Bidegain said that while landlocked countries in this region like Bolivia and Paraguay would especially suffer the rise in temperatures, coastal countries like Argentina and Uruguay would be hit harder by the effects of the rising sea level.

In the meantime, Brazil is investing millions of dollars in efforts to study and adapt to impacts like the gradual transformation of the Amazon jungle into savannah, and has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 36.1 or 38.9 percent - depending on GDP growth levels - by 2020.

The expert said Uruguay - which is sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil - will not escape the impacts. The last five-yearly report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in 2007, said that in the best-case scenario, the average global temperature would rise between two and 2.5 degrees by 2050.

The report by Tierramerica, a specialised news service on the environment and development produced by the IPS (Inter Press Service) news agency with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that is published by 20 newspapers in the region, is based on the responses of 23 climate change experts who were sent an extensive questionnaire by email, which was then supplemented by telephone contacts.

Several of the experts are members of the IPCC, like Bidegain, who was a reviewer of the Climate Change 2007 - The Physical Science Basis Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC and of the IPCC Technical Paper on Climate Change and Water (2008).

The aim of the special 40-page Tierramerica report, "Latin America and the Irreversible Effects of a Warmer Planet", which is available on-line in Spanish, is to analyse the state of global warming in the region, by consulting with experts, scientists and authorities, and representatives of civil society and international bodies. Updated reports will be produced periodically.

The report was presented Thursday in Montevideo by its author, Cristina Canoura, and IPS regional editor for Latin America, Diana Cariboni, ahead of the Dec. 7-18 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

In the Danish capital, delegates from around the world will try to reach agreement on a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

"A worrisome aspect for Uruguay is the rise in the average sea level. There is even greater uncertainty in that respect from a scientific point of view, because there is enormous debate, and even today the models used to project this kind of variable are not entirely reliable at a global level," said Bidegain.

The IPCC projected a 60 cm rise in sea level by the end of the century, although other researchers believe that is an overly conservative estimate and warn that it could rise by over a metre.

This is especially alarming for Uruguay, said the scientist, given that this country has only seen a 10-cm rise in sea level in the past 60 years. "This would be at least six times that, which is overwhelming," he remarked.

"This, naturally, has all kinds of effects on daily life that you can't even imagine. The rise in sea level won't only cause coastal flooding, but a process of salinisation of lakes, like at the mouth of the Santa Lucia river, where Montevideo gets its water," he said.

The scientist said adaptation efforts should be prioritised over mitigation initiatives. "The change is going to happen. The greenhouse gases that we have already emitted will remain in the atmosphere. What we are seeing now is not because of what we're emitting today, but what we have released into the atmosphere in past decades," he explained.

"Global warming is inevitable in the next 50 years. That must be understood. It's inevitable, no matter what we do. What will be negotiated in Copenhagen is an agreement to achieve an at-least voluntary reduction in greenhouse gases to try to curb the warming, but unfortunately it is going to continue for several decades."

Bidegain explained the concept of irreversibility discussed in the Tierramerica report.

"There are scientists in the world pointing out that with a more than two degree rise in the average global temperature, the climate system could stabilise at a certain level, which no one knows what that would be, but at which we would all suffer. But later, even with voluntary or coordinated greenhouse gas cuts, there would be no return, even to current levels," he said.

"Our society is based on the consumption of fossil fuels which, whether coal or oil, emit greenhouse gases when we burn them. We have to think of a new kind of society, a new way of life," said Bidegain.

The researcher underlined that Uruguay has made progress, especially with the creation this year of the National System of Response to Climate Change, although he also stressed the need to design concrete long-term plans for agriculture and livestock, chief economic sectors in this country that will be affected.

Winter crops like wheat and barley will be hit hardest, according to experts. "It's necessary to think about that with respect to the future, how Uruguay is going to cover that shortage. We will have practically no flour to make bread. Are we going to replace it with another crop? Climate change presents us with opportunities as well as challenges," he said.

One of the experts surveyed for the Tierramerica report, Agustin Gimenez, said "the most evident and negative effects of climate change in Uruguay and in the region (southern Brazil and the pampas in Argentina) are the increase in climate variability and more frequent occurrence of extreme weather events."

Gimenez is national coordinator of the National Institute of Agricultural Research unit on research and development on agro-climate and information systems.

The Tierramerica report says that Latin America and the Caribbean could suffer a loss of agricultural revenue of up to 12 percent, in a scenario of mild climate change, and of up to 50 percent in a more severe scenario.

Bidegain also underscored the need for these problems to be given priority in the plans of the future government of Uruguay, which will be elected in the Nov. 29 presidential runoff election.

Tierramerica is a multimedia platform that offers news reports, interviews and columns on the environment and development in Spanish, English and Portuguese in print, audio and images. It is sponsored by UNEP, the UNDP and the World Bank.

He believes innovation is critical in facilitating CCA, which involves adjusting natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli, particularly as authorities noted the country is already experiencing climate change?s repercussions like onslaught of increasingly violent weather disturbances.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead coordinating author Dr. Rodel Lasco also pointed to the urgency of generating needed resources, reporting CCA between 2010 and 2050 will likely cost developing countries around USD75-billion to USD90-billion annually.

?Gross cost will be highest in the Asia-Pacific region where the Philippines is,? he told the conference participants.

Unless the Philippines adapts successfully to climate change, Paje projects poverty incidence nationwide to worsen.

Environmentalist Sen. Loren Legarda is backing CCA, noting about 75 percent of rural people living below the USD1.25 per day international poverty line are vulnerable to weather fluctuations and hazards.

?They have little or no surplus capacity to absorb loses,? she said at the event.

She raised this point while warning climate change is turbo-charging smaller-scale disasters and this helps diminish capital for the poor.

Adaptation and mitigation are the two strategies government identified in its newly enacted Republic Act 9729, the Climate Change Act of 2009, to address the climate change issue.

Mitigation involves human interventions to lower emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases (GHG) which experts already identified as accumulating in the atmosphere and trapping heat there, causing global warming leading to climate change.

To help generate resources for CCA, Paje is recommending that power plant owners pay for rehabilitating watersheds where these draw water used in electricity production.

He rationalized this proposal by pointing out power plants can?t produce electricity if watersheds run out of water.

The River Basin Control Office earlier said environmental degradation, soil erosion and implementation of incongruent land uses are among factors destroying the country?s watersheds.

Paje also said authorities must invest in forests part of financial gains from such eco-systems so these can be preserved better and sustainably used more for future generations.

Presidential Adviser on Global Warming and Climate Change Sec. Heherson Alvarez is backing calls to protect forests and to replant denuded areas.

?Our forests can absorb some 20 percent of the Philippines? carbon dioxide emission,? he said.

As head of the country?s delegation to international negotiations for a new climate deal that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol, he is urging developed nations to institute ?deep and early cuts? in respective GHG emissions.

This will help avert ?runaway climate change? that will otherwise ensue if global temperature rises by an additional two degrees due to continuous increase in GHG emissions, he said.

?The problem will be unmanageable if carbon dioxide emission, its first cause, isn?t diminished,? he said at the conference.

Alvarez is supporting CCA?s implementation and said climate change is triggering onslaught of more violent weather disturbances.

He recalled such disturbances were uncommon just 40 years ago.

?We need to adapt,? he said.

Albay Gov. Joey Salceda expects best CCA practices to be identified during the conference which carries the theme ?Moving Forward on Albay Declaration 2007.?

He said these practices will serve as input for establishing the Philippine Strategic Framework on CCA.

In 2007, typhoon-weary Albay under his helm hosted the conference?s initial staging to explore options on addressing potential impact of climate change and its policy implications for local government units.

SOURCE: Climate Exchange PLC

http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?id=258B82247AB9711B
http://www.rns.com

Because of the interconnected nature of Argentina's power supply, and the Biosphere solution invented by Dr. Christopher McCormack, officials from the Argentina government, "Garbierno de la ciudad, Ministerio De Desarrollo, Urbano Secretario Privado Planta De Gabinete, Alejandro C. Vivone", has sent a urgent invitation confirming that the government will take part in the project for immediate instillation and deployment of the Biosphere power plant in order to generate clean green electricity in Buenos Aires city of Argentina.

Argentina has a wealth of natural beauty and immensely varied scenery. It covers an area of over one million square miles and is the second largest country in South America. Electric power in Argentina is 220 volt, 50-cycle alternating current. Argentina's government's idea is to install enough biosphere systems to process 3000 tons of municipal solid waste on a daily basis while generating green electricity and clean drinking water for Buenos Aires.

Energy efficiency is of great importance to Argentina, as well as the need to manage energy demand responsibly by the government and its citizens. True Green Energy Group and NT Energy along with Global Environmental Energy Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: GEECF) are now finalizing plans for this urgent meeting with authorities of the argentine government for immediate deployment of the Biosphere MKV. This meeting will in no doubt be a historical event in history as countries and people on a global scale are searching for green energy sources and ways to clean up the garbage and save planet earth.

Spectrum Blue Steel is also working with the Brazilian government as there is also a great demand for green energy and getting rid of the huge garbage problems. Just two weeks a go a massive power failure blacked out Brazil's two largest cities and other parts of the country, leaving millions of people without electricity and causing widespread traffic chaos.

The outage began when the Itaipu hydroelectric dam, which supplies much of the country's electricity, suddenly went offline plunging parts of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and other Brazilian cities into darkness.

Maria Elena Romero, a journalist in Sao Paulo, told Al Jazeera: "There are also reports of Paraguay being affected by the same power outages.

"The minister of the energy of Brazil has confirmed that the outage was caused by the failure of the Itaipu hydroelectric dam. The minister didn't want to speculate on the causes for this failure, but local media say weather conditions could be the reason."

Never the less the Biosphere system can and will solve both countries problems. The management system set up By True Green Energy Corporation for Spectrum Blue Steel is zero waste, zero emission, giving both countries clean green energy while saving the planet from the enormous carbon dioxide emissions due to human activity from garbage and traditional gas and coal power plants. CO2 emission sources include emissions from energy industry, from transport, from fuel combustion in industry, services, households, etc. and industrial processes, such as the production of cement.

Spectrum Blue Steel is also very interested in carbon credit trading as The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions .These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.

The major distinction between the Protocol and the Convention is that while the Convention encouraged industrialised countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol commits them to do so.

Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity, the Protocol places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities." The simple fact is the Biosphere system will reduce green house gas while getting rid of garbage and delivering clean electricity to many countries that are now desperate to go green.

True Green Energy Group has identified workable solutions for the reduction of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases that cause global warming by promoting the deployment of the Biosphere system that is now is erecting and deploying the first two MRF management and power systems in the Philippines.

Spectrum Blue steel strategy is to "de-carbonize" the electric power generation industry by shifting to non-fossil fuel based energy sources, specifically energy-from-waste. This follows the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which confirmed energy-from-waste is renewable, and the Philippine Renewable Energy Law (RA 9513) of the Philippines.

Spectrum is a domestic corporation duly registered under the laws of the Philippines and holds a license to the Biosphere Technology from Global Environmental energy corporation GEECF.OB. Global is a fully integrated energy company whose interests include electrical power generation, oil and gas exploration and production, clean coal and waste management technologies.

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of the 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the safe harbor created by those sections.

Contact: Ronald Flynn, +6391-8888-0017

SOURCE Spectrum Blue Steel

http://www.spectrumbluesteel.com

To date, our company has spent hundreds of millions of our shareholders' money on this development effort. As a merchant power company without regulated customer rates, we can only recover that money if we control costs and risks, and make the technology work in the competitive market. But of course neither the competitive market nor the fully regulated electricity market puts a price on carbon emissions. We are allowed to emit all we choose to into the atmosphere for free. This is why the Senate needs to pass legislation in order to make carbon emissions part of the economic equation for NRG and the rest of the industry.

The timing is particularly acute right now. For NRG, after 3 years of development, permitting, etc., many of our projects are ready or nearly ready to break ground. But for many of our projects to make that jump from millions of dollars spent on development to the billions invested in construction, the Senate first needs to pass a comprehensive climate bill. This is because due in part to the dramatic decline in fuel and wholesale electricity prices over the past year the economics of many of these projects depend partially or totally on their being a price imposed by the United States Government on emitting carbon into the atmosphere.

That, I would suggest respectfully, is how the EPW Committee and the Senate as a whole should think about the task at hand. I encourage you to view your work as a bipartisan mission to find a climate change framework that will unleash the power of American capitalism and the innovative genius of America's entrepreneurs. Certainly I can assure you that if you provide a sound framework, NRG will do everything we can within our capability to bring the promising low carbon energy technologies being developed and demonstrated around our country to full scale deployment, at a cost that allows the US not only to compete in the global economy, but to win.

As you address that task, and seek to improve on the effort begun in the House earlier this year, comprehensive federal climate change legislation designed to reduce our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 will, in fact, be our national energy policy for the next two generations. The House bill recognized this to a degree by including a Federal renewable energy standard in AR 2454.

But a national renewable policy, such as a federal RES, while it may be laudable, is not by itself an effectively comprehensive low carbon national energy policy. Renewable resources are a major part of our low carbon future, but their inherent issues of intermittency, limited scale, expense and geographic constraints are serious limitations. In fact, we need to build a zero carbon base load foundation under our wind farms and solar fields. That foundation is new advanced nuclear power.

Right now NRG's $10 billion, 2700 MW STP 3&4 project is one of the four projects under due diligence at the DOE for the all-critical federal loan guarantee, which was authorized by the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and has been administered in an admirably bipartisan way by the DOE through the transition from the Bush to the Obama Administration. We are highly confident that our project will proceed successfully through the DOE loan guarantee and NRC regulatory approval process, that it will be built on time and on budget and that it will be on line in the later part of the next decade, supplying inexpensive, reliable and safe base load power to 2 million Texan homes - and with zero carbon emissions or, for that matter, air emissions of any kind. We expect at least two of the other three projects currently before the DOE to begin operation in the same time frame.

Three new nuclear power plants by 2020, while an important first step in the right direction, does not a nuclear renaissance make. If you assume that all 104 nuclear reactors currently operating in the United States have been retired by 2050, that means we need approximately 75 new nuclear units over the next 41 years simply to keep nuclear power's share of electricity production near 20%. If we want to double the nuclear share of power production to 40% in order to accommodate demand growth and realize a greater carbon benefit, we are going to need to build about 150 new nuclear units.

There is a big gap between the three to four new plants currently working their way through the system to construction now and 150. In my view, we have no hope of getting anywhere near 150 new units over the next 41 years unless we have an effective nuclear title as part of comprehensive climate change legislation in 2009. That title must embrace new nuclear as a fundamental building block of our 21st century national energy policy, and provide the pragmatic, essential policy tools that are needed to realize the laudable intentions laid out for new nuclear power in the Kerry- Boxer bill -- tools that are needed in addition to a price on carbon for nuclear to succeed. Those tools must address the key commercial constraints to a nuclear renaissance, and include worker training, expanded domestic manufacturing capability, transitional loan guarantees for project financing for a second wave of new plants, and efficient and safe regulatory approval processes capable of handling a much larger volume of projects.

Nuclear, renewables and, let us not forget, carbon capture and sequestration, can transform NRG's fleet and the US power sector from high carbon to low carbon in the next 30 years. That will address the 40% of US carbon emissions that come from the power sector. But another third comes from the transportation sector, and more than half of that comes from light cars and trucks and simple math tells me that, if the goal is 80% carbon reduction by 2050, that means we need to aim for near total decarbonization of both the electric and transportation sector.

The Boxer-Kerry bill recognizes the importance of decarbonization of the transport sector through electrification but is too cautious in what it proposes. Planning and grants are well and good, but what we need to do is start building an electric vehicle ecosystem in several major cities and city clusters across the country right now. In other words, we need to focus on a commercial foothold strategy that will quickly capture a significant market share for electric vehicles in key American cities that themselves take steps to develop a coherent electric car urban ecosystem. This needs to be combined with provisions that foster entrepreneurial, campaign-based, commercial efforts to drive rapid adoption of electric vehicles by actual American customers.

Electrification of our transport sector is, of course, not just a major step forward in our effort to decarbonize American society, it means much more in terms of the enhancement of national security and the preservation of national wealth. The electrification of our transportation sector will provide the cure to our national addiction to foreign oil and will keep at home in the United States a substantial portion of the $400 billion of wealth transfer that currently takes place every year from the United States to the oil producing nations.

Let me turn from what should be added to the bill to commenting on what is already in the Boxer-Kerry bill. First, we want to salute you, Chairman Boxer, along with Senator Kerry, the members of this Committee and your staffs for starting this important work in the Senate.

Let me make it clear that we support the general framework of this bill. By that, I mean a declining cap on carbon emissions, a market-based flexible compliance system, and a combination of free allocations and auctioning of allowances. Auction revenues and some of the free allowances are used to help buy down the initial cost and risk of low and no-carbon technologies. Additional allowances and revenues are used to buffer the impacts of compliance costs on end use consumers. And a large number of offsets and other measures are intended to ensure that those costs do not become excessive. This bill has all of those features. However, in my view, the current draft would be more effective with modifications to several of those key provisions:

First, the bill appropriately recognizes that the most important source of investment in clean technologies is the private sector, and in the power sector that means power companies themselves. The transitional allocation of carbon allowances to the power sector is incredibly important in enabling US electric companies actually to invest in the scale deployment of clean technologies. As a merchant generation company, NRG would face a stark choice under climate legislation without enough transitional allocations for merchant coal companies. Earnings that we are spending today on aggressively decarbonizing our fleet would instead be spent buying more allowances in the EPA auction, leaving us unable to deploy at scale the low carbon technologies needed to meet the legislation's aggressive emission reduction goals. An adequate supply of transitional allocations to merchant coal companies will allow us to invest our way to a low carbon future; while helping ensure against carbon "windfalls" from merchant coal receiving excessive transitional allocations. Similarly, rate-regulated utilities need the bill's LDC allowances so that they, too, can invest in costly new technology without creating the rate shock that would harm customers and lead state utility commissioners to slow down their spending on new technology.

Given the importance of this issue, the House bill's overall level of power sector allocations were at a bare minimum for us. We certainly appreciate the maintenance of the basic power sector framework in the Kerry-Boxer bill. However, the set aside of some 10% of all allowances in the Senate bill for deficit reduction, while done more or less fairly or "across the board", does create a real problem for companies like ours that are attempting to invest tens of billions of dollars in new, clean power plants in the upcoming decade. We think the most promising solution to this problem is to carefully improve the bill's features for avoiding both under-allocation and over-allocation in and across sectors, and we look forward to working with members of this and other committees in exploring such improvements in efficiency and fairness, while maintaining the basic allocation approach.

Second, we are concerned with the very real risks to our economy and, we believe in the longer run, the climate that will result from EPA regulating greenhouse gases under the current Clean Air Act - as it is poised to do as early as next Spring if you do not act first. There are two basic problems with using the Clean Air Act's provisions for greenhouse gases- first, it can only mandate the use of technologies to reduce emissions, but cannot provide the positive incentives for rapid development and deployment of those technologies that would be provided by comprehensive climate legislation. Second, the solutions it can mandate for greenhouse gases are likely to both be highly expensive and environmentally relatively ineffective. To prevent both of these problems, the Senate must not only pass comprehensive climate legislation before next Spring, it must also affirmatively prevent the EPA from regulating GHGs under the Clean Air Act in ways that will do more harm than good in the power sector. The House bill does this. The Senate bill should, too. We believe there are a variety of approaches to fix this problem in an environmentally responsible way, and look forward to working with members on developing a Senate solution.

Third, the bill increases support for the broad early deployment of carbon capture and sequestration, which we believe is crucial for global success in reducing carbon emissions to acceptable levels. We appreciate the significant effort and innovation in this area your bill has made, and as we work through the significant details of your new provisions, we will commit to help with further improvements based on our own ongoing efforts and experience with post combustion carbon capture technologies.

Fourth, we believe that the cost containment provisions of the bill can and should be improved, in three key ways:

Along with other members of USCAP, we support the ability of covered entities to use at least 2 billion tons of offsets, made up of no more than 1.5 billion tons of either international or domestic offsets. The bill's limitation on domestic offsets international offsets is too narrow, and we believe will increase the risk of allowance prices being unacceptably high.

We also believe it is critically important to take steps that will increase the supply of such offsets that are in the development pipeline well before the carbon caps go into effect. In our view, the best way to do that is for the bill to encourage EPA to act now, even before enactment, to establish criteria for early offsets to qualify for compliance use in the program after the bill is enacted. To achieve this, the bill should clearly provide that any early offsets that meet such EPA criteria will indeed be valid for compliance. This will allow offset developers and offset buyers to have a high level of certainty regarding what offsets will qualify for compliance, and allow the early pipeline of offsets to begin to fill up almost immediately. This should significantly moderate costs in the early years of the program.

Similarly, we would like to see improvements in the market stability reserve program. Most important is for the bill to contain clearer means to ensure that a very large number of avoided deforestation credits from national programs will be procured by the US Government and used to fill and refill the reserve. This will allow it to be large enough to provide a truly firm cap on allowance prices. We are concerned that not enough attention has yet been given to ensuring that the reserve will be large enough to effectively prevent excessively high prices, and we look forward to working with you and others to ensure that it does.

For such a complex topic as climate change, and an 820 page bill, this is a pretty short list. While there are many parts of the bill that do not affect us, and which we do not have an opinion on, I think the basic message here is that you are making a good start. While much additional work is needed, I believe most of it is focused in a relatively few areas of the bill, and that the best way to achieve success is by moving the bill forward through the Senate process. Some of the work can best be done in this committee; I'm sure much important work in addressing various regional and state-specific concerns will be done in other committees; and much will no doubt be achieved on the floor of the Senate as well. Let me assure you that, as you work to improve this landfall first draft throughout the entire Senate process, and work above all to secure the all-important 60 votes on the Senate floor, we will be pleased to act as a resource to this Committee and to each of you in this historic and critically important task.

#DAL1234#

However, big demand for energy will come back as soon as the economy rebounds, the IEA said, forecasting a 40 percent increase in energy demand in 2030.

The future energy demand will still focus on oil, gas and coal, which are major producers of carbon dioxide, the key element that raises the temperature, according to the IEA.

The agency also expects an annual increase of one percent for global oil demand in the coming years, from 85 million barrels per day in 2008 to 105 million barrels per day in 2030.

Prior to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December, the IEA called on all countries to exert efforts to curb climate deterioration by taking financial actions, such as developing environment-friendly transportation, housing and power plants and renovating biofuels.

Weeks before the global climate negotiation in Copenhagen, there are great differences between developed and developing countries on carbon emission goals and distribution of financial and technological responsibilities.

It is "time to act," the IEA underlined, saying that world leaders should not miss the opportunity to seal a post-Kyoto agreement.

The Kyoto Protocol, a worldwide agreement on climate issue, will expire in 2012.