BBC Human Ignorance and Greed — Just when switching over to clean energy to fight climate change has become a global mantra, water-rich Nepal appears to be heading in the opposite direction, changing from renewable to dirty energy. To deal with crippling power cuts that last two thirds of a day, the government has declared a national power crisis, and announced a plan to install a series of generators of up to 200 megawatts (MW). They will run on diesel, a fossil fuel that emits the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

Officials at the Water Resources Ministry, responsible for power supplies, said there were talks about importing the generation plants from China, which reportedly had many of them spare after hosting last year’s Olympics. “The government may consider other options of suppliers as well,” said Anup Upadhyay, the ministry’s joint secretary. “What is important is we will have to get thermal plants to immediately address the load shedding, it’s a compulsion.”

Having been hit hard by the power cuts, the private manufacturing sector is also stressing the need for businesses to install their own electricity generators. Most of these will again be equipment run on diesel. Some factories already have diesel powered generators, with a total installed capacity of about 15MW, and the government wants them to install even more.

“With such increase and additional new plants in private factories, we may be able to add about 30MW to the national grid,” Mr Upadhyay suggested.

Traditionally, Nepal is not known for generating electricity using fossil fuels. With more than 6,000 rivers and rivulets gushing down the Himalayan foothills, snaking through the country’s rugged topography, have the potential to power tens of thousands of megawatts.

To date, only a small percentage of the potential hydro-electricity generation capacity has been tapped, providing electricity to less than 40% of Nepal’s population. However, the nation - until now - has stuck to hydropower over the years, maintaining a clean energy track record. (01/16/09)
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BBC Environmental Science — Street plug-points for electric cars, smart meters, and energy efficiency loans for homes are among Tory plans for an “energy revolution”. David Cameron launched plans he said would lower carbon emissions, create jobs and reduce oil and gas imports. He said a £1bn upgrade for the national grid would encourage people to generate their own power and boost renewables.

Launching what the party calls its green paper on low carbon, Mr Cameron said even those who were not convinced by climate change had to recognise the need for “energy security” - reducing reliance on countries like Russia and the Middle East for oil and gas. And he said there was no reason why, if electricity networks were updated to include computer intelligence, people should not be saving money in future.

This would include a “smart grid” and smart meters in homes - which monitor kitchen appliances every second, altering the amount of power that is sent down the line to ensure only the minimum necessary is used. Mr Cameron said it would make it possible to have “the Holy Trinity of big supplies of secure energy, green low-carbon energy and cheap energy”, by removing the requirement for the grid to have huge excess capacity in order to meet fluctuating demand.

The Conservatives say it would also pave the way for large-scale use of renewable energy sources, by introducing “feed in tariffs” - paid by power companies to people who generate power via wind turbines and solar panels.

They would also make more use of technologies like tidal power and biogas - creating power out of the waste vegetable matter from farms or households.

They say they would introduce a new “national recharging network” to encourage the use of electric cars and hybrid cars. (01/16/09)
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BBC Biological Science – An international team of researchers has found another form of light pollution that could have an adverse effect on wildlife. The scientists showed that as well as direct light sources, polarised light also triggered potentially dangerous changes in many species’ behaviour. They added that road surfaces and glass buildings were among the main sources of this form of light pollution.

The findings appear in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Co-author Bruce Robertson, an ecologist from Michigan State University, US, said polarised light from structures within the built environment overwhelmed natural cues that controlled animal behaviour.

“Environmental cues, such as the intensity of light, that animals use to make decisions occur at different levels of severity in the natural world,” he said. “When cues become unnaturally intense, animals can respond unnaturally strongly to them.”

As a result, the false cues could create an “ecological trap” for species attracted by the light. Dr Robertson said that water was the primary source of horizontal polarised light in the natural world, and that many animals - including birds, insects and reptiles - had highly developed polarisation vision.

This particular form of light played a key role in the animals’ lifecycle, such as finding breeding and feeding sites, he added.

A well documented example is the way that baby sea turtles rely on the direction of starlight and moonlight reflected off the water’s surface in order to help them find the ocean when they emerged from their nests.

Yet, there are examples of turtles in urbanised areas heading towards the brighter buildings and street lamps.

Dr Robertson said that expanding urban areas meant that there were more structures and surfaces to confuse wildlife. “Any kind of shiny, black object - oil, solar cells, asphalt - causes problems,” he explained. “The closer they are to wetlands, the bigger the problem. Light from the sun is vibrating in all possible directions, but after bouncing off smooth flat surfaces, like water, it only vibrates in the horizontal direction; it has become polarised.”

“This is why polarised sunglasses make it easier for us to see on a bright day - they remove only the horizontally polarised light that reflects off water and roads,” he told BBC News. (01/16/09)
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