Green News

AFP - Police in Spain detained 30 Greenpeace activists Thursday who had blocked the entrance to the country's oldest nuclear power station which the environmental group is urging the government to close, the group said.

AFP - Russia on Thursday signed an agreement to give 500,000 dollars to an Asia-Pacific fund to combat climate change and disasters.

AFP - Top Senate Democrats on Thursday said they would introduce major global warming legislation early next year, saying Barack Obama's election meant a "sea change" in the battle against climate change.

AFP - Global warming may have contributed to a recent spate of outbreaks of deadly diseases in the Philippines, a senior minister said Thursday.

AFP - Africa seeks a common position with the European Union going into climate-change negotiations next year, Algeria's environment minister said Thursday following pan-African agreement.

Europe today moved to join the scramble for the vast mineral riches of the Arctic being opened up by global warming, declaring for the first time that the region's resources could help stem anxiety about Europe's energy security.

In what it described as "a first step towards an EU Arctic policy", the European commission issued a paper spelling out Europe's interests in the Arctic's energy resources, fisheries, new shipping routes, security concerns, and environmental perils.

"We can't remain impassive in the face of the alarming developments affecting the Arctic climate," said Joe Borg, the commissioner for maritime affairs.

The EU, three of whose 27 member states — Denmark, Sweden, and Finland — border the Arctic, said it wanted to be granted "observer status" on the Arctic Council, a body made up of northern littoral states, to further its interests alongside the US and Canada, Russia, Norway, and Iceland.

Today's move followed a series of developments over the past year signalling a looming international contest for control of the far north as the polar icecap melts and the Greenland ice sheet thins.

The Kremlin sent pulses racing in the west last year when it sent a submarine under the north pole to plant a titanium flag and lay claim to the territory.

In Greenland in May the US, Russia, Canada, Denmark and Norway agreed to try to bury territorial disputes over the Arctic, a pact that critics said heralded efforts to carve up the Arctic between them.

Denmark, by way of its autonomous territory of Greenland, is involved in Arctic territorial scraps with Russia and Canada. Developments in the Arctic are regulated through the UN's law of the sea convention which has been ratified by all the Arctic countries bar the US. The incoming Obama administration is expected to support the treaty, triggering a faster race to develop the Arctic which is estimated to hold a quarter of the world's untapped oil and gas deposits.

In March an EU study highlighted major potential security threats for Europe as a result of a thawing Arctic.

"The rapid melting of the polar ice caps, in particular the Arctic, is opening up new waterways and international trade routes," the report noted. "The increased accessibility of the enormous hydrocarbon resources in the Arctic region is changing the geostrategic dynamics of the region."

Temperatures in the Arctic were warming at double the global average while the ice and permafrost were shrinking faster than predicted, said today's paper, which urged member states "to state their position concerning a unique region of strategic importance".

While calling for environmental safeguards in the Arctic, the commission said that "exploitation of Arctic hydrocarbon resources and the opening of new navigation routes can be of benefit".

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the commissioner for external relations, said the aim was to "keep the right balance between the priority goal of preserving the environment and the need for sustainable use of natural resources including hydrocarbons".

The World Wildlife Fund said the Arctic was "on the threshold of historically unprecedented, potentially dangerous ecological change" and called for stricter rules on activities in the region.

• Polar regions
• Endangered habitats
• Arctic
• European Union
• Energy
• Conservation
• Climate change
• Oil

Frank Asbeck knows how to attract publicity. There was the time Germany's self-styled "Sun King" offered all the country's atomic engineers a job in his solar-technology company if Germany turned its back on nuclear fuel.

The colourful maverick, who within 10 years has turned his Bonn-based SolarWorld into a multimillion euro concern and one of the leading solar companies in the world, has now done it again with his offer to buy the German car-maker Opel.

The 49-year-old son of a handyman who trained as an agricultural scientist offered €1bn (£850m), "a serious offer", he said, expressing his wish to turn Opel into Europe's "first green automotive group".

Minutes into the start of the working day in the US, Opel's owners, General Motors, flatly refused Asbeck's offer yesterday, issuing the unambiguous statement "Opel is not for sale".

Analysts have been keen to point out that such an offer from a company with an annual turnover of €700m to one with a turnover of €16bn, could have been little more than a PR stunt.

Others remarked that Asbeck, who recently announced plans to build a large compound at one of his plants for a pride of Zimbabwean lions, is a complicated man full of contradictions. Asbeck's penchant for fast sports cars is well-documented. "How can you trust a man who pushes for energy change yet drives around in a gas-guzzling Maserati?" asked Tilman Steffen of the Netzeitung.

The suspicion that Asbeck's offer was not quite what it seemed, deepened when a closer look at his proposal showed that he effectively wanted the company for nothing, demanding a payment of €40,000 for each of Opel's 26,000 workers — equivalent to the €1bn he is prepared to pay for it.

But it could be his remarks had just the effect he wanted. They got him on to the front of many newspapers and ruffled the feathers of German industry, triggering a debate in a poignant week when Opel went to the German government cap in hand looking for a €1.8bn bailout as the car industry feels the squeeze.

Asbeck said his aim is to transform Opel from a producer of high-emission cars to one of more energy-efficient vehicles, including solar-powered cars, or what he refers to as "sunmotive concept" vehicles.

"The challenges of climate protection and of the market require a transition from automotive to sunmotive concepts," he said.

His remarks are a pointed critique of Germany's car industry which has been painfully slow to rise to the challenge of producing more environmentally efficient vehicles. Many ask, due to the mistakes it has made, why the car industry has any more right to a government handout than other firms. Asbeck says crisis means opportunity and solar-powered cars might be just the boost the economy needs.

He insists he is in a position to make the transition where the car industry has failed. His stock-market registered company employs 2,250 photovoltaics experts and has been working on producing a solar-powered car (the "sun mobil") for years, amassing prizes for its efforts.

Supporters of Asbeck said his ideas should not be dismissed.

"He's as stubborn as a mule," said Michael Vesper, former minister of North Rhine Westphalia where SolarWorld is based, and a fellow Green party member. "When he wants something he sees it through," he said, pointing to his track record.

In 1999 Asbeck used the proceeds from floating SolarWorld on the stock market to buy the chemical giant Bayer's solar branch in Freiburg. By 2004 the shares had risen by 500%, making them the most successful in the German market and two years ago Asbeck's influence spread across the Atlantic when he bought the solar energy section of Shell. In October he opened his first factory in the USA, in Oregon and made sure he was on hand to press the red button which started the controls.

• Alternative energy
• Solar power
• Travel and transport
• Energy
• Germany
• Automotive industry

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