A new report, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), attempts to bring to the world’s attention the truly great economic value of ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as the benefits of taking these into account when making policies.

The value of the world’s natural ecosystems and biodiversity is something lacking in most economic analyses. Lack of value for what is truly priceless doesn’t just hurt the environment, however. It is also a sort of economic suicide. This new report, hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme and supported by key EU, UK, German, Swedish, Dutch, and Norwegian bodies, attempts to bring all of this to our attention more and show some positive case studies of how taking the environment into consideration can actually save us money.

As the report says: “the failure of markets to adequately consider the value of ecosystem services is of concern not only to environment, development and climate change ministries but also to finance, economics and business ministries.”

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Thin-film solar is being used in a variety of new applications, from solar roof shingles to solar tiles (like clay tiles) to solar panels glued right onto the roof. Its flexibility in use is one major benefit of this technology.

Lower cost is the number one factor responsible for its anticipated growth, but there are trade-offs as well.

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Last weekend Madison was host to Tales from Planet Earth, a local environmental film festival screening 50 films over three days. One film I saw was Our Daily Bread, a German film about the industrial food production and high-tech farming that managed to comment on the process without actually doing any talking. The image above, reminiscent of old movies and war films, is just one visual that’s stuck with me since.

Rather than my trying to muddle out a summary, here’s the filmmakers’ synopsis of the movie:

To the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines, the film looks without commenting into the places where food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds - a cool, industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism. People, animals, crops and machines play a supporting role in the logistics of this system which provides our society’s standard of living.

When the synopsis says the film “looks without commenting,” that’s exactly true. There is no narration and almost no actual talking throughout the entire movie. And since it’s in German I couldn’t understand any speaking anyway, meaning all I could interact with in the movie were the images.

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The articles of association for the DESERTEC Industrial Initiative (DII) were signed by the joint venture group of 12 companies and the DESERTEC Foundation in Munich on October 30.

Additionally, a CEO for DII was appointed — Paul van Son.

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Berlin is a great bicycle city! Full of bicyclists, bike art, bicycle infrastructure, and unique bikes for a variety of different purposes, Berlin is #7 on this “great bicycle cities” list.

If you go to Germany, you will probably hear some Germans saying how much they love their cars (i.e. Mercedes, BMW, Audi). However, you will probably be surprised to see how many people actually love their bikes. Berlin is perhaps the best example. You can see people from across the class spectrum using the bicycle for a wide range of purposes. Even the postal service and other delivery services use bicycles.

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Solar Energy. Wind Energy. Now, Wave Energy. Reminds me of Captain Planet.

A Finnish company, AW-Energy, recently signed a $4.4 million (€3 million) contract with the European Union (EU) to implement WaveRoller (wave energy) technology in Portuguese waters. This looks interesting. The location for the project is near a town deemed to be “capital of the waves.”

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“The United States is in a sense climate illiterate still,” Hans Schellnhuber, the director of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said earlier this week.

He wasn’t just comparing the US to the EU, however. Even developing nations seem to know more about the issue and the potential results of inaction.

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A new report released today says that if we shift our economy — to a greener, low-carbon economy — we will have more jobs, not fewer.

Earlier this week, Tony Blair (former prime minister of the UK) and the Climate Group reported that if we worked to avoid climate change we’d create 10 million new jobs by 2020 — worldwide. Another recent study by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council says that such a shift could increase employment in the EU by 2.7 million jobs by 2030.

One more report, released today by the Global Climate Network (an alliance of nine influential think tanks) comes to similar conclusions.

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The goal is to get a total of 25,000 megawatts just from ocean-sited wind power by 2030. This would provide the first half of that; from a 12,000 MW wind farm.

Germany is only just starting to dip its toes into off-shore wind production. It signed its first offshore wind project of just 15 megawatts a few months ago with the Alpha Ventus project that was co-financed by German energy giants Vattenfall, E.on and EWE and subsidized by the German government.

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Everyone who uses natural gas to supply heat and to heat water, could be tapping into that heat to make their own electricity as well with a CHP unit. Unlike solar or wind power, this energy source could be supplying electric power both day and night, and whether it’s windy or not.

And who better to make such a unit but an auto company that has already put in some design time making natural gas engines work more efficiently. Volkswagen wants to make electricity in your basement.

If you live in Germany. For now.

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Germany has launched an exciting new plan to establish a national hydrogen fuel network, which could be fully operational as early as 2015.

On behalf of the German government, the transport minister Wolfgang Tiefensee has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with eight industrial partners to set up the H2 mobility scheme. High profile participants include Daimler, EnBW, Linde, OMV, Shell, Total, Vattenfall and the NOW GmbH National Organisation Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology.

Speaking about the groundbreaking plan, the first of its kind anywhere in the world, Tiefensee said, “Our aim is to continue consistent and systematic promotion of electromobility based on batteries and fuel cells. Today we can see that Germany is setting the pace when it comes to hydrogen and fuel cell technology. We are aiming at establishing the nationwide supply with hydrogen in Germany at around 2015 in order to support the serial-production of fuel cell vehicles.”

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Ah, the Trabant. That most humble and often-maligned communist-era East German auto icon. To people who remember the car — lovingly and mockingly nicknamed the Trabi in its heyday — it conjures up all sorts of feelings. Personally the Trabi and I have a special connection: My wife grew up in East Germany and has fond, bittersweet memories of taking vacations to the Baltic Sea crowded into the back (and sometimes even the trunk) of the loud, blue-smoke-belching, death trap.

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In a press release by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) today, we can see that people in developed countries actually use several times more water than they “use” — the water used indirectly to create our products is several times more than the water we use ourselves. According to the WWF, “German households use 124 litres of water a day directly, individual Germans use 5288 litres of water a day when the water requirements of producing their food, clothes and other consumption items are included.”

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According to the most recent data estimates, roughly 70 million sharks are caught (and killed) each year, most of this is for food, some for sport, and sadly, some just out of fear.

But most of the commercially fished sharks are in fact killed for their fins only–their mutilated carcasses are simply tossed overboard. This is known as “finning”. The fins make their way into a dish known as shark fin soup–a prized delicacy in Japan but also in some Scandinavian countries and in Germany. And as its popularity increases, so do catches–and almost any shark will do (100 out of 400 species are presently exploited for food, according to the Shark Foundation). According to the IUCN (which tracks endangered species with its annual “red list“) and governmental and NGO conservation groups, one third or more of all shark species are endangered.

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The campaign targets 11 EU countries — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The campaign will involve celebrities from the various participating countries.

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Move over Nature…the famed strength of a spider’s web silk now has some competition. Bio-mimicry and bio-materials–both emerging new sciences that seek to utilize and/or reproduce or modify natural biological materials and properties for commercial usage–has been seeing an explosion of research and experimentation of late. Recent bio-materials experiments with spider dragline silk (taken from an Araneus spider’s silk glands) have resulted in a bio-mimicked new material that is stronger than its natural version.

To make this new material, the scientists had to “infiltrate” the inner protein structure of the spider’s dragline, silk threads with a metal ion of zinc (Zn 2+). These experiments built on earlier analyses of the mandibles of leaf-cutter ants, locusts, and marine polychaetes (a type of large sea worm) that showed a strong relationship between accumulated Zinc, Aluminum and Titanium levels in these materials and their high tensile and hardness properties.  Previous attempts to incorporate such metals synthetically had proven to be too great a technological challenge.

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The sun is coming out. And Europe isn’t waiting any longer. Some of the biggest businesses in Europe are ready to invest in the largest solar energy project in the world. They are looking to create a “solar energy belt” in the Middle East and North Africa.

How will the energy get to Europe? It will go through huge “super grids” under the Mediterranean Sea. Has this kind of thing happened before? Siemens CEO, Peter Löscher, says: “A few years ago we connected Tasmania with the Australian continent. And from 2011 there will be a 250-kilometer undersea cable supplying Majorca with electricity from the Spanish mainland. For us, this kind of thing is now part of our core business.”

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In reference to Thomas Friedman’s book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, Boxer said yesterday: “The nation that aggressively addresses the issue of climate change will be the nation that will thrive, the nation that will lead, and the nation that will prosper.”

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