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Four wards in the district – Adams Morgan, Brookland, Fairlawn and Tenleytown – will be the sites for the piloting of the scheme, which will see new trees planted on the state’s streets tagged with a QR code. Passersby who scan the images with a smartphone will be automatically directed towards a form on the Department of Transportation website to register their interest in caring for the tree. Adoption involves applying ten gallons of water to the tree each week between the beginning of spring to the start of winter, clearing away weeds or litter and alerting the department to any larger maintenance requirements. Canopy Keeper registrants receive a slow-drip watering tub free of charge to help them carry out their task. According to the scheme’s organizers, although the department has its own tree maintenance staff, it relies on the help of citizens to keep the trees thriving.

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The Canopy Keepers’ QR code scheme makes it easier for the residents and businesses of DC to help out in their local community.

agricel, a pioneer of unique soil-less agricultural technologies, has launched a series of revolutionary farming methods that will fundamentally improve the way farming is carried out.

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Dr. Mori of Waseda University and Chairman of the Advisory Board of agricel, the inventor behind this innovative form of soil-less agriculture, conducted a live demonstration to show the attendees fresh lettuce grown on Hydrogel based IMEC film. The lettuce requires only the IMEC membrane itself to grow naturally into an edible piece of salad. This “Film Farming” system is easy to set up and can be installed on any surface: wood, sand or concrete across any terrain: from a dry arid desert to existing fertile farms – even in space.

Yalman A. Khan, CEO & Founder of agricel, commented: “The challenges facing us all today centre around food, water and energy. We have only finite resources in terms of land and water. This is a major challenge for humanity. We, at agricel want to address this concern by feeding the future with a solution that will cover all aspects of social, economic and environmental dimensions of farming today. We can farm sustainably and commercially, producing nutritionally superior and safe food while drastically reducing the use of harmful chemicals in our food supply chain. I want all of you to help us to feed the future. This begins today.”

H.E. Omar Ghobash, Chairman of agricel, added: “With the world population predicted to reach nine billion in 2043, and water scarcity becoming an increasingly real threat to millions of people each year, agricel will be able to ensure that resources are utilised in the most efficient way possible.”

“agricel aims to remedy the problems of extreme food shortages due to finite agricultural land and resources and an exploding population whilst creating demand for jobs around the globe.” Ghobash concluded.

agricel is introducing its two main products: the Film Farm – Hydrogel based IMEC film; and the hydrophilic booster, SkyGel – a super absorbent polymer that acts as a reservoir holding water up to 1,000 times its weight whilst boosting plant productivity and yield. The IMEC Film and SkyGel are developed specifically to reduce the use of water, increase plant productivity and crop yield, while producing a best in class nutritious and healthy food that is highly rich in sugars, GABA and Lycopene.

Kunal G. Wadhwani, Founder of agricel, stated: “From a purely business perspective, the case is very clear as agricel’s innovative Film Farming technologies have proven to be more cost effective than alternative farming methods, generating an ROI of between 40% to 70% and an IRR north of 58%”.

agricel have partnered with Desert Green, the MENA Regions Premier Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security Conference due to take place in Qatar, 7^th – 9^th May 2012, announcing the Global Product launch of both IMEC and SkyGel.

Dr. Mori will demonstrate his proprietary technologies in the Middle East to an audience of Government Bodies, Project Developers, Agricultural Producers, Agri Consultants, Global Organisations and international institutions, all gathering to discuss and accelerate the sustainable agriculture projects throughout the Middle East and beyond.

John Duggan, the Desert Green Event Director reported: “The challenges faced in creating global food security could potentially be overcome by new and innovative technologies such as the IMEC Film Farm and Skygel products.”

With a cost comparable to soil-based agriculture and cheaper than hydroponics, film farming is expected to offer a return on investment of between 40 and 70 percent, says Agricel, which offers an online guide to building a film farm in 60 days. Agricultural entrepreneurs: one to look into?

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How can officials still talk about drought conditions when we’ve had one of the wettest spring months on record?

One month of heavy rain is welcome, but unless we have a particularly sodden summer and, more importantly, a damp-and-dreary winter, supplies could start to look very sparse indeed. That’s particularly true in the south and east of England, which depend on underground aquifers to store a large proportion of water supplies. The levels in these aquifers rely on winter rain to drip through the rocks above. Summer rain tends to run off, evaporate or get absorbed by growing plants.   So the U.K  problem  is not how much rain falls from the sky but how effectively we capture and utilise that water. Yet there has been an unwillingness in recent years to invest in big infrastructure.

in 2006, Thames Water applied to build a major new reservoir near the Oxfordshire town of Abingdon. However, after years of local opposition, in March 2011 the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman (yes the same alarmist politician whom raised  the possibility of households being cut off from their own water supplies and being forced to collect water, developing world style, from standpipes in the street!) the conclusions of a public inquiry which declared that there was no need for a reservoir of that size and told Thames Water to produce a plan for a smaller one. Thames Water commented : ‘Having the Abingdon reservoir or an equivalent-sized source of water would have reduced the risks we were facing this summer, so it would have significantly reduced the chances of a hosepipe ban, because we would have had more raw water in storage.’  So whilst the Abingdon reservoir would not have  helped  with the current drought – it would take years to build – but if the population of the south-east of England continues to rise, the demand for it will surely be there in future years.( However it would seem that the current Environment Minister is happy for consumers to pay for the right not to use hosepipes or have water from their taps)

The whole concept of capturing water is alien to the British because our national psyche tells us we get quite enough of it without having to mess about saving the stuff. The aim right now is ‘demand management’, not ‘increasing supply’. We Brits, apparently, have the temerity to use more water than our European neighbours. We don’t tend to water our gardens using rainwater from a butt and we don’t flush our toilets using dishwater. (Though if Ken Livingstone had his way, we wouldn’t flush very often at all. ‘If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down’, he told a conference in 2005.) While Livingstone’s mayoral opponent, Boris Johnson has, for all his other faults, talked up the possibilities for improving infrastructure, Johnson’s Conservative colleagues in Whitehall seem to have adopted the make-do-and-mend mindset.  As such we rely on the water industry to do that job for us in its major reservoirs – the majority of which are more than 50% full and the South West reservoirs  are currently more than 85% full in the South West.

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But the reservoir system is, in itself, a highly simplistic and not always efficient way of going about things when it comes to water capture and storage. Even in the wet regions,  South West  Water had to pump some eight billion litres from rivers to keep reservoir levels up over the winter – which is an expensive and not exactly eco-friendly thing to do.

One  new industry practice called “upstream-thinking” is trying to overcome such issues.

Put simply, what upstream-thinking really does is to state that nature knows best. It is about working with the landscape – rather than against it – not only allowing, but encouraging, natural processes to develop and mature in the interests of both water purity and flood control.

The trouble is that we humans are hard-wired to resist such ideas – after all, we’ve spent many centuries ignoring the forces of nature in order to make so-called “improvements”.

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South West Water has been studying several projects and just a few miles from Liscombe there’s a prime example of the interesting dichotomy which bears witness to both the historic bending of the environment for human needs and the much more recent story of upstream-thinking.

Not everyone is happy about the “re-bogging” of Exmoor’s peat mires – many local farmers and residents  regard it as a retrograde step and a waste of money. After all – for centuries people involved in agriculture on the moors set about draining the overly wet areas wherever they could in a bid to make it a less hostile and more stable landscape for grazing.

The trouble is, those big peat bogs had a job to do – one which perhaps wasn’t so obvious in times when the streams and rivers below the moors were wild meandering waterways filled with natural obstacles and surrounded by marshes of their own.

Now this surrounding area has  too been “improved” – so that when heavy rains fall our modern river channels are super-efficient at removing water rather than holding it up.

What the peat bogs used to do was act like a massive sponge –  simply sitting  there containing colossal amounts of water. And the “re-bogging” projects on Exmoor and Dartmoor (funded for the most part by South West Water) are being carried out in the hope that some of this sponge-like ability can be returned to the moors.

It’s not exactly rocket-science, nor is the basic eco-friendly work particularly expensive. But it is working. To abide by the water industry watchdog Ofwat’s rules, these re-bogging projects have to be monitored so that experts know if water retention is being achieved – and the good news for us all is that the newly rejuvenated mires are working.

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Results from Exmoor show that the water tables are higher in the moors in question: “The increases in water tables seen reflects an increased storage of water in the peat mass following restoration and it is consistent with similar changes recorded in other re-wetted peat-lands in the UK and Ireland,” states the official finding.

There are similar projects going on elsewhere in the UK and particularly in the South West such as the Culm Grasslands programme in North Devon – and all are backed by the idea that natural landscapes, which once seemed to have little economic worth, can earn their place in this modern world where everyone and everything seems to require an accountable value.  Anglian Water in partnership with UKCeed’s Water Innovation Network is seeking to drive innovation within the water industry supply chain and to encourage end-users of water to adopt innovative solutions that reduce water demand and effluent.

Much is made of “forward thinking” and “progressive problem solving” – we should also appreciate that “Innovation” does not just mean “Invention” – improvements through Innovation need to look at the power of nature and the methods used over history.

Maybe, if Britain had more in the way of upstream-thinking –  we’d have fewer people standing knee-deep in floods questioning the definition of the word drought.

The Global Solar Council was set up to allow the solar industry to better engage policymakers worldwide. The council hopes to demonstrate the progress towards abundant, affordable and low emission energy already made possible by the solar industry. In order to thrive, solar needs supportive policy. As solar subsidies begin to be slashed substantially around the world, the council hopes to reinforce the benefit of supporting solar.

Roland-Jan Meijer, the newly-appointed Executive Director of the Global Solar Council said: “The Global Solar Council is an important and timely initiative. It demonstrates a strong commitment by key players in the sector to work together to continue to make solar energy a global success.”

Bob Hansen, CEO of Dow Corning added: “Solar energy has already proven itself a viable contribution to energy sources in many markets, particularly in the EU and the US, and the industry continues to improve the cost-effectivness of this technology. The Global Solar Council will enable us to continue the expansion of cost-effective solar power in collaboration with Governments and other stakeholders.”

Suntech CEO, Dr. Zhengrong Shi commented: “A thriving solar industry is an important contributor to economic growth and employment in developing regions. By joining forces in the Global Solar Council, we will be able to demonstrate these benefits to our key stakeholders with one voice and drive forward the growth of the green economy.”

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The Global Solar Council will bring together vast industry knowledge and insights from all sides of the solar PV value chain. Its members consist of those experienced in the PV value chain, the supply of materials, product manufacturing, financing, policy, research and innovation, cross border cooperation, and grid development and management.

Global Solar Council founding members and their representatives are Applied Materials (Dr. Charles F. Gay, President, Applied Solar), Dow Corning (Robert D. Hansen, CEO), DuPont (David B. Miller, President, Dupont (Electronics & Communication), First Solar (Michael J. Ahearn, Chairman and Interim CEO), Lanco Solar (Vutukuri Saibaba, CEO), Phoenix Solar (Dr. Andreas Hänel, CEO), and Suntech (Dr. Zhengrong Shi, CEO).

The Global Solar Council sees its role as complementary to regional trade associations and other solar stakeholders and will work with them to acheive common goals.

Replacing the Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes network, which was set up in 1999, the new Energy Efficiency Partnership for Buildings (EEPB) body aims to bring together a network of potential Green Deal providers, financiers, and product and service suppliers.

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The partnership will act as a forum to represent industry’s views on the Green Deal, ECO and energy efficiency opportunities in the UK, as well as facilitate closer working between business, government and community organisations on energy efficiency in buildings.

In particular, the body said that it will be working to “overcome” market barriers and “unlock” opportunities for small and medium sized businesses by working with policy makers.

The EEPB was set up as a subsidiary to the energy efficiency charity the National Energy Foundation and has received backing from founding members, including npower, Strutt & Parker, Centrica, Kingfisher, Enact and Knauf Insulation.

EEPB chairman Dr David Strong, said: “The creation of the EEPB comes at a very significant time. Organisations across all parts of industry, all parts of the product and delivery sectors, and all parts of the private and public sector are seeking to collaborate and find answers to how we make the most of the new energy efficiency policies coming through from Government.”

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The EEPB plans to work with DECC to continue facilitating and coordinating the four Green Deal advisory forums, as well as advising it on the implementation of the Government’s Microgeneration Strategy.

The last game which will see fans standing in the Moy’s End, will be against Watford on April 21 but there are then two weeks of charity matches to be played before work can start.  Peterborough City Council are expecting to announce the building contract winner for the £9 million project within the next two weeks.  Signs of the initial work for the revamp of the stand at the stadium  has already started with a new lighting system being installed.

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The new stand will include an Breeam standard integrated skills and educational resource centre,  in a bid to boost young people’s prospects in the city, and will compliment the Peterborough City Councils aim of developing a community stadium, surrounded by the new ‘Carbon Zero’ Southbank development.

Richard Hodgson, council’s head of projects, said: “It is an exciting time for the city.

“Football fans will get a new stand and the city will get a great facility, which is important because education is an issue for Peterborough.

It will see a brand new 2,500-seater stand, replacing the current terrace which has a capacity of 3,495.

PETERBOROUGH City Council purchased the London Road stadium from Peterborough United 
Holdings for   £8 million in January 2010

It plans to transform the ground into a “community stadium”, which will incorporate educational, health facilities and commercial space and it is seen as a key site in the council’s regeneration of the South Bank - click for details

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The development from housebuilder Morris Homes will be to the level six of the code for sustainable homes, “zero carbon”, cutting energy emissions by 100 per cent compared to an equivalent-sized standard housing development.  Forty per cent of the homes will be for social rent or shared ownership, using a £7.8 million national affordable housing programme grant.

The first homes at the site, dubbed “Vista”, are due to go on sale by autumn of this year and it is expected the show home will be complete in early summer.

Garry Goodwin, group planning and design director at Morris Homes, said: “Our aim with Vista is to build homes that make sustainable living easier and provide long-term cost-savings for homeowners. We are in the enviable position of being able to create something truly visionary. We believe our proposals fulfil the carbon challenge criteria in an exciting way.”

Initial work has concentrated on putting in infrastructure such as drainage and access roads, however, foundations for the first few houses are now being put in place.

The development forms part of the Government’s Carbon Challenge, which aims to respond to climate change by fast-tracking the creation of several “zero carbon” housing developments.

Head of economic development at Opportunity Peterborough Steve Bowyer said, “The Carbon Challenge scheme is fantastic for Peterborough. Not only is it creating local jobs and housing, but as a leading example of large-scale highly sustainable housing, it reinforces the city’s aspiration to be the UK’s Environmental Capital.

“It’s telling that, despite the current economic climate and challenges, Peterborough is still attracting significant investment.

“Schemes like this and Network Rail’s £43m upgrade of Peterborough station, all signal confidence in our city and remind potential investors of our attractiveness.”

Visitors to the site at Peterborough Untited’s football ground will shortly see the demolition of the away supporters “Moys Road” stand, this is to make way for a redeveloped, all seater facility will also feature an education and innovation resource centre – Click here for more details of this development.

The study published in the April edition of Journal of Applied Ecology has been hailed as the first of its kind to study bird populations during both the construction and operation phases of new wind farms.

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Researchers from the British Trust for Ornithology and RSPB monitored 10 bird species at 18 wind farm sites in the UK, comparing breeding bird densities and population trends between years before, during, and after wind farm construction.

They found red grouse, snipe, and curlew populations all declined during construction. The red grouse populations then recovered after construction, although snipe and curlew densities did not bounce back.

However, the researchers found little evidence of bird populations continuing to decline once construction had ended, suggesting that wind farm construction can have greater impacts upon birds than wind farm operation.

The study was hailed as a major boost for wind farm developers, which have consistently sought to downplay concerns that large numbers of birds will be killed crashing into turbines.

Wildlife organisations such as RSPB and WWF say they strongly support the development of wind farms but only in the right locations. RSPB recently revealed it objected to just eight per cent of the 2,100 wind farm cases which it was involved in the UK between 2001 and 2010.

“Wind farm developers firmly believe that taking every possible step to protect birds is extremely important,” said RenewableUK spokesman Rob Norris.

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“That’s why they carry out stringent Environmental Impact Assessments to examine the effects a wind farm will have on wildlife.

“This new study shows that once wind farms are up and running, they don’t have any significant impact on the local bird population. So this report should dispel the longstanding myth about wind turbines damaging birds, and as such it’s very welcome.”

Niall Stuart, chief executive of Scottish Renewables, said the evidence showed birds and wind farms can coexist with little long term impact on many bird populations.

“We hope this will go a long way in addressing inflammatory statements made by anti-wind farm campaigners,” he said. “Onshore wind farm developers in Scotland have to complete rigorous environmental impact assessments which may include bird surveys which are then taken into consideration by the local planning authority.

“The wind industry will continue to work closely with statutory consultees including Scottish Natural Heritage to minimise the impact on habitats of animals and birds as we work to ensure the right balance between developing renewable energy projects and protecting our natural environment is met.”

Ulrich Schröder, chief executive of KfW Bankengruppe, yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding  with Sir Adrian Montague, chairman of the advisory group for the UK Green Investment Bank (GIB).

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The MoU builds on KfW’s previous work helping the establishment of the GIB, including advising on a business model for the bank that best meets its goal of driving more sustainable investment practices and providing investment to renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Business Innovation and Skills was unable to provide further details on KfW’s collaboration. However, she confirmed GIB was on track to make its first green investment this month.

KfW division invested more than €25bn in environmental and climate protection in 2010 in a drive to encourage businesses to curb their carbon footprint. It also launched a €5bn programme to promote offshore wind farms, making it one of the largest green investors in Europe.

It also has experience of securing state aid approval for a government-backed bank – a hurdle that GIB still needs to pass before it can become fully operational

“As a promotional bank with many years of experience in the area of climate 15 and environmental protection, we are more than happy to advise and support Green Investment Bank with our expertise in these promising fields of business,” said Schröder.

“In order for activities in environmental protection and climate finance to be successful, close bilateral links between the national European promotional banks are indispensable.”

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