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From the Economist

SHORTLY before the 2009 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, many companies got into green. The summit was expected to lead to new regulations restricting greenhouse-gas emissions. Dozens of chief executives came to see history being made and to be seen on the right side of it. But Copenhagen was a flop. Most firms turned their thoughts elsewhere. Only four bosses showed up at the next annual climate meet, in Cancún. Few are expected at this year’s bash, which begins in Durban on November 28th.

Alas, that represents a realistic assessment of the Durban summit’s chances of delivering anything like the long-term certainty that businesses crave. Of 300 bosses of big global firms recently quizzed by Ernst & Young, 83% said they wanted to see a legally binding multilateral deal struck in Durban to update the ailing Kyoto protocol and help to put a price on carbon emissions. But only 18% expect this to happen. The absence of a clear climate policy helps explain why, for example, investment in British clean technology fell from around $11 billion in 2009 to $3 billion last year. It would also suggest that any firm factoring a steep carbon price into its plans—as Shell does, assuming a notional price of $40 a tonne—should quietly lower it.

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From ScienceDaily

Fuel made from wood could become a competitive commercial alternative to fuel made from corn by 2020 if the wood biofuel industry is supported, according to a new University of British Columbia study.

Corn ethanol is currently blended with gasoline to satisfy government-mandated targets to include renewable content in transportation fuel. Compared to corn, wood-based biofuel is considered more sustainable but is not currently produced in large commercial quantities in Canada and the United States because the costs are too great.

The study, published in the most recent issue of the journal Biofuels Bioproducts & Biorefining, identifies several opportunities for reducing these costs. Researchers in UBC’s Faculty of Forestry found that large-scale commercial production of wood-based ethanol, also known as cellulosic ethanol, will reduce capital and operation costs and assist in achieving the improvements necessary for wood-based ethanol to compete, without government support.

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By Leslie Guevarra from Greenbiz.com

Starting today top Chinese automaker SAIC Motor Corp. Ltd. is offering a 13.5 percent price cut to people who buy a new hybrid Roewe 750 sedan during the five days of the Shanghai industry fair.

The offer brings the sticker price on the country’s first mass-produced eco-friendly car from 236,800 yuan ($37,260), to 204,800 yuan ($32,200), according to Reuters.

The subsidy on the Roewe 750 is just one of the incentives to push the market for hybrids and electric vehicles in China, where the government wants to have 1 million cars powered by electricity on the road by 2015.

BYD rolled out the first all-electric car for the country’s consumer market last week in the tech-centric city of Shenzen, where buyers of the BYD e6 are eligible for double the amount of a government subsidy to speed EV sales. In the southern China city, the five-passenger BYD e6 — a model previously available only for government and taxi fleets — comes with a hefty price subsidy of 120,000 yuan (about $18,800) that lops off about 32 percent from a starting price of 369,800 yuan (about $58,000).

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