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    Spanish company Ferry Group is to invest €42/US$55.2 million in a project for the production of biomass fuel pellets in Bulgaria. The 3-year project consists of establishing plantations of paulownia trees near the city of Tran. Paulownia is a fast-growing tree used for the commercial production of fuel pellets. Dnevnik - Feb. 20, 2007.

    Hungary's BHD Hõerõmû Zrt. is to build a 35 billion Forint (€138/US$182 million) commercial biomass-fired power plant with a maximum output of 49.9 MW in Szerencs (northeast Hungary). Portfolio.hu - Feb. 20, 2007.

    Tonight at 9pm, BBC Two will be showing a program on geo-engineering techniques to 'save' the planet from global warming. Five of the world's top scientists propose five radical scientific inventions which could stop climate change dead in its tracks. The ideas include: a giant sunshade in space to filter out the sun's rays and help cool us down; forests of artificial trees that would breath in carbon dioxide and stop the green house effect and a fleet futuristic yachts that will shoot salt water into the clouds thickening them and cooling the planet. BBC News - Feb. 19, 2007.

    Archer Daniels Midland, the largest U.S. ethanol producer, is planning to open a biodiesel plant in Indonesia with Wilmar International Ltd. this year and a wholly owned biodiesel plant in Brazil before July, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The Brazil plant is expected to be the nation's largest, the paper said. Worldwide, the company projects a fourfold rise in biodiesel production over the next five years. ADM was not immediately available to comment. Reuters - Feb. 16, 2007.

    Finnish engineering firm Pöyry Oyj has been awarded contracts by San Carlos Bioenergy Inc. to provide services for the first bioethanol plant in the Philippines. The aggregate contract value is EUR 10 million. The plant is to be build in the Province of San Carlos on the north-eastern tip of Negros Island. The plant is expected to deliver 120,000 liters/day of bioethanol and 4 MW of excess power to the grid. Kauppalehti Online - Feb. 15, 2007.

    In order to reduce fuel costs, a Mukono-based flower farm which exports to Europe, is building its own biodiesel plant, based on using Jatropha curcas seeds. It estimates the fuel will cut production costs by up to 20%. New Vision (Kampala, Uganda) - Feb. 12, 2007.

    The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has decided to use 10% biodiesel in its fleet of public buses. The world's largest city is served by the Toei Bus System, which is used by some 570,000 people daily. Digital World Tokyo - Feb. 12, 2007.

    Fearing lack of electricity supply in South Africa and a price tag on CO2, WSP Group SA is investing in a biomass power plant that will replace coal in the Letaba Citrus juicing plant which is located in Tzaneen. Mining Weekly - Feb. 8, 2007.

    In what it calls an important addition to its global R&D capabilities, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is to build a new bioenergy research center in Hamburg, Germany. World Grain - Feb. 5, 2007.

    EthaBlog's Henrique Oliveira interviews leading Brazilian biofuels consultant Marcelo Coelho who offers insights into the (foreign) investment dynamics in the sector, the history of Brazilian ethanol and the relationship between oil price trends and biofuels. EthaBlog - Feb. 2, 2007.

    The government of Taiwan has announced its renewable energy target: 12% of all energy should come from renewables by 2020. The plan is expected to revitalise Taiwan's agricultural sector and to boost its nascent biomass industry. China Post - Feb. 2, 2007.

    Production at Cantarell, the world's second biggest oil field, declined by 500,000 barrels or 25% last year. This virtual collapse is unfolding much faster than projections from Mexico's state-run oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos. Wall Street Journal - Jan. 30, 2007.

    Dubai-based and AIM listed Teejori Ltd. has entered into an agreement to invest €6 million to acquire a 16.7% interest in Bekon, which developed two proprietary technologies enabling dry-fermentation of biomass. Both technologies allow it to design, establish and operate biogas plants in a highly efficient way. Dry-Fermentation offers significant advantages to the existing widely used wet fermentation process of converting biomass to biogas. Ame Info - Jan. 22, 2007.

    Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited is to build a biofuel production plant in the tribal belt of Banswara, Rajasthan, India. The petroleum company has acquired 20,000 hectares of low value land in the district, which it plans to commit to growing jatropha and other biofuel crops. The company's chairman said HPCL was also looking for similar wasteland in the state of Chhattisgarh. Zee News - Jan. 15, 2007.

    The Zimbabwean national police begins planting jatropha for a pilot project that must result in a daily production of 1000 liters of biodiesel. The Herald (Harare), Via AllAfrica - Jan. 12, 2007.

    In order to meet its Kyoto obligations and to cut dependence on oil, Japan has started importing biofuels from Brazil and elsewhere. And even though the country has limited local bioenergy potential, its Agriculture Ministry will begin a search for natural resources, including farm products and their residues, that can be used to make biofuels in Japan. To this end, studies will be conducted at 900 locations nationwide over a three-year period. The Japan Times - Jan. 12, 2007.

    Chrysler's chief economist Van Jolissaint has launched an arrogant attack on "quasi-hysterical Europeans" and their attitudes to global warming, calling the Stern Review 'dubious'. The remarks illustrate the yawning gap between opinions on climate change among Europeans and Americans, but they also strengthen the view that announcements by US car makers and legislators about the development of green vehicles are nothing more than window dressing. Today, the EU announced its comprehensive energy policy for the 21st century, with climate change at the center of it. BBC News - Jan. 10, 2007.

    The new Canadian government is investing $840,000 into BioMatera Inc. a biotech company that develops industrial biopolymers (such as PHA) that have wide-scale applications in the plastics, farmaceutical and cosmetics industries. Plant-based biopolymers such as PHA are biodegradable and renewable. Government of Canada - Jan. 9, 2007.


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Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Eyes in the sky: ESA images forests in 3-D to analyse biomass

Nowadays there is a lot of research into analysing the capacity of ecosystems to act as 'carbon sinks' as they offer a potential way to mitigate climate change by storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Producing accurate forest biomass estimates, and how they are changing over time, are a critical challenge to environmental scientists to whom national governments are turning for help in meeting their international obligations to stabilise greenhouse-gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol.

Recent research revealed that not all forest types and not all locations would be suitable for afforestation, reforestation or conservation aimed at soaking up greenhouse gases, as some of the forests are and would be net CO2-contributors. This should make people think more critically about fashionable carbon offset schemes ('plant a tree to reduce your carbon footprint'), as some of these initiatives may actually worsen climate change (earlier post). On the other hand, understanding the amount of carbon forests store allows environmental economists to estimate the true 'ecoservice value' of an ecosystem (earlier post).

The European Space Agency is contributing to this kind of research by developing tools that allow forests to be seen from space in 3-D. It is also training scientists to use the new visualisation technique. 140 scientists and researchers from 22 countries have attended ESA's weeklong POLinSAR 2007 workshop, “Science and Applications of SAR Polarimetry and Polarimetric Interferometry,” hosted at ESRIN, ESA’s Earth Observation centre in Frascati, Italy, to hear the first space borne results and to attend interactive training sessions.

The technique is called 'polarimetric interferometry' and is performed using two polarimetric SAR (synthetic aperture radar) images acquired from slightly different directions. The study of these data sets permits scientists to retrieve information related to the 3-D structure of forest or other natural volume scatterers, such as underlying topography, forest height (image, click to enlarge) and to estimate forest biomass – a quantitative estimate of the entire amount of organic material in a particular forest habitat.
"POLinSAR allows us to estimate key environmental parameters that are needed today. For instance, it allows us to make estimations of forest biomass on a global scale. The conclusions from these global estimates may also be important for climate change modellers and decision makers." -- Konstantinos Papathanassiou, a researcher with the Radar and Microwaves Institute at German Aerospace Centre.
The capability of radar to penetrate ground cover and 'see' the underlying terrain, coupled with POLinSAR techniques to detect forest canopies, make it possible to classify trees and estimate their height using SAR imagery. This may sound of interest only to a narrow band of scientists, until one realizes that determining the types and heights of trees in a forest are critical ingredients in determining its biomass:
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Workshop participants saw the first POLinSAR in-orbit results from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s (JAXA) Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS). Launched on 24 January 2006, ALOS is supported as an ESA Third Party Mission.

Also at the workshop, ESA provided additional interactive training opportunities for the POLSARPRO tool developed by the University of Rennes 1, France, which includes a wide-ranging tutorial in Polarimetry and Polarimetric Interferometry. To date, some 700 registered users from 62 countries worldwide are using the tool.

Over the last 2 years, ESA has trained some 250 scientists to exploit Polarimetric airborne/spaceborne SAR data for science and applications development using in particular the POLSARPRO software and educational tool.

"POLinSAR is the starting point of future applications because we are at the point where new satellites will be launched, such as Germany’s TerraSAR-X and Canada’s Radarsat-2, that can provide polarimetry and interferometry," said Prof. Eric Pottier, head of the Radar Polarimetry Group at the University of Rennes. "Processing this kind of data will open many new application doors, so it is very important to train young students now to be able to handle this kind of data."


Image: ALOS PALSAR first forest height estimates by means of Single-Baseline Polarimetric Interferometry (POLinSAR) at L-Band obtained by German Aerospace Centre (DLR) on the Oberpfaffenhofen test site. The POLinSAR research group at DLR, supported by ESA, is studying the methodology for forest height measurement and validation. Credits: JAXA, ESA, DLR

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