The European Patent Office presented the 2009 European Inventor of the Year Awards on May 4 this year, awarding several inventors for their environmental contributions, and selecting a well-known solar energy researcher as the recipient of their Lifetime Achievement Award.

80-year old German scientist Adolf Goetzberger, which the conference nicknamed “the Sun God”, was presented the Lifetime award for recognition of his career-long achievements in both popularizing and harnessing solar energy. His earliest work helped to increase the efficiency of solar cells in the 1970’s and led him to roles as lead researcher in groundbreaking solar implementation plans throughout Europe. Goetzberger has been widely credited as a driving force behind Germany’s acceptance of solar power, which has led his nation to be the world’s leading market for solar photovoltaic technology.

Winners of the 2009 awards also were frequently tied to environmental success. Among them was Joseph Le Mer, a French mechanical engineer who took home the SMEs/Research award for 2009. Developing heating systems, Le Mer realized that home heating was often two things that consumers did not want: expensive and environmentally unfriendly. By designing an elegant, single-tube heat exchanger that could be manufactured cheaply and with a minimum of resources, Le Mer helped the entire industry take a large step toward sustainability. Combining that with his company’s insistence that work not be outsourced, Le Mer appears to have hit on a promising solution for a sometimes wasteful industry.

In the medical category, no winners were more environmentally sound than a Chinese team led by Professor Yiqing Zhou of the Beijing Institute for Microbiology, who used Chinese herbal knowledge to extract compounds from plants used for centuries to help develop an efficient and sustainable source of malaria-fighting drugs.

Image: Joseph Le Mer

The European Parliament released “Transport at a crossroads”, a report on the environmental impact of public transit, shipping, and freight, this month. The findings ranged the gamut from encouraging- air pollutants from vehicles are on the decline- to less than- that greenhouse gas emissions have increased 26% from 1990 to 2006. Lead researcher Jacqueline McGlade perhaps summed it up best when she said:

We know the technology exists to tackle impacts of the transport sector on Europe’s environment. However, many vehicles rolling off production lines are anything but green, the freight sector still favours the least efficient transport modes and railways across the EU still do not have a unified system.

The report urged European nations to develop transport policies that make transport more efficient and to respond to consumer demand, which the report often linked to rising fuel costs- the report shows a 25% increase in bus usage when fuel prices increased by 10%.

Image: European transport

The final day of the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul concluded on Sunday with some strong words from the assembled representatives but without a key statement that many thought would be a crucial rallying point for the conference.

In the Istanbul Ministerial Statement- the final wrap-up of the conference as agreed-upon by the 150 nations participating- the words were clear. In essence, the statement pushed for access to clean drinking water and forms of sanitation as a basic human need. What was particularly striking was what was left unsaid- that water was a basic human right.

The Statement, which is non-binding, instead urged countries to follow the previously-set targets for water access laid out in the Millennium Development Goals, as well as work at reforming water use in agriculture and lowering pollution levels. The Statement may have been the most collaborative to date, as Istanbul saw record Forum attendance of 28,000 registered visitors.

There was one group, however, that did not shy away from taking a firm position on water as a basic human right. The Alternative Water Forum was formed out of the need for human rights groups and activists to stake out a position at a Forum that was reportedly deporting protesters from the country. After a three-day meeting, the Alternative Forum produced a statement that decried the privatization and commercialization of water resources and affirmed the need for a non-corporate structure of water usage that offered water to all citizens.

Image: The Alternative Water Forum in Istanbul

The final day of the University of Copenhagen’s Climate Change Congress moved on from the symptoms to the cure to the cost in its wrap-up sessions. After two days spent exploring the effects of climate change and the potential remedies, the final day took a pragmatic stance and studied the economic feasability of renewable energy and other climate change adaptations, as well as the feasability of ignoring the problem altogether.

A clear statement that came from the discussions on the conference’s final day was that no area of the world- coastal or otherwise- would be spared the effects of climate change. In a session entitled “Economic Costs of Adapting and not Adapting to Climate Change”, economists and scientists presented research that covered the globe. Some, like French researcher Stephane Hallegatte whose paper focused on hurricane damage in the United States, studied the link between climate change and natural disasters, while others, like Nigerian Abayomi Oyekale of the University of Ibadan, studied the lost revenues to climate change’s effects on agriculture, particularly in poor, developing nations. Even developed nations will feel the brunt in often surprising ways that will reduce their bottom line. Researchers from the United Nations University looked at the effect on Japanese ports an increase in tropical cyclones would have due to global warming. In no uncertain terms, it stated:

Adaptation to climate change is essential for the future growth of the Japanese economy. Port planners should therefore factor in this potential future increase in storm intensity when designing port capacities (to be able to prevent delays due to increased downtime) and sea defences (to limit damage due to higher possible future waves). Failure to do so could lead to future bottlenecks in the shipments of products, constrain Japanese economic growth and reduce the potential Japanese GDP by between 1.5 and 3.4% by the year 2085.

Perhaps the most sobering assessment came from researcher Lillian Yamamoto of Kanagawa University. Her work studied what it would mean both economically and politically if Pacific island nations were literally wiped off the map, submerged by climate change. In her own words:

It is urgent that the international community develops a legal status to those who have to leave their countries of origin due to the environmental effects of global warming. The ‘environmental refugees’ will leave their countries, but what happens to their legal status, if the territory of their country disappears?

With the economic costs of inaction growing, researchers took a new interest in developing models to determine just how costly action would be. The conference took a special interest in the ‘environmental Marshall Plan” presented by Terry Barker, of the Cambridge Center for Climate Change Mitigation Research. Barker argued that the costs usually associated with renewable energy and climate change mitigation could be lessened by following the example of the United States and investing in a ‘green New Deal’ that could form a worldwide network of support. Barker explains:

The current global financial crisis must be seen as a timely stimulus to tackling climate change, not a hindrance. If all G20 countries adopted a Green New Deal similar to that proposed by President Obama, the world economy could be greatly strengthened, especially the sectors producing low-carbon technologies…But global coordination is critical. Any single country’s New Deal may fail if its extra demand for goods and services are met with imports. If we act together, everyone’s exports will increase and we can recover employment much quicker.

If there was an overall message from the three days of scientific know-how on display in Copenhagen it was perhaps that: without global cooperation and a recognition of a shared cause, climate change would continue to make our planet a very different and perhaps unlivable world.

Image: Final session of the Climate Congress

The second day of the Climate Change Congress at the University of Copenhagen opened with a focus on renewable energy, shifting from the symptoms of climate change to the solutions. With panels on topics such as carbon sinks, the reliability of biofuels, and the promise of sustainable energy solutions, the assembled scientists offered tentative answers to the looming question: how do we fix it?

Touted by the conference in advance of its sessions on energy was the research of Peter Lund, of the Helsinki University of Technology, who announced that by his calculations renewable energy could provide up to 40 percent of the world supply by 2050. Lund, in his own words:

Our findings demonstrate that with global political support and financial investment, previous notions that the potential for renewables was in some way limited to a negligible fraction of world demand were wrong. If we prioritize and recognize the value of renewable energy technologies, their potential to supply us with the energy we need is tremendous.

The mechanics of actually supplying renewable energy were explored by scientists like Dieter Genske of the Swiss Department of Environmental Sciences, who cited the potential of cities as incubators for renewable energy. Genske reported:

Many spaces within an urban environment, such as roofs and facades, can be utilised
to produce energy. Besides solar applications, urban energy sources including wind and water can be
utilized to produce power and ambient air, wastewater and the underground can be utilized to extract heat. Municipal solid waste and green waste can be exploited to produce both. In addition, derelict and idle spaces can be revitalized for renewable energy production, for instance to grow energy plants.

Others, like Brian Wilson of Colorado-based Solix Biofuels, touted the potential of algae as a fuel source. Wilson’s Solix system helps to cut down on the high costs associated with algae-for-fuel production and estimated that the costs would be “$1/liter ($150/barrel); with a defined path to reducing the production cost by half over the next 2-3 years.” Frauke Urban of the University of Sussex explored the potential for integrating renewable energy into ‘rapidly developing’ countries like China and India, and came up with a similar economic model: cheap for small scale, more expensive for large scale, with the potential to reduce costs as renewable energy is taken up more widely.

Image:Renewable energy workshop