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Wednesday, 14 March 2007 |
The Var now has the first service station in the region to offer
ethanol-based motor fuel.
It is not commonly known that all motor fuel in France has
had a 5% ethanol content for some time. Ethanol is a non-oilbased
fuel derived from plants. What is different about this new
fuel is that it is 85% ethanol and 15% lead-free 95-octane
gasoline, hence its name Superethanol 85. In this case, the ethanol
comes from beetroot.
Currently it is available in the region only
from the Leclerc station at the east-bound Aire de l’Estérel, close
to the Var/Alpes-Maritimes border on the A8 autoroute.
Inevitably the new fuel has a chicken-and-egg aspect:
retailers are reluctant to install new equipment without being
sure of demand, while motor manufacturers see only a limited
market for vehicles equipped to use both ethanol and
conventional gasoline, until fuel supplies are easily available.
By the end of this year, Leclerc plans to have Superethanol
85 at the pumps on 72 sites, with a further 250 scheduled by
Total. With other retailers coming on stream progressively, it is
hoped to have 500 of the national total of 1,350 outlets equipped
during 2007. Currently, only three cars can use this fuel: a Ford,
a Saab and a Volvo, though both Renault and Peugeot plan to
launch hybrid versions of existing models this year.
The new fuel is less expensive: 80c per litre against
€1.23 for lead-free 95 at the Esterel pumps, and will probably
be even cheaper when available outside the autoroute network.
One reason for this is that the government only taxes the
gasoline content.
The down side is that fuel consumption is 20% to 30%
higher. Though this does not eliminate the saving, it does mean
more frequent stops for refuelling.
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Wednesday, 14 March 2007 |
Vauzelle victorious
Michel Vauzelle, president of the PACA regional council, has
long been known as a doughty political negotiator. His
reputation can only have been enhanced by his efforts to improve
the contents of the investment programme for 2007-2013. As
reported here last November, Vauzelle was scathing of the
programme first proposed by the government, which he
complained did little for improved communications, nothing for
agriculture, tourism, solidarity, job creation or training.
Now he has announced triumphantly that the final
programme includes an increase of €140m (21%) in state aid.
This figure includes €40m for transport links, including the
Turin-Marseille rail line and the long-awaited reopening of the
Carnoules-Gardanne and Carpentras-Avignon lines. There is also
€33m for research and higher education, €11m for improving
water supplies, €9m to help agricultural sectors currently in
difficulty and €12m for welfare programmes.
This increase, the highest achieved for any region in France,
Michel Vauzelle attributes to the support from all interested
parties, regardless of political affiliations, who showed solidarity
in the face of a government bent on cost-cutting rather than
investment. To that extent, it is, he says, a victory for everyone in
the PACA region.
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Wednesday, 14 March 2007 |
Anew scheme launched in Lille
last month should help those
who live or work in the city and only
need a car for short, local journeys.
Lille-Autopartage has 16 cars
located at eight strategic points
around the city and members can
book a car by phone or online for
however long they need.
The cars, small town runarounds,
are available seven days a
week, 24 hours a day. The
membership card and a personal
code give access to the car by
releasing the key in the glove
compartment. Initial membership is
€15 and then €5 per month. The
scheme is the result of a partnership
between various organisations in
the city including Keolis, which
runs the public transport system.
Tariffs are reasonably low to
encourage users to join and help
reduce the number of cars coming
into the city. The Green party also
hopes it will help to cut emissions.
The idea has been used in many
cities round the world, but in
France only La Rochelle, Paris and
Strasbourg have been tempted to
trial the scheme before Lille. If it
catches on in Lille, the idea is to
increase the number of cars
available to about 50.
www.auto-partage.com
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Wednesday, 14 March 2007 |
Five enterprising and
compassionate French
teenagers are about to set
off on a charity mission to
help the orphans in Cambodia.
The group, all members of the
Lille Baptist Church, is led by
Englishman and Lille resident
Andrew Openshaw.
The group of five
teenagers, aged 14 and 15,
have been working on the
project for two years. They
have had to arrange various
activities to fund both their
trip and the work of the
charity volunteers in Phnom
Penh. Recently, friends and
supporters attended a horse
racing evening to help raise
more money. The project is
being run under the auspices
of Le Centre de la
Reconciliation and the WEC, a
multi-national, nondenominational
Christian
charity with projects and
workers around the world.
The church in Lille became
involved in the project through
Tim Paton, an English resident
in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais who
has been based with the
charity in Phnom Penh for the
past six years.
As Cambodia still
struggles to recover from the
damage caused by the Khmer
Rouges in the 1970s, there are
many children either orphaned
or put out to beg by their
parents. These children are
forced to live in rubbish
dumps or along the river banks
in the city and fend for
themselves by begging from
tourists. All the charity
organisations in the country
work together to help and
support these children.
The WEC, in particular,
has focused on helping the
orphanages there and has also
opened a day centre, called
The Bridge of Hope, where
children, for whom residential
solutions are not relevant or
appropriate, can go and start
the process of getting back
into normal life. This can
mean education, but even
more simply, learning basic
social skills such as personal
hygiene and respect for
themselves and others. In a
country where life is cheap,
where child prostitution, drugs
and violence have filled the
moral vacuum that was Pol
Pot’s legacy, even the most
basic, and to the western
mind, most obvious lessons
are having to be re-taught and
re-learnt. This work is long,
painful and slow and often
goes unnoticed under the radar
of the western media.
Andrew, youth leader
Philippa Wehrle and the
teenagers will spend their twoweek
half-term break working
alongside the charity workers
in Phnom Penh. They hope to
help in whatever small way
they can.
Andrew says: “Not only
do we hope to help the
orphans and give some respite
and support to Tim and his
helpers, but also to impact on
the lives and attitudes of the
teenagers we are taking.”
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Wednesday, 14 March 2007 |
After 10 years, the experimental
geothermal heating project at Soultzsous-
Forêt in northern Alsace is ready to
produce electricity in commercial
amounts.
The project is based at the world’s
oldest exploited oilfield where the Earth’s
crust is particularly thin, making drilling
easier. A pilot power station is to be built
which will produce electricity from 2008.
The contract has been awarded to the
Franco-Italian company Cryostar/
Turboden. The scheme is financed jointly
by the European Union, the Agence de
l’Environnement et de la Maîtrise de
l’Énergie – Ademe – and the German
ministry of the environment. It will finally
test whether pumping water deep into the
earth and bringing it back to the surface
again is a viable undertaking for
producing cheap, environmentally clean
electricity. The benchmark will be whether
the system can continuously bring to the
surface 35 litres of water at 175°C per
second via a closed circuit.
Jacques Graff, co-director of the
European Geothermal Project (GEIE),
commented that the new development was
possible following the successful
completion of three trial drillings at 5,000
metres. He said: “The trials have taught us
to extract calories without causing a
disturbance.” He was referring discreetly
to the rather unsettling tendency of these
experiments to cause minor earthquakes
similar to those experienced at Basel near
another geothermal research site in the
Rhine valley. “At a depth of 5km there
is a pressure limit that should not be
exceeded otherwise we start to move the
rock,” he added.
If the pilot plant is a success the plan
is to build the first full-scale geothermic
power plant capable of supplying
20,000 people with electricity by 2015.
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