by Mark Lynas, guardian.co.uk

The traffic lights are still blinking in Odaka town, north-western Japan, but few cars pass through these deserted intersections. Frozen in time after being hit by the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and meltdowns in the nearby Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear plant, tables are still laid in partially-collapsed restaurants and cars are stacked up against railings where they were deposited by the retreating wave. When I visited last week, a deathly silence reigned, the only noise the chirruping of frogs in uncultivated rice paddies on the edge of town, and the bleeping of my dosimeter.

Radiation readings in Odaka are well below anything that could be considered a health risk, but people are still not coming back. Indeed, the long shadow cast by Fukushima has extended over a much wider area than any scientific assessment of radiological hazard would argue is necessary. In Minamisoma, 20km north of the stricken reactor, a community centre above the town is decked out for indoor play because no one wants to let their children venture out of doors. The parents refuse to believe that radiation readings are low enough – barely above normal background, on my dosimeter – that their children's health would be improved by letting them play outside in the fresh air. Watching the kids cooped up in a big wooden hall, I could only conclude that unnecessary fear of radiation is just as much a hazard as the real thing.

On a wider scale still, unnecessary fear of radiation now presents a serious hazard to the world's climate. Japan's precipitous exit from nuclear power generation – the day I arrived in Tokyo was the first non-nuclear day in Japan for 42 years – has pushed the country's fossil fuel demand through the roof, with imports of oil and gas up by more than 100% since last year, their ballooning cost driving a record trade deficit of $32bn. As carbon emissions rise in lockstep, Japan's leaders are now backing off from their international climate change commitments, which the country has no chance of meeting. Given that wind, solar and geothermal account for less than 1% of Japan's electricity generation, the country will be massively dependent on fossil fuels for decades to come if the reactors stay switched off. The only alternative is blackout.

Given the trauma of the March 2011 tsunami disaster, Japan's nuclear shutdown is understandable – if regrettable from a global warming perspective. But a flight across the Sea of Japan to its neighbour South Korea shows a very different model in evidence.

In the same week that Japan mothballed its very last reactor, Korea broke ground on two new-build nuclear power stations – a pair of APR-1400 units now being constructed at Shin Ulchin, on the east coast. They are two of eight new stations planned to add to the country's existing nuclear fleet of 23, currently supplying 45% of the nation's electricity. To mark the occasion the country's president, Lee Myung-bak, paid a visit to the site, praising a "huge milestone" for South Korea's engineers, who had helped the country achieve "the dream of independent nuclear technology".

It is not that South Korea is not green. In fact the mantra of "green growth" has been a central component of President Lee's policy platform since 2008, and this month – even as Japan backed away from its own climate commitments – Korea's legislature unanimously passed a new climate act which will enforce carbon caps and an emissions trading scheme among its heavy industry and electricity sector. The country's international carbon emissions target is for a 30% cut below "business as usual" emissions by 2020, a commitment its leaders say they intend to deliver on. It also spent a higher proportion of its post-economic crash stimulus package on environmental initiatives than any other country.

South Korea is anxious to export its green growth model to other countries. Last week President Lee spoke at a landmark summit held by the Seoul-based Global Green Growth Institute, reiterating his view that there need be no automatic trade-off between rapid economic growth and environmental sustainability. In respect of Japanese sensitivities, he refrained from addressing the centrality of nuclear to Korea's green growth plans, but tension between the competing visions for what counts as "green" were evident throughout the two-day meeting. The president was immediately followed by the Japanese telecoms billionaire Masayoshi Son, who – having reinvented himself as head of the new Japan Renewable Energy Foundation – dramatically declared that there should be "no nuclear for mankind anywhere in the world, for the sake of the future, for the sake of our children, for the Earth".

The Korean hosts clapped politely, but did not appear convinced – hardly surprising given that Masayoshi Son's only proposed alternative to nuclear generation was a scheme for a pan-Asian supergrid linking Japanese cities with thousands of solar and wind plants supposedly to be built across the Gobi desert in faraway Mongolia. The plan would cost trillions and take decades to implement – and would leave Japan dependent on power lines crossing its energy-hungry and often less-than-friendly neighbour China. Koreans know that their economic miracle has been built on practical engineering success, not magical thinking.

The chair of the Green Growth Institute, Dr Han Seung-soo, himself a former prime minister of Korea, told me later: "Once the safety aspect is guaranteed there is no cleaner source than nuclear. It is clean energy because the amount of emissions created is almost nil." When I asked if Korea had a target for wind and solar deployment, he shook his head. Looking out of the window, from the centre of an Asian megacity with impressive skyscrapers in every direction as far as the eye could see, the idea of powering Seoul with renewables did seem nonsensical.

The truth is that, as in Japan, the proportion of solar and wind on the Korean grid is tiny, about 0.25% – most of the country's power comes from coal, and the only way to reduce its carbon emissions significantly is to continue to replace coal plants with nuclear. Yet as the post-Fukushima anti-nuclear hysteria continues to drag many countries – from Japan to Germany to Switzerland – back towards the fossil fuels age, South Korea is quietly getting on with reducing its carbon emissions while continuing its growth miracle.

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Photo: By Calmos at fr.wikipedia (Transferred from fr.wikipedia) [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons

You've probably heard it a thousand times before: corporate sustainability is not only good for the planet but it is good for a company's bottom line. But we can make those claims until we are blue in the face and it wouldn't mean anything unless there was some strong evidence to back them up. Well, now there is.

A new study by George Serafeim at Harvard University found that companies that put a higher value on corporate sustainability over the long term show stronger stock market and operating performance than companies that don't. In a recent piece on American Public Media's radio program, Marketplace, Serafeim says:

"We found that the high sustainability group out-performs the low sustainability group in terms of stock market performance. And also we found that the high sustainability group out-performs the low sustainability group in terms of operating performance as well. Whether you look at in term of assets or in terms of equity, you find stronger performance."

The tricky part about these findings, which were based on data from companies over a 20-year period, is that it is still unclear which way the causal arrow points. In other words, correlation is not causation. Do companies that value corporate responsibility perform well in the market because of their better than average sustainability efforts or are companies with strong market performance just more likely to emphasize sustainability?

Whether emphasizing sustainability is how these companies became profitable or whether they emphasize sustainability because they are profitable may not be critical to drawing conclusions from the study. The key take home point is that more profitable companies are embracing sustainability. And no matter which way you slice it, that is a good thing.

Photo:Some rights reserved by KJGarbutt

Ever since the introduction of the Tesla Roadster in 2008, compressed natural gas (CNG) has taken a back seat as an alternative fuel in the U.S. retail automotive market. Despite heavily financed advocacy campaigns, the technology has suffered from a lack of model availability, infrastructure, and public interest. Recent announcements from both domestic and foreign automakers , though, may be placing the alternative fuel back in the spotlight alongside electricity.

General Motors, Chrylser, and Ford all announced in early March that by the end of 2012, CNG versions of the OEMs’ pickup trucks will be available for the U.S. retail market directly from their dealers. The “Big Three” used to sell CNG vehicles retail in the 90’s and early 2000’s, but cheap gas and a lack of infrastructure made the more expensive CNG models less desirable. Thus the CNG models have been relegated to the conversion aftermarket with other eco-friendly alternative fueled vehicles such as biodiesel and EVs. Ford was the first of the Big Three back into the CNG market, offering packages preparing engines for CNG conversions in 2009.

One auto-manufacturer, Honda, has consistently maintained a CNG light duty vehicle on the U.S. market: the Civic GX. The GX has been a perpetual winner of the “Green Car of the Year” award, but is only available in four states. Though sales of the Civic GX in the U.S. have not been spectacular (2009 sales numbered less than 2,000), Honda announced in late 2011 it was expanding its sales territory to 38 states while simultaneously installing CNG refueling stations at its dealerships – essentially creating its market.

The trend certainly has much to do with the rising price of gasoline and the more consistent price of CNG (see below), as well as the slowly growing infrastructure (there are now 449 publicly accessible stations). Though the increased interest from OEMs is encouraging, the trend has not yet translated to actual sales. This is in large part because conventional internal combustion engines are becoming more efficient, hybrid mpg ratings are topping 50 miles, and plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) are finally starting to hit the market. All these competing technologies also rely on an infrastructure that is quickly becoming, or already, easily accessible. This fact is troubling for Honda, because it means that a) the GX faces stiff competition, and b) it doesn’t have the public infrastructure to make “range anxiety” irrelevant. For GM, Chrysler, and Ford, however, the issues of competition and range anxiety are less concerning.

The big three have taken a markedly different approach. The first difference being that, instead of competing in a market saturated with small Japanese hybrids, plug-ins, and European clean diesels; Detroit is sticking to markets it knows well, offering a fuel efficient “enabler” to a vehicle segment desired by fleet purchasers and prominently regarded as gas guzzling. Second, and most important: many of the CNG pickup trucks are dual Fuel, which means they will have tanks for both gasoline and CNG, and can switch between the fuels with ease. Ford and GM models will boast a range of more than 600 miles on combined tanks. Dodge’s model has a much smaller gasoline tank, and therefore combined range is placed around 360 miles. The dual fuel system will therefore give drivers the opportunity to both reduce mileage costs and be “greener” without the concerns of range anxiety.

Dual fuel CNG technology is not necessarily “new” to the world, as Fiat first introduced the systems in 2008 to South American markets. The system, however, has never been directly available from U.S. dealerships. In the battle for the CNG vehicle market share, Detroit’s prospects look good.

Scott Shepard is a research associate for Pike Research with a focus on smart transportation and the smart grid. Reprinted with permission of Matter Network.

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) may trace its roots to when Leonardo da Vinci first conceived a parabolic mirror concentrator to heat water, but the technology’s future may be brighter than ever. According to a Pike Research study, the market as a whole will more than double from $2.1 billion in 2012 to $4.8 billion in 2020.

Like many other forms of renewable electricity generation, CSP projects have been slowed by austerity measures across the world. But Pike researchers say the current CSP surge, which began in earnest around 2004, is merely paused at the moment, and global capacity will double by 2013.

Several policies have fueled the current market, including California’s renewable portfolio standard and several European feed-in-tariff systems. 2008’s global economic crisis didn’t immediately impact the CSP market because multiple projects were already underway, notably 14 utility-scale plants that brought 667 new megawatts (MW) online in Spain between 2008-2010.

However, as austerity measures kicked in the pipeline began to close and Spain, once the global leader in CSP technology, currently has zero projects under construction. The same trend is seen in the United States, where stimulus funding helped fund five CSP projects. These projects represent 1.5 gigawatts (GW) currently under construction, although nearly 6.9GW have been awarded.

As in Spain, though, when government funding and incentives dried up, so did new project starts. 745MW of projects have been cancelled or delayed, and 3.4GW of projects are uncertain to move forward.

Beyond austerity measures, Pike also sees the plummeting price of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules as a serious threat to the technology. PV modules have dropped beyond 50 percent from their 2008 peak, and PV is more attractive to investors due to its established track record. To wit, 1.2GW worth of CSP projects in the U.S. have been replaced with PV.

But, CSP may overcome austerity measures and PV competition by reducing project costs through three avenues: increasing project scale, hybridization with fossil fuel plants through Integrated Solar Combined Cycle (ISCC), and utility-scale energy storage.

“The most promising opportunity in the near term is to link CSP with thermal energy storage, thereby increasing the value of clean electricity in a cost-effective way that solar PV cannot replicate,” said Peter Asmus, Pike Research senior analyst.

Industry growth is likely to be concentrated in areas like Europe and northern Africa, according to Asmus. “There are clearer market signals to develop large amounts of bulk renewables due to carbon mandates and corresponding investments in bulk power transmission to serve EU markets.”

The study confirms what many assumed all along but had little in the way of comprehensive empirical research to back up their claims:  the charging of electric cars generally emits less greenhouse gas than does the comparable amount of gasoline needed to power cars for the same distance traveled. And while the amount of these emissions is substantially greater in some regions over others, the amount of these emissions varies significantly based on the mix of energy sources used to power a region's electricity grid. In other words, the greater the proportion of clean energy on an electric grid, the less greenhouse gas operating an electric car charged on that grid will emit.

What does Alaska have to do with those findings?

According to the UCS study, the electricity on the Juneau, Alaska power grid, which is mostly generated by hydroelectric power plants, makes it one of the "greenest" places to operate an electric vehicle in the country.  Alaska Electric Light and Power's Snettisham Hydroelectric Project pumps 78.2 MW of electrical power to the Juneau power grid.

That said, an underdeveloped charging infrastructure combined with the under-studied impact of sustained cold temperatures on electric car batteries, may make owning and operating an EV in Alaska a little less rosy than the study would indicate.

Generally speaking, the study found that electric cars plugged into grids in coastal states in the eastern and western U.S. have smaller carbon footprints than those plugged into the grids of the coal-reliant interior. [This pattern is indicated in the map above which shows the greenhouse gas footprint of EV charging in a range of blues, with the smallest footprint in light blue and the largest footprint in dark blue].

But the most important finding of the study may be that operating an electric car almost always generates less greenhouse gas than operating a gasoline-powered vehicle. "Nearly half of Americans live in regions where driving an electric vehicle means lower global warming emissions than driving even the best hybrid gasoline vehicle available," the authors of the study write, noting that, "Over the lifetime of an EV, the owner can save more than 6,000 gallons of gasoline—a significant contribution to U.S. energy security."

Even in Alaska.

Photo: Some rights reserved by Flying Amos

With its earliest opening in the prize's history, the submissions and nominations period is already underway, running through July 16, 2012. And considering the 2012 prize attracted 425 applications from 71 countries, competition will should again be stiff for the increasingly prestigious prize.

“We decided to open submissions earlier this year in order to guarantee equal opportunity for countries on the opposite side of the equator. It was important for us, from inception, that the prize benefits a global audience,” said Dr Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, Director General of the Zayed Future Energy Prize.

Created in honor of the late Founding Father and President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan and managed by  Masdar, Abu Dhabi's global clean energy company, the prize aims to inspire the next generation of innovators in the fields of future energy, climate change and sustainable global energy resources by celebrating "achievements that reflect innovation, impact, long-term vision and leadership in the fields of renewable energy and sustainability."

In addition to the longer nomination period mentioned above, the 2013 ZFEP will have a remade prize structure. Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) and Non-Governmental Organization will be separated into two categories, with winners in each taking home the healthy sum of $1.5 million.

For the newest category, Global High School, five winning high schools, one each in the geographic regions of Africa, the Americas, Asia, Oceania and Europe, will split the half million-dollar purse.

Rounding out the cash awards, the Lifetime Achievement (Individuals) category will take home $500,000.

“Nurturing and developing young minds at an early age and encouraging them to innovate lies at the core of the heart of our wise leadership," said Dr. Al Jaber, commenting on the creation of the category for young people.

The decision to restructure the prize categories was seen by the prize committee and jury members as a crucial step to widen the Prize’s appeal to a larger pool of applicants in the future.

As was the case in 2012, the winner of the Large Corporation category will not receive a cash prize. In the first two years of the contest when there was still a cash award for the Large Corporation category, ZFEP winners Vestas and Toyota made the shrewd decisions to donate their prize money to non-profit organizations.

The submissions and nominations period will last through July 16, 2012. Subsequent stages of review, selection and final deliberation will continue through the fall with the the awards ceremony taking place on January 15, 2013.