The Uk government is about to spend more than £500,000 in an attempt to develop the world’s first recyclable vehicle made from hemp in collaboration with Ford and Hemcore, which grows plants closely related to the ones that produce cannabis.
In fact ( for the ones who have no clue about what Hemp can be )Hemp is the common name for plants of the genus Cannabis as a source of industrial, food and other non-drug products, including cultivation information.
The first utilisation of Hemp will be to offer an alternative of internal components such as plastics ( one of the most difficult material to recycle )
Nevertheless this projet won t be so easy to set up : Growing hemp is strictly controlled because of the association with drug use
In order to have more informations on this topic you can go and have a quick look on the following link
Chloe

In the BBC News today, I’ve read that that the European Commission was supposed to announce a major step this week in fighting CO2 emissions. The European Commission wanted to regulate the automobile industry that makes up more than 1/5 of the entire emissions. Furthermore, it is the only sector where CO2 emissions have drastically increased in the last years. The European Commissioner Stavros Dimas decided to demand the automobile industry to make new cars with decreased CO2 emissions and gave a mandatory target for 120g/km by 2012. Right now, cars are emitting about 162g of CO2 per kilometre.
This week, however, the European Commission decided to postpone the announcement because of strong disagreement within the Commission on this topic. Maybe the pressure from the industry, warning that this measure would raise prices and cost jobs, got too strong.

In any case, it is a typical example of the democratic system, where decisions-making takes too long and where it is almost impossible to take measures when they are needed.
(Image source:http://www.klimanet4kids.baden-wuerttemberg.de/images/02_info/abgase.jpg)

There was an article on Finland’s main commercial news channel yesterday that drew my attention. It was about tax on cars changing dramatically by 2009 in Finland. Currently there are huge taxes on cars when you buy them, but this tax has nothing to do with its emissions. Although Finnish people may be keen on buying a lot of the new technology available on the market, they are not very keen on switching cars often. This is because with the tax, they really are expensive. Cars are generally much older on average in Finland compared with other developed European countries. http://www.mtv3.fi/uutiset/arkisto.shtml/arkistot/kotimaa/2007/01/499080

In 2009 the tax will change so that there is a great incentive to buy cars that emit less carbon dioxide and also that consume less fuel. Cars will become less expensive, but using them much more costly. This motivates switching cars more often to ones with newer technology, which is good as they are more economical; however this also increases waste, i.e. the actual number of cars. Of course, if the old cars can be recycled up to 100% then it is good, but usually this is not the case.

Although 3/4 of the government support this reform, it still moves much slower than the car industry in implementing change. The car sellers would already be willing to implement this law even from today, but the government is concerned that there are a lot of low income families who depend quite a lot on their current vehicle for transportation (as a lot of Finnish people do not live in cities) and are not in the position to change quickly.

The Finnish Minister of Finance states that this is a necessary part of the response to climate change because we are living in a time where environmental issues play the most important role. I’m sorry I didn’t find these in English, but if you’d like to see the news clip:
http://nettitv.mtv3.fi/nettitv_uutiset/index.shtml/nettitv_uutiset/uutiset?91619#91619

Although I will not contradict the evident fact that India has become and now is an ecological disaster, I would like to share some optimistic views about the improvement that the country is currently doing.

First, I would like to highlight that despite a high rate of poverty, the country owns among the most advanced high tech industries such as software development and biotechnologies. In the same time, the number of high educating engineers and R&D centres is growing very fast each year thanks to governmental initiative and FDI as well. Clearly, and more than China, Indian industries are challenging eastern Countries and try to move up the value chain thanks to innovation.

Thus, research and innovation are now serving the environmental cause. The current president Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, has an engineering background and is very sensitive to the environmental cause. His objective is to produce 30 billion tons of bio-fuel within 2030, to reduce the cost of photovoltaic cells and increase the rate of energy conversion to 50% within 3 years, to improve the storage of hydrogen, to implement partnerships between agricultural and motor sectors, and many other innovating ideas.

As a consequence, Delhi is now the city with the highest number of cars working with CNG (Gas naturally compressed), all public motor vehicles including rickshaws are eco-friendly. With high level of autonomy provided with CNG fuel, the cost (3x higher than oil) is rapidly amorted. Moreover, by June 2007, 10% of oil will be replaced by bio-ethanol made of sugar cane. Then 5% of bio-fuel taken from Jatropha vegetal oil will be introduced in Diesel Fuel. Eventually, hydrogen/Methan fuel will be provided in fuel stations within a few months. It needs no modification on cars to use it…

Of course India is far from being an ecological model, but I am convinced that the country has the skills and the will to develop better than we have.

(Image taken from www.blonnet.com)