The solar electric power system will supply power to the winery’s offices and processing facilities, as well as its large, barrel refrigeration rooms. The winery expects the project to pay for itself in energy cost savings in seven to eight years. The winery will begin its first solar powered wine production when the bottling line starts up this month.

Premier Power designed the 129 kW solar electric system, which features 784 of GE Energy’s GEPV 165 solar power modules. Each solar power module generates a peak power of 165 watts. Premier Power, GE’s Northern California distributor, integrated its system into Shafer Vineyards’ landscaping and existing structures.

The system consists of three sub systems: two 50 kW east/west rooftop systems, and a 29 kW combined south rooftop and a ground-mounted system. The system should produce approximately 12,900 kWh per month or approximately 155,000 kWh per year. The entire system could power roughly 20 to 30 average U.S. homes.

"Premier Power selected GE Energy’s solar electric systems for the project because of the in-depth support in design and layout GE provides," said Dean Marks, pre?ident of Premier Power. Their support involved collaboration on electrical design elements including equipment selection and site layout."

The winery is on track to receive a rebate of up to USD $490,000 from Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) through the local utility’s Self-Generation Incentive Program, which covers up to half the cost of clean, on-site electric generating systems.

"For more than 20 years, Shafer Vineyards has worked diligently to develop a sustainable business. Our conversion to a total use of solar power is part of that plan," said Doug Shafer, president of Shafer Vineyards.

The Shafer Vineyards project is the most recent addition to Premier Power’s list of PV enabled wineries which includes Sierra Vista Winery, Domaine de la Terre Rouge and Madrona Vineyards.

"We have never looked at manure as an opportunity," Gordon Wells of Tradex AgriSystems said at the 2005 Banff Pork Seminar. "One of the key messages that must be received is that manure has renewed value in today’s marketplace."

Increasing urban pressure on water and land, and dramatically higher energy costs have created a real challenge for livestock producers, but those same conditions have created a renewed interest in this new technology, said Wells.

Bio-Terre Systems of Manitoba is using a low-temperature anaerobic digestion technology to offer waste management solutions to?its customers. Their system is appropriate for both small and large livestock operations because it doesn’t require as much in capital costs, and is easier to operate than conventional digesters used at some of the larger livestock businesses. (Information on Bio- Terre is courtesy of the Stategis business directory.)

Home Farms Technologies of Manitoba offers gasification technology of "barn slurry", which separates the liquids from the solids in manure and then oxidizes the resulting biomass to create biogas that fires a steam generator.

Clear-Green Environmental of Saskatchewan offers its customers a variety of ways to get from biomass to biogas. What the company concentrates on is the best technology fit for its customer to produce a useable fuel from the manure, and then Clear-Green will find the appropriate company to install the technology.

While each business has developed different technologies and business models for waste to energy projects, all three have a common goal to process potential waste into commercially usable by-products, Wells said.

"What is clear is that these three have persevered through incredible odds, lack of political support and economic challenges to lay the groundwork for real progress," he said. "The cost of energy, the increasing public pressure for real solutions to environmental issues, and significantly larger-scale livestock operations and processing facilities put integrated solutions in a new light."

There are certainly issues to be dealt with and business models developed before those units become commonplace, according to Wells. For example, setting up an integrated processing unit, with long-term payback requirements obviously requires that the manure source stays in business.

"Innovation will drive these opportunities and successful innovation requires a well-developed capital market that allows people to invest in these opportunities," said Wells. "Integrated manure management systems are just now beginning to attract capital, but at least we are moving in the right direction.

But biotechnology supporters complained the bill would essentially uphold a "medieval" moratorium based on backward ideas about genetically altered crops.

The so-called "co-existence" law sets out rules to ensure conventional and organic crops are not contaminated by GM seeds, part of a web of European Union legislation aimed at allowing a controlled opening of the market to GM organisms.

But it will be up to each of Italy’s 20 regions to set the detailed rules and most of them have said they want to remain GM-free, effectively maintaining an unofficial EU- wide ban on GM foods which was formally lifted earlier this year.

Agriculture Minister Gianni Alemanno, who sought jail time for farmers who broke the rules, said he was "very pleased" by the legislation’s final passage in the Senate on Tuesday. It won approval in the lower house last week.

"We sought to… guarantee freedom of choice for Italian producers, while heading off the risk of diffuse and uncontrolled contamination by GM (organisms)," he was quoted as saying by ANSA news service. Roberto Gradnik, president of pro-bioindustry group Assobiotec, complained to local media the approval of the legislation was a step backwards.

"With this medieval-flavoured decision, our country denies to agriculture companies the freedom to choose to cultivate plants that are genetically modified," he said.

Any attempt to impose a blanket ban on GM farming would probably have prompted legal action from the European Commission, which has to ensure that use of such plants is allowed as long as they have passed safety tests.

Many European consumers and environmentalists fear the crops — whose genetic makeup has been altered, often for resistance to pesticides — might pose a hidden risk to health or wildlife.

Consumers have been eating GM food for years in the United States where it is not required to be separated from conventional strains or labelled.

"Interdependence is no longer disputed," said Blair, speaking to a forum of business and political leaders. "If America wants the rest of the world to be part of the agenda it has set, it must be part of their agenda too."

President George W. Bush’s inauguration speech last week showed the United States realised it could not defeat terror threats just by military means or on its own, said Blair, one of the US leader’s staunchest allies.

Defending the speech, which was accused of not reflecting the reality of US policies, Blair said its support for extending democracy and liberty "emphatically puts defeating the causes of terrorism alongside defeating the terrorists."

Blair said after international divisions over the war in Iraq, there was "a wish to re-unify." He has predicted Bush’s second term would see more account taken of the views of Europe, which the president visits next month on a fence- mending trip.

There was common purpose in fighting global terrorism, extending democracy and seeking peace in the Middle East, said Blair, stressing that those issues and his agenda for this year’s Group of Eight presidency could not be decoupled.

Blair wants to focus British leadership of the G8 group of leading industrialised nations on relieving poverty and disease in Africa and on combating climate change.

But the Bush administration has little enthusiasm for mandatory action to tackle the warming of the planet.

It has refused to sign up to the Kyoto protocol on cutting emissions thought to cause global warming, arguing it would cost US jobs and unfairly burden developed states while imposing no obligation on poorer polluting states such as China and India.

LOW COST CLIMATE SOLUTION

A broad belief in Europe that scientists have proved global warming is a reality is not so widely shared in the United States. The evidence of climate change had been clearly and persuasively advocated by a very large number of entirely independent and compelling voices, said Blair. "The majority is not always right. But they deserve to be listened to."

If governments proposed solutions involving drastic but justified cuts in growth or living standards they would not be agreed, Blair conceded.

But global warming could be tackled without enormous economic cost through more intelligent use of science, a greater contribution by rapidly developing economies and market mechanisms like emissions trading, he argued.

"We need to send a clear signal that whilst we continue to analyse science … we are united in moving in the direction of greenhouse gas reductions," said Blair.

An international panel of experts this week described global warming as an "ecological time bomb" and warned that without fast action carbon concentrations would push global temperatures up from pre-industrial times by 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

That level would trigger "substantial agricultural losses, greatly increased numbers of people at risk of water shortages, and widespread adverse health impacts," the panel warned.

Blair used his speech to repeat his call for more aid for Africa, faster?debt relief, imaginative financing of help for the continent and a dismantling of unfair trade barriers.

He speaks on a panel on Africa on Thursday with rock star Bono, South African President Thabo Mbeki, Microsoft chief Bill Gates and former US president Bill Clinton.

But far from making any recommendations for action to their political masters, the scientists from 30 countries will review the state of knowledge and try to define just what constitutes "dangerous" levels of climate warming.

"We will not try to come up with a consensus number on what should be a target. That is a job for the politicians," conference chairman Dennis Tirpak said on Wednesday.

"The purpose is to have a debate of the scientific facts. We will collect the best information we have to give to the politicians … but don’t expect to make any recommendations," he told reporters.

It is a far cry from the fanfare with which British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced the conference last September, promising a cutting edge meeting that would set the political agenda for his presidency of the Group of Seven rich nations.

Scientists have said that two degrees centigrade of warming is already expected — with a major input from human activities like burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, which produces vast quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

They have also warned that warming of more than that will start to fuel itself, pushing the planet into the unknown as ice caps melt, sea levels rise and weather patterns change at accelerating rates, putting millions of people at risk.

An international report this week said the climate was a ticking time bomb and urgent action was needed now to curb greenhouse gas emissions. One computer model predicted climate warming of up to a catastrophic 11 degrees.

Environment campaigner Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth was upbeat about the meeting.

"A clear demonstration of a scientific consensus will send an unmistakable message to the politicians that they have to take action on carbon dioxide emissions now," he said.

The scientists from countries as varied as Australia, India, Sri Lanka, China and Japan will meet in isolation for three days starting on Tuesday — ?ust two weeks before the Kyoto climate change treaty finally kicks in.

A tiny step to limit rising temperatures, Kyoto aims to cut CO2 emissions by developed states by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

The United States — the world’s biggest generator of greenhouse gases — has refused to sign up.

EU health inspectors plan to test national governments to see how they cope with any outbreak of the virus and stop it from harming humans and animals, the EU’s health and food safety chief said.

Last week, the World Health Organisation warned that th? virus, known to have killed 27 people in Vietnam and 12 in Thailand over the past year, was endemic in Asia and appeared to be evolving in ways that favoured the start of a human outbreak.

"So far, the infection of humans by humans is the main concern, but this hasn’t happened to a worrying extent," EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou told reporters. "And some scientists say a pandemic is overdue."

"We are insisting that member states have ‘preparedness bans’. We will have test exercises on member states for dealing with these issues. It’s not only the time required to prepare a vaccine but also the time for industry to get them ready."

In Europe, several countries have found themselves forced to react quickly to a bird flu outbreak in their poultry sectors. The Netherlands, for example, slaughtered a quarter of its poultry after an outbreak infected 90 people and killed one.

What scientists fear most is that the bird flu virus could mutate if it infected a person sick with ordinary flu, or got into an animal hosting a human flu virus, such as a pig.

If the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus were to merge with a human flu virus, they say, then it could produce a strain capable of sweeping through a human population without immunity, possibly killing millions worldwide.

The threat of a bird flu epidemic in humans has health officials so worried that more than 120 million poultry birds were destroyed during the first quarter of last year in an effort to control its spread among animals.

Launching a five-day conference sponsored by the United Nations on protecting the diversity of Earth’s plant and animal life, Chirac called for a change in world attitudes to ensure more was done to protect species close to extinction.

"I appeal to all scientists to gather to create a world network of expertise, and France will propose to its partners … the creation of an inter-governmental group on the evolution of biodiversity," Chirac said.

He gave few details but said France would push for adoption of such measures by the signatories to the 1992 Convention onf Biological Diversity, which is designed to sustain biodiversity.

"With the fight against world climate change, the protection of biodiversity demands a deep change in how we think and live," he said.

The conference of 1,200 participants, organised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), is looking at ways to prevent the loss of biodiversity due to disappearing natural habitats and world climate change.

UNESCO cited figures suggesting almost 16,000 species of living creatures were near extinction and said the dangers of extinction were increasing with global warming.

One in four known mammal species and one in 10 bird species is in danger of extinction, it said. Of the 350,000 known plant species, 60,000 are threatened with extinction, it said.

Chirac has been a vocal supporter of global biodiversity, but France stands accused of not meeting its own standards for promoting conservation.

The European Union’s executive Commission said last week Paris had failed to heed rulings from European’s top court on nature conservation, public access to environmental information, water protection, and genetically modified micro-organisms.

France has said it is aware of of its delay in implementing the European directives and has made it a priority since 2002 to catch up on the delay.

"We fear that once again speeches will just give rise to more speeches," Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth said in a statement as they and other environmental groups held a parallel meeting to the UNESCO gathering.

"Every six hours, an area of forest the same size of Paris is disappearing, meaning the extinction of numerous species of plant and animal life sometimes not even known about."

Story by Elizabeth Pineau and Gerard Bon

"Fish from some areas of the Baltic Sea are so contaminated that they may be too toxic for European Union markets," it said in a report about the state of the shallow, brackish sea in north-east Europe.

It estimated that about 31 kg (68 lb) of poisonous PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, accumulated ever year in fish caught in the Baltic Sea from 1980 until the early 1990s "and almost certainly ended up on people’s plates".

Use of a so-called "dirty dozen" industrial toxins including PCBs, dioxins and pesticides like DDT were outlawed by a UN pact in 2001. They can get lodged in fatty tissues of animals and take years to break down.

Sweden in 1995 recommended that women of childbearing age should limit consumption of Baltic herring and salmon because of a range of pollutants, including PCBs and dioxins, which have been blamed for birth defects or cancers.

"This is not just a burden of the past but a major ongoing problem," said Ninja Reineke of the WWF’s anti-toxics campaign.

The report said that fish including Atlantic salmon, sea trout, cod and turbot had shown signs of reproductive problems in recent decades, possibly linked to the contaminants.

And traces of brominated flame retardants — used to make furniture or computers safer — in predators like seals or white-tailed eagles were two to five times higher in the Baltic than in the North Sea or Arctic Ocean, it said.

The Baltic is sensitive to pollution because it is almost an i?land sea with only a narrow opening between Sweden and Denmark towards the Atlantic Ocean. Some rivers flowing into the Baltic Sea are polluted.

The report did not say which states around the Baltic Sea — Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland or Germany — were most to blame.

European Nickel won two exploration licences last year, for the village of Lipovac in central Serbia and for the village of Mokra Gora in the area of Mount Tara, a protected natural park in southwest Serbia.

But filmmaker Emir Kus?urica, who used Mokra Gora as the setting for his latest movie "Life is a Miracle" and has since settled there, said locals will not allow European Nickel anywhere near their village.

"Somebody granted the exploration rights against the law and will be held accountable," Kusturica told Reuters. "We’ll do whatever it takes to defend this virgin land from those who want to destroy the environment, take the money and run".

Government officials called a news conference to respond to mounting criticism, saying European Nickel had a new acid leach process that would not harm the environment.

"The village of Mokra Gora itself (around 10 square km) will be excluded from the exploration, even though geological research is completely benign," Deputy Energy and Mining Minister Djordje Mihajlovic told reporters.

The village, nestled on a green hillside, is also famous for its Sargan Eight train that twists through the mountains on narrow-gauge rails, crossing gorges and rushing streams.

The government-run Institute for Nature Protection said it had originally rejected giving the exploration rights to European Nickel because Mokra Gora was protected by local laws, but their decision had been overturned.

"Nickel exploration and exploitation cause serious environmental degradation and we cannot allow that," the head of the Institute Lidija Amidzic told Reuters.

"Protected nature and organic food can bring a lot more dollars than nickel".

The Institute said it has placed the village, which borders Bosnia, on a list of temporarily protected natural sites and will ask UNESCO this year to include it in its Man and Biosphere programme.

The government is also under fire for giving European Nickel an exploration licence despite a Serb-run study saying the low-grade ore does not justify mining operations.

Local authorities have said that even if mining was proved worthwhile, they would block it.

San Francisco Bay area municipal governments are working to grow sustainable communities, by passing green building ordinances, requiring energy-efficient designs, recycled content and a host of ?green? strategies for public projects. In the city of San Francisco alone, new public projects of more than 5,000 square feet are now required to meet the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) silver standard.

LEED, the national energy- and environmental-efficiency standard set up by the U.S. Green Building Council, offers a four-tier rating system, ranging from basic certification to silver, gold and platinum levels. In San Jose, California?s third-largest city, any new construction of more than 10,000 square feet must be LEED certified. Mike Foster, Green Coordinator for San Jose, reports that many of the nearly 58 public projects now underway in the city incorporate green features such as carpeting with recycled content or paints with low levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs).

?Green building makes good sense,? says Carl Mosher, director of environmental services for San Jose. ?We can reduce operating and maintenance costs by saving energy, water and other natural resources, in addition to reusing certain materials.? Neighboring cities of Pleasanton, Berkeley and San Mateo all have instituted LEED standards for new municipal construction.

?We?ve learned a tremendous amount,? says Mark Palmer, green building coordinator for the city of San Francisco, where 10 local pilot projects are evaluating green design and construction. The Academy of Sciences, the Laguna Honda Hospital, the Golden Gate Music Concourse and the Islais Creek Muni Facility have ?given us a means to learn what works and what doesn?t work,? he says. ?The perception is that green building is expensive. That simply is not true. The key is to get all parties together at the very beginning of the design process.?

The California Sustainable Building Task Force (CSBTF) found that constructing a green building costs an average of two percent more than traditional structures of the same size, but offers a tenfold savings over 20 years through lower energy and water bills, reduced waste, and improved worker productivity.
by Dana Abbott