A team of engineers at Penn State University has discovered a tiny microbe which can use electricity to directly convert carbon dioxide and water to methane, producing a portable energy source with a potentially neutral carbon footprint.

Methanogenic microorganisms produce methane in marshes and dumps but scientists thought that the organisms turned hydrogen or organic materials, such as acetate, into methane. However, the researchers have now found, while trying to produce hydrogen in microbial electrolysis cells, that their cells produced much more methane than expected.

"We were studying making hydrogen in microbial electrolysis cells and we kept getting all this methane," said Bruce E. Logan, Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering, Penn State. "We may now understand why."

Microbial electrolysis cells require an electrical voltage to be added to the voltage that is produced by bacteria using organic materials to produce current that evolves into hydrogen. The researchers found that archaea, using about the same electrical input, could use the current to convert carbon dioxide and water to methane without any organic material, bacteria or hydrogen usually found in microbial electrolysis cells. 

"We have a microbe that is self perpetuating that can accept electrons directly, and use them to create methane," said Professor Logan.

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Wired magazine has reported that Scientists at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg have developed an improved technique for producing liquid fuel from coal.

The process of producing liquid fuel from coal has already been used on a lage scale - in Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa  It’s not only the regimes that have used it that leads many to see this process as evil. Coal-derived fuel could produce as much as twice as much CO2 as traditional petroleum fuels and at best will emit at least as much of the greenhouse gas

The traditional process uses carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen to produce the liquid hydrocarbons. The new process uses just CO2 and hydrogen. The new production method also allows a lower limit on the amount of energy needed to transform solid coal into fuel. Theoretically, the energy required could be reduced from 1,000 megawatts per 200,000 litres of fuel to 350 megawatts per 2000,000 litres but even a small efficiency gain would make the process competitive with many renewable energy processes.

Pushker Karecha of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies commented that "The bottom line is that there’s one fatal flaw in their proposed process from a climate protection standpoint. It would allow liquid fuel CO2 emissions to continue increasing indefinitely."

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The Chinese government has announced what observers are describing as the most generous and aggressive power subsidy in the world.

China is offerring 20 yuan (about $au4.30) per watt for solar voltaic installations greater than 50 kilowatts. This would amount to about half the cost of the installation.

China has built up a sizeable solar industry based almost entirely on exports but several large-scale domestic solar power projects have been announced in the past year - including a 1 gigawatt power plant in Qinghai’s Qaidam Basin that would be the world’s largest photovoltaic project.

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The unveiling of the new Tesla Model S seems to have signalled the beginning of a new round of electric and hybrid vehicle announcements.

The Tesla Model S is an electric sedan that Tesla says will carry seven passengers and provide more cargo space than any other sedan currently on the market. The reason for the large cargo space is the lack of gears and the location of the battery pack under the floor, leaving space under the bonnet.

The battery pack is designed to be swapped in less time than it would take to fill a petrol tank. Alternatively, the onboard charger allows the battery to be recharged from any standard 120, 240 or 480 volt outlet. Fully charging at a 240 volt outlet takes about four hours but a "quickcharge" can be done in 45 minutes. It has a range of up to 480 kilometres on a full charge, depending on battery options.

The price of the Model S is expected to be $US49,900 (after a $US7,500 tax credit), which is half the price of the original Tesla Roadster. Full production is planned for 2011.

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Scott Heckbert, an environmental economist at the CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems Division in Townsville, estimates that traditional Aboriginal burning practices in Australia’s savannah country could reduce national greenhouse emissions by nearly five megatonnes a year and trigger a $52 million-a-year industry employing 1,000 people.

Despite the huge economic cost of fires in the more populated areas, such as the recent Victorian bushfires, 90 per cent of Australian wildfires actually occur in the continent’s far north. 

Each year large swathes of savannah are deluged by rain during the wet season This boosts the growth of native grasses. Traditionally, Aboriginal people  have burned off these grasses, using relatively small fires lit in a mosaic pattern, early in the dry season in order to create new growth which attracts kangaroos and birds.

Now, the grasses are left to grow and become fuel for uncontrollable fires late in the dry season.

It is estimated that these fires contribute 14 megatonnes of greenhouse emissions a year - 3 per cent of total national emissions.

Recent scientific research has shown traditional burning practices are kinder to biodiversity and emit less carbon.

Mr Heckbert and his colleagues estimate that the greenhouse offsets derived from Indigenous management of savannahs could amount to 4.8 megatonnes. Assuming a carbon price of $20 a tonne, this would bring $52 million in revenue and could create more than 1,000 jobs for Indigenous people.

"Black Burning" by Tooley via Flickr

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 Last July, a Pelamis wave power generator was towed into the Atlantic about 5 kilometres off the coast of Aguçadoura in northern Portugal. In September, two more Pelamis uints were added. Each Pelamis unit was capable of generating about 750 megawatts of electricity - making this the world’s first commercial wave power project.

The project was a joint venture between the Portuguese power utility Energias de Portugal, a Portuguese electrical engineering company Efacec, and the Australian asset manager Babcock & Brown.

The first problem the project encountered was leaks in the foam-filled buoyancy tanks for the mooring installation. These were replaced but further "technical issues" emerged.

Now, Babcock and Brown, which is in voluntary administration, has announced that it cannot provide any futher fuinding and wants to pull out of the project. According to Anthony Kennaway, a Babcock & Brown spokesman "Babcock & Brown are in process of winding down and we’re looking at offers for all our assets. Pelamis is part of that. All our assets are for sale. We are not putting any more money into the project."

There is currently no timetable for returning the generators to sea.

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Californian utility PG&E has expanded an already huge purchase agreement with BrightSource from 900 megawatt of solar thermal power to 1,310 megawatts. BrightSource CEO, John Woolard, said that makes it “the largest solar deal in the world”. Previously, the largest solar contract was for 1,300 megawatts to be supplied by Brightsource to Southern California Edison.

The new deal is for power purchases over 20 years from seven solar thermal projects that will be built in the Mojave desert. The power plants will consist of thousands of sun-tracking mirrors which will focus the sun’s rays on a water-filled boiler sitting on top of a tower. The heat will produce steam to drive a turbine to generate electricity

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Veranda Solar, a Californian company, says it wants to become the Apple of consumer solar products - instead of focusing on a new solar technology or production methods, the company hopes to differentiate itself with its aesthetics and ease of use

Veranda Solar says that its panels are "plug-and-play". They can be installed in minutes, with just a screwdriver and without specialist installers. The ease of installation on balconies and hanging out of windows is designed appeal to sustainably-oriented city dwellers.

Veranda’s solar-power systems are made up of small panels (about 600 millimetres in diameter and generating 60 to 70 watts) with rounded corners, that consumers can install themselves. They fold flat, making them easy to ship, and snap  together. The systems include the panels, inverter and everything else needed to deliver power into a home, and will be certified to plug straight into a standard wall outlet.

The company is seeking $1.5 million to bring its systems to the market.

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MIT materials scientists Byoungwoo Kang & Gerbrand Ceder have published a paper in Nature describing a new battery technology which allows for ultrafast charging and discharging of lithium-ion batteries.  The discovery could lead to cellphone-sized batteries that could be charged in 10 seconds.

"The ability to charge and discharge batteries in a matter of seconds rather than hours may open up new technological applications and induce lifestyle changes," they wrote.

In energy storage, there has always been a trade-off between the amount of energy a material could store and how quickly you could charge and discharge it. Batteries are good at storing energy but getting the energy into and out of them is more difficult. The new battery material solves the problem by applying a special surface coating to the lithium iron phosphate which creates a "fast-lane" for ions to move around the material. This allows the ions to speed around the battery resulting in recharging 100 times more quickly than with current lithium-ion batteries.

Although batteries are notoriously difficult to scale out of the laboratory into production, the scientists believe that the new technology could make it to the market in two to three years. The technology has already been licensed by two manufacturers.

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As the first step in its plan to eliminate all fossil fuel burning cars by 2030, Sweden has announced new taxes on car emissions and on diesel fuel.

From January 2011, vehicle (registration) taxes will be increased by 5 krona (about 90 Australian cents) for every gram of carbon dioxide that the car emits per kilometre traveled above a base of 120 grams per kilometre. (This is slightly more than a Honda Civic Hybrid which emits 109 grams per kilometre.).

"Green" cars, which emit less than 120 grams per kilometre will be completely exempt from vehicle tax for five years. Swedes already get a 10,000 krona ($au1,750) rebate when they buy a "green" car.

Taxes on diesel are to be increased by 0.40 krona (about 8 Australian cents) a litre. Most cars in Sweden run on diesel rather than petrol.

Both actions are part of Sweden’s plan to reduce greenhouse emissions to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. Germany is aiming for a similar reduction with the overall European Union target being a 20% reduction. The Australian government is proposing a 5% target.

Sweden has been one of the most successful countries in reducing greenhouse emissions. It attributes its success to carbon taxes, which were introduced in 1990, rather than carbon trading.

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