Record warm summers cause extreme ice melt in Greenland: an international team of scientists, led by Dr Edward Hanna at the University of Sheffield, has found that recent warm summers have caused the most extreme Greenland ice melting in 50 years. The new research provides further evidence of a key impact of global warming and helps scientists place recent satellite observations of Greenland´s shrinking ice mass in a longer-term climatic context. Findings are published in the 15 January 2008 issue of Journal of Climate.
South East Asia starts work on common biofuel standards
The Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand will spearhead efforts to come up with common biofuel standards that will allow them to trade and export biofuels with less hassle, according to Philippine Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla.
"Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia have something in common in terms of having a strong agricultural base. Therefore we are in a position to develop the biofuel sector," Lotilla said. "So it is in the common interest of South East Asian countries that we push now for the development of common standards, so that the tradeability of biofuels will be enhanced in the future."
The first part of the Philippine's Biofuels Act recently came into force, requiring all petroleum product distributors to blend 2% biodiesel in their supply. The biodiesel is mainly made from coconut oil. Meanwhile the ethanol industry in the country is attracting foreign investments from Japan and China (earlier post).
Indonesia is busy implementing its own very ambitious bioenergy policy, with massive investments from, amongst others, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (earlier post). The program aims to cultivate sugarcane, cassava, palm oil and jatropha on approximately 6 million hectares of land (earlier post and here).
Thailand for its part has no biofuel mandate yet, but produces a considerable volume of ethanol made from cassava, a very efficient biofuel crop (previous post). Because of a lack of clear policies, producers are even facing a surplus and are examining exports to neighboring countries (earlier post).
Lotilla, who attended a recent energy ministers' meeting in Riyadh, said Thai Energy Minister Piyavasti Amaranand had agreed that Thailand and the Philippines should work together in building up the biofuel sector in various international forums.
A separate meeting with Indonesian special envoy Alwi Shihab yielded the same results, Lotilla said. He quoted Shihab as saying the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand should ensure that biofuels and vehicles using them were not hampered by "artificial barriers to trade":
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: ethanol :: biodiesel :: biomass :: fuel standards :: Indonesia :: Thailand :: Philippines ::
Lotilla said the Philippines proposed a workshop that would allow countries in the region to exchange information on the status of their national efforts in developing biofuel standards and determine steps for moving forward.
"The three countries have agreed to come up with the common standards so that we will be able to share this with other countries as well," Lotilla said. "We're organising that workshop for a levelling of standards among the different East Asian countries".
There are no details on what kind of standards will be discussed, but we assume they will be dealing with technical criteria (fuel quality standards) and trade issues. Environmental and social sustainability as they are being designed in the EU are probably not the main focus of the negotiations.
Several other regional initiatives, like the Greater Mekong Subregion which includes Thailand (earlier post) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation's (APEC) recently strengthened Biofuels Task Force (earlier post), are cooperating to create biofuels industries in the region.
More details about the Indonesian, Thai and Philippine initiative as soon as they become available.
"Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia have something in common in terms of having a strong agricultural base. Therefore we are in a position to develop the biofuel sector," Lotilla said. "So it is in the common interest of South East Asian countries that we push now for the development of common standards, so that the tradeability of biofuels will be enhanced in the future."
The first part of the Philippine's Biofuels Act recently came into force, requiring all petroleum product distributors to blend 2% biodiesel in their supply. The biodiesel is mainly made from coconut oil. Meanwhile the ethanol industry in the country is attracting foreign investments from Japan and China (earlier post).
Indonesia is busy implementing its own very ambitious bioenergy policy, with massive investments from, amongst others, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (earlier post). The program aims to cultivate sugarcane, cassava, palm oil and jatropha on approximately 6 million hectares of land (earlier post and here).
Thailand for its part has no biofuel mandate yet, but produces a considerable volume of ethanol made from cassava, a very efficient biofuel crop (previous post). Because of a lack of clear policies, producers are even facing a surplus and are examining exports to neighboring countries (earlier post).
Lotilla, who attended a recent energy ministers' meeting in Riyadh, said Thai Energy Minister Piyavasti Amaranand had agreed that Thailand and the Philippines should work together in building up the biofuel sector in various international forums.
A separate meeting with Indonesian special envoy Alwi Shihab yielded the same results, Lotilla said. He quoted Shihab as saying the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand should ensure that biofuels and vehicles using them were not hampered by "artificial barriers to trade":
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: ethanol :: biodiesel :: biomass :: fuel standards :: Indonesia :: Thailand :: Philippines :: Lotilla said the Philippines proposed a workshop that would allow countries in the region to exchange information on the status of their national efforts in developing biofuel standards and determine steps for moving forward.
"The three countries have agreed to come up with the common standards so that we will be able to share this with other countries as well," Lotilla said. "We're organising that workshop for a levelling of standards among the different East Asian countries".
There are no details on what kind of standards will be discussed, but we assume they will be dealing with technical criteria (fuel quality standards) and trade issues. Environmental and social sustainability as they are being designed in the EU are probably not the main focus of the negotiations.
Several other regional initiatives, like the Greater Mekong Subregion which includes Thailand (earlier post) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation's (APEC) recently strengthened Biofuels Task Force (earlier post), are cooperating to create biofuels industries in the region.
More details about the Indonesian, Thai and Philippine initiative as soon as they become available.
posted by Biopact team at 12:50 PM
1 Comments:
there are a few jatropha planters in the philippines now & not for long the seeds will be ready for biodiesel processing & yet until now i've never heard of any PNS on jatropha biodiesel quality standard but only for cocobiodiesel.is this an oversight on the part of the govt.the philippine govt released hundreds of millions PHP to support the jatropha cultivation but the PNS is hanging.jatropha biodiesel has already been proven to conform with EN14214 by D1 Oils in the UK when they processed & tested it in their UK processing plant(source is available on request).with this attitude,we are driving away investors instead of attracting them.there are a few foreign investors interested to venture into this philippine project,including myself with a foreign financier who is very interested to start within this quarter hoping that this jatropha PNS will be resolve asap.
thank you for your attention,
ernie
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