Two reports from world bodies have been published week saying that the world has ample capaicty to feed its projected increased population.

The first report, from the OECD and the UN Food & Agriculture Organization, projects ten years from the food price increases of 2008. It concludes that "Some 1.6 billion hectares could be added to the current 1.4 billion hectares of crop land [in the world], and over half of the additionally available land is found in Africa and Latin America."

The second report, from the UN Food & Agriculture Organization and the World Bank, concludes that 400 million hectares, spread across 25 African nations are suitable for farming.

The report cites Thailand as a model for agricultural development. In Thailand, land originally deemed agriculturally unpromising, due to irrigation problems and infertile soil, has been "transformed into a cornucopia" by smallholder farmers.

The report says that, as in Thailand,  future success will come by using agriculture to lift Africa’s smallholder farmers out of poverty, aided by strong government measures to guarantee their rights to land, say both reports.

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Treehugger has published a post which points out that, when all of the factors such as transport and production of the container, are taken into account, it takes 200 litres of water to produce a take-away latté.

So, how much water do some of the other "necessities" of modern life consume?

• A pair of jeans - 6,800 litres
• A cotton t-shirt - 1,500 litres
• A hamburger - 4,900 litres
• A serving of french fries - 22 litres
• A glass of cola - 38 litres
• An egg - 454 litres
• A loaf of bread - 570 litres
• An apple - 60 litres
• An orange - 83 litres
• A kilogram of paddyfield rice - 1,550 litres
• A kilgram of beef - more than 50,000 litres
• A plastic bottle of water - 7 litres

It seem like french fries are our best option!

(Based on data from the US Geological Survey)

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A Hamburg-based company, Thermodyna, has developed an air-conditioning system that uses only the sun’s heat to produce hot or cool air as required.

The core of the system is a Schukey motor. For cooling, a solar panel uses the sun’s heat to produce steam which is converted into mechanical energy. This drives a pump which sucks damp, warm air out of the room, compresses it and then allows it to expand. According to Thermodyna, the process can cool the air to around 20 degrees Celsius.

"There are no electronics and hardly any components," says Thermodyna boss Volker Bergholte. The company plans to begin selling the units in 2010.

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Inventor and entrepreneur, John La Grou, hasdeveloped a "smart" electrical power outlet, called a Safeplug, containing a  microprocessor. The main reason for the invention was to prevent electrical fires by giving the wall socket sufficient intelligence to detect that an appliance was drawing too much power and shut it off.

However, the Safeplug also has the potential to save massive amounts of energy by switching off appliances and even allowing whole areas, such as hotel rooms, to be switched off remotely when not in use.

John La Grou describes his invention on this TED Talk video:

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Chemical engineer, Dr Andrew Harris amd his research team at Sydney University’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions have been awarded a research grant from the European Energy Company, E.ON, to investigate materials like silicon carbide and alumina for building synthetic sponges, which would be grafted with calcium oxide to absorb carbon dioxide.

Dr Harris is using a group of marine creatures known as echinoderms, which includes starfish, sea urchins and sea cucumbers, as his source of inspiration. He says that these creatures have an "awesome" calcium carbonate skeleton, ideal for absorbing C02. He hopes to mimic the structure of their skeletons to produce a synthetic sponge.

Dr Harris hopes that the technology will be used to absorb CO2 released during the manufacture of hydrogen. Currently, most hydrogen is made from fossil fuels but Dr Harris believes that, in the future, it will be sourced from biomass, such as crop waste.

"We did an experiment a couple of years back and found that if all the forest waste, left over crops and wood waste sent to landfill in Australia was converted into hydrogen there would be enough energy to run every bus in every city for a year on the waste," he said.

Several members of the team are working on ways of re-using the CO2 captured by the synthetic sponges.

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Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario have developed a prototype of a lithium-sulphur rechargeable battery that can store three times the power of a conventional lithium-ion battery in the same volume while being significantly lighter and potentially cheaper to manufacture.

As with lithium-ion technology, lithium-sulphur batteries store the electrical charge in one electrode during the charging phase and release it to the other during the discharge phase. To achieve high performance, sulphur needs to remain in very close contact with a conductor, such as carbon. The research team used mesoporous carbon, a material that has a highly uniform pore structure at the nano-scale, to achieve this. Sulphur was melted and made to fill the tiny voids in the carbon using capillary forces. All the spaces were uniformly filled with sulphur, thus maximizing the surface area in direct contact with carbon and boosting battery efficiency.

According to the leader of the research team, Professor Linda Nazar, the energy density of lithium-sulphur batteries is "about a factor of 3 to 5 times more than a conventional lithium-ion battery" while the raw materials are cheaper.

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The World Wildlife Fund and the Australian Geothermal Energy Association have produced a report on Australia’s geothermal energy potential.

The main findings of the report are:

• By 2050 geothermal energy could reduce Australia’s emissions by avoiding approximately 25% of today’s electricity generation emissions.
• Over 17,000 Australians could be employed in the geothermal energy industry by 2050
• Jobs from coal, oil and gas (and their associated service and support industries) are readily transferrable to the geothermal industry, thanks to similarities between drilling technologies.
• Baseload emission-free energy resources like geothermal need targeted support today so so that their development is fast and seamless

Paul Toni, WWF Program Leader for Sustainable Development commented that “When it comes to geothermal energy, we truly are the lucky country. The energy stored in hot rocks near the Earth’s surface in Australia is a thousand fold what we use each and every year.”

The full report, titled "Power to Change: Australia’s Geothermal Future" can be downloaded here.

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The 360 Paper Water Bottle has been awarded the InnoVic International Next Big Thing Award for 2009 - a global competition to find and showcase the best new Australian and international innovations.

The 360 Paper Water Bottle is a single serve, single use water bottle made from 100% renewable materials, namely paper - specificaly from sustainable paper sheet stock produced from materials such as bamboo and palm leaves. An internal micro-thin film provides the liquid / air barrier and the fusing material to join the two pressed halves together.

The botlles are designed to be produced in sheets which would be cut into packs - typically six-packs - of individual bottles which can be pulled apart. This elimates the need for further packaging to bundle packs of bottles together as is done with plastic bottles. The design takes this concept further by designing the six-packs in such a way that they can be clipped together using ecoboard into larger bundles for shipping - again, eliminating the need for outer packaging.

A peel-off seal is used instead of the plastic or metal cap used on plastic water bottles.

The 360 Bottle was designed by New York designer and inventor, Jim Warner.

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Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology in Stuttgart, working in conjunction with the company Logos Innovationen, have developed a way of converting humidity in the air into drinkable water using only solar heat or light.

In essence, the process uses hygroscopic brine (a saline soluion that absorbs moisture) to absorb water from the air. Solar thermal concentrators or photovoltaic electricity is used to boil the diluted solution in a tank which is partially evacuated to reduce the boiling point. The water vapour is condensed - producing drinkable distilled water - and the remaining liquid is concentrated brine which is reused to collect more water vapour from the air.

The researchers say that there is sufficient water vapour in the air even in desert regions for the process to work - and, since the process is powered by sunlight, it can be used virtually anywhere in the world.

The process has been tested on a laboratory scale and the researchers now intend to develop a demonstration facility.

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While most car makers have been announcing their grand plans for electric and hybrid cars, Fuji Heavy Industries which own Subaru, has been noticeably silent.

It seems that Fuji wanted to produce a hybrid Subaru based on Toyota’s technology. Toyota is the largest shareholder in Subaru with a 16% stake and the two companies have a long-standing agreement to share development costs. However, Toyota was very reluctant to share the technology which has made the Prius the market leader.

That attitude seems to have changed now that all manufacturers will have to produce more efficient vehicles if they are to participate in the American market.

Fuji has announced that it will be releasing a hybrid model, using Toyota’s technology, in 2012 as well as a fuel-efficient diesel model in 2011 or 2012.

Subaru is also testing an electric car with a range extending petrol motor, the R1e, which is similar in size to the Smart car and has a range of 80 kilometres on batteries alone.

(Based on sources including The Japan Times

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