Liu Xiao spends her weeks visiting sludge and organic waste treatment plants across China. The travel can be tiring but as a technical and policy adviser on waste management she must help implement President
Kevin Rudd, Australia's recently elected prime minister, is watching his country being pulled in several directions at once. A natural resource and investment boom are dragging its febrile economy towards China, while climate change and water shortages are threatening its longer-term future. It is an interesting time for a Sinophilic internationalist to take control. For the moment, Mr Rudd, who has made a confident start since his resounding victory in November's election, seems convinced he can manage. But tough decisions in both domestic and foreign policy are pressing.
Britain's electricity market suffers from a lack of transparency and liquidity that may mean customers are paying too much for their power, some companies and industry experts have said. Competitors to the "big six" energy suppliers have urged Ofgem, the regulator, to focus on wholesale market problems in the inquiry it launched in February. If one of the leading suppliers such as Electricit
Marriott International has signed a landmark deal with the Brazilian state of Amazonas that will see the hotel group launch a carbon offset programme for its guests and invest in a fund aimed at securing 1.4m acres of rainforest. The company has invested $2m in the fund, which aims to prevent the deforestation of the threatened Brazilian rainforest. Marriott guests will be invited to invest in the fund, which the company said would offset the carbon emissions associated with their stays.
A string of three red steel tubes, each the size of a railway carriage, lies low in the water off the northern coast of Portugal. As the snub-nosed apparatus rises and dips in the Atlantic waves, it becomes immediately clear why this pioneering energy technology is called Pelamis after a mythical giant sea snake. Later this year, these wave energy converters, developed over many years of testing by Edinburgh-based Pelamis Wave Power, will be pumping electricity into Portugal's national grid, making it the first country in the world to harness wave energy on a commercial basis.
Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is to convene a meeting of hundreds of its Chinese suppliers to set out goals for significant reductions in the environmental impact of its vast supply chain. Wal-Mart accounts for about 30 per cent of all foreign buying in China and just under 10 per cent of total US imports from the country, which were worth $321bn last year.
Over the past five years I have become increasingly concerned at the scaremongering of the climate alarmists, which has led the governments of Europe to commit themselves to a drastic reduction in carbon emissions, regardless of the economic cost of doing so. The subject is such a complex one, involving science, economics and politics in almost equal measure, that to do it justice I have written a book, albeit a short one, thoroughly referenced and sourced. But the bare bones are clear.
Sir, The European Union carbon trading schemes introduced in 2005, outlined in the article "Carbon trading grunts into life' (April 2), saw limited emissions trading conducted among a handful of large companies, and was used primarily as a training exercise. The second period will fully integrate emissions trading with other commodities, and a whole new set of rules will apply.
The battery-testing facility at General Motorsin Michigan is working 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the Chevrolet Volt, the electric car the company this week described as its "number one priority". The US carmaker is developing the Volt and its still-unproven technology in parallel on one of its briskest development schedules ever. It aims to start selling the car by late 2010 and, in so doing, wrest industry leadership on environmental issues from Toyota, its archrival.
The European biodiesel industry says it will soon launch legal action against its US competitors, alleging that unfairly subsidised American production is undercutting it in the EU market. The European Biodiesel Board told the Financial Times it would by mid-April ask the European Commission to impose one or both of two kinds of import tariff on US imports. These tariffs are "anti-dumping" levies, used against exports sold more cheaply than in the home market, and "countervailing duties", designed to offset the effect of government subsidy.
The sharp rise in oil prices over the past year has provided a massive economic boost for many Arab states. In Jordan, however, it has forced the government into a delicate balancing act in order to preserve political and fiscal stability.
