Earthwatch Lecture – Forests and Climate Change

Earthwatch Lecture – Forests and Climate Change Thursday 26th March, 7.00pm-8.30pm at the Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR Our forests, home to an extraordinary range of biodiversity, and arguably one of our greatest safeguards against climate change, continue to be depleted at an alarming rate. How can we set about securing their future?

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KIV – Biomass and waste to energy district heating and power generation plants

KIV commenced the commissioning a new gasification EfW CHP and district heating scheme in September 2008. The plant has been designed to environmental standards above and beyond the EU Waste Incineration Directive (WID), which also incorporates Best Available Technique (BAT), lodged with the EU BREF documents office. The plant will be an EU ‘showcase’ project, which incorporates a presentation room for coach parties of visitors.

Approximately five years ago, KIV commenced a joint development for the gasification EfW CHP plant with Celje town council. The plant has an 18MWth input capacity for <38,000 tpa of a mixed fuel (80% RDF + 20% Sewage Sludge), with an average CV of 13.6MJ/kg, based on a guaranteed 8,000 hrs/annum availability. The scheme is connected to an existing District Heating scheme, which has a 110oC flow temperature. The scheme is ‘heat led’ and therefore produces a reduced amount of gross power at 2.1 MWe. If the scheme was ‘electricity led’, it would produce 3.8MWe of gross power.

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We've been asked to have a look digester technology to treat the effluent from a palm oil mill

http://tx1.fcomet.com/~claverto/cms/download/310/ http://tx1.fcomet.com/~claverto/cms/business-services/Novero-digester-technology.html We‘ve been asked to have a quick look at this technology for a dig ester to treat the effluent from a palm oil mill and then recovering the gas to run a boiler or potentially getting a generator to produce electricity. There would also be revenue from O&M and carbon credits. One of the […]

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Senior Energy Analyst reports on biochar as economic method of CCS

Hi Claverton,

Just read this on bio-char.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/67843ec0-020b-11de-8199-000077b07658.html.

Sound’s good to me. At £9/tonne this seems a sizeable contribution to GHG

reduction at a carbon price we already have in the EU cap and trade system.

I think the silver buckshot Al Gore cites will have many such low tech, low

cost solutions. For me making charcoal is an intuitively correct solution

as it seems to be a simple way of compressing the natural carbon capture

cycle that can be done at low capital costs and with lots of other benefits

as well.

Rgds

M

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"CO2 (equivalent) saving from short-rotation willow coppice (SRC) is ZERO" – official

DEFRA and ADAS (the UK agricultural agency) are now circulating a study comparing net GHG impacts of different bio-feedstocks which concludes that the net CO2 (equivalent) saving from short-rotation willow coppice (SRC) is ZERO because of the direct and indirect GHG emission from the fertilisers used, whereas there is near 100% CO2 (equiv) saving from Miscanthus (“elephant grass”) because it doesn’t need fertilisers. Some of the wood wastes show up to 600% CO2-equivalent net saving because of the methane emissions in the “base case” where they are put to landfill (I presume this applies to most natural forest-floor debris and dead trees). …….Chris Hodrien

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Bio-methane fuelled vehicles – John Baldwin CNG Services

Year 2008 may well be recognised as a turning point in the journey away from fossil fuels and this has major implications for the waste management industry. The increase in oil price to $140/bbl is the market signaling that, to use the words of Shell CEO van der Veer, ‘easy oil’ is running out. The large oil fields that have supplied the world with oil are starting to decline and new resources, such as oil sands in Canada, have much higher levels of CO2 emissions associated with their extraction.

At the same time, countries like Nigeria are capturing and liquefying the natural gas (to make LNG) that is a by product of oil production. Nigeria is forecasting LNG production of around 60 million tones per annum by 2012, bringing in around $60 billion of income – not a bad return for what was flared off as a waste product until 1999. High natural gas prices in the US are also bringing forward huge resources of ‘tight’ natural gas that are now economic to produce. Such gas needs more wells than normal gas and so requires the higher gas prices we have now – historically low natural gas prices in the US have acted to leave the ‘tight gas’ in the ground but it is now economic to bring it to market.

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Uttlesford – the most CO2 per household in England – "100% renewable is possible" says Altechnica study.

Dr Derek Taylor, Altechnica and OU Open University Energy & Environment Research Unit

The Altechnica study on Renewable Energy potential in Uttlesford (commissioned by Uttlesford Futures) study shows that it would be potentially possible to ultimately obtain all of the household electricity, space & water heating needs and power personal cars from 100% renewable energy from within Uttlesford.

Uttlesford is the East of England District located in the North West corner of Essex that borders Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire and includes Saffron Walden, Great Dunmow and Stansted Airport within its boundaries. – Prior to Uttlesford Futures commissioning the study, Uttlesford District had been reported as emitting the most CO2 per household in England.

This study showed that domestic heat provision, electricity and potentiall

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