kyoto

4WD Permoveh wheelchair turns on a dime

Japanese researchers led by Masaharu Komori, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Kyoto University, recently demoed the Permoveh, or Personal Mobility Vehicle, as a prototype next-generation wheelchair.

The Permoveh has four wheels of the same size, and each wheel contains 32 rollers that can rotate in a perpendicular direction to the rim. As the vid below shows, the vehicle can move in any direction when the user operates a hand-held control.

When the user wants to travel forward or back, the wheels alone move; when going sideways, the rollers move. When traveling diagonally, both wheels and rollers move. … Read more

Global climate talks can reach deal, says negotiator

A global deal on a pact to succeed the U.N.'s main climate agreement is still within reach but will not be struck this year, with the pace of talks still far too slow, New Zealand's top climate negotiator said today.

Inevitably, there would be a gap after the Kyoto Protocol's first period expires in 2012, Minister of Climate Change Negotiations Tim Groser said in an interview after delegates from 35 nations attended two days of climate talks in Auckland.

Disputes between rich and poor on sharing curbs in greenhouse gases mean gridlock over the Kyoto Protocol, … Read more

Governments to debate Kyoto climate dilemma

Governments are looking at ways to keep the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol going beyond 2012 in some form to defuse a standoff between rich and poor nations that threatens efforts to tackle global warming.

Negotiators from almost 200 nations will meet in Bangkok from March 3-8, after side-stepping the Kyoto issue at their last meeting in Mexico in December.

"There is some creative thinking going on" about Kyoto's future, said Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate and energy program of the Washington-based World Resources Institute.

The Kyoto Protocol obliges almost 40 industrialized nations to cut greenhouse … Read more

China questions review of controversial carbon program

A Chinese government fund has told a U.N. panel it supports project developers that earn carbon offsets under a lucrative Kyoto Protocol program, and rejects the idea that they are overcompensated.

Chinese project developers rejected key grounds for a review of Kyoto's clean development mechanism (CDM), and the China CDM Fund supported them, confidential papers showed a week before a U.N. panel decides whether to launch a formal review of the program.

The projects are the most lucrative under the CDM, which allows rich countries to buy offsets from carbon-cutting projects in the developing world as a … Read more

A $5 solar stove for rural poor, paid for by polluters

It looks so simple, and that's the key innovation.

The Kyoto Box consists of two cardboard boxes, one inside the other. The inner box is painted black to absorb sunlight, and the heat is trapped with a transparent acrylic lid. Captured solar energy heats up the air in the box enough to boil food and water and bake, but the stove is not powerful enough to fry food.

The invention received the $75,000 FT Climate Change Challenge award last week. The competition, run by Forum for the Future with The Financial Times and Hewlett-Packard, had nearly 300 entries, which were judged on their contribution to tackling climate change.

"It feels good. It was the only finalist that was a solution for developing countries," Kyoto Energy CEO Jan Bohmer, a Norwegian-born entrepreneur based in Kenya, told CNET News during a call on a crackling phone line from Nairobi.

The invention was inspired by the 240-year-old "hot box," a heat catcher by Swiss inventor Horace de Sausseur, and it could solve problems plaguing rural areas of developing countries.

Deforestation is a huge problem in Africa, note the inventors of the Kyoto Box, who hope the stove could halve firewood use, saving trees and preventing carbon emissions. The Kyoto Box is targeted at people who currently use firewood, a fuel that takes the rural poor hours of hard labor per day to collect, and can cause health problems when the fumes from the often primitive stoves are breathed in the home. … Read more

U.S. voluntary carbon market does not reward complexity

I had a lively discussion with Susan Wood, CEO of SCC Americas, at the Carbon Finance North America Conference last week. SCC Americas is the U.S. arm of Syndicatum Carbon Capital, one of the largest developers of Kyoto-based CDM carbon credit projects in the world. Susan herself has been doing emissions trading for more than a decade, after starting out as an environmental engineer.

The punchline in our chat was quite fascinating--the U.S. voluntary carbon market does not reward complexity in projects, Susan says. Basically, U.S. carbon credit developers are only doing a few limited types of … Read more

EcoSecurities founder says carbon markets work

As arguably the largest single market segment in the clean-tech sector, carbon markets are an area of keen interest for me personally and professionally, so it is always frustrating that the mainstream media largely refuses to learn the details.

In general, layman and media who don't understand the details of the carbon markets attack carbon offsets in two areas: first, questioning whether the credits are for a project that would have occurred anyway (a concept known in carbon as "additionality"); and second, questioning whether there are checks and balances to ensure the environmental standards are adhered to … Read more

Super Tuesday is Super for a US based cap and trade system

One things for sure, post Super Tuesday with Governor Mike Huckabee far behind, Mitt Romney out, and McCain the all but crowned Republican nominee, the US is getting a cap and trade system for carbon. The question is which one. I thought I'd track a little of the candidates' various positions.

The major differences that are left between the parties are on how to do it. In general the Republicans favor US based systems, the Democrats favor a Kyoto based approach. The Democrats favor 100% allowance, the Republicans favor a slower adjustment scheme (The Kyoto mechanisms today are actually … Read more

Conserving energy without the penguins

The most surprising thing about this household energy monitor is that it's made in Japan. Not because the country has anything against green technology, but because the device doesn't have animated penguins or some other irritating example of the country's kawaii culture.

The "Wattson Limited Edition" supposedly can monitor individual appliances and instantaneously provide information on the amount of power it uses and at what cost. OhGizmo notes that it's unclear how the gadget from DIY Kyoto connects or taps into the power lines, but it had better work if consumers expect to recoup … Read more