but we should not forget that energy efficiency and conservation are more cost-effective than all measures.
Oil gushed into the Gulf of mexico at a staggering rate from the damaged riser that had attached the platform to the well.
Chemical dispersants to break up the oil were applied at one of the highest rates in history.
Some of the oil was trapped well below the Gulf's surface, with undetermined effects. It seemed as though the spill might drag on forever.
but to an episode three decades earlier and about 1, 000 kilometres south, at an exploratory oil well known as Ixtoc I, operated by Mexico's national petroleum company Petr  leos Mexicanos (PEMEX.
it spewed some 475,000 tonnes of oil into waters northwest of Ciudad del Carmen on Mexico's Yucat ¡
His mission was to collect samples of any oil that might remain, and to interview local fishermen about their experiences during and after the spill.
the tide pools here were thick with oil. Development and road building have changed the shoreline significantly since then.
whether they exhibit the chemical signatures of oil from the Ixtoc I well. It is unlikely that the oil is having any significant ecological effects after weathering away for so long,
but the residue is a reminder of what the region experienced when oil first came ashore.
Thirty years ago, most fishing villages were isolated so that locals knew little about the disaster playing out just a few kilometres away.
to look for oil among mangrove trees. A few kilometres from the village, the team found patches of what looked like highly weathered oil.
Then Ch ¡vez called out, Hey Wes, there's a stinky one over here. The 2-metre by 1-metre mat of tar smelled distinctly of asphalt.
but that more productive ecosystems such as mangrove swamps or salt marshes the closest analogue to mangroves in the northern Gulf retain oil indefinitely.
it too generated subsurface oil plumes. That oil made its way around the Gulf, and at one point some beaches in Texas took an unexpected oil hit after it mixed with surface waters close to shore.
You didn't see anything and then all of a sudden you had oil on the beaches, Jernelã v says.
In broader terms, Tunnell, Jernelã v and other researchers familiar with Ixtoc I agree that its most important lesson is to continue studying the Deepwater horizon spill
and its impact especially after the oil stops flowing and the world's attention turns elsewhere so as not to be caught short next time.
Steve Murawski, chief science adviser for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration's National Marine Fisheries Service, says that he
Many fear that the oil will come their way, and they sympathize with those already affected.
and fuel wood and in some cases to earn money from selling carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism established in 2001 as part of the Kyoto Protocol.
says that a space telescope that could search for clues to dark energy and for exoplanets should be top priority for large space activities (projects exceeding US$1 billion).
The Los alamos Study Group says that the nuclear facility, the core of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) project, has violated federal law by failing to produce an environmental-impact statement.
Massachusetts, has spawned an energy-storage company, 24m Technologies. The venture will develop rechargeable power units that combine elements from fuel cells
and shares a $6-million grant from the US Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy with Rutgers University in New brunswick, New jersey,
and environmental disasters including the risk of radioactive particles being released from contaminated land around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor.
and low-dose radiation combination, said Vladimir Chouprov, an energy campaigner for Greenpeace Russia, in a statement.
Media reports say that fires encroaching on the nuclear research centre in the town of Snezhinsk,
Fire-fighting measures were stepped up in the town of Ozersk in the Chelyabinsk region where one of Russia's largest nuclear-waste plants,
and is also found in adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the main energy carrier in cells. As demand for food production rises,
making them seek out easily digested sugars and carbohydrates for a quick energy boost. This and other results, published in three journals in the past month,
For example, once ground and cooked, the cattail grains contain nearly as much energy as domesticated cereals,
a nuclear physicist at the Weizmann Institute, is a regular participant in digs, where she can be seen on her hands
For instance, wheat grains and pieces of charcoal are used often to date pottery shards found in the same spot.
Nature Newsfunding Policy Research Events Business Business watch Coming up Funding Clean-energy cash A large fund for clean-energy projects in Europe, estimated at Â
It will also cover at least 34 projects involving innovative technology for renewable sources such as solar power, bioenergy and wind, tidal and geothermal energy.
which measure 15,625 parsecs (50,000 light years) from end to end, formed from a single relatively rapid release of energy equivalent to that from 100,000 supernovae.
has eclipsed the US Department of energy's Jaguar system at the Oak ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. In the latest update to the list of the world's top 500 supercomputers (www. top500. org), released on 11 november,
Atlas Energy of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is the latest to be snapped up; on 9 november, oil group Chevron of San ramon, California, said it would buy the firm in a US$4. 3-billion deal.
The moves are based on a belief that such sources will make up an increasing share of global gas production,
as projected in the 2010 World Energy Outlook, released on 9 november (see chart). Coming up 20 november US President Barack Obama's bioethics advisers reach their six-month deadline for completing recommendations on issues raised by synthetic biology.
whose well-meaning efforts have poured only fuel on the fire. By this account engaging with the skeptics is pointless
energy production, and more to avert a potential disaster. In this context, figuring out how to shape the public debate is a matter of survival.
But studies had suggested they were the same species DNA in mitochondria (the cell's energy factories) from African elephants found evidence of interbreeding between forest and savanna elephants around 500,000 years ago2.
The researchers sequenced the nuclear genomes of both types of African elephant as well as that of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus).
Examining the nuclear genome which is around 200,000 times larger than that contained in mitochondria,
You get a different picture by looking at nuclear DNA, says Reich. MITOCHONDRIAL DNA evidence suggesting that forest
Nature Newsbuffeted by the economic crisis and a drop in the oil price, US producers of corn ethanol are encountering increasing scepticism from the legislators on Capitol hill even as producers of the'greener'cellulose-derived ethanol struggle to move beyond basic research and development.
but it also included a host of incentives for energy development. Among them was a one-year extension of a tax credit giving refiners nearly 12 cents of federal cash for every litre of corn ethanol they blend into gasoline.
A tariff of more than 14 cents per litre on imported ethanol was extended also through 2011.
director of renewable energy policy for the Natural resources Defense Council in New york. There's a sort of belief in Washington that corn ethanol is one of these topics where everyone has to toe the line,
one year at least allows time for a more logical conversation about how we reform energy tax policy,
says Matt Hartwig, a spokesman for the Renewable Fuels Association in WASHINGTON DC. Salo Zelermyer, who represents ethanol producers for the legal firm Bracewell
The mandated levels of biofuel production in the United states will increase to 53 billion litres in 2011 about 8%of the country's total fuel consumption
The US Department of energy has supported biofuels through research grants, including $30 million for research into next generation biofuels announced last week,
Cellulosic ethanol producers are trying to generate fuel from biomass such as leaves and branches. These feedstocks have the advantage that they are plentiful
but doing so requires energy and specialized enzymes, or both. Mark B Â nger, research director for Lux Research in San francisco, says that most companies are still struggling with the basics:
Steve Long, a crop scientist and deputy director of the Energy Biosciences Institute in Urbana, Illinois, says companies are struggling to overcome a suite of financial,
citing oil giant BP's decision to purchase cellulosic ethanol technology from the Verenium Corporation,
to hunt for the elusive Higgs particle at the collider's current collision energies. The plan is likely to be agreed by CERN's management and council in January.
Fred Upton (Republican, Michigan) 墉 who has supported frequently environmental legislation 墉 will chair the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
and advanced programmes to help the developing world adopt clean energy and adapt to climate change.
and a technology-transfer mechanism to supply developing nations with technology for clean energy and adaptation.
Nuclear agreement As part of a series of commercial deals with France announced on 6 december, India agreed that French energy company Areva would construct two nuclear reactors in the state of Maharashtra by 2018;
a deal valued at US$9. 3 million. India plans to build about 20 more nuclear reactors to generate 60 gigawatts of electricity (10%of total demand) by 2035.
Areva hopes to build a total of six, and Russia's state-owned nuclear company has preliminary agreements to supply at least a dozen.
Research Orion from a plane Nearly a decade overdue, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Observatory (SOFIA) has published its first images of the sky,
focusing on the Orion star-formation complex. The 2. 5-metre, mid-infrared telescope is mounted on the back of a Boeing 747 that flies in the stratosphere above much of the atmospheric water vapour that absorbs infrared light.
US energy boost The United states needs to triple its annual federal funding 墉 from US$5 billion to $16 billion 墉 for energy'research, development, demonstration and deployment,
'and adopt a strategic, coordinated energy policy, a report from the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommends.
a'Quadrennial Energy Review',modelled on an existing defence review. Oil-spill budget Scientists have welcomed a long-awaited peer-reviewed US government report on the short-term fate of the oil from the Deepwater horizon spill in the Gulf of mexico this summer.
Released on 23 november the report supersedes an'oil budget calculator'published in August, which was reviewed not peer
and was criticized for its lack of information about how calculations were carried out, uncertainties in estimates and overly optimistic press presentation.
although oil experts note a paucity of solid data on which to base estimates. See go. nature. com/j3ixm6 for more.
Oil and gas companies can still drill in the area, but federal agencies have to ensure that proposed activities don't jeopardize polar bears and their habitat.
People Murder in Iran Majid Shahriari, an Iranian nuclear physicist, was killed and his wife injured in a bomb attack on 29 november in Tehran.
Another nuclear scientist, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, and his wife, survived an identical simultaneous attack. See page 607 for more.
a Malaysia-based company involved in palm-oil production, and will look at changes to biodiversity and the resources and processes provided by the ecosystem as the forest is logged
Arch Coal, a mining company based in St louis, Missouri, obtained the permit for what would have been the country's largest mountaintop mine in 2007 from the Army Corps of Engineers,
Spill science scarce The presidential commission investigating last year's huge oil spill in the Gulf of mexico has called for more science in federal decisions on oil production and spill response.
Business BP in Russian deal BP is joining up with Russia's state oil company Rosneft to drill in the Arctic waters of the Kara Sea.
The London-based company will take 9. 5%of Rosneft's shares and help its Moscow-based partner explore a 125,
Rosneft will get 5%of BP's ordinary shares, worth around US$8 billion. Environmentalists have protested against the deal as they grow increasingly vocal about the dangers of drilling in the Arctic.
cut generous feed in tariffs (the price an electricity utility must pay to generators of solar energy) by capping the subsidized hours that solar plants can sell.
For now they only affect the fuel efficiency of new vehicles and the issuing of permits for new industrial emitters of large amounts of carbon dioxide.
Nuclear treaty The US Senate on 22 december ratified a deal with Russia to reduce nuclear arms
which could replace ethanol as a fuel additive, but which is used also to produce plastics and rubber.
Pollution fight US oil giant Chevron of San Remon, California, says that it will appeal a US$8. 6-billion fine imposed for environmental damages by an Ecuadorian court on 14 february,
The drilling was carried out in part by the oil company Texaco, which Chevron later purchased. Events Egypt's revolution offers hope to science Elated scientists joined celebrations throughout Egypt following the resignation of Hosni Mubarak on 11 february
after 30 years of presidency. With the military in interim control, the country's future is unclear,
Perchlorate interferes with the production of thyroid hormones and mainly leaches into the environment from its use in the manufacture of rocket fuel and explosives.
by eating the vegetation that forms potential fuel, and that ecologists have ignored mountain cattlemen's knowledge of the land.
but merely testing methods suitable for measuring the impact of cattle on fuels and on ecosystem functions.
and parts of Borneo) are the world's largest suppliers of palm oil, accounting for 87%of global production in 2008.
Given the rather coarse resolution of that satellite data, only large palm-oil plantations with closed canopies are easily identifiable,
Events Cleanup visions for Fukushima As workers continue to douse stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant with water,
On 17 april, the Tokyo electric power Company (whose executives are pictured at a harried press conference six days earlier) put forward a plan to stabilize the plant within six to nine months.
as well as spent fuel pools, while, in parallel, developing techniques to store and decontaminate used water on the site.
and international organizations had pledged an extra ¢ 550 million (US$780 million) to help build a spent-fuel storage facility
Austria. go. nature. com/xnyc4t 26 april The 25th anniversary of the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in
and fuel-so that fewer trees need to be cut down. To be smart about using money to store carbon
In addition, free distribution of fuel-efficient stoves would decrease the need for charcoal. A Smart-REDD plan,
Radioecologists with The french Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (ISRN) in Cadarache converted concentrations of radioisotopes measured in the soil and seawater into the actual doses that various groups of wildlife were likely
the Fukushima accident could help scientists to gain a better understanding of the effects of nuclear radiation on wildlife and the environment.
TEPCO's losses The operators of Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant announced a net loss of ¥1. 25 trillion (US$15. 3 billion) for the year ending 31 March,
because of expenses set aside to deal with nuclear cleanup. The president of the Tokyo electric power Company (TEPCO), Masataka Shimizu, resigned after the figures were released on 20 may.
He has been replaced by managing director Toshio Nishizawa. The company's share price has dropped by more than 80%since the earthquake and tsunami on 11 march.
Trend watch The price of uranium oxide 墉 the raw material for uranium fuel 墉 climbed steadily last year after an earlier price collapse.
But since the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, the spot price has dropped by about 16%,reflecting uncertainty about prospects for nuclear energy.
Coming up 25 27 may A host of eminent researchers speak at a free-to-attend conference on'Transforming the future of energy'hosted by the US Department of energy in WASHINGTON DC. go. nature. com/zjrmew 29 may 2 june A world congress
Nature Newspolicy Events Business Research People Trend watch Coming up Policy Nuclear shutdown Obeying a 6 may request from Prime minister Naoto Kan,
if other nuclear plants under inspection following the Fukushima disaster are ordered also to close. Spanish shake-up A wide-ranging bill that updates 1986 legislation on Spain's science system was expected to pass Congress this week,
The 9 may study examined the future of six renewable energy sources (biomass, hydro, wind, solar, geothermal and oceans).
More than half of the 164 future scenarios presented in the report suggest that these sources will provide more than 27%of the global energy supply by 2050.
The US Department of energy had said in January that it would not fund the collider into 2012,
and oil and gas operations Ethanol subsidies The US Senate has voted to end costly federal subsidies for producing ethanol from maize (corn).
although at lower energies. Physicists hope to eke out 12 before the 26-year-old machine shuts down at the end of September.
Trend watch The solar-energy industry's drive to cut costs got a sharp boost in June,
and national subsidies, says Jenny Chase, a solar-energy analyst at consultants Bloomberg New Energy Finance in London.
The researchers found that firewood accounts for around a fifth of the income that comes from forests,
and fuel prices could easily favour the conversion of land for agriculture and other uses over forest conservation.
as well as market goods, such as energy and food. In doing so, it builds on previous studies,
Nature Newsafter the Fukushima nuclear disaster spewed radiation across northern Japan in March, some feared that farming there would be shut down for years.
The microbial enzymes may help giant pandas to extract extra energy from the small amount of bamboo that they manage to process
and olive DNA, possibly from olive oil, in six of them. Other'hits'included DNA from legumes, ginger, walnut and juniper and from herbs such as mint, thyme and oregano.
oil and honey were traded, as well as fruit, fish, meat and resin. He says the DNA approach offers great promise for advances in terms of analysing amphora contents from archaeologically documented wrecks,
RESEARCHGOOGLE ends RE<C Google has axed an initiative that aimed to make renewable energy cheaper than coal by improving solar thermal power systems.
) On 22 november the company announced it was ending its engineering work on cutting the cost and water consumption of concentrated solar power systems,
TREND WATCH A European fund aims to raise  4. 5 billion (US$6. 0 billion) for clean-energy projects in 2012 by selling 300 million allowances to emit carbon dioxide on Europe
COMING UP4-8 december The triennial World Petroleum Congress the'Olympics of the oil and gas industry'meets in Qatar.
RALSTON/AFP/Gettyalberta's oil-sands companies are required to reduce the intensity of their greenhouse-gas emissions under the province's emissions trading scheme.
It sets limits on the intensity levels of greenhouse gases emitted by Alberta facilities oil sands operations and coal-fired power plants,
such as the number of kilowatt hours of energy produced or miles driven. Alberta, unlike other jurisdictions, has opted to link reduction targets to a facility s production output.
otherwise have used fossil fuels; investing in the development and operation of an energy-efficient rapid transit system in Delhi, India;
and dissemination of efficient wood stoves in Nigeria to reduce wood demand and deforestation. Some emissions trading schemes give preference to local projects.
accurate method for measuring the emissions from oil-sands tailing ponds, which store contaminated water, clay, sand and bitumen from oil-sands processing.
Many opponents of emissions trading programmes also argue that companies are likely to purchase carbon offsets instead of reducing emissions by adopting new technologies
Nature Newsresearch Events Business People Policy Trend Watch Coming up Number crunch Research Fracking tremors A British energy company says that its hydraulic fracturing('fracking')project probably caused the cluster of small earthquakes
Nuclear restart For the first time since the Fukushima disaster a Japanese nuclear reactor that had gone into shutdown has been brought back online.
The Genkai Nuclear power Plant in southwestern Japan was shut down briefly in October because of a technical fault,
But concerns over nuclear safety mean that no other plants closed since the earthquake and tsunami on 11 march have been allowed to restart.
Of Japan's 54 nuclear reactors, 43 are currently offline. Asteroid fly-by Marshalling everything from major radar facilities to backyard telescopes,
16 22 december 2011cold shutdown The three reactors at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant that had meltdowns in early March have now been brought to a state of'cold shutdown,
water will need still to be pumped into the reactors to cool their decaying fuel, and residents who once lived near the plant will not be able to return until the land has been decontaminated.
/SEIAUS solar-energy installations spiked during the third quarter of 2011, according to a joint report by the Solar energy Industries Association in WASHINGTON DC and GTM Research, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.
Declining module prices have aided the boom, but the rush was driven also by a federal programme that provides solar-investment tax credits in the form of cash grants.
Shale-gas companies have maintained that complaints of methane and other chemicals in groundwater can't definitely be linked to fracking,
Coming up 16 december The Japanese government is expected to announce that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has reached cold shutdown a declaration that the stricken reactors have reached stable
such as renewable energy. The mechanism, negotiated in Kyoto, allows developing countries to build up their green infrastructure,
In the case of maize, more energy is required for growing and harvesting the crop than can be gained from the ethanol produced.
in theory, be engineered to produce a variety of other useful chemicals and fuels.""This is very impressive work it really is a groundbreaking achievement,
which soaks up solar energy, and methane, a greenhouse gas that is 25 Â times more potent than carbon dioxide,
For methane, the study identified 14 control measures that would target leakage from coal mining and oil and gas operations, emissions from landfills, wastewater systems, livestock manure and rice paddies.
dung and charcoal for cooking and heating in poor countries. It could take decades to slow global warming through reductions in carbon dioxide emissions,
) Bilateral or multilateral agreements can help to pay for cleaner fuels and filters for diesel engines or promote policies that ban the burning of agricultural waste
Safer reactors France's nuclear regulator is demanding stringent safety upgrades for the country's reactors in response to the disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant.
By contrast, a 4 january report from the UK nuclear regulator did not find any fundamental weaknesses in its nation's power stations.
Canadian oil sands: defusing the carbon bombenvironmentalists and many politicians have called the oil sands a planetary-scale threat as they fight to prevent further development of the resource.
Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart, both climate scientists at the University of Victoria in British columbia, listened to the rhetoric and decided to run some calculations.
Because of the energy-intensive process for producing oil from this region, it is true that greenhouse gas emissions are higher than average.
But their work underscores evidence that the environmental impacts of producing the oil sands are primarily local rather than global."
if all of the oil available in the Alberta reserves were to be burned. Their results suggest that complete development of the sands would boost the average global temperature by roughly 0. 36 °C,
which consumes energy and increases emissions. However, such a life-cycle comparison is included not in Weaver and Swart s analysis,
owing to the complexity of assessing future technological changes for this and other fuels. But their calculations suggest that a full life-cycle analysis increases the overall emissions from oil sands by roughly 17%.
%Yes, generally speaking. But there are many varieties of crude as well as various production methods that factor into cumulative life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions.
Oil from Norway and Saudi arabia is easy to produce and relatively clean in terms of overall emissions.
But depending on how much energy goes into production and other factors such as the flaring of the natural gas produced as a by-product,
which is common in Nigeria the dirtiest conventional oils could be just as bad or even worse than crude from the oil sands.
A study published last week by researchers at Environment Canada in Toronto used satellite measurements to analyse emissions of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide from the oil sands2.
in particular, have increased alongside oil development in recent years and are on par with emissions from individual coal-fired power plants.
and cooked to produce oil, the development has resulted also in concerns about water pollution and eventual reclamation.
In situ production, by contrast, uses steam injection to liberate the oil underground, which reduces surface disturbance but actually increases greenhouse-gas emissions as a result of higher energy consumption.
Environmentalists see the pipeline, proposed by Calgary-based Transcanada Corporation, as enabling the development of a dirty fuel,
and US President Barack Obama seemed to be catering to them when he nixed the project,
But barring a precipitous drop in oil prices or a sudden imposition of carbon regulations, Canada will probably find customers for its oil one way or another.
The Obama administration cited concerns about the route chosen for the first proposal, leaving the door open to a revised application down the road,
Canada is also investigating other options for piping the oil directly into international markets. Concerns about global warming in general and regulations in places like California and Europe have spurred scientists to tackle life-cycle emissions for the full suite of energy sources in recent years.
Despite considerable progress however, major uncertainties remain, weighing heavily as policy-makers seek to create policies that promote cleaner fuels
and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Governments will surely demand additional detail from scientists in the coming years
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