"Turning wind into profit” – Stephan Wrage couldn’t have chosen a better slogan for his project, which at first glance sounds more like a beachboy’s dream than a successful business idea. Or does the concept of taking kytes (so far only known from the watersport “kyte surfing”), attaching them to massive cargo ships in order to reduce their gas consumption sound realistic to you?

The German engineer proved all the pessimists around him wrong by turning his vision into reality with his company SkySails located in Hamburg. His literally biggest success: this summer the first 140 meter long cargo ship will conquer the open sea equipped with one of Wrage’s Skysails.
The owners of that ship simply got convinced by numbers: Given optimal weather and wind conditions fuel costs can be lowered by the most 50 percent, the least 10 – 35 percent (in a yearly average). Taken the finite oil resources into account experts estimate that the oil price could rise from 40 $ a barrel to 120 $ a barrel till 2030. In this light the hybrid system of conventional power and wind energy provided by SkySail provides a real advantage in the competitive shipping business in the long run. That justifies the investment of between 500.000 - 2.5 million euros for a SkySail.

Ship owners are not the only ones thinking that the concept has a future. The project gets funding by the EU and the German government. The UN also recommends using SkySails in light of climate change and the massive amount of CO2-emissions (approx. 600 – 800 m tonnes) shipping contributes overall – in comparison twice as much than aviation worldwide.

Stephan Wrage even has good news for all the owners of luxurious yachts among us: kytes in smaller versions are also available – easy to install you get the speed of a motor boat but not the sound. That’s called selling a product – for the greater good of saving the environment. Right on!
Fotos: Website

It has been one of those meetings were you have two days to go deeper into the topics than within a telephone or video conference. 27 Ministers of Environment from the European Union gathered in Essen, Nordrhein-Westphalia to discuss the climate politics of the continent for the next years.Club of Pioneers was there, meeting with Achim Steiner, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme.

Achim Steiner and Alex Goerlach
Steiner worked with the worldwide largest Environmental Protection NGO,the IUCN in Washington (D.C.) and Asia before he became Secretary General of World Commission on Dams (WCD) in Capetown. Jeremy Rifkin is the founder and CEO of Foundation on Economic Trends. In now 17 books he wrote about the changes in development, technique and the labor processes. He is an observer of the consumer society. His books are translated into 20 languages.

Jeremy Rifkin and Alex GoerlachBoth Rifkin and Steiner agreed to speak in upcoming posts of Club of Pioneers about their work and their vision for a sustainable future. During the conference they were introduced into the Hydrogen 7 of BMW and the company's vision of a future Hydrogen powered world.

Hey, we are not just the nominal Club of Pioneers! No, our pioneers ignite the spark of pioneering for real. The best example: Caro. She just introduced us to the "soccer clinic" concept she developed in Zambia. The idea is simple: educating kids about the environment through what all kids love to do - playing soccer. The event sponsored by the Environmental Council of Zambia, NGOs and Caro herself will be part of the activities taking place at the world environment day on june 5th . The whole event will be covered by local media and is hoped to replicate in other schools and hopefully on a larger scale. To understand where her pioneering spark comes from Caro first gives us some background information on the situation in Zambia. More information on the soccer clinic itself will be posted on CoP as well.
Caro's Blog:Zambia is faced with different environmental challenges and the most predominant ones are the recurrent floods as a result of heavy rains, severe drought, Water pollution and soil degradation largely due to mining activities, inadequate sanitation Soil degradation, Air pollution (especially on the Copperbelt), Wildlife depletion (fish and game) and deforestation.

 

I was shocked to read an article a few months ago that the town of Kabwe (central province) is Africa’s world’s fourth polluted city as a result of lead ore mining. This is due to the fact that for many years the smeltering process was not regulated by government and there were no pollution controls. The mining operation started in 1902 and ceased operating in 1994. The air, soil and water in this area are polluted. The pollution causes a lot of damage to the developmental process of children especially lead which has a hazardous effect on children’s mental development and to pregnant women.

 

This situation is unfortunate because if the local people were empowered with knowledge about what was happening to their environment they would have exercised their rights by voicing their concerns and put pressure on the relevant authorities.

 

The Government established the National Environmental Action Plan (NEAP) in 1994 however, this plan targets mostly corporate entities and is not packaged to meet the needs of the general public at every level of society. It is also too academic and ambiguous without offering practical solutions.

 

I believe that solutions to Zambia’s environmental need to take a local approach. The approach should suite the needs of the people and must incorporate local knowledge and indigenous cultural beliefs. The youths and children in Zambia make up 60% of the population. There are not many environmental programmes that aimed at educating children about the environment. In fact there is only one established NGO that has programmes that educate children about conservation and wildlife. The children are the future generation of any country and need to be included in environmental programmes.

 

The issue of poverty is sometimes used as an excuse for not coming up with activities for this age group, however, a cleaner environment is necessary for health and economic development and is a basic human right. Children should grow up in a healthy environment.

 

All children like to play and interact well when they are playing a game that they enjoy. They are also good at passing on information to their friends and peers and are therefore good at advertising. The children’s soccer clinic is aimed at providing a platform for playing and educating children aged between 8 and 15 years about the environment.
About Caro:Caro is an Export Promotion Advisor to the EU Mining Sector Diversification Programme. The project is targeted at small scale miners whose mining activities in Zambia are responsible for large scale environmental degradation. The major objective is to develop mining in a sustainable way.
Caro holds a BA in economics and is currently doing a MA in sustainable development. She travelled and lived in a lot of foreign countries and loves the experience.

“I like to be proactive and to initiate or involve my self in community projects. I like the adrenalin! I also like to socialize, open to new experiences, relaxing and I like art.”

Victoria Falls in ZambiaFoto: www.q2travel.co.za

American President George W. Bush sticks up for a new and worldwide agreement of reducing CO2 emissions in the year 2008. Observers see a change in the President's politics on climate change in this announcement. However, adressing a new initiative for 2008 signifies the no-interest of the President in finding a new strategy for lowering the CO2 emissions during the G8 summit neyt week in Heiligendamm, Germany.The German government is not really amused about President Bush's proposal but Chancellor Angela Merkel embraced it saying it is important that all polluters worldwide recognize their responsibility in lowering emissions and facing the possible risks of climate change.It is not ruled out there will be no agreement next week in Heiligendamm. In 2008 a new American President will be elected. It seems Mr. Bush wants to transfer the issue to his successor.

Probably the most sophisticated sensor onboard ENVISAT is the so-called ASAR – Ad-vanced Synthetic Aperture Radar. It’s a radar system which constantly emits radar waves which are reflected from ground and received by ASAR. From these reflected waves surface maps with 30 meters resolution can be generated. The key point is that these maps can be generated day and night, 24x7, and even at 100% cloud coverage, because radar waves are actively illuminating the surface and can penetrate clouds. This makes ASAR superior to optical sensors. These advantages are the reason why Germany currently launched a radar satellite, SAR-Lupe, with a peak resolution of below 1 m for military surveillance purposes.How do we get the data from ENVISAT? ENVISAT transmits the data in two ways to ground. One is directly to a ground station in Kiruna in Sweden. Though this is the easiest link it works only when ENVISAT flies over Kiruna. In order to have constant data access ENVISAT also transmits via the European relay satellite ARTEMIS, which is located in a geostationary orbit, to the ground station ESRIN in Italy. From there the data are distributed to five different data processing facilities in Europe, so called PACs (Processing & Archiving Centers), where the data are exploited and made available to the researchers. This is just the first step: Compiling the status of our atmosphere. We also need to know how much trace gases and aerosols our atmosphere can stand without too much warming. And finally, what can we do to lower these unwanted constituents? We need at least to withdraw the same amount of substances we release into atmosphere until we arrive at a closed loop cycle maintaining garbage concentrations well below their critical limits. Plants helps us to withdraw CO2. It’s up to us to reduce burning CO2 to the same emission rate. We are far from that. But we have an alternative: Switching from CO2 emission to H2O emission. There are no H2O emission limits. Earth bathes in water. So let’s be pioneers: Don’t burn carbon, let’s burn hydrogen!

We (Germans) like labels. We label anything and everyone. That makes life easy and structured. The latest coup is a new energy efficiency label for buildings and apartments, proposed by Germany last week. Concrete details are not out yet. It is thought to be made mandatory in Germany starting at the end of this year.
Critiques argue: a proposal easily made for us, being ahead of most other countries concerning combining architectural innovations with energy efficiency – the latest thing: the three-litre house.
So, is this label really just a fig leaf? Just a mean to guarantee Germany a pool-position in the race for the, right now, most-wanted label to be “clean” or even “the cleanest”?
Maybe, but nonetheless… it’s a good idea. It would offer some orientation for the consumer willing to support any effort taken against climate change. Giving them an easy tool for comparison similar to the EU-labelling of fridges etc.. Plus it would push competition in the building industry to actually put the newest innovations into practices. If…and that’s the phalanx in the process, it takes the first hurdle: Merkel’s coalition cabinet.
Till now it at least looks good on the EU-level:
Last Friday in Berlin, German ministers proposed and European Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said yes –to supporting the idea at least. Fully aware that this proposal would be non-binding on EU-level but part of the German contribution to cut energy use in homes and transport by 20 percent by 2020. Binding or not – our reputation as land of green ideas is at stake as well as our role as environmental leaders...
Read the whole article hereFoto: www.eder.co.at/04051/images/passivhaus/waerme.gif

The EU set out their new strategy on climate preservation for the next decades. The venture of Mr. Barosso now is to get all the memeber states on track for this ambitious project. Amongst the aims of the Eu-summit is to raise the part of renewable energies within the energy mix of the Union up to 20 percent until 2020. Further the European Community wants to diminuish the CO2-emissions about 20 percent as well within this period.