Coal Offloaded from Stricken Ship

Shen Neng 1 To Be Towed Back To China

Salvage crews have begun to offload coal from the Chinese-registered ship that ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia last month.

A smaller bulk carrier has docked beside the Shen Neng 1 and work has begun to offload a third of its coal. A second coal lighter will take over offloading duties when the first is full, probably this weekend. Around 19,000 tonnes will be removed from the over the next three weeks and the ship will then be towed back to China.

The Shen Neng 1 ran aground on 3 April causing extensive damage to the reef. It was refloated on 12 April 12 and towed to calmer waters off Hervey Bay on Tuesday for the salvage operation.

MSQ general manager Patrick Quirk said extensive environmental protection measures were in place.

"Water sprays are being used to suppress any coal dust which may be stirred up by the lighter's grab buckets, which are also specially designed to reduce spillage," Mr Quirk said.

"We will also have skilled observers watching the transfer process for any sign of spillage and they can call an immediate halt to the operation if they have any concerns."

Environmentalists have called for the Queensland government to guarantee that the state’s marine parks won’t be used as a refuge for ships that have run aground. A Greenpeace spokeswoman pointed out that the ship had been anchored in the Hervey Bay marine park that was home to dolphins and whales and she urged the state not to allow the Shen Neng 1 to set a precedent.

Greenpeace Criticises Coal-Fired Data Centres

Environmentalists Slam Internet Cloud Pollution

Envrionmental activist group, Greenpeace, has criticised internet-based companies such as Facebook, Apple and Google for building data centres powered by coal.

Greenpeace released a report on Tuesday criticising the idea of an internet ‘cloud’ of pollution caused by these data centres.

Last month we reported that a data centre to be built by Facebook in the US state of Oregon will run on fuel created by a coal-fired power station. Apple is building a data centre in North Carolina that relies on coal power.

"The last thing we need is for more cloud infrastructure to be built in places where it increases demand for dirty coal-fired power," said Greenpeace in the new report.

The report highlights the fact that coal is still the number one fuel for power plants in the US and that Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google all have at data centres that still rely heavily on coal power.

Environmentalists Slam Cloud Of Internet Pollution

Data centre energy use is already huge and is growing rapidly, Greenpeace says, predicting that the cloud is set to be the fastest-growing facet of tech infrastructure over the next ten years.

The report also suggests that if global telecommunications and data centres were considered as a country it would have ranked fifth in the world for energy use in 2007, behind the US, China, Russia and Japan.

However, the Greenpeace report pointed to Yahoo as a company that it says is a model for data centre construction. The company is building a centre near Buffalo in New York state, that will get its energy from hydroelectric facilities. Yahoo said energy-efficiency was the top goal, with a building design that promotes air circulation.