Eideard

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, cola wars rivals for a century, are now locked in a bottle battle.

PepsiCo Pepsi’s new bottle is made from switch grass, pine bark, corn husks and other materials. Ultimately, Pepsi plans to also use orange peels, oat hulls, potato scraps and other leftovers from its food business.

Two years after Coca-Cola Co. unveiled a bottle made partly from plant materials, PepsiCo says it is introducing a better one. The Purchase, N.Y. company says it has developed the world’s first plastic bottle made entirely from plant-based, fully renewable resources, cutting the use of petroleum. Coke’s PlantBottle is made of up to 30 percent plant sugars…

Beverage companies are trying to design bottles to counter environmental concerns. The bottled water industry is using lighter plastics, dropping the average weight of the 16.9 ounce “single serve” bottle by a third over the past eight years, according to the International Bottled Water Association.

That means less fuel consumed to transport the beverages.

Meanwhile, Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle is available in nine countries and is expected to reach more than a dozen other markets this year. More than 2.5 billion PlantBottles have reached the marketplace, a number Coca-Cola says equates to saving about 3 million gallons of gasoline.

The technology will also appear in Heinz bottles, under a partnership with the ketchup-maker, and possibly in bottles for Honest Tea, a Maryland company Coca-Cola just acquired. The PlantBottle is made partly with natural sugars found in sugarcane ethanol from Brazil. Odwalla, a Coca-Cola juice brand, plans to switch to the PlantBottle within the next few weeks.

Before someone brings it up – yes, I know that glass is one of the easiest after-use commodities to recycle. And we’re not about to run out of sand to make glass bottles either. But, either road, glass production in the traditional manner consumes a boatload of energy. And that, too is a commodity which must be paid for by consumers.

Circa 1904

ScottishPower is planning a tidal energy project that will supply all the electricity for one of Scotland’s most famous islands, the Guardian can reveal.

The company is close to signing a supply contract with Diageo, the drinks group, to provide electricity from the project to eight distilleries and maltings on Islay – including the makers of the renowned Laphroaig and Lagavulin whiskies.

The 10MW tidal project, one of the world’s largest, will provide enough electricity for Islay’s 3,500 inhabitants for 23 hours a day.

ScottishPower will submit a planning application in the next couple of months and expects the ten 30-metre underwater turbines to be operational in 2011. The turbines will cost about £50m to install…

There is…strong support on the island, although it is by no means universal. Kevin Sutherland, manager of the Islay group of Diageo distilleries, works at the Caol Ila distillery, which overlooks the Sound. The distillery, like the rest of the island, gets the majority of its electricity from the Hunterston nuclear reactor on the mainland. But the reactor is being decommissioned in 2016 and the distillery suffers frequent power cuts in stormy weather when pylons are blown over.

When the tidal project is built, the distilleries on the island will enjoy a much more secure electricity supply, confounding critics of renewable energy – primarily wind power – who say it is intermittent and unreliable.

One of the biggest obstacles for renewables in Britain has been planning permission. Onshore wind applications are frequently rejected because locals object to the visual impact. Because the Islay generators will be on the seabed, no one can see them and the Scottish government will have the final say on planning.

Trust me. There will be some fop from London who owns fishing rights which he uses once every dozen years – who will find grounds he feels should halt the project.

I am also reminded there were portions of my life entirely powered by Laphroig.

DUNHUANG, China – As the United States takes its first steps toward mandating that power companies generate more electricity from renewable sources, China already has a similar requirement and is investing billions to remake itself into a green energy superpower.

Through a combination of carrots and sticks, Beijing is starting to change how this country generates energy. Although coal remains the biggest energy source and is almost certain to stay that way, the rise of renewable energy, especially wind power, is helping to slow China’s steep growth in emissions of global warming gases.

While the House of Representatives approved a requirement last week that American utilities generate more of their power from renewable sources of energy, and the Senate will consider similar proposals over the summer, China imposed such a requirement almost two years ago.

This year China is on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest market for wind turbines — after doubling wind power capacity in each of the last four years. State-owned power companies are competing to see which can build solar plants fastest, though these projects are much smaller than the wind projects. And other green energy projects, like burning farm waste to generate electricity, are sprouting up.

This oasis town deep in the Gobi Desert along the famed Silk Road and the surrounding wilderness of beige sand dunes and vast gravel wastelands has become a center of China’s drive to lead the world in wind and solar energy.

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Daylife/AFP/Getty Images
Saudi King and his cousin Dickie

Strict measures across the world to act against climate change could seriously affect the economies of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf nations.

“Countries talking about reducing dependence on oil could impact our economy,” Mohammad al-Sabban of the Saudi ministry of petroleum told an OPEC energy conference…

“We are ready to bear our fair share of cost of addressing climate change but no more,” said Sabban…a senior economic adviser at the Saudi oil ministry.

He cited an independent study by consultants Charles Rivers, which stated that policies to mitigate climate change could remove 5-20 percent of Saudi and other Gulf countries’ GDP.

“Efforts to cut CO2 and at the same time reduce energy dependency on imported oil “is a very serious behavior that could impact our economy,” he said.

The fact that the rest of the world may save on their energy production – may build a better world for future generations to live in – seems not to have sunk into the brain of this particular kingly servant.