Hydrogen tank of the future?

Fossil fuels, atomic energy and bio-fuels do not create a sustainable environment. And while I share the belief that a change away from our energy production methods will take decades rather than years, we do need to continue to look at alternatives (which of course includes the bedrock of consumerism, but that’s another story). Hydrogen so far was dodged by storage problems, however the first solutions come into view, as the New Scientist reports.

If the hydrogen economy is ever going to become reality, we will need a way to store the stuff without having to compress it to dangerously high pressures. The gas could then be fed to fuel cells to power the phones, laptops and automobiles of the future.

Just such a technique may now be coming together in a Dutch lab, in the shape of a material in which billions of carbon buckyballs are sandwiched between sheets of graphene – another form of carbon.

The US Department of Energy reckons that to be viable, hydrogen stores should hold at least 6 per cent by weight of the gas. Until now, materials designed to do the job have fallen well short of this target. Metal hydrides which bind loosely to hydrogen can hold only 2 per cent. So the race is on to develop a molecular matrix that can store more.

Last month, George Froudakis and his team at the University of Crete in Greece reported that computer simulations of a layer cake of graphene sheets connected by hollow carbon nanotubes (see right) indicate that it could store 6.1 per cent of its weight in hydrogen (Nano Letters, vol 8, p 3166).

Now Dimitrios Gournis of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands has started to make this exotic sandwich. So far he has created a 40-layer structure in which the sheets are separated by buckyballs, and is aiming to replace these with the nanotubes envisaged by Froudakis by the end of the year. The next step will be to fill the structures with hydrogen to see whether Froudakis’s predictions hold true.

Forests to fall for food and fuel

By Richard Black  Environment correspondent, BBC News website

Demand for biofuels will add to pressure on forests, the report warns

Demand for land to grow food, fuel crops and wood is set to outstrip supply, leading to the probable destruction of forests, a report warns.

The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) says only half of the extra land needed by 2030 is available without eating into tropical forested areas.

A companion report documents poor progress in reforming land ownership and governance in developing countries.

Both reports were launched on Monday in UK government offices in London.

Supporters of RRI include the UK’s Department of International Development (DfID) and its equivalents in Sweden and Switzerland.

The dual crises of fuel and food are attracting significant land speculation  Andy White, RRI

“Arguably, we are on the verge of a last great global land grab,” said RRI’s Andy White, co-author of the major report, Seeing People through the Trees.

“It will mean more deforestation, more conflict, more carbon emissions, more climate change and less prosperity for everyone.”

Rising demand for food, biofuels and wood for paper, building and industry means that 515 million hectares of extra land will be needed for growing crops and trees by 2030, RRI calculates.

But only 200 million hectares will be available without dipping into tropical forests.

Forest focus

The report foresees demand increasing further into the century.

‘New crops needed’ to avoid famine

It cites studies suggesting that “…if the current plateau in productivity continues, the amount of additional agricultural land required just to meet the world’s projected food demand in 2050 would be about three billion hectares, nearly all of which would be required in developing countries.”

According to UN figures, the world currently has about 1.4 billion hectares of arable land and about 3.4 billion hectares of pasture.

Some academics place their hopes in agricultural technologies including genetic engineering to boost crop yields.

But since the spectacular successes of the Green Revolution, advances have been slow. In some areas, yields are falling – a trend which is likely to be exacerbated by climate change.

However, eating into tropical forests to create extra agricultural land would, in turn, exacerbate climate change, with deforestation currently accounting for about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Reform call

One of RRI’s main conclusions is that reform of land ownership is crucial, if large-scale pillage of tropical forests is to be avoided.

The conclusion have been supported by DfID, whose minister Gareth Thomas was one of the speakers at the launch event.

“These new studies should strengthen global resolve to protect the property rights of indigenous and local communities who play a vital role in protecting one the most outstanding natural wonders of the world,” he said.

DfID runs programmes in West Africa aimed at helping forest dwellers acquire the legal right to manage their land.

Many indigenous peoples need help in acquiring rights to the land they live on

“It is clear that the dual crises of fuel and food are attracting significant new investments and great land speculation,” said Andy White.

“Only by protecting the rights of the people who live in and around the world’s most vulnerable forests can we prevent the devastation these forces will wreak on the poor.”

But the second RRI report – From Exclusion to Ownership? – says progress in reforming ownership has been slow, with only a few countries such as Brazil, Cameroon and Tanzania handing over significant tracts to local communities.

Moves to curb climate change by preserving forests in developing countries could help, RRI concludes. But it also raises the question of who owns rights to the trees – the rich Western countries that want to fund carbon sequestration, or the people who live in the forest areas?

Sorting out ownership could not only help on the environmental front, but also remove reasons for conflict. RRI calculates that about two-thirds of the world’s current violent conflicts are driven by land tenure issues.

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

What might happen to world food prices

Meal Ticket

By Chris Mayer in Rude Awakening – 25. November 2008

“In my own case, the Depression brought a strange result,” writes Eddie Cantor in 1931. “Before the crash, I had a million dollars, a house, three cars and four daughters. Now all I’ve got left is five daughters.”

Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) was a comedian, singer, songwriter and actor. “Banjo Eyes,” as he was sometimes called, was also the author of two little books on the Great Depression. “People used to rob banks,” he writes in Yoo-Hoo Prosperity. “Now we’re lucky when it isn’t vice versa.” Cantor jokes about many troubles in the Great Depression, but one recurring theme is the relative lack of food.

A millionaire is “one who eats three square meals a day.” Things were so bad that “the pigeons are now feeding the people.” They were funny lines…sort of. For many of the people living during those times, Cantor’s jokes were not so far from the truth.

We have it comparatively easy in this, the crisis of 2008. We may have to make do with fewer Swatch watches and Coach handbags. We may have to pass on the latest iPod and make do with last year’s winter coat. These hardships are not important, except for people selling those goods. But the credit crisis is also affecting the world’s ability to produce one thing important to everyone: food.

It’s harder for farmers to get credit for next season’s crop, especially farmers overseas. They need fertilizer, seed, fuel and more. And most farmers need to borrow money to obtain these essential items. No credit; no crops.

Therefore, the global credit squeeze might reduce plantings of key grains, even as world inventories of these grains hover near historic lows. In Russia, for example, cash-starved banks have cut off funding for the industry. The head of the Russian Grain Union says, “Many farmers probably won’t be able to borrow money for the spring sowing.” This is important because Russia is no lightweight in the grain division. It produces 9% of the world’s wheat, for instance. No surprise that the United Nations considers Russia a critical component of the global food supply.

Ironically, Russia just had its best harvest ever. And still, global grain inventories remain low. Bloomberg reports that global inventories of corn, wheat and soybeans are the second lowest they’ve ever been since 1974.

A number of countries already fear what might happen next year. The Washington Post Foreign Service in Shanghai reports that China adopted a number of measures to protect itself from the worsening food crisis: “Among the most extreme measures [China] took was to impose new export taxes to keep critical supplies such as grains and fertilizers from leaving the country.”

These taxes are extremely high, on the order of 150%-185%. China worries that richer countries may outbid its own farmers for supplies and weaken China’s own food supply. One Chinese fertilizer company, which produces 150,000 tons per year, already said that the new taxes mean exporting is no longer profitable.
China was the biggest exporter of certain types of fertilizer. No longer. That’s a lot of supply off the market.

Fertilizers are absolutely critical in maintaining (and improving) crop yields. Without them, we’d produce far less per acre. As a result, in parts of Africa where people depend on Chinese fertilizers, the food supply problem is now more acute. China’s export taxes and bans follow those of other grain producers, including the Ukraine, India, Pakistan and Argentina.

Amazingly, despite these various maneuvers around the world to prevent grain exports, the prices for wheat, corn and soybeans are all half of their mid-summer highs. It seems the market believes a global recession will dampen demand. Maybe so, or maybe the market doesn’t know anything. The severe commodity selloff during the last few weeks might be saying a lot more about the desperation of hedge fund managers to raise cash than about the prospect that grain demand will fall – in which case, we could see another surge in prices next year.

Demand for grains is still very strong. In China, each wage-earner devotes about 40 cents of every dollar earned to buying food. In India, that number is a staggering 70 cents out of every dollar earned. In other words, the food budget in these countries is hardly a discretionary item. It will remain constant, or even rise, no matter what the global economy does.

Meanwhile, the people in these countries who have a couple of extra rupees to toss around are upping their consumption of meats, which increases the per capita demand for grains. As PotashCorp chief William Doyle recently pointed out: “The average daily protein intake in China has increased by 40% over a 20-year period, with the greatest percentage of that increase coming from meat consumption.” You can see it in the size of the people themselves: The average 6-year-old Chinese boy is 12 pounds heavier and 2 inches taller than 30 years ago. These people aren’t going back to the ways thing were. This is a long-term story, and these trends should continue.

 

Yet even if demand growth for grains slows, it’s not likely that those low global grain inventories will improve. Even if grain demand fell to 2% per year, we’d still need record production to keep grain inventories from falling further.

For all these reasons, I think the future is still bright for agriculture and all that it entails. I think the fertilizer companies look cheap again. We owned Agrium (NYSE: AGU) for nearly three years, and it more than tripled our money. The stock is now a good one-third below what we bought it for initially.
PotashCorp (NYSE: POT) and Mosaic (NYSE: MOS) are other names I’m looking at hard right now – both have been crushed in this troubled market.

Beyond that, irrigation companies have come way down, even after posting outstanding results. Lindsay (NYSE: LNN) and Valmont (NYSE: VMI) are two irrigation equipment makers, for example, both coming off great quarterly results.

In 1931, Eddie Cantor wrote that the biggest thing in years was bread. “Why, they’re giving it away free! Whenever four men get together at a street corner, it used to be a merger,” he writes. “Now it’s a bread line!” It’s funny now. Next year, it might not be, at least to some.

Thomas Midgley – greatest environmental vandal?

I hadn’t heard about Thomas Midgley before, and I kind of feel sorry for him … nevertheless it’s quite a funny video :D.