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October 18th 2010

Linking Innovative Technologies with Global Energy Markets

Dear Reader,

Welcome to our NET Newsletter tracking the latest news related to new
energy technologies. CONTENTS

NET update focuses on how new technologies are changing the global  Technology News
renewable and non-renewable energy markets. The NET newsletter
provides a well-rounded view on the most up-to-date energy news from  Business News
a broad range of sources.
 Commentaries and
The widespread media coverage of the cyber attack on Iran‘s nuclear
Opinions
facilities shows the threat to global energy facilities. In this month‘s
column Mr. Dylan Welch therefore describes implications of cyber
warfare.
Contact us:
Meanwhile new ways of making energy are developing. The North
London Waste Association (NLWA) talks about their involvement in MEC International Ltd.
the Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF) – a process that converts solid waste
into clean, efficient, renewable synthetic gas. But will waste and Granville House
artificial electricity producing leaves actually determine the future way
132 Sloane Street
of producing electricity and gas? The article can be found in the new
column ‗Change-makers’. If your company has an interesting story to
London SW1X 9AX
tell, involving new energy technologies then we would like to hear
about it. Just send your message to: info@meconsult.co.uk. Tel: 020 7591 4816

And find out how a new heating system for our homes could help Fax: 020 7591 4801
reduce our carbon footprint climate change. This system district heating
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If you would like to receive further information on any of the issues info@meconsult.co.uk
raised in this newsletter, please contact me at info@meconsult.co.uk.

With warmest regards,


Jochem Jacobs
Editor
Business & Technology News
Cyber attack threat 'could be next Pearl Harbor'
18/10/2010

Terrorist cyber attacks on government computer systems and businesses could


be ―the next Pearl Harbor‖, the head of Britain‘s Intelligence and Security
Committee (ISC) has warned. Read More

How Israel prepared for a cyber war


07/10/2010

Israeli officials are maintaining their silence over reports that the country's Identifying supply chain gaps and
intelligence agencies are behind the Stuxnet computer virus that has wreaked strategies to increase domestic
havoc on the Iranian nuclear programme. Read More wind manufacturing facilities

Structure of Plastic Solar Cells Impedes Their Efficiency 30 November - 1 December 2010,
07/10/2010 Chicago, USA

A team of researchers from North Carolina State University and the U.K. has
found that the low rate of energy conversion in all-polymer solar-cell
technology is caused by the structure of the solar cells themselves. They hope
that their findings will lead to the creation of more efficient solar cells. Read
More

A Step Toward Lead-Free Electronics


05/10/2010 To view the updated
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More Dear Colleague,

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Potential of Lead-Free Piezoelectric Ceramics power facility.
04/10/2010

Scientists are using Diamond Light Source, the UK's national synchrotron
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products from inkjet printers to digital cameras. Read More

Turning Waste Heat Into Power


03/10/2010

What do a car engine, a power plant, a factory and a solar panel have in
common? They all generate heat -- a lot of which is wasted. Read More
Work light twice as hard to make cheap solar cells
01/10/2010

"Third-generation" solar cells that could shatter the efficiency limit of


conventional cells have come a step closer. A proof-of-concept device is the
first to generate twice the standard current produced from the most energetic
photons in sunlight. Read More

Tiny Generators Turn Waste Heat Into Power


29/09/2010 Unleashing the potential of
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The second law of thermodynamics is a big hit with the beret-wearing college
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Electric Cars Hold Greater Promise for Reducing Emissions


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Mimicking Nature, Water-Based 'Artificial Leaf' Produces
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24/09/2010

A team led by a North Carolina State University researcher has shown that
water-gel-based solar devices -- "artificial leaves" -- can act like solar cells to
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Successful Sludge-to-Power Research Developed


24/09/2010

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Out-of-this-world proposal for solar wind power


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Environmental Impact of Organic Solar Cells Assessed


20/09/2010

Solar energy could be a central alternative to petroleum-based energy


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same energy yield and is more expensive to mass-produce. In addition,
information on the total effect of solar energy production on the environment is
incomplete, experts say. Read More

Home's Electrical Wiring Acts as Antenna to Receive Low-


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16/09/2010

If these walls had ears, they might tell a homeowner some interesting things.
Like when water is dripping into an attic crawl space, or where an open window
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Electron vortex could trap atoms


15/09/2010

Set a beam of electrons twisting and the resulting vortex could be just the
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Commentaries and Opinions

As the world turns, so does the way we effect other countries. Dylan
Welch says. Not only do we now fight on water and ground, as well
as in the air, but we also fight via computers. Is Cyber war the future
way of fighting a war, including sabotage and espionage? And is it
something that could cause an effect more horrible than that of a real
fight? Mr. Welch not only believes that it is the future. But also that
this future is only a few steps away from reality.... What is your
response to it? Read it now and let us know afterwards at
info@meconsult.co.uk.

Cyber soldiers
09/10/2010
(The Sydney Morning Herald)

A new era of warfare is dawning, with an invisible enemy constantly


searching for ways to cripple life as we know it, writes Dylan Welch.

The world began to change two years ago when a US soldier in the Middle East plugged a flash drive into a military laptop.

Without the soldier's knowledge a small piece of rogue code called agent.btz, placed there by foreign spies, slipped from the
flash drive and onto the computer, and started replicating itself across classified US networks.

The US Deputy Secretary of Defense, William Lynn, was later to describe the incident as one of the biggest compromises of
US military networks in its history.

"[The] code spread undetected on both classified and unclassified systems, establishing what amounted to a digital beachhead,
from which data could be transferred to servers under foreign control," Lynn wrote in Foreign Affairs.

"It was a network administrator's worst fear: a rogue program operating silently, poised to deliver operational plans into the
hands of an unknown adversary."

This year, Iranian nuclear technicians became alarmed when another piece of malicious software, a computer worm, attempted
to hijack the system that controls the Natanz nuclear plant.

The code, called Stuxnet, was eventually analyzed and declared to be a complex and targeted program that could only have
been created by a nation state.

The head of a company given the task of examining the worm, Eugene Kaspersky of Kaspersky Lab, last month declared the
worm a "turning point".

"This malicious program was not designed to steal money, send spam, and grab personal data. No. This piece of malware was
designed to sabotage plants, to damage industrial systems," he said. "I am afraid this is the beginning of a new world."

Kaspersky and his ilk are not the only people aware of the significance of the new breed of malicious software ("malware")
such as Stuxnet and agent.btz. President Barack Obama declared last year, when announcing a new White House cyber sphere
office: "Cyberspace is real. And so are the risks that come with it," he said. "It's the great irony of our information age – the
very technologies that empower us to create and to build also empower those who would disrupt and destroy. And this paradox
– seen and unseen – is something that we experience every day."

Agent.btz was not the first time the cyber sphere was used as a tool of international antagonism. The roots of cyber espionage
and war on the internet can be traced back several decades.

In 1982, software inserted into the operating system of a trans-Siberian gas pipeline in the Soviet Union caused a massive
explosion. It was later claimed the software was written at the behest of the CIA.

In 2007, during a dispute with Russia, Estonian national infrastructure was subject to crippling cyber attacks. Banks,
government departments and media were bombarded with requests for access, causing overloaded servers to shut down. During
the war in the former Soviet republic of Georgia in 2008, Georgian infrastructure was bombarded with similar attacks.
While the Estonian and Georgian attacks were crude, they made it clear that a new era of warfare was dawning. No longer
would the first angry shots of war be bullets. Instead, countries would send forth invisible and insubstantial assaults that could
shut down military computer networks or those of cities.

The US has now designated cyberspace as the fifth sphere of war – after land, sea, air and space. (While Australia has yet to
make that symbolically important move, the Defense Department told the Herald the issue is being "closely examined".)

In May, the US appointed a four-star general, Keith Alexander, as the first commander of the Pentagon's ambitious new US
Cyber Command. The command will eventually be staffed by 1100 people and will operate as a central hub for cyber warfare.
Its mission statement says its aim, in part, is to conduct "full spectrum military cyberspace operations" and to "ensure US/Allied
freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries".

Based in the National Security Agency's headquarters at Fort Meade, Virginia, the new command has left some in Congress
concerned it will lead to a "militarization of cyberspace", and that the rapid advances in cyber warfare are outstripping the
government's ability to create a legal framework to govern it.

In his landmark Foreign Affairs article, Lynn made it plain that the western world has, almost overnight, found itself incredibly
vulnerable.

"Cyber attacks offer a means for potential adversaries to overcome overwhelming US advantages in conventional military
power and to do so in ways that are instantaneous and exceedingly hard to trace," he wrote.

"A dozen determined computer programmers can, if they find a vulnerability to exploit, threaten the United States' global
logistics network, steal its operational plans, blind its intelligence capabilities or hinder its ability to deliver weapons on target."

Australia is also being deluged by intrusions on both public and classified networks.

"We are definitely being targeted. Virtually all of our systems have been targeted," said the director of Sydney University's
Centre for International Security Studies, Alan Dupont.

Dupont has worked on Australian security for three decades as a diplomat, a government strategic analyst and an academic. He
said recent events such as Stuxnet may be indicative of a new evolved battlefield.

"It does represent a new dimension to warfare. I don't think there's any question of that," Dupont said. "And why it is so serious
is because we are an increasingly wired society. While it may have only been an inconvenience 10 years ago, it is now quite a
serious problem in terms of maintaining critical infrastructure.
"A very destructive virus or worm specifically designed to bring down a system like an electricity grid is a very serious threat to
modern society."

Australia's response to the cyber threat came in January with the opening of the Cyber Security Operations Centre. Based
within the Defense Signals Directorate, it is the front-line expert unit tasked with confronting the cyber threat. The then defense
minister, Senator John Faulkner, said Defense had experienced about 2400 "electronic security incidents" on its networks last
year, or 200 a month.

In figures released to the Herald yesterday - only the second time Defense has revealed intrusion numbers - the department said
there were 5551 incidents between January and August alone, or almost 700 a month. So serious were 45, they were reported to
a system for investigating intrusions "which affect the security or functionality of Australian government computer and
communications systems".

Other non-military government networks have seen a huge spike. Only 220 incidents were reported last year to Defense. But in
the first eight months of this year, there were about 1000.

When he spoke at the start of the year, Faulkner said the cyber security centre would both provide "critical understanding of the
threat from sophisticated cyber attack", and be at the forefront of "developing capabilities to gain an edge in the cyberspace
domain".

It opened with 51 staff, has more than 90 now, and is expected to grow to about 130 by 2015, including Defense officers, staff
from the federal police, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Attorney-General's Department.

"Cyberspace is a 24-hour-a-day world, one in which old assumptions about geographic boundaries and time zones are
obsolete," Faulkner said. "This is one of the great benefits of modern technology - cyberspace is always open for business. But
this also brings great challenges to those who guard our electronic borders."
The government bureaucrat tasked with ensuring the security of Australia's critical infrastructure, Mike Rothery, alluded in a
recent speech to the massive scale of the threat. While the government would render what assistance it could, he made it clear it
should not be seen as an aegis to shelter industry from the online environment.

"To be honest, we struggle to defend our own systems from the current threats - the idea that we can extend the envelope to
protect the mining industry's [operating system] or the banking industry just doesn't fly," he said.

When asked about the scale of the threat posed by misuse of the internet, Rothery would not be drawn on exactly how many
illicit attempts to access government networks are made. But he says the number would be "astronomical".

"That number doesn't tell us much about what the risk is, how often systems get penetrated and how often they are degraded or
have information removed. What we do know is that it's an extremely hostile environment on the internet."

Driven by fear and desire, the highest levels of cyber intrusion and warfare are increasingly the almost exclusive terrain of
nation states seeking to find advantages over their adversaries. One nation is doing more than anyone else to push this cyber
arms race onwards - China.

So prevalent is data theft and intrusion in China, the country has become almost a byword for the cyber threat.
An internal FBI report - leaked to a US website earlier this year - estimated that China had secretly developed an army of
180,000 cyber spies, and in 2009 staged 90,000 attacks a year against US Defense Department networks alone.

The Chinese cyber spies pose "the largest single threat to the United States for cyber terrorism and has the potential to destroy
vital infrastructure, interrupt banking and commerce, and compromise sensitive military and defense databases," the document
reportedly stated.

So prolific and expert is the work of China's cyber spies, they managed to access networks related to the Pentagon's $300
billion Joint Strike Fighter project and copy several terabytes of data about its design and electronics systems.

Russia and North Korea have also been accused of being at the forefront of cyber espionage and warfare.
But increasingly, it seems everyone is doing it. In his Foreign Affairs article, Lynn says there are more than 100 foreign
intelligence agencies trying to break into US networks.

While the Australian government will not publicly comment on the number of spy agencies targeting classified networks here,
there is little doubt it is a common occurrence.

What most countries have found is that the anonymity of the internet makes it incredibly difficult to establish the origins of
specific attacks, which are often routed through several countries and launched from multiple "slave" computers.

Even though Stuxnet has been floating around the internet for several months and has infected at least 100,000 computers in
eight countries (including 2500 devices in Australia), no hard evidence of its origin has been found.

One solution proposed to counter that anonymity was proposed by a former head of the
National Security Agency earlier this year. He argued that countries should
forget about trying to establish if an attack is state-sponsored, and instead
simply hold nations responsible for malicious activity that comes from
their cyberspace.

There is also an international move towards creating a set of international


laws guiding how nation states should behave on the web - a sort of cyber-
Geneva Convention.

But Professor Dupont believes nations will slowly come to grips with the
technology, and as they develop ways of being able to attribute attacks, an
old strategic device will return to prominence - deterrence.

Simply, as states learn how to more accurately establish where intrusions


come from, the repercussions of an attack will become more pronounced.
Like two Cold War nations squaring off with nuclear warheads, eventually
the fear of detection and reprisal will deter nations from launching cyber
attacks.

"There's a window of opportunity now for the attackers, and it is a serious and growing threat, but there will eventually be a
serious and effective response," Dupont says. "And we're starting to see that now with the Americans setting up their Cyber
Command, and the Cyber Security Operations Centre in Australia."
Change-Makers

Running a single waste procurement process can be a daunting challenge for any Waste Disposal Authority. Running two
simultaneous procurements for separate Waste Services and Fuel Use Contracts is another thing altogether.

Here the North London Waste Authority‘s Fuel Use Procurement Manager, Euston Ling reveals more about the NLWA‘s
procurement and scope of the Fuel Use Contract.....

Would you like to give a response to it, or perhaps also write a column for the NET? Don‘t hesitate, it is
free and very easy. You can contact me at info@meconsult.co.uk.

North London Waste Authority


14/10/2010
(NLWA)

The North London Waste Authority (NLWA) is the UK’s second largest Waste Disposal Authority (WDA).
Handling around 3% of national municipal waste, on behalf of seven constituent boroughs: Barnet, Camden,
Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington and Waltham Forest, the Authority is responsible for the treatment and
disposal of almost one million tonnes of waste each year.

For the past 15 years the NLWA has managed its waste predominately through a waste treatment and
disposal contract with London Waste Limited (LWL), a company now wholly owned by the Authority.

The existing contract is due to expire in December 2014 and because of this the NLWA is seeking to procure
services which will deliver:

- A recycling-led solution with the aim of almost doubling recycling and composting rates to 50%
by 2020; and
- A reduction in biodegradable material going to landfill, from 36% to 15%.

In March 2010 the NLWA was awarded £258.4m worth of credits under the Government’s Private Finance
Initiative (PFI) to improve waste management and recycling in North London.

In July 2010 the Authority announced its long list of bidders that had been invited to submit outline solutions
for both its Waste Services and Fuel Use Contracts. Seven bidders were long-listed for each contract, 14 in
total.

The NLWA was delighted to announce such a strong line-up. Aside from increasing recycling and composting
rates, the Authority is looking to recover as much value as possible from waste which cannot be recycled.
Under the Waste Services contract, waste will be treated to create Solid Recovered Fuel (SRF) and it is how
best to make use of that SRF which is at the heart of the Fuel Use procurement.

SRF (Solid Recovered Fuel) converts solid waste into clean, efficient, renewable synthesis gas.

The Fuel Use Contract

The Authority considered three procurement approaches to securing strong end market solution(s) for its
SRF, capable of delivering the most advantageous environmental, financial and commercial results. These
were:

1. Securing an integrated solution whereby the waste services provider is responsible for finding a market
for the fuel, with the contractor bearing the risk of not doing so;
2. Securing a solution including fuel production, with the Authority achieving a market solution at some
future date and land filling the resultant fuel in the meantime; or
3. Parallel ‘twin track’ approach by the Authority to secure fuel production and fuel use, potentially with two
or more different parties.

The first two options have been adopted in other areas including East London Waste Authority and
Southwark (approach one) and Essex and Cambridge (approach two). Both of the first two options offered
advantages and disadvantages but the Authority concluded that for its specific requirements, these
approaches would not provide the best solution.

There were a number of reasons for this including the risks associated with each approach, overall costs,
deliverability and the ultimate quality of solution which would be provided. The NLWA needs a solution
which will help deliver its core strategy; to improve recycling and composting rates and reduce landfill.

It was agreed that the best way to achieve this would be through the third approach; i.e. a twin track
approach separating the procurement processes for Waste Services and Fuel Use. While being more complex
and therefore costly, in terms of time and money, the Authority believes that ultimately it will deliver better
value for money. Early market soundings with potential bidders prior to the start of the procurement
process endorsed our approach.

During the development phase the Authority also held many useful discussions with key stakeholders and
partners including the Greater London Authority (GLA), its constituent Boroughs, London Thames Gateway
Development Corporation and DEFRA.

As such, the Authority has put considerable effort into ensuring that its Fuel Use contract is sufficiently
attractive to stimulate wide market interest, including industrial energy users along with traditional waste
management companies. In addition, this procurement is expected deliver an annual greenhouse saving of
approximately 176,000 tonne CO2 equivalent compared to landfill. This will mean a significant
environmental benefit for the North London region and the UK as a whole.

Next steps

At the end of September the Authority received bidders’ outline solutions and is currently engaged in the
evaluation process.

The outline solution stage (ISOS) is the first stage of the competitive dialogue process. It is high level and
designed to elicit information on how the bidders intend to meet the Authority’s service and performance
requirements, and how these will be achieved through the proposed service configuration.

The evaluation of ISOS submissions will provide the Authority with information regarding the Bidder’s
proposed solutions for delivering the Waste Services and Fuel Use Contracts and to provide a basis for short
listing bidders who will be invited to Submit Detailed Solutions (ISDS). ISDS is the following stage designed to
expand on the ISOS submissions, largely based on the development of detailed method statements.

In terms of the project timeline, the NLWA is in a strong position and remains on track to commence fuel
production and off-take by April 2016. Towards the end of the year, the Authority expects to announce its
short list of bidders who will be carried forward to the next stage, ISDS.

The selected bidder is anticipated to be announced in April 2012, with financial close for both contracts
occurring in October 2012.

For further information visit www.nlwa.gov.uk

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