Liu Xiao spends her weeks visiting sludge and organic waste treatment plants across China. The travel can be tiring but as a technical and policy adviser on waste management she must help implement President
Soyabean and wheat prices continued falling yesterday as traders chewed over the implications of the dramatic shifts in agricultural production likely across the US farming industry this year. Both soyabeans and wheat are on course for a large increase in farmland devoted to their production, while last year's rush by US farmers into corn to feed the requirements of the ethanol industry will be partially reversed.
Carbon traders will today find out whether the European Union's emissions trading scheme has succeeded in persuading companies to curb their greenhouse gas output. The European Commission is expected to release data today showing the extent of carbon dioxide emissions in 2007 from businesses covered by its emissions trading scheme. It is widely expected to show that emissions from heavy industry such as steel and cement making have fallen by a small amount, but that emissions from the power sector have risen slightly.
Investors in the fledgling market in greenhouse gas emissions have seen their share of volatility and shocks in the past three years. Shares in several carbon trading companies have fallen sharply in the past year, and traders have had to cope with a crash in the carbon price and uncertainty over the future regulation of the market.
One of the most bitter transatlantic trade disputes of the past decade inched towards resolution on Wednesday, when the European Union announced it had complied with a 1999 World Trade Organisation ruling against its ban on beef hormones. Though Brussels refused to lift the ban, trade officials insisted that the original legislation banning the use of six growth-promoting hormones had been amended in a way that should satisfy both the complainants - the US and Canada - and the WTO.
Jonathan Thomas comes from a family of jewellers, so when the price of gold began to shoot up the Michigan-based entrepreneur saw a commercial opportunity. At the beginning of the year he and his business partners launched My Gold Party.com, a company that helps arrange Tupperware-style parties for people keen to sell unwanted gold items. Business has been brisk, he says. "They bring their gold and they can walk away with a cheque."
US farmers have rarely been so spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing which crops to plant. Corn, wheat, soyabean, oats, rice, barley, hay, canola and sunflower prices are all at or near record levels. Which crops farmers will plant this year should become clearer on Monday when the US Department of Agriculture publishes its Prospective Plantings report, based on a survey of 86,000 farm operators in the first two weeks of March.
Royal Dutch Shell, Europe's biggest oil company, is working on a process to turn sugars into a synthetic petrol, rather than ethanol, with the aim of moving to a commercial demonstration plant in two years' time. The company yesterday announced a joint venture with Virent, a US biotech business based in Wisconsin, saying results from research over the past year had been better than expected in terms of costs and yields.
Deutsche Asset Management, the $800bn fund unit of Deutsche Bank, plans to launch the world's first private equity fund specialising in climate change, or green investments. "We're developing the product," Kevin Parker, DeAm chief executive, told the Financial Times. "We are already the biggest climate change investors in the world. That has happened really in just the past 18 months." The move dovetails with DeAm's commitment to climate change as a potentially huge investing trend and with its desire to develop more products in the higher-margin end of the asset management business.
It is raining and Tirana's main rubbish dump in the Sharra valley, about five kilometres outside the capital, is covered in sticky mud. However, for Ardian Alu it is business as usual. Together with his two young sons, Mr Alu, a member of Albania's Roma community, sifts through piles of waste selecting recyclable materials he can sell to a local trader. He is paid Lek14 (
Food scientists are meeting in Cusco, Peru, this week to find ways of boosting world potato production to ease the strain of surging cereal prices on the world's poorest countries. Potato production already reached a record high last year as cereal prices rose, partly as a consequence of grain producers - such as the US - switching to bio-fuel crops. The impact of more expensive cereals has been harshest on developing countries that are dependent on imports.
