The Cement Sustainability Initiative (CSI), whose 18 members produce about 30 percent of the world’s cement, has unveiled its vision of a "sectoral approach" to tackling carbon dioxide.

The cement industry contributes about 5 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and is expected to double its capacity by 2030 because of the rapid urbanization in developing countries.

CSI has developed a system for monitoring, reporting and verifying carbon dioxide emissions and aims to share technology and best practice for cutting those emissions. They claim that the proposed system could reduce emissions by as much as 25%, compared to taking no action.

Cement is made by heating limestone with clay minerals to produce an intermediate product called clinker. This process releases large amounts of carbon dioxide.

The CSI initiative would replace this clinker with residues from steel production and coal-fired power stations. Further cuts would be made by using biofuels to generate heat and by burying carbon dioxide using carbon capture and storage technologies.

Many environmentalists view industry initiatives such as this with skepticism after numerous voluntary agreements have failed to achieve significant results.

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A $US1 billion proposal to build the United States’ first big offshore wind farm passed a key hurdle on Thursday by winning permit requirements in Massachusetts, where iopposition from some influential residents had stalled the project for more than seven years.

Cape Wind Associates plans to construct 130 wind turbines over an area of 62 square kilometres in Nantucket Sound, within view of the wealthy Cape Cod resort region of Massachusetts.

The project, designed to power about 400,000 homes, won unanimous approval from the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board for a "composite certificate" that combines the nine state and local permits needed for the project. The project now requires final approval from Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar.

The breakthrough follows last months’ issuing of long-delayed guidelines from the U.S. Interior Departmentis for leasing offshore areas for renewable energy production.

For some of the background to the proposal, see this Daily Show segment from August 2997:

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While most car makers have been announcing their grand plans for electric and hybrid cars, Fuji Heavy Industries which own Subaru, has been noticeably silent.

It seems that Fuji wanted to produce a hybrid Subaru based on Toyota’s technology. Toyota is the largest shareholder in Subaru with a 16% stake and the two companies have a long-standing agreement to share development costs. However, Toyota was very reluctant to share the technology which has made the Prius the market leader.

That attitude seems to have changed now that all manufacturers will have to produce more efficient vehicles if they are to participate in the American market.

Fuji has announced that it will be releasing a hybrid model, using Toyota’s technology, in 2012 as well as a fuel-efficient diesel model in 2011 or 2012.

Subaru is also testing an electric car with a range extending petrol motor, the R1e, which is similar in size to the Smart car and has a range of 80 kilometres on batteries alone.

(Based on sources including The Japan Times

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Car sales in China in April were 25 per cent higher than in the same month last year - and for the third month in a row, car sales in China exceeded those in the United States.

The sales boom has been attributed to the Government’s halving of sales tax on small, fuel efficient cars.

One of the beneficiencies of the sales boom has been General Motors’ Chinese subsidiary whose monthly sales were 50 percent higher than last year.

Results such as this have led to speculation that Chinese car companies are seeking to take over Western car manufacturers at current bargain prices. Chinese manufacturers have tried to dampen this speculation by issuing official denials that they are bidding to buy Ford’s Volvo and General Motor’s Saab divisions. However, Chinese companies have already purchaseed the Australian gearbox manufacturer, Drivetrain Systems, and the French diesel engine manufacturer, Moteurs Baudouin  Meanwhile, the Indian Tata Motors has acquired Jaguar and Land Rover.

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Three French designers, Nicola Delon, Julien Choppin and Raphael Menard, have won Metropolis Magazine’s 2009 Next Generation contest with the simple idea of instaling wind turbines on, or inside of, high-voltage electricity transmission towers.

Although their suggestion of putting vertical axis turbines inside the structure of transmission towers may not be the most effective design, combining power generation with transmission would avoid the cost of having to build the infrastructure to bring power from the generators to the distribution grid.

“There are half a million pylons already in France,”  Raohael Ménard says. “If you look to other countries, there are tens of millions. Even if the power is tiny, as soon as you integrate it like that, it creates big, big energy.” The team estimates that if a third of France’s high-voltage electricity towers were renovated with turbines, they could rival the power generation of two nuclear reactors, or about 5 percent of the country’s energy needs.

Alex­andros Washburn, New York’s chief urban designer and a judge for the competition, commented that “The genius of the proposal is that it solved probably the biggest issue of wind production,” says  “which is where to locate these very large structures. By incorporating them into transmission towers, which are already located and of the same scale as wind towers, the idea of how it looks on the landscape is very cleverly integrated.”

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Cisco Systems Vice President, Marie Hattar, estimates that the "smart grid" could be 100 times, or even 1,000 times, the present size of the Internet.

The smart grid is a modernised electricity network which would deliver electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability. Over time, people’s homes will have sensors in appliances, which will give detailed information to help cut electricity usage and help utilities avoid stressing the grid during peak times.

Cisco Systems estimates that just the communications portion of building smart grids will be worth $20 billion a year over the next five years. The company, whose networking equipment is installed in all corners of the Internet, intends to make communications equipment for the electricity grid - everything from routers in grid substations to home energy controllers.

"Our expectation is that this network will be 100 or 1,000 times larger than the Internet. If you think about it, some homes have Internet access, but some don’t. Everyone has electricity access - all of those homes could potentially be connected," Marie Hattar said.

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Researchers in the UK are developing a rechargeable lithium-air battery that could deliver a ten-fold increase in energy capacity compared to that of currently available lithium-ion cells. The research at the University of St Andrews, with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle, is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council,

Lithium-air batteries use a catalytic air cathode in combination with an electrolyte and a lithium anode. Oxygen from the air is the active material for the cathode and is reduced at the cathode surface.

According to Professor Peter Bruce of the Chemistry Department at the University of St Andrews, "The key is to use oxygen in the air as a re-agent, rather than carry the necessary chemicals around inside the battery. Our target is to get a five to ten fold increase in storage capacity, which is beyond the horizon of current lithium batteries. Our results so far are very encouraging and have far exceeded our expectations."

Professor Bruce estimates that it will be at least five years before the batteries are commercially available.

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A new wind turbine going into production in Germany this week is expected to achieve 20% greater yield simply by having a taller tower.

The novel tower has been installed at Germany’s Windtest field at Grevenbroich, near Cologne.

The lower section of the tower consists of narrow concrete pre-fabricated parts while the upper 55 metres is conventional steel components. On top of the tower is a 2.3 megawatt nacelle with a 93 meter diameter rotor. The arrangement gives a hub height of 133 meters whereas a conventional tower with a rotor of this size would be 100 metres tall. The system has an overall height of 180 meters.

The tower has been built by Advanced Tower Systems who say that the additional construction costs should be recouped within four years. More than 20 of the tall towers are planned for construction before the end of next year.

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Better Place has released the video below demonstrating its battery swapping process.

Better Place is planning a network of charging stations and battery swap facilities in Israel, Denmark, Australia and the United States. See this article at Aussie Renewables for more details.

The battery swap demonstration at Yokohama took 1 minute and 13 seconds. Power to recharge the batteries was drawn from photovoltaic panels.

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The world’s largest offshore wind farm, the London Array, will begin construction this northern summer after the British government doubled its incentives for offshore wind energy.

The project had been in doubt after Royal Dutch Shell pulled out of the scheme last year because of rising costs, leaving Denmark’s DONG Energy with a 50 percent stake and Germany’s E.ON with 30 percent. Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy fund, Masdar, has taken the remaining 20 percent. The project partners have now announced that they will invest 2.2 billion euros ($au4 billion) in building the first phase of the project.

The London Array wind farm will be built on a 230 square kilometre area, 19 kilometres off the coasts of Kent and Essex. The first phase will consist of 175 turbines built by Siemens AG to be completed in time to power the London Olympics in 2012. The second phase will take the farm to 1,000 megawatts - enough power for 750,000 homes.

DONG’s CEO, Anders Eldrup, said "The decision to build the London Array offshore wind farm is a cornerstone in DONG Energy’s strategy to increase the proportion of electricity generated from renewable energy sources. DONG Energy has built approximately half of all offshore wind farms in operation in the world today."

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