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Green lifestyle innovations on display at CEATEC

Panasonic Corp. is looking to promote the green revolution in the home and wider community with a display of cutting-edge gadgets and energy-saving devices for future generations at the upcoming CEATEC Japan 2010 exhibition.

The electronics giant is just one of around 600 companies that will be exhibiting at the annual technology show, the largest of its kind in Asia, and which organizers are hoping 200,000 people will attend this year. CEATEC stands for Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies and the title of the event this year is “Digital Harmony: Technologies for Comfortable and Eco Living.”

Tying in neatly with that theme is Panasonic’s offering, which is described as “various solutions involving the entire town for realizing a sustainable green lifestyle which is safe, comfortable and enjoyable.”

The Energy Solution Zone, for example, will highlight the company’s Home Energy Management System, which is designed to control the energy that is created, stored and saved in the home to achieve optimum energy efficiency that is in tandem with the homeowner’s lifestyle.

The same zone will include intelligent Networkable Eco Navi Home Appliances that will elevate these everyday appliances to a whole new level as they are linked to other electronics.

There will also be solutions for environment-friendly cars, again linked to Panasonic’s plans for the whole house, as well as “Energy Solutions for the Entire Town,” which integrate the home with other buildings, shops and offices in a community through a common energy management system.

In the Network Audio-Visual Zone, the company will show off multifaceted three-dimensional presentations, including a 3D mass display that consists of 33 3D plasma screens ranging from 42 to 152 inches. The world’s first consumer 3D camcorder and 3D-compatible Lumix G Micro System cameras with the world’s first interchangeable 3D lens will allow consumers to create their own 3D content.

For professionals, Panasonic’s 3D professional camcorders, 3D editing equipment and 3D imaging technology will also be on display.

CEATEC Japan 2010 gets under way on October 5 at the Makuhari Messe International Convention Complex, just outside Tokyo. Other electronics firms that will be exhibiting at the event include Fujitsu Ltd., Mitsubishi Electric, Toshiba, Murata Manufacturing and Nissan Motor Corp.

CEATEC, October 5- 9

Times: 10 am to 5 pm

Venue: Makuhari Messe International Convention Complex, 2-1 Mikase, Mihama-Ku, Chiba City, 261-0023, Japan. http://www.m-messe.co.jp/en/index.html

Admission: All visitors are required to register, either in advance or on the door. Registering via the www.ceatec.com/ website provides free entry. On the door, the cost is Y1,000 (€9.29) for an adult and Y500 (€4.65) for a student. Children under the age of 12 are admitted free.

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Green Deal ‘will support 250,000 jobs’

Some 250,000 jobs could be supported by the government’s Green Deal, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has claimed.

The scheme is designed to allow homeowners and businesses to make energy-efficient improvements without the upfront cost and without having to own the property. Some 26 million UK homes are expected to benefit from the initiative over the next 20 years and the DECC claims that the scheme, which was outlined in the coalition’s programme for government, will support a quarter of a million jobs.

Chris Huhne, secretary of state for energy and climate change, said that the Green Deal was part of the “third industrial revolution”.

“Insulation installers and the supply chain all stand to benefit from this long overdue energy makeover… We need to tap in to this huge market to save people money on fuel bills, save carbon and help the economic recovery,” he added. The Green Deal is expected to be available by late 2012.

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Scotland raises renewable energy target to 80%

First minister Alex Salmond has announced that he is raising Scotland’s renewable energy target by 30 percent. In 2007, the Scottish government set itself the aim of producing 50 percent of its energy from low carbon sources by the year 2010. This target has now been increased to 80 percent.

The government calculated that there does not need to be any significant change to policy, planning or the regulatory framework in the country to reach the new target. Mr Salmond said that, by 2020, it is possible that 60,000 jobs will have been created in the low carbon industries.

He added that Scotland already boasts “a quarter of Europe’s potential wind and tidal energy capacity and a tenth of its wave resource”.

“Given the scale of lease agreements now in place to develop offshore wind, wave and tidal projects over the next decade it is clear that we can well exceed the existing 50 percent target by 2020,” Mr Salmond said.

The target is far in excess of that from the UK government, which is aiming to generate just 15 percent of its energy from renewables by the end of the next decade.

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Feelgoodz Flip-Flops An Unwitting Casualty of Gulf Oil Spill

While not exactly on the same scale as fishing and tourism taking a huge hit from the Gulf oil spill, Change.org highlights an unwitting and unexpected casualty of it all: Feelgoodz flip-flops. The ethically-sourced, all natural rubber, footwear start-up is sitting on thousands of unsold shoes and may be unable to repay a $50,000 loan that got them started.

Apparently, just as the company had a container of 10,000 flip-flops ready to be distributed to 75 Whole Foods stores throughout the US–to enter through the Port of New Orleans–the BP oil spill happened. The ship with the shoes aboard was stuck in Freeport, Bahamas.

The shoes eventually reached New Orleans, over two months later than expected, and the window to stock the seasonal shoes at Whole Foods closed.

The result of all that is that the company may be unable to repay that $50,000 loan to Village Capital Funding by this week’s deadline.

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Bees fare better in town than country

Researchers at the University of Worcester analysed the pollen collected by bees from 45 hives on National Trust property around the country.
They found that bees in towns and cities have a much more “varied diet”, taking pollen from different flowers.

For example at Kensington Palace in London, where the Duke of Gloucester is keeping bee hives, the samples contained large amounts of pollen from rockrose, eucalyptus and elderberry.
In contrast bees in the countryside tended to rely on fields of crops. At Nostell Priory in Yorkshire and Barrington Court in Somerset, the samples were heavily dominated by oilseed rape with little other pollen types detectable.

In the last 20 years there has been a dramatic 50 per cent decline in bee numbers in Britain. Climate change, pesticides and even a mystery disease known as ‘colony collapse disorder have been blamed’.

Experts also believe that intensive farming may have contributed to the decline of bees because it means there is less wild flowers in the countryside to provide the insects with a ’varied diet’. Matthew Oates, Nature Conservation Adviser at the National Trust, said there are “precious few” pollen sources for bees in the countryside because farmland is either taken over for “monoculture” like wheat or barley or grazed for livestock.

He urged farmers to allow more wild flowers on field margins and to plant seed mixes in unused areas. Mr Oates also said the study showed how important urban beekeepers are to boosting numbers and called on more people to install a bee hive in the town.

“These are interesting early findings, seemingly backing what we’ve suspected for a while – namely that bees today often fare better in urban environments than in contemporary farmland,” he said.

Already the middle class fad for keeping bees has seen a doubling in hives over the past two years, according to the British Beekeepers Association, with many new beekeepers coming from towns and cities.

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Sun’s ‘quiet period’ explained

Solar physicists may have discovered why the Sun recently experienced a prolonged period of weak activity.

The most recent so-called “solar minimum” occurred in December 2008.

Its drawn-out nature extended the total length of the last solar cycle – the repeating cycle of the Sun’s activity – to 12.6 years, making it the longest in almost 200 years.

During a solar minimum the Sun is less active, producing fewer sunspots and flares.

The new research suggests that the longer-than-expected period of weak activity may have been linked to changes in the way a hot soup of charged particles called plasma circulated in the Sun.

The study, conducted by Dr Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and her US colleagues, is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The Sun’s activity strengthens and weakens on a cycle that typically lasts 10.7 years. Since accurate records began in 1755, there have been 24 such solar cycles.

The 23rd cycle, which ended in December 2008, was both longer than average and had the smallest number of sunspots for a century. Sunspots are areas of intense magnetic activity that are visible as dark spots on the star’s surface.

Currents of fire
The new research suggests that one reason for the prolonged period of weak activity could be changes in the Sun’s “conveyor belt”.

Similar to the Earth’s ocean currents, the Sun’s conveyor transports plasma across its surface to the pole. Here, the plasma sinks into the heart of the Sun before rising again at the equator.

During the 23rd cycle, these currents of fire extended all the way to the poles, while in earlier cycles they only extended about two thirds of the way.

Dr Roger Ulrich of the University of California, Los Angeles, a co-author of the study, said the findings highlighted the importance of our monitoring of the Sun.

The research team used sophisticated computer simulations to show how changes in the conveyor might have affected cycle duration. They found that the increased length of the conveyor and its slower rate of return flow explained the prolonged 23rd cycle.

However, Dr David Hathaway, a solar physicist from Nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, who was not involved in the latest study, argued that it was the speed and not the extent of the conveyor that was of real importance.

The conveyor has been running at record high-speeds for over five years. Dr Hathaway said: “I believe this could explain the unusually deep solar minimum.”

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Woolly mammoth extinction ‘not linked to humans’

Woolly mammoths died out because of dwindling grasslands – rather than being hunted to extinction by humans, according to a Durham University study.

After the coldest phase of the last ice age 21,000 years ago, the research revealed, there was a dramatic decline in pasture on which the mammoths fed.

The woolly mammoth was once commonplace across many parts of Europe.

It retreated to northern Siberia about 14,000 years ago, where it finally died out approximately 4,000 years ago.

The reasons for its extinction are unclear and have been a matter of heated scientific debate.

Some scientists have argued that it was principally the result of climate change while others say that it was driven by pressures of a growing human population, or even a cataclysmic meteor strike.

Now, according to Professor Brian Huntley of Durham University, that debate has been settled.

“What our results have suggested is that the changing climate, through the effect it had on vegetation, was the key thing that caused the reduction in the population and ultimate extinction of mammoths and many other large herbivores,” he said.

Professor Huntley and his colleagues created a computer simulation of vegetation in Europe, Asia and North America over the last 42,000 years.

They did this by combining estimates of what the climate was like during this period with models of how various plants grow under different conditions.

They found that the cold and dry conditions during the ice age, with reduced concentrations of carbon dioxide, didn’t favour the growth of trees.

So instead of forests there were vast areas of pasture, which was ideal for large herbivores, such as woolly mammoths. But as a result of a warmer, wetter climate and rising concentrations of carbon dioxide at the end of the ice age, trees emerged at the expense of the grasslands.

“During the height of the ice age, mammoths and other large herbivores would have had more food to eat,” said Professor Huntley.

“But as we shifted into the post-glacial stage, trees gradually displaced those herbaceous ecosystems and that much reduced their grazing area.”

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Eon installs first turbine on MoD land

The first wind turbine to be used on Ministry of Defence (MoD) land has been installed by Eon at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School in Kent.

Over the 20-year lifespan of the turbine, it will save 114 tonnes of carbon emissions and will help contribute to the MoD’s target of generating ten percent of power from renewable sources.

The Duke of York’s Royal Military School is used to educate the children of serving army personnel and the turbine is also intended to teach pupils about renewable energy.

Colin Grenville, Eon’s microgeneration sales manager, told BusinessGreen: “Up to now, wind energy was seen as a bit of a no-go for MoD sites as there had been a number of issues with radar interference. This project shows what can be done even where there has been historic opposition.”

Mr Grenville added that the energy company was in talks with the MoD about installing more turbines.

The UK generated 6.7 percent of its electricity from renewable sources in 2009, statistics released recently by the Department of Energy and Climate Change show.

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Branches of low carbon restaurant chain to open in the UK

The low carbon restaurant chain Otarian is to open its first UK branches in London this week.

Based on the principle of vegetarianism, the chain will be the first to include information on carbon footprints to internationally recognised standards on all of its menus .

Restaurants in Wardour Street, Soho, Shaftesbury Avenue, and Covent Garden are due to open on August 20th.

Otarian operates a no air freight policy, meaning all products are delivered by road and if a reliable supply cannot be obtained the dish is altered.

Some 98 per cent of waste from the restaurant is either composted or recycled and sustainable building products, such as floor tiles made from recycled glass, are used throughout the building design.

Radhika Oswal, said that vegetarianism is the most sustainable way of living as it has “a lighter ecological footprint, reduced resource impacts, and lower carbon emissions than non-vegetarian equivalents”.

A report released earlier this year by the Centre for Alternative Technology entitled Zero Carbon Britain suggested that an 80 per cent reduction in livestock in the UK would contribute to the country producing zero emissions by 2030.

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£5,000 grants for electric cars start January 2011

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The Department for Transport will from January 2011 provide grants worth £5,000 against the cost of a fully electric or plug-in hybrid car.

In order to qualify for the grant, the amount claimed must not represent more than 25 per cent of the cost of the car. Furthermore, the vehicle must have a range of at least 70 miles, a minimum top speed of 60mph, and meet European safety standards.

London, Milton Keynes and the North East will receive funding for 11,000 charging points in car parks at railway stations and supermarkets. Many of these will enable rapid charging, although not all will be installed before 2013.

Similar electric car grants already exist in America and China.

A spokesperson for the Environmental Transport Association (ETA) said: “The grant is intended to coincide with the launch of mass-produced electric cars like the Nissan Leaf and Mitsubishi iMiev – currently the choice of electric vehicle is very limited.”

Which electric cars will be eligible for the £5,000 grant?

When the scheme first launches, only two cars – the Tesla Roadster and Mitsubishi iMiev – will qualify for the £5,000. However, many more models are promised in 2011. The following electric vehicles are currently undergoing testing on British roads.

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