Olympic village to save electricity in Beijing- Green games

Echelon Corporation today announced that the Olympic Village in Beijing is using Echelon's LonWorks([R]) technology to create an energy efficiency lighting control system. Lighting typically consumes as much as a third of the electricity used in a building, making it a prime target for energy efficiency for the Olympic Village during the Games. The smart LonWorks based control system integrates all lighting subsystems to optimize energy usage while maintaining a safe and aesthetically pleasing environment for the athletes - contributing to the government's pledge to stage a "green Olympics."
Beijing is committed to reducing energy and water consumption per unit of GDP by five percent this year as part of a push for a 'recycling economy' in time for the Olympics.
"Only LonWorks technology was able to fulfill the unique needs of this project," said Vincent Wang, General Manager, of Lang Meng Technology, Inc. "There are vast numbers of devices scattered across a large area, serving the many needs of the Village from beautification, to safety, to energy efficiency. It is extremely important to China that the Village be seen positively by the tens of millions of viewers that will be watching the Olympics on television. Because the LonWorks products from our various suppliers integrate easily, we were able install and configure the project in less than two months, helping to ensure that the Olympic Village will open on schedule."
Echelon's LonWorks control technology is incorporated in the Chinese national standard for building automation, intelligent residential community construction, and in the national standard for control applications.
The Olympic Village is the largest non-competition venue in Beijing, and will accommodate over 23,000 athletes and team officials for both the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Village has over 370,000 square meters of apartment space, including 22 six-floor buildings and 20 nine-floor buildings, and facilities such as general information centers, meeting rooms, medical clinics, religious centers, multiple restaurants, a library, parking areas, and entertainment and leisure activity centers.
The smart lighting control system integrates lighting subsystems for the apartments, public areas, car park areas, and all landscape and beautification lighting. In addition to increased energy efficiency and safety, the system is designed to enhance the beauty of the Village by illuminating architectural details on the buildings and entry arches into the Village, as well as various landscape features such as water fountains.
"Beijing is making substantial, if not historic, efforts to produce the first 'green Games' that impact not only the Olympic venues, but the entire country," said Anders Axelsson, Echelon's senior vice-president of marketing. "The Olympic Village is essentially a city within a city and a great example of how Echelon and its partners can bring solutions that can enhance the quality of life in a city while at the same time making it more energy efficient

Link Echelon

Top climate scientist blasts G8 climate pledge

One of the world's most respected climate scientists on Tuesday slammed the G8 summit's goal of halving global warming emissions by 2050 as "worse than worthless."
Leaders of the world's richest nations, meeting in Japan, "are taking actions that guarantee that we deliver to our children climate catastrophes that are out of our control," US expert James Hansen said in an e-mail to Agence France-Presse.
Hansen, who heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, was one of the first climate scientists to sound an alarm about the threat of global warming.
In a landmark study published in 1981, Hansen predicted that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from human activity would accelerate climate change far more quickly than previously thought.
At their summit in the resort town of Toyako, the leaders of the Group of Eight (G8) nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States -- agreed Tuesday to "consider and adopt" the goal of achieving the 50-percent cut in worldwide emissions by mid-century.
But they made no targeted pledge for action next decade, nor did they mention specific action against coal, which Hansen characterized as the greatest peril.
"A statement of any goal for percent reduction is worthless. Indeed, it is worse than that: it is a pretence that they understand the problem and plan to take needed actions," said Hansen.
The only way to avoid climate catastrophe, argued Hansen, was to halt the emissions of coal, the most abundant and highly polluting of all fossil fuels.
He reiterated a call for a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants and for existing ones to be fitted with technology to capture the CO2 and store it deep underground.
"Otherwise we are sending a death sentence to uncountable species and are leaving our children with an ungodly mess," he said.
Sky-rocketing oil prices have spurred energy-efficiency plans in many countries but at the same time have intensified the use of coal around the world, especially in developing juggernauts China and India.
Testimony by Hansen on June 23, 1988 -- a day of record-breaking heat -- before a US Congressional committee made headlines around the world when he said "the Earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements."
His intervention helped spur the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the Nobel-winning committee of climate scientists.
His now-famous "hockey-stick" graphic predicting a sharp rise in world temperatures provoked a backlash among climate skeptics.

Link AFP

G8 buries climate pledges in time capsule

Group of Eight leaders meeting in Japan wrangled over the timeframe to fight global warming, but they have a set deadline when their pledges will be reviewed - in 100 years.
Their summit documents, along with current newspapers, will be buried in a time capsule at the luxury hotel where they met for three days in the mountain resort of Toyako in northern Japan.
The Windsor Hotel Toya will dig up and open the time capsule on July 7, 2108.
"We hope to confirm that the summit will have been remembered for 100 years as a key conference on climate change and that by then global warming will be halted as promised by the leaders," a hotel spokesman said.
The time capsule will be put in a new park along with a monument with the engraved autographs of the G8 leaders and a sculpture representing a chunk of ice that is melting due to global warming.

Link AFP