The European Commission acknowledged on Wednesday that reductions in greenhouse gas emissions linked to the use of some forms of bioenergy — burning wood for electricity, for example — could be overestimated because of a “serious accounting error.”
But the commission rejected the conclusions of a draft opinion by the European Environment Agency Scientific Committee that said that similar problems afflict the calculation of emissions from biofuels for transportation.
The draft opinion, described here in an earlier post, could have wide repercussions. It suggests that a far narrower variety of crops for biofuels and bioenergy should be grown and that organizations like the International Energy Agency and the United Nations probably need to lower their emissions forecasts related to the use of biofuels and bioenergy.
Bloomberg NewsRapeseed, a popular feedstock for biofuels, in a field in Oxfordshire in England.
The European Union is overestimating the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions achieved through reliance on biofuels as a result of a “serious accounting error,” according to a draft opinion by an influential committee of 19 scientists and academics.
The European Environment Agency Scientific Committee writes that the role of energy from crops like biofuels in curbing warming gases should be measured by how much additional carbon dioxide such crops absorb beyond what would have been absorbed anyway by existing fields, forests and grasslands.
Instead, the European Union has been “double counting” some of the savings, according to the draft opinion, which was prepared by the committee in May and viewed this week by The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times.
The committee said that the error had crept into European Union regulations because of a “misapplication of the original guidance” under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
A bluefin tuna cage trawling the Mediterranean. Regulators are supposed to ensure that countries do not exceed fishing quotas in their waters, but a thriving black market in illegally fished bluefin persists.
The United States and the European Union announced a bilateral agreement on Wednesday on combating illegal fishing, saying that the practice deprives legitimate fishermen and coastal communities of billions of dollars of revenue each year.
Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and Maria Damanaki, the European Union’s commissioner for maritime affairs and fisheries, announced the deal in Washington. The pact calls for cooperation on adopting effective management measures in regional and international organizations to combat illegal fishing and promoting tools that prevent illegal fishing operators from benefiting economically from their activities. The United States and the European Union will also share information on illegal fisheries and “promote the sustainable use of fisheries resources while preserving marine biodiversity,’’ the two sides said.
Policymakers argue that illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing — known as “I.U.U.” fishing or pirate fishing — makes a mockery of national and international laws meant to ensure fish stocks are managed in a sustainable manner.
Liberia, home to 45 percent of the rain forests in West Africa, signs a deal with the European Union to prevent illegal timber exports and develop a sustainable forestry industry. Illegal logging flourished during the country’s long civil war but led to crippling sanctions against the timber industry. [BBC]
A vote to end oil industry subsidies could come as soon as next week, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, says. The legislation would save the federal government $21 billion over a decade but is opposed by Republican leaders, who say it will reduce domestic oil production. “Common sense tells us that those companies do not need these subsidies,” Mr. Reid told reporters on Tuesday. [The Hill]
General Fusion, a nuclear fusion energy start-up, receives nearly $20 million in venture capital funding, including an investment from the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The company is developing a reactor that achieves fusion by driving a shock wave through a plasma of hydrogen isotopes. [Fast Company]
The tilapia arrayed between the salmon steaks and flounder filets at an upscale supermarket down the block from my home in Manhattan looks as if it were plucked out of the water yesterday, and it costs far less than those other fish.
Meridith Koh for The New York Times Guess: fresh or frozen?
But if you ask about the provenance of tilapia at your own market, you may discover what I did: that it was previously frozen and then thawed and put on display among fresh fish. And it was farmed in China.
How can it look so good after that kind of journey? Much of the tilapia farmed in China is frozen and then treated with carbon monoxide, a gas that prevents meat and seafood from discoloring as it ages. When it is thawed, it looks like new.
Carbon monoxide-treated fish is safe to eat, but the treatment does deprive consumers of visual cues about the freshness and handling of the seafood they’re buying. And that could be especially important when the fish comes from China, where aquaculture is poorly regulated.
PARIS — Mediterranean fish, including bluefin tuna, sea bass and hake, are in danger of extinction from overfishing, marine habitat degradation and pollution, according to a report on Tuesday from the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
In all, more than 40 species of Mediterranean fish are endangered, the organization said in its list of threatened species.
Almost half the species of Mediterranean sharks and rays — so-called cartilaginous fish — are facing extinction, the conservationist organization said, adding that they make up 14 of the 15 species it considers critically endangered. The 15th is a bony fish, the common goby or Pomatoschistus microps; the group says its population has declined about 80 percent in the past 10 years, mainly from damage to its habitat and incidental capture.
The organization called on governments to “reinforce fishing regulations, create new marine reserves, reduce pollution and review fishing quotas, in particular the number of captures allowed for threatened species.”
A species that the group lists as endangered, the Mediterranean population of Atlantic bluefin tuna, is one of the world’s most valuable fish, with adult specimens regularly selling for thousands of dollars on the Japanese market. Read more…
European airlines will spend nearly $2 billion on carbon dioxide emissions permits next year as European Union rules on emissions take effect, financial analysts estimate. Under the rules, the number of free carbon permits allocated to airlines will shrink considerably beginning in 2012. By 2020, the cost of permits to the industry could climb to almost $10 billion annually. [Guardian]
A major drought threatens Vietnam’s agricultural production and drinking water supplies. Three major reservoirs for irrigating crops are nearly empty, and stretches of two major rivers in the country’s central region have run completely dry. [United Press International]
A huge fish kill in Southern California involving an estimated one million sardines was not the result of a toxic event, but natural processes, authorities say. “All evidence points to oxygen deprivation as cause of death,” says a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Game. [CNN]
Deformities in frogs in the northeastern United States are far more common in suburban and urban areas, not in and around farmlands, a Yale ecologist’s research shows. The findings upend the conventional wisdom that agricultural pesticides are largely responsible for the abnormalities. Rather, the combination of many household chemicals, including pharmaceuticals and plastics that mimic hormones, appear to be the root cause. [Yale Environment 360]
The European Union’s executive arm files a formal complaint with the Greek authorities over environmental damage to Lake Koroneia, Greece’s fourth-largest lake. In the last 30 years, drought and agricultural diversions have shrunk the lake’s surface area by one-third and caused its depth to drop from 16 feet to little over 3 feet. Still part of a European network of natural heritage sites, the lake is choked by garbage and farm waste. [Guardian]
A popular Ohio program for subsidizing the purchase and installation of solar panels runs out of money after state legislators decline to reauthorize the 9-cent monthly fee on state residents’ electric bills that financed the program. Hundreds of businesses and homeowners who applied for grants last fall were only informed this month that they would not receive funds. [Columbus Dispatch]
James Kanter writes about the travails of Connie Hedegaard, the European Union’s commissioner for climate change action.
Chris Ramirez for The New York Times
It is known as the mackerel war, a simmering dispute over North Atlantic fishing quotas in which the primary victim may turn out to be not the fishermen, but the fish.
While stocks of the Atlantic mackerel, Scomber scombrus, are thought to be in relatively good shape, Europe’s fishing nations — primarily Norway, Ireland, Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands — have squared off with Iceland over its decision to overshoot scientists’ recommendations for a sustainable catch.
In the latest broadside against Iceland’s unwillingness to accept a lower quota, the European Union’s fisheries commissioner, Maria Damanaki, said Tuesday that to ‘‘send a clear message,’’ she would initiate a process under which Icelandic boats could be banned from unloading mackerel in European Union ports. (Norway, not a member of the 27-nation European Union, has banned Icelandic mackerel boats from its ports since July 29.)
Reuters The European Union’s health commissioner, John Dalli, was met by a protest against genetically modified foods on Thursday at the European Commission’s headquarters in Brussels.
Greenpeace and Avaaz handed a petition with a million signatures to the European Commission in Brussels on Thursday that calls for a freeze on imports and cultivation of biotech crops.
Although the initiative by the activists is not expected to succeed, it was noteworthy as the first attempt to invoke the so-called European Citizens’ Initiative, which aims to give citizens the power to overturn European Union laws that they find objectionable.
The initiative was also an example of how delicately European officials navigate the issue of biotech products.
Many Europeans continue to regard them as freakish and potentially harmful more than a decade after they began to be widely introduced in countries including the United States, Canada and Argentina.
European nations will keep trawling the deep sea bottom, officials said this week, confounding hopes that they would honor commitments made to the United Nations General Assembly to stop the destructive practice.
Agence France-Presse – Getty Images A trawler off France’s Brittany coast.
The Council of Fisheries Ministers, made up of officials from the 27 member nations of the European Union, said Monday that there would be little change in deep-sea quotas for the next two years, despite strong objections from the conservationist camp.
Officials agreed to end deep-sea shark fishing and to restrict fishing for a handful of species, but in a victory for the French and Spanish fleets, fishing will continue largely as before. Deep-seas fisheries are defined as those below 200 meters, or about 650 feet. Deep-sea trolling and long-lining can lead to overfishing a stock, and dragging heavy nets across the bottom destroys coral and vegetation, disrupting the fragile ecosystem of the ocean floor.
Making matters worse, deep-sea species tend to reproduce more slowly than species higher in the water column, so severely depleted stocks can face a tough road back to health even if significant conservation measures are eventually enacted. Read more…
International fisheries officials have barely started their meeting to decide the fate of the endangered Atlantic bluefin tuna, but the European Union may have already torpedoed efforts to lower a hotly contested limit this year.
Associated Press A bluefin tuna at a Paris market.
As I noted on Tuesday, Europe had a real problem on its hands going into the first day of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or Iccat, which started in Paris on Wednesday and runs through Nov. 27.
The 27-member European Union is supposed to adopt a common position and vote as a bloc, and France, Spain and Italy — the key Mediterranean bluefin fishing nations -– were arguing, over the advice of Iccat scientists and even the European Union fisheries minister, Maria Damanaki, that the quota should stand at 13,500 tons again in 2010.
The fishing nations have carried the day.
Ms. Damanaki said late Wednesday in a statement that a position had been reached by European ministers, though not the one she advocated for at least a halving of the quota. Read more…
Two senators have called for a 25 cent rise in the federal gasoline tax to pay for road and bridge construction and maintenance and debt reduction. Tom Carper of Delaware, a Democrat, and George Voinovich of Ohio, a Republican, wrote to President Obama’s commission on reducing the federal debt, proposing the measure. They suggest that 10 cents of the increase go toward paying down the debt, and the rest toward transportation infrastructure. [The Hill]
The failed blowout preventer from the Gulf oil spill has yet to be examined, two months after being raised from the ocean’s floor, and it is in danger of corroding, a lawyer for the drilling firm Transocean has told federal investigators. The device did not contain oil from the well after the rig collapsed, as designed, and is considered a crucial piece of evidence in assigning responsibility for the spill. [Associated Press]
The European Union voted this week to tighten rules governing emissions from large industrial facilities to improve air, water and soil quality. The rules will require industrial plants to adopt stronger control standards for sulfur and nitrogen compounds, dust particles, asbestos and heavy metals. [Business Green]
Whale species off of Mexico’s Pacific coast show signs of sunburned skin, which scientists believe may be linked to damage to the ozone layer. The whales show evidence of lesions associated with sun damage connected to exposure to ultraviolet radiation. Whether the sun damage is leading to skin cancer in the whale is unclear. [Associated Press]
When I dropped off a rental car recently in New York City after visiting my daughter at her college’s parents weekend, I suffered a severe case of sticker shock. I had been cursing myself for forgetting to refuel the midsize car in New Jersey before re-entering New York. Now I would be stuck paying New York gas prices.
But when I filled up the tank on West 96th Street in Manhattan, I was startled by the bill. It seemed way too low: only $28 for nine gallons of gas! Wow!
You see, I don’t drive often in the United States. I drive cars mostly on assignment in Europe, where it is hard to refill even a tiny Fiat Panda gas tank (nine gallons) for less than 50 euros, or $70, about as much as it costs to rent a car for the day. While exact rates vary from country to country, gas sells for the equivalent of about $6 to $8 per gallon in the European Union. About three-quarters of that is government-imposed tax.
Gas prices are high enough in Europe that it becomes a significant cost and discourages driving, at least to some extent. Read more…