Berlin, Jan 26(EFE). – The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) held today it’s Founding Conference in Bonn, in an act in which Spain was represented by the minister of Industry, Miguel Sebastian, and the secretary of State for the Climatic Change, María Teresa Ribera Rodríguez.    Â

IRENA is fruit of a German initiative, to which Spain and Denmark were added, and it has as objective the renewable energy promotion in the entire world and to overcome the obstacles that these find in its development.Â

Sebastian took advantage of his participation in the conference to appeal to all the countries to impel the clean energy sources together and to share experiences on this matter.Â

“Spain can contribute its experience in that field, since it is leader in some sectors as that of the wind energy”, Sebastian said.Â

Spain occupies the third world position at the moment in the use of the wind energy, behind United States and Germany.

The renewable energies have in Spain 20 percent of market quota regarding the electric power production.Â

The conference of Bonn had been prepared with a preparatory meeting in Madrid on last October, in which 51 countries gave their approval to the creation of IRENA.Â

To the conference of Bonn attend representatives of about 120 countries of which 50 signed the constituent agreement of IRENA.Â

Germany’s Federal Environment Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, underlined at the beginning of the conference that the development of the renewable energy in the entire world still has many obstacles, among those he highlighted that there are still many countries with conventional energy sources.Â

“A quick growth of energies as the solar or wind power continues being blocked by many obstacles”, Gabriel said in the inaugural conference of IRENA.Â

“The market continues being distorted by grants to conventional energy”, Gabriel added.Â

The obstacles that the renewable energies have, according to Gabriel, make necessary the creation of an international organization as IRENA that can channel the political will to overcome the difficulties.Â
Gabriel considers that a great breach still exists among the potential of the renewable energy and the relatively low market quota that they have at the moment.Â

Also, the minister is of the conviction that the renewable energy, besides being key for the protection of the climate, offer big economic possibilities for many countries.Â

“With the technical progresses, the renewable energy are every time a competitive alternative in front of the conventional energy. Also, the technology makes them cheaper year after year”, Gabriel said.Â
In 2008 150.000 million dollars were invested in the entire world, according to Gabriel, in the sector of the renewable energy.Â

The agency will try to foment the use of energies as the wind power or the solar to substitute to the coal, the petroleum and other conventional sources and to advise to the countries that have plans of developing technologies related with it.Â

IRENA is the first international organization that is exclusively in charge of renewable energies.Â
In the list of those that signed the agreement some important countries are missing as United States, Russia, China and Brazil.Â

Gabriel said in this respect, that in some countries a clarification process is still missing, but he expressed his conviction that soon the treaty will be subscribed by more states.Â
Tomorrow will take place the session of installation of the Preparatory Commission, to which all the countries members of the Agency will belong to, that in June will have to determine the headquarters of IRENA and to choose the first director.Â

Germany wants the headquarters of IRENA to stays in Bonn but other countries, among them Spain, have shown interest.Â

Among the candidates to be the first director of IRENA has been insistently mentioned the name of the german social democrat politician Hermann Scheer, that was one of the instigators of the creation of the agency. EFEÂ

Source: Finanzas

As they informed from the brazilian government the reedbeds sowed to obtain ethanol, would not be dangerous. Agency APÂ

The expansion of the reedbeds in Brazil to satisfy the growing demand of ethanol in the world won’t damage the Amazonas rainforest, said on Monday a high employee of the government. Â

In declarations at the beginning of a five days international conference on biofuels, the government’s general secretary, Dilma Rousseff, said that the country will announce a plan of agricultural areas very soon to specify where the cane can be cultivated, both for sugar or energy generating. Â

The Amazonia and other well-known regions for their wide range of animal species and of plants would be excluded. But Brazil will encourage the expansion of the ethanol production to other parts and in poor countries of the world in wich the climate is favorable for the cultivation.Â

“It is a socioeconomic reality”, Rousseff said. “It generates works and revenues, mostly in tropical countries.”Â

Rousseff also said that the expansion of the ethanol won’t compete with the production of foods in Brazil, and that space exists for other crops, including soya and corn.Â
Although the reedbeds cover 4,2 million hectares of Brazilian lands now, the minister said that that represents less than 1% of the national territory and that abundant available land exists outside of the protected areas.Â

Rousseff said that Brazil should “put an end to the myth that the cane fields are invading the Amazonia”, but the critics say that there are already cane plantations in the region and that some plan to expand. They also denounce that the conversion of grass lands and soya fields to reedbeds are displacing soya farmers and cattlemen that in turn settle down in deforested areas of the forest.Â

Rousseff said that the government of Brazil is prepared to help to the big ethanol producers that suffer because of the global credit crisis.Â

The ethanol producers were among those that could receive help when the government announced thousands of millions of dollars recently in lines of emergency credit for the companies affected by the crisis.Â

Source: La Voz

ROME (AFP)-The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO)Â questioned the benefits of the biofuels and requested a revision of the policies and subsidies to those products, in a report published on Tuesday in Rome.Â

The document that circulates annually under the title ‘The State of Food and Agriculture´ (SOFA), analyzes the advantages and risks of the biofuels. Â

“The biofuels production based on agricultural products grew more than the triple between 2000 and 2007 and now it almost supposes two percent of the world consumption of fuels for the transport”, sustains the report.Â

“In spite of the scarce importance of the liquid biofuels in terms of the world energy supply, the demand of agricultural raw materials (sugar, corn, oleaginous seeds) to obtain them will continue increasing in the next decade and maybe later on, increasing the pressure on the alimentary prices”, warned the experts of the FAO.Â

The agency of United Nations also sustains that the biofuel impact on the environment ” is not always positive.”Â

“A bigger production and biofuels employment won’t necessarily contribute to reduce the emissions of hothouse effect gases as much as previously it had been supposed”, reveals the report.Â

“The changes in the use of the earth – for example the deforestation to satisfy the growing demand of agricultural products – are a great threat to the quality of the floor, the biodiversity and the emissions of hothouse effect gases”, Jacques Diouf pointed out, general director of the agency of United Nations.Â

The experts of FAO estimate that “the policies and subsidies of the biofuels should be reconsidered with urgency to maintain the objective of the world alimentary security, to protect the poor peasants, to promote a wide based rural development and to assure the environmental sustainability.”Â

The FAO also criticizes the fiscal incentives because they have generated “the quick artificial growth of the biofuels production”, what implies “high costs” so much economic as social and environmental.Â

The biofuels is object of a growing polemic, since its detractors assure that they contribute to the rise of the prices of the foods, the deforestation and the displacement of populations in the poor countries.Â

For its defenders, on the other hand, the biofuels can be good to cut the dependence on the petroleum and to fight against the global heating, when reducing the emissions of hothouse effect gases generated by fossil fuels.Â

The report of the FAO will generate a strong debate, mainly among the biofuel producing latin american countries, as Brazil, Colombia and the Central American El Salvador, Costa Rica and Guatemala, which took the road to the biofuels, although to a smaller scale.¼br /> United States is the first ethanol producer starting from corn (alcohol fuel), with 48% of the world total in 2007. Brazil follows its step, with 31% of the ethanol world production, manufactured starting from the sugarcane. Â

“We still don’t know the report, but for the anticipations I believe that it will raise reactions, because it doesn’t correspond to that agreed in the summit of June held in Rome”, commented to AFP Francisco Coy, representative of Colombia before the agency of United Nations.Â

The signatory countries of the declaration of Rome invited five months ago to make “studies in depth” on the biofuels, qualified as “an opportunity and a challenge.”¼br /> The answer to that order seems to be the wide report of the FAO, of some 130 pages, in which “the perspectives, the risks and the opportunities of the biofuels” are analyzed, as the subtitle recites.Â

The FAO on the other hand nurtures big hopes on the second generation biofuels.¼br /> “They are still not available at commercial level, but they use raw materials as wood, high grasses, agricultural and forest waste, and they could improve the balance of the fossil energy and the hothouse effect gases of the biofuels”, assures the entity.

“The second generation technologies, if well designed and applied, they would have a bigger potential in terms of reduction of the emissions of hothouse effect gases with a smaller pressure on the natural resources”, Diouf assured.Â

Source: AFP