Business Day NZ - Southland coal seam may be as big as Kupe

L&M Petroleum says it remains confident of forecast coal seam gas reserves in Southland after fresh laboratory analysis confirmed initial tests

Radio NZ - Oil falls 4% in price as US fuel stocks rise

Oil prices fell by almost 4% to $US36 per barrel due to rising inventories and falling demand in the United States.

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In an attempt to slem the tide, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed to a series of output cuts late last year, including a record 2.2 million barrels per day in December on top of 2 million bpd since September.

Saudi Arabia said on Tuesday it's prepared to make even more cuts next month.

ABC - Climate expert urges larger emissions cuts

Climate change expert Warwick McKibbin has criticised the Government's proposed emissions trading scheme as flawed, and says much bigger carbon cuts are needed.

Professor McKibbin, who is also on the Reserve Bank of Australia board, has described the scheme as "predictable and disappointing" and vulnerable to change under future governments through industry lobbying.

SMH - Carbon capture put to the test in NSW

NSW is about to find out whether it will be able to capture greenhouse gas emissions from its coal-fired power stations and store them underground.

Drilling began on Monday to see if the rock 800 metres under the Central Coast can handle having thousands of tonnes of liquefied carbon dioxide pumped into it each week.

It is yet to be proved that carbon capture and storage, in which carbon dioxide fumes from power stations are compressed and cooled on-site before being buried, will work on a large scale in Australia.

ABC - UK methane cuts hard to replicate in Aussie dairies

By switching to more finely chopped feed - which makes it easier to digest - some farms have reduced methane emissions by 20 per cent.

Alan Burgess from Australian Dairy Farmers says it's not viable for Australian farmers to do the same thing, since most cows aren't hand fed.

Stuff.co.nz - NZ storms harbingers of climate change

The storms, droughts and floods that hit New Zealand last year could be a harbinger of climate change, weather scientists say.

Proactive Investors - Arrow Energy in MOU with India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation

Arrow Energy (ASX:AOE) has announced that Arrow has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Indian government owned ONGC Limited to cooperate in Coal Bed Methane (CBM).

ABC - Institute aims to lower solar costs

It is hoped a new $100 million Australian Solar Institute in Newcastle, in the New South Wales Hunter, will help to bring down the cost of solar technology for ordinary Australians.

The institute, which will be officially launched today, will fund solar energy research projects and create export opportunities for Australian businesses.

The Age - Hot days cast harsh light on policies of neglect
I take a train to work in Melbourne CBD. This pretty much sums it up:

ONE typical hot summer's day is all it takes to reduce the public transport system's performance from the routinely mediocre to hopeless. On Monday and again yesterday morning, rail commuters baked helplessly on platforms as dozens of services were cancelled and those trains that did run slowed to a crawl. Some passengers were stranded for hours in carriages going nowhere, with little indication of when or how their ordeal might end. Those who used their cars yesterday rather than risk a repeat of Tuesday's rail chaos found roads congested by the many others of like mind.

Connex and V/Line blamed the failure of air-conditioning in ageing trains and the effect of heat on rail lines, signals and power supplies, which are the Government's responsibility under franchise arrangements.
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As Public Transport Users Association president Daniel Bowen said: "It might be reasonable if 37-degree days were unknown in Melbourne, but we get these days every summer and it seems every time it gets hot the transport system falls apart."

Radio NZ - Cook Islands govt calls for public involvement in fuel farm initiative

The Cook Islands government is calling on the public to attend a series of three meetings this week on its fuel farm initiative.

NZ Herald - Warming world will be even hotter than we thought, say scientists

The world will be hotter than we think if no action is taken to cut greenhouse emissions, a Wellington conference will hear today.

United States climate modelling expert Matthew Huber - who is speaking at the Greenhouse Earth Symposium at Te Papa today - says at least one climate model used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produces temperatures that are cooler than the real world. Dr Huber is one of several visiting scientists who use a dramatic period of warming 55 million years ago to predict what will happen in the future.

National Business Review NZ - $10 million in climate change research funding announced

Over $10 million of new research designed to help the agriculture and forestry sectors adapt and respond to climate change has been given the green light

TV NZ - Solid Energy defends bankrolling ETS report

Solid Energy is defending its bankrolling of a highly critical report of the former Labour-led government's emissions trading scheme (ETS).

The Greens have accused the state-owned coal company of working to undermine government policy after it was revealed it contributed $214,000 towards a report that painted a dire picture of the economic consequences of the ETS.

Solid Energy on Monday defended its contribution to the $1.3 million report carried out by the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research (NZIER) as legitimate research.

Energy Matters - Solar Energy Hybrid System - ThermaVolt

Solar panels get hot - very hot at times, which can negatively impact on their efficiency. In some systems, the heat can be so intense that heat sinks are used to reduce the temperature, particularly in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) systems that use lenses or mirrors to focus the sun's rays.

That wasted heat is also wasted energy, so why not use it to heat water instead of needing to have a separate solar hot water system?

Entech Solar have done just that and taken it a step further with their ThermaVolt™ system. ThermaVolt is based on combining concentrating photovoltaic and thermal (CPVT) technology.

SMH - Oil Search cuts back on PNG licences

Oil Search Ltd has reduced its interest in four exploration licences in Papua New Guinea to reduce expenditure commitments, amid a low world oil price.

Nippon Oil Corporation of Japan, which acquired AGL Energy Ltd's interest in the PNG liquefied natural gas project last year, has taken up Oil Search's interests in the licences.

Online Opinion - Forget climate change: a fossil fuel future is a fantasy

Jon Jenkins in his article “The warmaholics’ fantasy” (The Australian, January 6, 2009) ends by asking this: “The real question is in acknowledging the end of fossil fuels within the next 200 years or so: how do we spend our research time and dollars?”

Unfortunately, Jenkins has made the common error of not factoring in growth in demand.