The Switch � September 2007

According to the European Respiratory Society (ERS), there is a mismatch between scientific knowledge and the EU political agenda on particulate matter (PM) - also referred to as particulates, aerosols or fine particles. PM are tiny particles of solid or liquid suspended in a gas, and are usually defined by the size of the particles.

In an editorial, the ERS explains that there is now clear scientific evidence of the negative impact of PM on health, including links with increased mortality (cardiopulmonary problems and lung cancer) and reduced life expectancy. Moreover, the ERS researchers have identified clear signs of other health effects of exposure to PM, including increased risk of strokes and pulmonary affections, as well as sudden cardiac death and infarction.

The authors believe that the benefits of stringent air pollution legislation clearly outweigh the costs, despite the major resources required. The ERS calls for ambitious air quality strategies and reduction programmes in Europe. They fear that the European Parliament's proposed target of 20 micrograms / m3 might not be enough to efficiently protect public health as significant adverse effects have been recorded even at this level.

The researchers conclude that plans to reduce exposure to PM in the proposed Air Quality Directive must be legally binding if they are to reach their full potential and stimulate ambitious policies in the Member States. Delaying the enforcement of ambient air quality limit values would weaken EU credibility, they add.

Simple Living Manifesto

A simple life has a different meaning and a different value for every person.

It means getting rid of many of the things you do so you can spend time with people you love and do the things you love. It means getting rid of the clutter so you are left with only that which gives you value.

However, getting to simplicity isn't always a simple process. It's a journey, not a destination, and it can often be a journey of two steps forward, and one backward.

If you're interested in simplifying your life, the Simple Living Manifesto is a good starters' guide, offering 72 ideas to simplify your life.

Sustainable Nuclear Energy?

A "Sustainable Nuclear Energy Technology Platform" has been launched in Brussels, bringing together nuclear energy stakeholders. Its goal is to pressure the European Commission and national governments to define and concentrate the efforts and budgets on priorities agreed at EU level through a "Strategic Research Agenda" and corresponding "Deployment Strategy".

According to European Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik, "for those countries that choose it, nuclear power will be a very important part of their solution to security of supply and reduction of greenhouse gases".

Greenpeace calls the Sustainable Nuclear Energy Technology Platform "an initiative that has got everything wrong: nuclear energy is not and cannot be made sustainable ... Nuclear power still receives far more research money than renewable energy does - it is time that this changed".

Oliver Schafer, Policy Director for the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC), reacted earlier to a claim by the International Energy Agency warning Germany that it could not complete its nuclear phase-out and fulfil its consumption needs at the same time: "All evidence shows that Germany is able to phase out nuclear and at the same time replace it with renewables. One example - in July [2007], they celebrated a goal in Germany. The goal was the 2010 renewable electricity target of 12.5%. They met it three years early. With a continuation of the existing policy, I am confident that nuclear power can be replaced in Germany, according to the forecasts of bodies other than the IEA.

Nuclear has a 2% share in our global energy supply - if you tell me that mankind is not able to replace 2% of its energy supply, I would be surprised. We are not talking here about 70 or 80% - we are talking about 2% of the global energy supply coming from nuclear. We can fly to the moon, that is much more challenging."

For more information about nuclear energy, please visit the Nuclear Energy Fact Sheet by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.

Opportunities for CO2 Capture and Storage

Carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) could play an important role in reducing CO2 emissions and is being evaluated as a way of storing CO2 over periods of hundreds, even thousands of years. According to the report Near-Term Opportunities for Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage by the International Energy Agency (IEA), CCS in power generation, industry and fuel transformation could account for 20% of CO2 savings (or 6.5 Gt of CO2 captured and stored annually in 2050).

The IEA study says that governments need to adopt climate change policies that put a cost on emitting CO2. If they do not do this, there will be no incentive to use CCS. Other drawbacks on CCS itself include:

the most important solutions to the climate change problem are energy efficiency and cleaner, renewable energy sources. CCS should not detract attention away from issues such as pollution and the production of large amounts of CO2 in the first place.
the process of CCS itself requires energy and adopting it may actually lead to an increase in our use of fossil fuels.
There are the non-negligible hazards to human health. These include possible leakage of CO2 from underground depots, as well as risks inherent in transporting CO2 (the gas must be liquefied under high pressure) and in injection processes. All of these problems need to be further studied and overcome if the technology is to be employed on a wide scale.
Finally, there are various legal issues to resolve, including how the law would treat CCS activities in international seas and which organisations would be responsible.

Lowest Arctic Ice Coverage in History

The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its lowest level since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago.

Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre said: "We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3 million sq km which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006. There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100 000 sq km per year on average, so a drop of 1 million sq km in just one year is extreme... The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected and that we urgently need to understand better the processes involved."

Arctic sea ice naturally extends its surface coverage each northern winter and recedes each northern summer, but the rate of overall loss since 1978 when satellite records began has accelerated. The Polar Regions are very sensitive indicators of climate change. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed these regions are highly vulnerable to rising temperatures and predicted the Arctic would be virtually ice free by the summer of 2070. Still other scientists predict it could become ice free as early as 2040 due to rising temperatures and sea ice decline.

Because sea ice has a bright surface, the majority of solar energy that hits it is reflected back into space. When sea ice melts, the dark-coloured ocean surface is exposed. Solar energy is then absorbed rather than reflected, so the oceans get warmer and temperatures rise, making it difficult for new ice to form.

The Middle Path

The debate about global warming is over. There is no longer any question that human activity is causing the Earth's climate to heat up at an increasingly rapid rate, with consequences that we are now only beginning to understand. Meanwhile, human population growth is placing unsustainable demands on everything from animal habitats to water supplies. Faced with radically different assessments of the long-term effects of global warming - from oil companies, scientists, business lobbies, and environmental groups - concerned citizens find it difficult to tell how dire the prognosis really is. Is life on Earth doomed, or is there still time to mitigate - even to reverse - the damage that has already been done?

In The Middle Path, noted geographer Eric Lambin provides a concise, readable summary of the present state of the environment and considers what must be done if environmental catastrophe is to be avoided. Finding merit in the arguments of both optimists and pessimists, Lambin argues that it is not too late to exploit the inherent tendency toward equilibrium of large-scale systems such as the earth's environment. By relying upon a combination of remedies as global as international cap-and-trade emission treaties and as local as municipal programs promoting the use of bicycles rather than cars, it may yet be possible to rescue humanity from a potentially fatal crisis of its own making.

World Car-Free Day

Every 22nd of September, people across the globe get together to swear off their cars - if only for one day - in a collective reminder that we don't have to accept car-dominated societies, cities, or personal lives. Since its earliest incarnations in the 1970s and '80s, World Car-Free Day has grown into a massive global celebration of human-centric communities and people-powered transportation.

Car-Free Day 2007 could turn out to be the biggest yet. For the first time, China's government is hopping on board, with official events talking place in more than 100 cities, including Beijing and Shanghai. Officials will reportedly be trading in their famed black sedans for public transportation, and some roads will be closed to private cars.

As the world tunes in to the fact that the climate is heating up, this is the perfect opportunity to take the heat off the planet, and put it on city planners and politicians to give priority to cycling, walking and public transport, instead of oil-hungry automobiles. Let World Car-Free Day be a showcase for just how our cities might look, feel, and sound without cars - 365 days a year.

European Mobility Week

The overall aim of the European Mobility Week campaign is to encourage public awareness of the need to act against pollution caused by the increase in motorised traffic in the urban environment. In fact, it is not just a question of fighting atmospheric pollution or noise but also of improving the quality of urban life.

Accordingly, that operation is centred on three types of measures, designed to:

encourage the use of alternative forms of transport and travel other than private cars,
raise awareness and inform city-dwellers of what is at stake so far as concerns long-term mobility in towns and the risks connected with pollution,
show the town in another light thanks in particular to reduced motorised traffic within restricted areas.

It is an opportunity for all the participating towns to show how much environmental issues concern them. The operation will allow them to express themselves on the matter and at the same time give citizens an opportunity to show their support by their interest and involvement, for measures for a better quality of life in the urban environment. Because to offer everyone an alternative means of getting around, necessarily entails rethinking the apportionment of the highways. Therefore, the European Mobility Week is a unique moment in the year when the elected town councillors can test their transport policies in situ.

Survey on Noise Pollution

Road traffic is perceived as the most annoying source of noise pollution by residents of EU urban areas, a survey conducted in the framework of a European research project has concluded.
The overall objective of the SILENCE project is to develop methods for noise abatement and therefore significantly reduce Europeans' exposure to noise, particularly in urban areas. The survey , conducted online, examines how noise is perceived by urban residents.

The first results of this survey revealed that 61% of people living in metropolitan areas are annoyed by traffic noise. Of these, 32% said they were "very" or "extremely" annoyed.

The most irritating noise source reported to date is road traffic, with 52% of people polled expressing their annoyance, while only 16% complained about railway noise. The study also found that noise annoyance perceived is significantly influenced by an individual's noise sensitivity.

Noise can cause sleep disturbance and impair people's learning, motivation and problem-solving abilities. An estimated 1,800 early deaths - mostly in urban areas - are said to be attributable to excessive noise, which is thus considered as one of the sources of urban-area pollution.

In September 2007, the European Commission will adopt a Green Paper on Urban Transport to look into the best way to deal with growing congestion and pollution problems in European cities.

European Carmakers Failing on Lower Emissions

European carmakers are failing to deliver the lower carbon emissions they pledged to the European Commission in 1998, with emission rates from new cars down by just 0.2% last year, the worst performance on record.

New figures published by Transport and Environment (T&E) in its report Reducing CO2 Emissions from New Cars, show new cars sold in Europe in 2006 by members of the Association of European Automobile Manufacturers (ACEA) emitted 160g of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilometre on average, down less than half a gram on the previous year. ACEA, which accounted for 81% of sales in Europe in 2006, committed to reach 140g/km by 2008 but will now almost certainly miss that target.

Evidence is emerging that carmakers have been holding fuel efficient technology back for years and are only now starting to bring it to market as the threat of regulation becomes real. ACEA are actively lobbying the EU to give heavier cars, such as SUVs, weaker CO2 standards. The new figures also show that the average weight of new cars increased by 18 kg in 2006 continuing a long-term upward trend. And yet, reducing weight is one of the most important methods of improving fuel efficiency and cutting CO2 emissions.

T&E is calling on the EU to stick to a single fleet average standard of 120g/km by 2012. Alternatively, T&E says car 'footprint', the area between the four wheels, could be used as a temporary measure to define what CO2 standard individual car models would have to apply. 'Footprint' is the attribute used in new North American CAFE fuel efficiency standards for light trucks and was chosen, amongst other reasons, because it avoids the dangerous safety implications of using a weight-based standard.

Car Use, Obesity and Carbon Dioxide

A new report by the Institute for European Environmental Policy highlights the extent to which car use is implicated in the increase in obesity as well as rising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

The report Unfit for Purpose: How Car Use Fuels Climate Change and Obesity records the decline in routine physical activity in the form of walking associated with growing car use from 1975-2005, taking the United Kingdom as a case study. Car ownership has risen steadily since the Second World War, to the point where most households now own at least one car, and many have several. Now 81% of all adults live in households with at least one car. Levels of walking have steadily declined in recent decades, and as car ownership increases, many journeys that would once have been made on foot are being replaced by car travel.

The report argues that the dominant factor in the obesity epidemic is a decline in energy expenditure, through declining levels of physical activity. Nearly 1 hour of travel per week is switched from walking to car travel once a car is available, and this decline in walking is in itself enough to account for much of the rise in obesity of recent decades.

If all drivers were to walk an extra hour per week (the same as non-drivers) the extra walking could displace at least 11 million tonnes of CO2 from cars - amounting to 15.4% of the total emissions from passenger cars. The report goes on to argue that we need to provide travel behaviour change intervention programmes tailored to individual needs, in order to help those interested in change to find ways to make walking a routine activity in their lives and lifestyles.

OECD Study Critical on Biofuels

A study by the Round Table on Sustainable Development of the OECD criticises current government policy bias towards biofuels, saying that subsidies and tariff-protection measures will drive land owners to divert land from food or feed production to the production of energy biomass, thereby driving up food prices.

Biofuels have been championed as an energy source that can increase security of supply, reduce vehicle emissions and provide a new income stream for farmers. These claims are contested, however. Critics assert that biofuels will increase energy-price volatility, food prices and even life-cycle emissions of greenhouse gases. The study presents salient facts and figures to shed light on these controversial issues and asks whether biofuels offer a cure that is worse than the disease they seek to heal.

The information gathered in the study Biofuels: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease? gives rise to two questions:

1. Do the technical means exist to produce biofuels in ways that enable the world to meet demand for transportation energy in more secure and less harmful ways, on a meaningful scale and without compromising the ability to feed a growing population?

2. Do current national and international policies that promote the production of biofuels represent the most cost-effective means of using biomass and the best way forward for the transport sector?

Nordic Ministers Call for Ambitious Baltic Sea Plan

The Nordic environment ministers have called for tangible measures to protect the Baltic Sea, e.g. a ceiling on emissions of nutrients. The measures are intended for inclusion in the planned Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP). The Nordic environment ministers pledged their full backing to the BSAP and stressed the importance of all the governments in the region working to ensure it is as effective as possible.

The BSAP is due to be approved by environment ministers from all of the Baltic Sea nations at a meeting of the Helsinki Commission for the Protection of the Baltic Sea Environment (HELCOM) in Krakow, Poland, on 15 November. The ministers stressed the necessity of comprehensive regional co-operation between the EU countries and Russia to reduce the impact of nutrients on the Baltic Sea.

Europe Can Reduce Water Usage by 40%

In order to support the European Commission in the preparation of a Communication on water scarcity and droughts, a study was commissioned to assess the EU water saving potential. The study, EU Water Saving Potential [part 1] [part 2], addresses the savings that can by achieved via technical measures without major changes in human behaviour or production patterns. Furthermore, it looks towards instruments such as water pricing, drought management plans or labelling that can foster the implementation of these measures.
Total water abstraction in the European Union (EU 27) amounts to about 247 000 million m/year. On average, 44% of total water abstraction in EU is used for energy production, 24% for agriculture, 17% for public water supply and 15% for industry.

As regards public water supply (including households, public sector and small businesses), the reduction of leakage in water supply networks, water saving devices and more efficient household appliances have the potential for up to 50% water savings. Applying the above mentioned measures would allow for a reduction in water consumption from 150 litres/person/day (average in the EU) to a low 80 litres/person/day. A similar reduction could be applied to public water supply, leading to an estimate of potential saving up to 33% of today's abstraction.

The use of water saving technologies and irrigation management in the industrial and agricultural sectors could reduce excesses by as much as 43% while water efficiency measures could decrease water wastage by up to a third.

Green Public Procurement - European Case Studies

The Oko-Institut and ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability has published five case studies on green public procurement which assess the costs and benefits of green public procurement for local authorities. They include:

(1) Barcelona, Spain: Sustainable bus shelters; (2) Goteborg, Sweden: Low emission buses; (3) Lille, France: Public lighting services; (4)Taunusbahn, Germany: Public railcars with particle filters; (5) Zurich, Switzerland: Energy efficient floorlamps.

The full study is divided into the following parts: