimize what you use, and then you offset. So I think any production that takes advantage of that is going to see some financial benefit as well.

    From my experience in my present job, she just makes so much of sense.

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    Branson’s approach to charity

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    Richard Branson pledged $3 Billion of his profits in the next decade from his transportation businesses to create a environmentally friendly alternate fuel at the Clinton Global Initiative.

    In this interview with Forbes, he explains some of his thinking.

    Forbes.com: Is the prospect of turning over so much profit to finding an alternative energy source at all scary? Is this part of your generation’s mark on society?

    Branson: The generation brought up in the 60s definitely has more of a social conscience than previous generations. And if you’re one of those fortunate people to become extremely wealthy you have a responsibility to utilize that wealth constructively. What you shouldn’t do is leave that money languishing in a bank. What you shouldn’t do is compete to have the biggest yacht or private plane. I think people will get far more satisfaction from making a real difference. Besides, once you’ve had your breakfast, lunch and dinner; you can only live in one kitchen and drive one car at a time.

    Forbes.com: Celebrities, politicians and business people seem like strange bedfellows. Are they?

    Branson: Entrepreneurs and business people are going to make the difference more than politicians. On global warming we desperately need politicians to work with the business community. Arnold Schwarzenegger is giving a good lead in California bringing in bills to speed up alternative energy.

    We’re going to practically attack our own industry with the announcement I made at CGI. Hopefully the paradoxical idea of someone in the transportation business making a statement like we made will inspire others.

    As for politicians, Bush needs to be a leader on this. He still has time to embrace global warming. If he did that, all the damage that has been done in other aspects of his time in office could be overcome by him acknowledging that the world has a problem. Given where he and his vice president have made their money is all the more reason he should do something bold. He must be searching for a legacy.

    Forbes.com: Is this push by business leaders about altruism or marketing?

    Branson: There’s no one reason for people doing things. I’ve always said that I want to build the most respected brand in the world, and if we can send people into space in an environmentally friendly space craft that will help enhance our brand [and] if we can invent an alternative fuel that tackles global warming, that is more effective than ethanol and can one day can be used in airplanes that’ll enhance our brand and tackle global warming — it’ll enable me to sleep better at night.

    Branson is a great guy.

    Tower of Power

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    Business 2.0 has a inspiring story of EnviroMission and its Solar Tower.

    EnviroMission is founded by Roger Davey, a previous stock broker who got interested in this German design. After securing licenses for Australia, US and China he has set about commercializing this technology for many years now.Solartower_01_300x170 It is listed on the ASX.

    The initial plan was to build a 200 MW plant which has been scaled down to 50 MW. The initial tower may have looked like the one on the right side. This could have been the largest man-made building in the world.

    Apart from the risk in the technology, just building the Tower would have been an engineering marvel. However, Davey is confident that this will happen.

    “The tower will be over there,” Davey says, pointing to a spot a mile distant where a 1,600-foot structure will rise from the ocher-colored earth. Picture a 260-foot-diameter cylinder taller than the Sears Tower encircled by a two-mile-diameter transparent canopy at ground level.

    About 8 feet tall at the perimeter, where Davey has his feet planted, the solar collector will gradually slope up to a height of 50 to 60 feet at the tower’s base. If Stanley Kubrick had put a power station in 2001: A Space Odyssey, it would’ve looked like this. Acting as a giant greenhouse, the solar collector will superheat radiation from the sun. Hot air rises, naturally, and the tower will operate as a giant vacuum. As the air is sucked into the tower, it will produce wind to power an array of turbine generators clustered around the structure.

    You can watch the visionary tower in a animation on You Tube.

    [Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sacc3Htnr_g&mode=related&search=]

    The interesting aspect of the program is that Davey is confident that they can compete “with the coal people”. To make his dream possible, Davey is securing support from a varied set of companies and people.

    Davey has also secured the services of Macquarie Bank, one of the country’s most prominent investment banks and a financier of major infrastructure projects in Australia and overseas. Companies like General Electric (Charts) and PPG Industries (Charts) are providing free design services – with the expectation, obviously, that they will win contracts to supply components for the solar tower.

    The latest believers are the Chinese. IN 2002 executives at Xiang Jiang Industrial, a Shanghai developer and construction company, stumbled across press mentions of the project. They flew to Melbourne to meet Davey and learn more about the technology.

    Xiang Jiang subsequently became EnviroMission’s second-largest shareholder when its Australian holding company invested $1 million in EnviroMission and $1 million in SolarMission Technologies, the vehicle for Davey’s U.S. operations.

    The Chinese also invested $8 million in a joint venture with EnviroMission to build and operate solar towers in China. “We truly believe the technology will be successful,” says Yue Tang, a Xiang Jiang director. “Every country needs renewable energy, and China will be a big market.”

    The joint venture has applied to build a 200-megawatt, half-mile-high solar tower outside Shanghai. “We want to build the tallest in the world,” Tang says. “Reaction at all levels of government and from technical officials is all positive, but because this is a new technology, they still need more technical information to get final approval.”

    With a huge renewable energy target China is a great place for staring project like these.

    China’s renewable-energy target represents about 60 gigawatts. Australia’s total energy production is about 45 gigawatts.

    The article also provides some examples of various other renewable energy companies working in Australia and glimpse of how they are struggling to commercialize their technologies in a country where the Federal government has rejected the Kyoto Accord.