Tag Archives: energy
Chinese Buyer Keen To Buy More Kiwi Forest
Published: 6:12PM Wednesday April 24, 2013 Source: BusinessDesk A stack of cut logs. – Source: Photos.com The North Island forest estates are the first step in the Chinese company’s strategy to invest in the local industry and look at other opportunities, it said in a statement. The general manager of China National Forests, Lin Zhan, expects the forestry investment will generate new jobs. “To ensure that the forests are managed to best practice, New Zealand based in-forest suppliers will continue to provide the in-forest services.” “Owning the forestry estate will not likely see any reduction in the purchase of export logs from other New Zealand suppliers,” Wong said. The superannuation fund, known as the Cullen Fund for its architect former Finance Minister Michael Cullen, sought a buyer for the blocks last year, when it valued the estates at some $91.1 million as at June 30. “We see more attractive investment opportunities for our purposes elsewhere,” Whineray said. “We are always working to ensure that we have the best possible mix of investments in the fund.” The Cullen Fund recently upped its stake in the Kaingaroa Forest, which is still the fund’s single biggest asset worth $945.1 million as at March 31, and recently bought a $140 million stake in local IT company Datacom and 11 local dairy farms. Continue reading
China to Complete Climate Change Law Draft in Two Years
18/04/13 China plans to draw on the experience of seven regional carbon markets as it drafts new national legislation in one or two years, according to the country’s lead climate negotiator. The nation, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases linked to global warming, will “actively promote” the legislation, Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman at the National Development and Reform Commission, said today in Beijing. “Shanghai and Shenzhen are trying to set rules for carbon trading,” providing expertise for the nation, he said. China, which surpassed Japan in 2010 to become the world’s second-biggest economy, plans to cut carbon emissions per unit of economic output by 40 percent to 45 percent before 2020 and learn from carbon-pricing efforts in South Korea, Australia and the European Union, Xie said. “The carbon price depends on emission-cutting efforts,” Xie said. The EU price is “very low,” probably because they allocated too many emission quotas when designing their market. “We are learning lessons.” The Shanghai carbon exchange plans to take back allowances when carbon prices are low and sell more when they are high “to maintain relatively stable levels,” Xie said. China’s national climate legislation will have a binding effect, Charlie Cao, a Beijing-based analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said by phone today. “This will bring stable expectations to investors on a carbon market. Otherwise they don’t have confidence.” China asked seven cities and provinces last year to set regional caps and pilot programs for trading emission rights. The country set targets to cut carbon intensity reduction and energy consumption by 2015 for each city and province, Xie said. The total amounts of carbon emissions can be estimated with planned economic growth, he said. China will then set quotas for carbon emissions and allocate them into key enterprises, Xie said. Shenzhen, scheduled to start June 18, will be the first to begin emissions trading, and Shanghai is likely to follow this year, he said. To contact the reporter on this story: Feifei Shen in Beijing at fshen11@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net Continue reading
More Plant Sugars, More Biofuels: Funding Continues For J.B.E.I. Work
Monday, 15 April 2013 JBEI’s Henrik Scheller (left) and Dominque Loque, shown here with Arabidopsis plants, are engineering plant cell walls to make the sugars within more accessible. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt, Berkeley Lab) The Joint BioEnergy Institute has received a five-year renewal of funding from the United States Department of Energy. Under the terms of the renewal, J.B.E.I. will be funded by up to $25 million annually through 2018. The J.B.E.I. is a Bioenergy Research Center created by the D.O.E. to conduct research on the development of advanced, next-generation biofuel. Originally established in 2008, it was backed by a $125 million grant for the first five-year period. The J.B.E.I. is led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory but also includes researchers from the Sandia National Laboratory, the University of California campuses of Berkeley and Davis, the Carnegie Institution for Science, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. J.B.E.I. research, for the past five years, has focused on developing advanced biofuels from lignocellulosic biomass, which uses grasses and other non-food crops and agricultural waste to create alternatives to fossil fuels. Using synthetic biology techniques, the J.B.E.I. researchers seek to engineer plants to enable easy extraction of plant sugars from biomass and to increase the sugar yields of energy crops. Softer walls, less sugar A recent example of the work done in J.B.E.I. would be a genetically engineered Arabidopsis plant that produces less xylan in its cell walls (see related story ) and another with less lignin then the natural plant with more extractable sugars for the biofuel process. “Through the tools of synthetic biology, we have engineered healthy plants whose lignocellulosic biomass can more easily be broken down into simple sugars for biofuels,” said Dominique Loque, who directs the cell wall engineering program for J.B.E.I.’s Feedstocks Division. Lignocellulosic biomass is one of the most abundant organic materials found on Earth. It has been used as animal feed and in the creation of paper. Now scientists are focused on using lignocelluloses as a source of sugars for advanced biofuels. Lignocellulose makes up the plants cell walls. In order to get to the fermentable sugars, the lignocelluloses need to be broken down, a process that can be difficult, expensive and time consuming. Researchers have been searching for a way to reduce lignin, a major polymer in plant cell walls, to enable easier sugar extraction. Most efforts have however resulted in sever biomass yield reduction or a loss of integrity in the plant’s vessels, a key tissue for water and nutrient distribution. What Mr. Loque and his colleagues did was rewire the regulation of lignin biosynthesis and create an artificial positive feedback loop to enhance secondary cell wall biosynthesis in specific tissue. “When we applied our APFL to Arabidopsis plants engineered so that lignin biosynthesis is disconnected from the fiber secondary cell wall regulatory network, we maintained the integrity of the vessels and were able to produce healthy plants with reduced lignin and enhanced polysaccharide deposition in the cell walls,” said Mr. Loque. The researchers believe that this technique can also be implemented to other plant species for biofuel crops with less lignin and more sugar. Enhancing national security, increasing green jobs Aside from the J.B.E.I., the Energy Department also funds two other Bioenergy Research Centers, the BioEnergy Research Center led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison. According to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the establishment and support of these centers by the administration is intended to help the biofuels industry move forward to decrease the country’s dependence on foreign oil, as well as generate new clean energy jobs. As with the J.B.E.I., both the B.E.S.C. and the G.L.B.R.C. will be funded worth $25 million for the next five years. Emphasis during these years will be on bringing the new methods and discoveries in the centers to maturity to enable their transition into the marketplace. – K.R. Jabuena Continue reading
