UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim

Jonathan Leake

A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland.
The source for its claim was a report from WWF, an environmental pressure group, which was authored by two green activists. They had based their “research” on a study published in Nature, the science journal, which did not assess rainfall but in fact looked at the impact on the forest of human activity such as logging and burning. This weekend WWF said it was launching an internal inquiry into the study.
This is the third time in as many weeks that serious doubts have been raised over the IPCC’s conclusions on climate change. Two weeks ago, after reports in The Sunday Times, it was forced to retract a warning that climate change was likely to melt the Himalayan glaciers by 2035. That warning was also based on claims in a WWF report.

The IPCC has been put on the defensive as well over its claims that climate change may be increasing the severity and frequency of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.
This weekend Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, was fighting to keep his job after a barrage of criticism.
Scientists fear the controversies will be used by climate change sceptics to sway public opinion to ignore global warming — even though the fundamental science, that greenhouse gases can heat the world, remains strong.
The latest controversy originates in a report called A Global Review of Forest Fires, which WWF published in 2000. It was commissioned from Andrew Rowell, a freelance journalist and green campaigner who has worked for Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and anti-smoking organisations. The second author was Peter Moore, a campaigner and policy analyst with WWF.
In their report they suggested that “up to 40% of Brazilian rainforest was extremely sensitive to small reductions in the amount of rainfall” but made clear that this was because drier forests were more likely to catch fire.
The IPCC report picked up this reference but expanded it to cover the whole Amazon. It also suggested that a slight reduction in rainfall would kill many trees directly, not just by contributing to more fires.
It said: “Up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically to even a slight reduction in precipitation; this means that the tropical vegetation, hydrology and climate system in South America could change very rapidly to another steady state. It is more probable that forests will be replaced by ecosystems that have more resistance to multiple stresses caused by temperature increase, droughts and fires, such as tropical savannas.”
Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at Leeds University who specialises in tropical forest ecology, described the section of Rowell and Moore’s report predicting the potential destruction of large swathes of rainforest as “a mess”.
“The Nature paper is about the interactions of logging damage, fire and periodic droughts, all extremely important in understanding the vulnerability of Amazon forest to drought, but is not related to the vulnerability of these forests to reductions in rainfall,” he said.
“In my opinion the Rowell and Moore report should not have been cited; it contains no primary research data.”
WWF said it prided itself on the accuracy of its reports and was investigating the latest concerns. “We have a team of people looking at this internationally,” said Keith Allott, its climate change campaigner.
Scientists such as Lewis are demanding that the IPCC ban the use of reports from pressure groups. They fear that environmental campaign groups are bound to cherry-pick the scientific literature that confirms their beliefs and ignore the rest.
It was exactly this process that lay behind the bogus claim that the Himalayan glaciers were likely to melt by 2035 — a suggestion that got into another WWF report and was then used by the IPCC.
Georg Kaser, a glaciologist who was a lead author on the last IPCC report, said: “Groups like WWF are not scientists and they are not professionally trained to manage data. They may have good intentions but it opens the way to mistakes.”
Research by Richard North

Bye bye black sheep thanks to climate change

Mark Macaskill

The oldest flock of native sheep in Scotland are changing colour because of global warming, claim scientists.
The Soay sheep of Hirta — which have been found in the Hebridean islands for more than 4,000 years — have succumbed to climate change and are shedding their dark coats, a new study suggests.
The darker-coloured animals used to have a better chance of survival than the smaller sandy-coloured sheep on the island, as their wool helped them absorb the sun’s warmth to maintain their body heat in harsh Hebridean winters.
However, as temperatures have risen, the sandy-coloured Soays are gaining the upper hand because they need less food to survive and have stronger reproductive genes.
Scientists in Western Australia and South Africa found the proportion of sheep with dark fleeces fell by nine percentage points between 1985 and 2005 as average temperatures rose by about 1C. The findings, published in Biology Letters, a Royal Society journal, suggest sheep with dark coats could disappear altogether. “We suggest that while in the past a dark coat has offset the metabolic costs of thermo-regulation by absorbing solar radiation, the selective advantage of a dark coat may be waning as the climate warms in the North Atlantic,” the study states.
“If environmental effects are the cause of the decline, then we can expect the proportion of dark-coloured Soay sheep to decrease further.”
Scientists from the University of Western Australia and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, compared Met Office temperatures at Stornoway airport on Lewis, about 50 miles east of the St Kilda archipelago, with population statistics for dark Soay sheep.
They found that the proportion of dark Soay sheep had fallen from 77% to 68%.
Shane Maloney, lead author of the study, said: “Taking the extrapolation to its logical conclusion, if the climate there keeps warming, the sheep will keep getting lighter.”
Soay sheep are one of the most primitive forms of domestic sheep in the world. Before a flock was moved to Hirta in 1932, they were found only on Soay. They are classified as “vulnerable” on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust watch list.
Jacqui Tucker, chair of the Soay Sheep Society, said the number of dark sheep regularly fluctuated and they were being more closely monitored.

Greenhouse effects: dishwasher tablets

Consumers need to take action themselves as cleaning agents for dishwashers often have a high phosphate content

Tony Juniper

One of the most damaging long-term environmental trends worldwide is the build-up of plant nutrients. Sewage works, transport emissions and farming all play their part — and so do the products we use in our homes.
One cause is the use of phosphates in detergents. As a result of these getting into water via sewage treatment plants, rapid growth in algae can occur. This leads to reduced oxygen levels, which can kill fish and wildlife. It can also promote blooms of algae, which are toxic to dogs, and indeed humans. Two-thirds of lakes and rivers in England are thought be below the “good ecological standard” set by EU law due to phosphate contamination.
There are plans to ban phosphates from laundry detergents, but not from dishwasher tablets, where they are used as a water softener and to improve cleaning. Most liquid detergents sold for washing dishes by hand are phosphate-free, but cleaning agents for dishwashers often have a high phosphate content; most UK detergents contain more than 30% phosphate.
While Sweden is taking steps to ban phosphates from dishwasher detergents, manufacturers in this country are still reluctant to consider alternatives; for now, consumers need to take action themselves. In part, the Swedish leadership on the issue is down to the soft water there, but that is not the whole story.
The performance of some of the low-phosphate tablets available in the UK has been favourably compared with the normal ones (even in hard-water areas), but you might need to use salt and rinse aid as well; most tablets sold these days are combined.
Low- and zero-phosphate brands you can find in the shops include Ecover (www.ecover.com) and BioD (biodegradable.biz/products). Most supermarket chains also have their own brands — look on the box.
Thinking of household stuff getting into water, I saw photos last week that show what discarded plastics do to sea birds. Visit chrisjordan.com and click on the Midway selection.
Be prepared for a shock.
Tony Juniper is an environmental campaigner and former director of Friends of the Earth; tonyjuniper.com
greenhouse@sunday-times.co.uk

Stern report was changed after being published

Information was quietly removed from an influential government report on the cost of climate change after its initial publication because supporting scientific evidence could not be found.

By Richard Gray, Science CorrespondentPublished: 9:00PM GMT 30 Jan 2010

Claims that eucalyptus and savannah habitats in Australia would also become more common were also deleted from the report
The Stern Review on the economics of climate change, which was commissioned by the Treasury, was greeted with headlines worldwide when it was published in October 2006
It contained dire predictions about the impact of climate change in different parts of the world.

But it can be revealed that when the report was printed by Cambridge University Press in January 2007, some of these predictions had been watered down because the scientific evidence on which they were based could not be verified.
Among the claims that were removed in the later version of the report, which is now also available in its altered form online, were claims that North West Australia has been hit by stronger tropical typhoons in the past 30 years.
Another claim that southern regions in Australia have lost rainfall due to rising ocean temperatures and air currents pushing rain further south was also removed.
Claims that eucalyptus and savannah habitats in Australia would also become more common were also deleted.
The claims were highlighted in several Australian newspapers when the report was initially published, but the changes were never publicly announced.
A figure on the cost of US Hurricanes was also changed after a typographical error was spotted in the original report. The original stated in a table the cost of hurricanes in the US would rise from 0.6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 1.3%.
The later report corrected the error so the increase was from 0.06% to 0.13%. A statement about the correction appeared in a postscript of the report and on the Treasury website.
The Stern Review has been instrumental in helping the UK government draw up its climate change policies while it has also been cited by leading organisations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its assessment reports on climate change.
Details of the changes, which have not been publicly detailed before, have emerged as the IPCC is under fire for errors on the melting of Himalayan glaciers that appeared in their most recent assessment report because of a failure to check the sources of the information.
A spokesman for Lord Stern, who headed the review and is now chair of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, said that the changes to the statements about Australia were made following a quality control check before the report was printed by Cambridge University Press.
He said: “Statements were identified in the section on Australia for which the relevant scientific references could not be located.
They were therefore, as a precaution, omitted from the version published by Cambridge University Press and they were deleted from the electronic version on the HM Treasure website.
“These changes to the text had no implications for any other parts of the report.
“It is perhaps not surprising that in a report of more than 700 pages a few typographic errors and minor but necessary clarifications to the text were identified in November and December 2006 after its launch.
“However, none of these corrections and changes affected the analysis or conclusions in the Stern Review, which is rightly regarded as an important contribution on the economics of climate change.”
Professor Roger Pielke, from the centre of Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado who has been a long term critic of the Stern Review, described the changes to the report as “remarkable”.
He said: “In any academic publication changes to published text to correct errors or to clarify require the subsequent publication of a formal erratum or corrigendum.
“This is to ensure the integrity of the literature and a paper trail, otherwise confusion would result if past work could be quietly rewritten.
“Such a practice is very much a whitewash of the historical record.
“One would assume – and expect – that studies designed to inform government (and international) policy would be held to at least these same standards if not higher standards.”

Scottish Water taps into demand for electricity

The company is poised to become an energy provider using turbines in its pipes

Mark Horne

Scottish Water is to generate green electricity by fitting turbines in mains water pipes, in a revolutionary scheme that it claims could slash bills and provide energy for thousands of homes.
The publicly owned utility is to launch a pilot scheme in Fife later this year, which will produce renewable energy by harnessing the power of water flowing at high pressure underground.
The aqua-turbine system, which was developed by Norwegian scientists to power offshore oil and gas rigs, will be fitted at one of its plants in Glenrothes. The device will generate enough electricity to power about 50 homes.
Although the Difgen turbine will cost around £100,000 to install, it is expected to produce £20,000 worth of energy every year.
If the trial is a success, Scottish Water intends to install the turbines at its water treatment plants across the country. Larger individual turbines could potentially produce enough electricity to power more than 200 homes.
“The first trial will demonstrate whether the reality meets the theory, and we will use the data to look at further opportunities across the rest of our network,” said Grant Nairn, Scottish Water’s director of technology and innovation.
“The device that we intend to fit at Glenrothes promises to generate around 60kW of power — enough to power around 50 homes — which we could either feed into our own plant or hook back into the grid.”
Nairn said the turbines would also reduce leaks and lower operating costs, which would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower bills.
“The device has the dual benefits of generating electricity from the flow of water in our mains pipes as well as allowing us to control the pressure in those pipes,” said Nairn.
“This is a very useful feature in our ongoing battle against leakage and wastage. In the long term, this promises to benefit customers through lower bills, and it also contributes towards Scotland meeting its carbon reduction commitments.”
Ash Gupta, who is promoting the technology in the UK for the Norwegian manufacturer Zeropex, said the science behind the scheme was simple.
“Water can travel underground at the sort of pressure that would blast the taps off,” he said. “This device has a brake which steps that pressure down and is connected to a turbine which spins and generates power. It kicks out at least 60kW of clean, green energy 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.”
The Stavanger-based firm showcased the technology at an oil industry exhibition in Aberdeen last year.
“Scottish Water are going to be the first out of the blocks to use it this way,” said Gupta.
“But we are also now talking to a number of other utility firms, including Severn Trent and Northumbrian Water in England.”
The UK government-funded Carbon Trust, which helps and advises companies on cutting energy waste, confirmed that it is interested in the Difgen scheme.

New laws to ensure batteries recycled

Published Date: 31 January 2010
By John Ross
RETAILERS have been forced to set up new collection points for used household batteries in an attempt to cut down on the hazardous chemicals sent for dumping.
Britons throw away around 600 million spent batteries in their rubbish every year, most ending up in landfill sites.But from tomorrow, shops which regularly sell batteries to the public will have to take them back free of charge or face legal sanctions.At present, only three per cent of batteries are recycled in the UK, one of the worst rates in western Europe. But an EU Batteries Directive requires that this increases to 25 per cent by 2012 and 45 per cent by 2016.While consumers cannot be forced to recycle, they are being encouraged to return all batteries from a range of household appliances – from remote controls to computers – to the shops with recycling points. The retailers involved are those who sell more than 32kg of portable batteries a year – about seven packs of AAs a week. They must then be delivered to recycling firms who extract components that can be reused and dispose of dangerous chemicals safely.The directive aims to stop harmful pollutants such as mercury and cadmium contained in batteries from leaking into the environment. In addition, thousands of tonnes of valuable metals, such as nickel, cobalt and silver, could be recovered if batteries did not go to landfills or incinerators.A spokeswoman for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency said: “Householders are encouraged to take advantage of the systems set up in their areas and return batteries so that they do not end up in landfill but are appropriately recycled or disposed of.” Vince Armitage, divisional vice president of Varta Consumer Batteries, a major battery supplier, said all batteries should be recycled.”Households need to be aware that next time the batteries run out in their remote control, alarm clock or smoke alarm they shouldn’t just head straight for the bin,” he said. “All batteries, regardless of size or purpose, should be recycled at specified drop-off points. “It may sound like more of a chore, but the directive has actually made it really easy for consumers. All retailers that sell reasonable quantities of batteries will have to provide a collection point, so when you buy a new pack just drop the old batteries off at the same time. There’s really no excuse not to recycle.”The UK’s portable battery recycling rate is one of the lowest in western Europe. Belgium recycles 41.5 per cent of its portable batteries, Austria 38 per cent and the Netherlands 37 per cent, while the EU average is about 20 per cent.At present, facilities in the UK for recycling batteries are limited, but kerbside collections are made in Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Argyll & Bute, East Renfrewshire, Falkirk, Orkney, Shetland and Perth & Kinross.A spokesman for the Scottish Government said: “This directive is in line with what we are trying to do in terms of making Scotland a zero-waste country. “This puts responsibilities on everyone, including government, businesses and individuals, to do more to recycle and reduce the amount of material that goes to landfill.” However, retailers say they cannot be expected to be solely responsible for recycling batteries. They argue that better and continuing information is needed to change consumer habits, along with improved facilities in schools, offices, community centres and kerbside collections.Bob Gordon, head of environment for the British Retail Consortium, said retailers support the aim of the directive and recognise their own responsibilities. But he added: “Informing customers isn’t all down to retailers. We need a comprehensive and continuing information campaign.”We need more local authorities to take used batteries from homes and a more consistent recycling regime for all materials.”Duncan McLaren, Friends of the Earth Scotland chief executive, said more effort should be put into waste prevention.”While we welcome that batteries have been banned from landfill, because they are toxic and damaging to people’s health and the environment, banning individual products from the waste stream is not the most efficient way of reducing waste.”It’s much more efficient to prevent waste in the first place, and in terms of batteries we advise people to use rechargeable instead of disposable ones.”

China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy

January 31, 2010

China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy

By KEITH BRADSHER
New York Times

TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

“Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.

President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress.

The United States and other countries are offering incentives to develop their own renewable energy industries, and Mr. Obama called for redoubling American efforts. Yet many Western and Chinese executives expect China to prevail in the energy-technology race.

Multinational corporations are responding to the rapid growth of China’s market by building big, state-of-the-art factories in China. Vestas of Denmark has just erected the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturing complex here in northeastern China, and transferred the technology to build the latest electronic controls and generators.

“You have to move fast with the market,” said Jens Tommerup, the president of Vestas China. “Nobody has ever seen such fast development in a wind market.”

Renewable energy industries here are adding jobs rapidly, reaching 1.12 million in 2008 and climbing by 100,000 a year, according to the government-backed Chinese Renewable Energy Industries Association.

Yet renewable energy may be doing more for China’s economy than for the environment. Total power generation in China is on track to pass the United States in 2012 — and most of the added capacity will still be from coal.

China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020. That compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States. Coal will still represent two-thirds of China’s capacity in 2020, and nuclear and hydropower most of the rest.

As China seeks to dominate energy-equipment exports, it has the advantage of being the world’s largest market for power equipment. The government spends heavily to upgrade the electricity grid, committing $45 billion in 2009 alone. State-owned banks provide generous financing.

China’s top leaders are intensely focused on energy policy: on Wednesday, the government announced the creation of a National Energy Commission composed of cabinet ministers as a “superministry” led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself.

Regulators have set mandates for power generation companies to use more renewable energy. Generous subsidies for consumers to install their own solar panels or solar water heaters have produced flurries of activity on rooftops across China.

China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year. To meet demand in the coming decade, according to statistics from the International Energy Agency, China will need to add nearly nine times as much electricity generation capacity as the United States will.

So while Americans are used to thinking of themselves as having the world’s largest market in many industries, China’s market for power equipment dwarfs that of the United States, even though the American market is more mature. That means Chinese producers enjoy enormous efficiencies from large-scale production.

In the United States, power companies frequently face a choice between buying renewable energy equipment or continuing to operate fossil-fuel-fired power plants that have already been built and paid for. In China, power companies have to buy lots of new equipment anyway, and alternative energy, particularly wind and nuclear, is increasingly priced competitively.

Interest rates as low as 2 percent for bank loans — the result of a savings rate of 40 percent and a government policy of steering loans to renewable energy — have also made a big difference.

As in many other industries, China’s low labor costs are an advantage in energy. Although Chinese wages have risen sharply in the last five years, Vestas still pays assembly line workers here only $4,100 a year.

China’s commitment to renewable energy is expensive. Although costs are falling steeply through mass production, wind energy is still 20 to 40 percent more expensive than coal-fired power. Solar power is still at least twice as expensive as coal.

The Chinese government charges a renewable energy fee to all electricity users. The fee increases residential electricity bills by 0.25 percent to 0.4 percent. For industrial users of electricity, the fee doubled in November to roughly 0.8 percent of the electricity bill.

The fee revenue goes to companies that operate the electricity grid, to make up the cost difference between renewable energy and coal-fired power.

Renewable energy fees are not yet high enough to affect China’s competitiveness even in energy-intensive industries, said the chairman of a Chinese industrial company, who asked not to be identified because of the political sensitivity of electricity rates in China.

Grid operators are unhappy. They are reimbursed for the extra cost of buying renewable energy instead of coal-fired power, but not for the formidable cost of building power lines to wind turbines and other renewable energy producers, many of them in remote, windswept areas. Transmission losses are high for sending power over long distances to cities, and nearly a third of China’s wind turbines are not yet connected to the national grid.

Most of these turbines were built only in the last year, however, and grid construction has not caught up. Under legislation passed by the Chinese legislature on Dec. 26, a grid operator that does not connect a renewable energy operation to the grid must pay that operation twice the value of the electricity that cannot be distributed.

With prices tumbling, China’s wind and solar industries are increasingly looking to sell equipment abroad — and facing complaints by Western companies that they have unfair advantages. When a Chinese company reached a deal in November to supply turbines for a big wind farm in Texas, there were calls in Congress to halt federal spending on imported equipment.

“Every country, including the United States and in Europe, wants a low cost of renewable energy,” said Ma Lingjuan, deputy managing director of China’s renewable energy association. “Now China has reached that level, but it gets criticized by the rest of the world.”

French bank faces broadside on ‘greenwash’ ads

Crédit Agricole, France’s biggest bank, is being attacked by the environmental lobby for its advertising campaign
Danny Fortson

ONE of the world’s biggest banks is to be referred to advertising watchdogs over a campaign fronted by Sir Sean Connery that highlights its green credentials.
Friends of the Earth, the campaigning group, called the marketing push from Crédit Agricole “the worst example of greenwash we’ve ever seen”.
The environmental group and a French organisation, France Nature Environnement (FNE), are compiling a dossier on the bank’s activities in the fossil-fuel and defence industries to submit to France’s advertising standards board.
The global campaign is the first from Crédit Agricole, which has grown from a network of regional mutuals to become France’s biggest bank. The campaign is part of the bank’s efforts to expand its business outside France and includes full-page advertisements in international newspapers such as the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal.
It also includes television ads depicting dramatic scenes of planetary destruction. Scarred landscapes are blown away by wind turbines and give way to a gleaming Crédit Agricole skyscraper as Connery intones: “Back to common sense. It’s time for green banking.”
Calyon, Crédit Agricole’s investment-banking arm, is one of the primary funders of oil exploration in the developing world. Last year it led a syndicate of banks that lent $520m (£324m) to Trafigura, the Swiss oil giant that was caught dumping toxic waste off the Ivory Coast.
It is one of the main financiers of Tullow Oil, which is developing giant new oil projects in Ghana and Uganda, and recently led a $1 billion financing of Perenco, a private group that is developing oil fields in Iraq and the Amazon.
The bank has made a concerted push into Africa and shows no sign of pulling back, according to Philippe Vasset of Africa Energy Intelligence, a specialist publication. “They weren’t really a presence until three of four years ago when they had a big breakthrough — they gave some oil-backed loans to Sonangol [Angola’s state-owned oil firm],” he said. “It’s been hugely lucrative for them.”
Yann Louvel, of Friends of the Earth France, said: “We know what they invest in. This is absolutely the worst case of greenwash we’ve ever seen.” The Friends of the Earth dossier will shortly be sent to France’s advertising authority, the ARPP.
Crédit Agricole said the ad campaign was “not simply an environmental notion” but was meant to highlight a broader change in the bank’s approach to business, focusing on more “responsible and ethical” practices. It also pointed out that it was a signatory to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment and a member of the FTSE4Good index. Given its activities, however, industry experts said the bank will have a tough time convincing consumers that its claims are not disingenuous.
ECO PLEDGES ‘LITTLE MORE THAN LIP SERVICE’
AS banking emerges from the global financial crisis, a growing number of firms are claiming to be eco-friendly in an attempt to attract new customers. In most cases, though, it is little more than lip service, writes Tricia Holly Davis.
Bank Track, a green watchdog, will say in a report this week that climate change has influenced banks’ investment decisions only marginally, if at all. Its research has found that banks with green reputations — including Crédit Agricole, Standard Chartered and HSBC — finance environmentally destructive projects. Not one bank appears in the FTSE Environmental Opportunities index.
To make the index, companies must derive at least 20% of their revenues from green goods and services.

Solarcentury considers listing

By Mark Leftly
Sunday, 31 January 2010
Solarcentury, a renewable energy company founded by green campaigner Jeremy Leggett, is mulling a flotation on the London Stock Exchange.
A listing could value the company at up to £100m, according to an estimate by an industry expert.
Solarcentury, which employs more than 110 people and provides solar technology across Europe, has a £35m turnover and is one of the country’s fastest growing clean technology firms. A source close to the company said that while a decision has not been made, it was “an option [because] the company is doing well”.
Solarcentury is believed to be considering the flotation for later this year, taking advantage of “feed-in tariffs”, which will be detailed in a government announcement next week. From April, people who install photovoltaic cells will be able to sell surplus energy to the National Grid, creating an incentive to buy the kit.
Mr Leggett, who was a leading campaigner for Greenpeace International on climate change in the 1990s, declined to comment.

Niger Delta Militants Call Off Truce With Nigeria

Niger Delta militants call off truce with Nigeria

AP

Lagos–The main militant group in the oil-rich Niger Delta called off its ceasefire with the government yesterday morning, dealing a potential death blow to a presidential amnesty programme aimed at ending violence that has crippled production in the West African nation.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta issued a statement saying it would no longer abide by the unconditional October 25 ceasefire President Umaru Yar’Adua had negotiated with the group.

The militants warned oil producers with pipelines and personnel working in the creeks and swamps of the Delta that it would wage an “an all-out onslaught” against them. The Mend “warns all oil companies to halt operations as any operational installation attacked will be burnt to the ground”, the statement read.

“Oil companies are responsible for the safety and welfare of their workers and will bear the guilt should any harm come upon their staff in the event of an attack.

“Militants in the Niger Delta have attacked pipelines, kidnapped petroleum company employees and fought government troops since January 2006. They demand that the federal government send more oil-industry funds to Nigeria’s southern region, which remains poor despite five decades of oil production. Violence has cut Nigeria’s oil production by about one million barrels a day, allowing Angola to surge ahead as Africa’s top oil producer.

Still, Nigeria remains the number three crude oil supplier to the US, offering the country nearly a million barrels a day in November, according to US government statistics.

Mend announced it had brokered an unconditional ceasefire with the Nigerian government on October 25, but later said it broke the agreement to attack a pipeline December 19.

The group said it attacked the line due to the long absence of Yar’Adua, who remains in Saudi Arabia receiving medical treatment for what his doctor described as a heart condition. Militants have questioned whether the amnesty programme Yar’Adua promised them — which included cash payments to former fighters — has been frozen in his absence.

Part of the amnesty programme included offering the Niger Delta improvements to its decaying roads and government facilities. The militants’ statement last Saturday claims nothing has been done so far and said states in northern Nigeria would receive benefits for having a pipeline pass through them.

“This government is hoping it can divide the people of the Delta in order to govern and plunder the Niger Delta,” the statement read.

“All who have misled the government and oil companies into such inanity will be put to shame.

“But questions remain about what power the Mend still wields. The amnesty programme pulled away some fighters and weapons. The militants said they sanctioned a recent attack on a pipeline owned by a subsidiary of Chevron Corporation, but didn’t carry it out. They claimed to have no hand in the kidnapping of three Britons and a Colombian working as contractors on a Royal Dutch Shell plc project — the first high-profile ransom grab in months. The Nigerian military also didn’t confirm the pipeline attack the Mend said it carried out December 19. Still, the militant group struck a defiant tone.

“Acting like a victor over a conquered people, the government rolled out a list of its plans for the Delta which it assumed would end decades of agitation, promising at the same time to deal with all who remained dissatisfied with its lame effort to redress the injustice in the Niger Delta,” their statement read. —