Preparing for the Future

When we discuss the impacts of climate change, most people have visions of melting glaciers, polar bears, and shifting dunes. These are serious problems, to be sure, but they seem for the most part to be something that will happen to someone else, far away.

Few people consider effects that will hit much closer to home. Take weeds, for example.

Lewis Ziska, an ecologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, wanted to understand how weeds are affected by a warmer world. Short on funds to expand his research lab, he hit on an ingenious solution:

"Then it occurred to Ziska that the complaints made by residents of nearby Baltimore about summer in their city — the exhaust-laden air and the way in which buildings and pavement soak up solar energy to create an abnormally warm “heat island” — could be put to good use. When he checked, he found that in fact the temperatures in Baltimore run 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer on average than those of the surrounding countryside, and the concentration of CO2 in the local atmosphere (440 to 450 p.p.m., or parts per million by volume) is well above the current global average. This, coincidentally, matched almost exactly what the panel on climate change predicted for the planet as a whole 30 to 50 years in the future in its “B2 scenario,” a middle-of-the-road projection that envisions continuing greenhouse gas increases but also some success in abatement programs."

Ziska collected soil with weed seeds from an organic farm and created identical growing beds on the farm, in a nearby suburb with moderately higher temperatures and CO2 levels, and in the high-temperature, high-CO2 heat island. Then he let the weeds grow. The results over the next five growing seasons were breathtaking.

In nearly every case, Ziska found that weeds benefit much more from increased CO2 concentrations than do agricultural crops and domesticated plants. In the high-CO2 plot, the weeds grew much faster and up to twice as large as the weeds on the farm. Many were more resistant to common herbicides. And when trees eventually began growing on the untended plots, the high-CO2 plot was dominated not by oak and maple, but by stubborn invasive species like ailanthus and mulberry.

What's more, the weeds produced more pollen in a high-CO2 environment. When Ziska grew ragweed at the CO2 concentrations predicted for the end of the century, they produced twice as much pollen as they do today, and of a form more likely to cause allergic reactions. Poison ivy grew faster and produced a more intense form of rash-inducing oil. This means that climate change is bad news if you're an allergy sufferer, if you're a farmer, or if you simply enjoy having a weed-free lawn or vegetable plot. The future may look a bit brighter if you manufacture herbicides or produce anti-allergy medications, but it looks there will be more losers than winners. There are, of course, many other implications to the rise of the weeds, which I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.

The growth of weeds in a warmer world is rarely discussed, and yet the potential impacts on people, farmers, corporations, and local ecosystems is huge. And this is only one of many interlocking impacts.

My team at Carbon Clear spends a lot of time helping companies understand how climate change can affect their business over the coming years and decades. We do this in part to help our clients prepare for the future. But we also look at these impacts to help people understand that greenhouse gas emissions can impose a high price - both at home and abroad. Faced with massive global change, early action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is often the most sensible investment we can make.

The Power of Feedback

About twenty years ago I came across an electrical engineering textbook entitled Feedback Control Systems. It was a highly technical piece about how to design thermostats, automatic doors, alarms and the like. The key to such devices, of course, is that they monitor local conditions and adjust their operation when those conditions change. These feedback systems can be surprisingly simple, but imagine our lives if they didn't work properly. Imagine the waste and frustration if the automatic door at the supermarket had to guess when a trolley was approaching, or if the heating unit in your home couldn't detect the temperature.

One of the things I like about my five year-old hybrid car is that it includes the driver in an energy efficiency feedback system. In everyday terms, there's a simple but informative fuel economy display mounted in the dashboard. This system doesn't take control - the petrol and electric motors will work together and provide a boost if I need to out-accelerate the huge truck bearing down on me. But the feedback is always there, and I can use it to change my behaviour. If I get caught up in the rush-hour road rage, the display shows my fuel economy dropping - 48 mpg, 45 mpg, 43 mpg... And that's my cue to take action. By maintaining a steady speed, coasting on the downhills or slowing down gradually at traffic lights, I can see the numbers go up - 50 mpg, 60 mpg or more. Since my last tank of fuel, I've been averaging 57.2 mpg. Getting regular, visible feedback on my performance gives me a strong incentive to change behaviour and reduce waste.

When Carbon Clear measures your company's carbon footprint, we are helping you design a powerful feedback tool for tracking environmental and financial performance. Our standards-compliant analysis identifies those activities - flights, vehicle fleet, outsourced manufacturing, etc. - that make up the lion's share of your carbon footprint - and are probably costing you money. Of course, knowledge alone is not enough. We help companies take action, developing plans to tackle those emissions sources that will give the fastest or most cost-effective reductions. And we'll help measure progress over time.

Every company has the potential to achieve significant, absolute reductions in their carbon footprint. At Carbon Clear we'll help you get there. Measuring your carbon footprint is the first step.

Will High Oil Prices Save the Planet?

The scientific academies of thirteen countries yesterday issued an unprecedented joint statement urging faster, more decisive action to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The carbon reduction specialists at Carbon Clear applaud that sentiment, and are committed to helping businesses and individuals, measure, reduce, and offset their carbon emissions. And yet more remains to be done.

Many pundits are hoping that help will come from the rising cost of fuel. With oil prices skyrocketing, firms around the world have a strong incentive to reduce consumption. Emissions reductions are sure to follow - won't they?

At first glance, the signs are encouraging. Fuel purchases in the U.S. are down 7% from a year ago, and consumers can't seem to ditch gas guzzling cars and trucks fast enough. Last week, auto giant General Motors announced that it was closing four truck and SUV production lines and was considering abandoning its signature Hummer SUV brand. Meanwhile, the company has announced the launch of two new small cars, and a new electric-hybrid vehicle called the Volt.

The airlines are economising, too. Northwest Airlines is parking its workhorse DC-10 airplanes, in favour of newer A330 models that are 38% more efficient. Southwest Airlines claims to have saved millions in fuel costs simply by cleaning its engines more frequently, and Delta is flying its planes 20 mph slower to save fuel.

To be sure, high oil prices strengthen the economic case for demand reduction in the form of increased fuel efficiency or fewer journeys. But they also strengthen the economic case for increasing supply - in the form of oil substitutes. While some substitutes, like biofuels, show promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when used correctly, others are the stuff of environmental nightmares.

In the remote regions of Canada's Alberta province lie vast deposits of thick, tarry sand and soil. These tar sands hold the equivalent of 175 billion barrels of oil - nearly as much as Saudi Arabia. The challenge has been getting to it. In order to convert the oil in the tar sands to usable form, the solid granules must be mined, crushed, diluted and cleaned - and then manufactured into synthetic oil in an energy-intensive refining process. According to an estimate reported by the Financial Times, this process means that oil from the tar sands has five times the carbon intensity of conventional fossil fuels. On an individual level, while a round-trip flight from London to New York might normally result in 1.3 tonnes of CO2, a flight fuelled by tar sands-derived kerosene would result in a whopping 6.5 tonnes of CO2. Driving 10,000 miles in a car would result in a 15-tonne carbon footprint. And this says nothing of the vast tracts of forest wilderness that must be cut up to reach these fuel resources.

But the global implications are even more serious. Alberta's 175 billion barrels of oil equivalent, if it were all consumed, would result in the release of about 35 billion tonnes of CO2.

That's 30% more than all the CO2 released from fossil fuels worldwide last year.

Extracting oil from the tar sands is dangerous and expensive work. So long as oil was relatively cheap, the tar sands were safe. But at $120 a barrel, $200 a barrel, or even more, the tar sands begin to look like a viable option. Six million hectares of oil sands - 43% of the total - have already been leased to oil companies for exploration and development. The oil majors are lobbying regulators to include these resources on their balance sheets, signaling their intent to exploit them.

With high oil prices likely here to stay, more energy efficiency measures will be pursued, but the tar sands are more likely to be tapped as well.

And that's bad news for the environment.

A high oil price can be a mixed blessing. We need to bring other tools to bear in the fight against climate change. We'll present some more ideas in subsequent posts.

(Carbon Clear website)

Carbon Management Providers Unite to Promote Rigorous Standards

Carbon Clear and seven other leading carbon reduction and offset providers yesterday announced the formation of the International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance (ICROA). The organisation has been created to build support for the carefully crafted standards that now exist for the voluntary offset market. In addition, the group will provide a unified voice in promoting credible carbon management strategies, which use a ‘reduce-and-offset’ approach. ICROA intends to be active in policy discussions, push for high standards and advocate greater transparency in the carbon reduction industry.

Jamal Gore, Managing Director, Carbon Clear said: "Carbon Clear is delighted to be a founding member of ICROA. As a company that leads by example, it was important that we lend our expertise to the development of a rigorous Code of Practice that will raise the bar for the entire carbon management industry. We look forward to continuing to help environmentally responsible companies develop a sound carbon management strategy and achieve significant greenhouse gas emission reductions."

Climate change and the greenhouse gases driving it are an international concern so of ICROA’s eight founding members, five have headquarters in the United Kingdom, two in the United States, and one in Australia.

ICROA founding members currently serve thousands of businesses and hundreds of thousands of individuals and are:

• Carbon Clear, London, UK
• The CarbonNeutral Company, London, UK
• ClimateCare, Oxford, UK
• Climate Friendly, Sydney, Australia
• co2balance, Somerset, UK
• Native Energy, Charlotte, VT, USA
• targetneutral, London, UK
• TerraPass, San Francisco, CA, USA

The key elements of the ICROA Code of Best Practice include:

• Measure carbon footprints according to accepted international standards
• Set emissions reduction targets based on scientific assessments
• Assess and implement both internal and external emissions reduction opportunities, the ‘reduce and offset’ approach
• Use credible offset projects, where offsetting is appropriate to meet emissions reduction targets
• Be transparent in communicating emissions reductions strategies and practices
• Use offsets that meet the following principles: real, measurable, permanent, additional, independently verified, and unique
• Submit annual report demonstrating compliance with the Code

Carbon offsets are designed to complement the measures that individuals and corporations undertake to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and GHG that result from their daily activities and operations. Carbon offsets result from projects that reduce, avoid, or capture the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other GHG. Offsets are measured in metric tons of CO2.

Initially the ICROA Code of Best Practice recognizes three standards for offsets as being of sufficient quality: Voluntary Carbon Standard, Gold Standard, and Clean Development Mechanism/ Joint Implementation. The Climate Group, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing business and government leadership on climate change, is currently responsible for the day-to-day operations of ICROA, under the direction of the organization’s Executive Committee.

We Can Do More

Tackling climate change requires large reductions in worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. The popular idea is that reducing emissions to the extent required - sixty percent or more - will be so painful and difficult that we need to phase the changes in gradually over the next four or five decades.

But is this true? Do we really have to wait until 2050 to get to a low-carbon economy?

In my last blog post we discussed the idea of "climate wedges" - a range of modest measures that rely on existing technology. Taken together these small "wedges" can cut society's carbon footprint by a massive amount.

It doesn't have to take long. When an avalanche near Juneau, Alaska in April destroyed the city's main electricity transmission lines, the utility switched to expensive backup generators. Residents' utility bills soared 400% and the switch began immediately.

The local library realised there was no need to keep to elevators (lifts) running, and took one out of service. The local hardware store quickly ran out of clothes pins as people abandoned their clothes dryers in favour of line-drying their laundry - even though it rains over 200 days per year. Households replaced every incandescent bulb they could with low-energy compact fluorescents. For show-and-tell, schoolchildren give presentations about how much energy they are saving at home.

The city of Juneau, Alaska cut its electricity consumption by more tha 30% in just a few weeks.

Weeks, not years. With existing technology and no earth-shattering lifestyle changes.

The residents of Juneau are no different from anyone else. If they - and we - can achieve this type of carbon reduction in less than a month, imagine what we can do in forty years.

U.S. Declares Polar Bears an Endangered Species

It's official.

After years of wrangling, the U.S. Department of the Interior has declared polar bears an endangered species. As climate change causes the polar ice to dwindle, the bears' natural habitat has come under increasing pressure and it becomes more difficult for them to hunt for food.

This ruling was not a knee-jerk response to public affection for large, furry mammals. The current Interior Department leadership has not been keen to extend the Endangered Species Act to new contexts, nor to acknowledge the need for immediate action on climate change. As Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne remarked days earlier,
“When the Endangered Species Act was adopted in 1973, I don’t think terms like 'climate change' were part of our vernacular.”

However, when forced by a judge to make an objective assessment of the polar bears' predicament, the choice was clear. Again quoting Kempthorne:

“This has been a difficult decision...But in light of the scientific record and the restraints of the inflexible law that guides me, [it was] the only decision I could make...”

The new ruling by itself won't lead to faster action on greenhouse gas reductions. The Endangered Species Act requires immediate remedial action if, for example, a construction site threatens the habitat of a rare plant or animal. But the link between greenhouse gas emissions and habitat loss are more indirect, and longer term. It is difficult to point to a smokestack or tailpipe and prove that cutting those specific emissions will protect the polar bears' habitat.

Nevertheless, this ruling is important. It is a formal acknowledgement from a particularly sceptical source that climate change is having a real and measurable impact on the world around us.

The debate is over. Now it's time to achieve significant carbon reductions. The Carbon Clear team will help you get started.

The Myth of the 'False Solution'

In the old black and white horror movies, a werewolf would terrorise hapless villagers. Impervious to normal weapons, the werewolf would shrug off their attacks until the hero arrived and slew the beast with the only thing that could kill it - a silver bullet.

The old werewolf movies were just harmless entertainment, but real threats stalk the global village - and climate change is right near the top.

Unfortunately, many people are still looking for a silver bullet to make the threat go away, and rejecting any measure that doesn't promise an instant fix:

• Biofuel a 'false solution'

• Green taxes are not the solution to a better world

• PR smokescreen lifts on coal industry's false solution

• Nuclear is not the solution to climate change

• Why planting trees is not the solution to global warming

The critics are right, of course. No single solution available today will solve the problem.

However, it is a mistake to argue that partial solutions are useless. In fact, they're all that we have. A 2004 paper published by Princeton University researchers S. Pacala and R. Socolow introduced the concept of "climate stabilisation wedges". In short, the researchers estimated the worldwide greenhouse gas reduction potential of energy efficiency, carbon capture and storage, tree planting, renewables, and other measures. They found that each of these measures could save about a billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2050. Here's one illustration of how these figures could stack up:





Taken together, these "climate wedges" could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 200 billion tonnes - enough to stave off the worst climate change impacts.

That's it, problem solved. No technological breakthroughs. No silver bullets. Just lots of partial measures, enacted at the same time. This means support for renewables AND energy efficiency AND tree planting AND carbon capture AND etc., etc.

Climate change isn't a horror movie from the golden age of cinema. Just because a measure isn't "the solution" does not mean we should reject it outright. There is no silver bullet that can solve the problem of climate change. A number of short-sighted actions have combined to cause this problem - deforestation, coal-fired power stations, trains, planes and automobiles. We'll solve it the same way, by working together, on a hundred small solutions.

(Carbon Clear homepage)

Carbon Clear in Top 30 Global offset providers according to ENDS Report

Carbon Clear has been formally recognised as a global leader in the carbon offset market for the high quality of its offsets and carbon management consultancy. Out of all the organisations ENDS investigated world-wide, only 30 were recognised in its list of Quality Offset Providers, with 140 failing to make the grade.

The top 30 quality providers came from a range of organisation types across the globe but were united in their ability to meet the following criteria:

• The quality of the offset: all investments should be traceable to specifically named offset projects.
• Timing of delivery: carbon credits should have already been generated or be guaranteed to be delivered in the short-term.
• Emissions calculation: emissions savings are calculated and verified by official standards, for example ISO 14064 or from official DEFRA figures.
• Transparency: quality providers were judged to be transparent with regards to the credit source, quality of the offset, the timeline of its projects and pricing.
• Engagement and advice: the ENDS Guide also recognised the importance of broader climate change strategies and praised those carbon offset providers that also offer advice and management processes to reduce clients’.
• Other considerations included the breadth of projects in the organisation’s portfolio, levels of engagement with the projects and overall experience.

The respected environmental publisher created its guide to carbon offsets to provide readers an understanding of the offsetting process and how to identify providers that are committed to offering a quality service and operating responsibly.

Commenting on Carbon Clear’s inclusion, Mark Chadwick, CEO of Carbon Clear said: “I'm delighted that the ENDS Report has recognised Carbon Clear's commitment to high quality projects and advisory services. From the outset we have focused on delivering the highest standards and we're immensely gratified to see this hard work has been acknowledged by an industry leader such as the ENDS Report.”

Even MORE "Buy One Grow One Tree" Goodness from Innocent and Carbon Clear

Following the success of last year’s "Buy One Get One Tree" campaign, innocent is teaming up with Carbon Clear again for its bigger and better Buy One Grow One Tree scheme. Throughout May, for each carton of smoothie sold and registered, innocent will grow a tree in one of Carbon Clear’s projects in India. Each carton has a unique code which when registered on the dedicated website will see a tree planted.

The innocent smoothie drinkers across the UK who participated in the last BoGoT project are responsible for a whopping 164,020 trees now growing in rural India, absorbing carbon dioxide and supporting local communities. The trees planted provide food and medicine, shelter for secondary crops and reduce soil erosion. If that’s not enough of an incentive there’s also a little something extra for those who register lots of trees, like a ‘grow your own’ herb box, an extra night in an organic B & B in the countryside or the chance to win a year’s supply of smoothies thanks to the lovely people at innocent.

This year innocent is also supporting The Tree Council’s Walk in the Woods Month to encourage everyone to visit their local forest or parkland during May. At events across the country kids are being encouraged to complete the innocent tree trail and enjoy the UK’s trees and woodlands. For more information visit: www.innocentkids.co.uk/trees.

Carbon Clear joins the UN’s Climate Neutral Network

At yesterday's Global Business for the Environment (B4E) Summit in Singapore, representatives from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) welcomed Carbon Clear as the first carbon management company to join its Climate Neutral Network (CN Net). Established in February of this year, CN Net’s aim is to inspire leaders in business and government by sharing success stories and best practice in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate change is now a major global issue and a rapidly growing number of individuals, companies, cities and even countries are pledging to become climate neutral as part of CN Net.

As one of the largest independent carbon management companies, Carbon Clear is fully committed to achieving carbon neutrality and supporting the shift to a low-carbon economy. The company applies the same “measure, reduce, and offset” approach to controlling its own greenhouse gas emissions as it uses when helping clients reduce their carbon footprint. In 2007 Carbon Clear worked with over 70 businesses worldwide to help them plan and implement carbon reduction strategies. Clients who work with Carbon Clear to demonstrate their commitment to environmental responsibility include Eurostar, Innocent Drinks, 3M, Multimap and Computer Cabs.

Mark Chadwick, CEO, Carbon Clear, said: “At Carbon Clear we believe that achieving climate neutrality can be an immensely positive experience. We are passionate about helping others to see sustainable business as both necessary and desirable. It is important that we share best practice and success stories in order to inspire others; through the Climate Neutral Network we can create a community that illustrates how good a sustainable future can be.”

In a statement welcoming Carbon Clear as a new CN Net participant, UNEP said: “We believe that the expertise of pioneering carbon management companies like Carbon Clear will benefit not only CN Net participants but also the broader private sector community, by helping businesses ‘kick their carbon habit’.”

In Memoriam: Energy Expert Alex Farrell

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 17 April 2008

BERKELEY – Alexander E. Farrell, an associate professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked closely with state government over the past year to chart a course to reduce California's carbon emissions, died earlier this week at his home in San Francisco. He was 46.

Farrell, who joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 2003 and became director of the campus's Transportation Sustainability Research Center in 2006, was recognized internationally as a leading expert on transportation fuels and the role of transportation in climate change. His research interests included biofuels, hybrid electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles, the low-carbon fuel standard and transportation sustainability.

"He was one of the leading lights in the area of low-carbon fuels and energy systems, and his career was on a dramatic rise," said colleague Dan Kammen, a professor in the Energy and Resources Group and of public policy who helped recruit Farrell to UC Berkeley and co-authored many papers with him, including a just-released report on plug-in hybrid vehicles. "The trajectory of his career and his contributions were both impressive. Alex was a great mentor to the graduate students in the group as well as to students from across campus working on energy and sustainability."

...

"Alex was brilliant, energetic, supportive, insightful and caring, and he had a way of challenging his colleagues and students to think more critically even when they thought they already were," said Tim Lipman, a UC Berkeley colleague and the founding research director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center. "His career had reached a point where his loss is an enormous one, not just for the Energy and Resources Group and the transportation center, but also for the global transportation and energy community."

UK Government Considers Mandatory Carbon Footprints for Business

I attended a carbon footprinting discussion at the UK Houses of Parliament last year on behalf of Carbon Clear. At that session, Christian Aid and other organisations were calling for standardised corporate carbon footprinting and a Defra representative mentioned that they were setting aside funding to research the issue.

It was therefore no surprise to read in yesterday's Independent on Sunday newspaper that the UK Government has moved closer to requiring publicly listed companies to disclose their corporate carbon footprints along with the other data included in their annual reports.

There are many reasons why diferent actors would want companies to report this information. First, it makes it easier to benchmark the performance of individual firms. This enables government, shareholders and activists to identify and praise the environmental leaders and criticise the laggards. Such pressure, it is hoped, will pressure companies faster voluntary action to reduce emissions.

The second, and to my mind more important rationale, is that mandatory carbon footprints provides greater access to a very powerful management tool for large and small companies alike. Carbon footprinting provides an opportunity for managers to look at their company from a new perspective. In addition to helping benchmarking against the competition, understanding and tackling your corporate carbon footprint provides five key benefits:

1. Reducing costs: As a company, your biggest sources of carbon emissions are often items that cost you money: fuel, electricity, raw materials, and waste disposal. Using these resources more efficiently can trim your carbon footprint while helping your bottom line.
2. Developing new business opportunities: The "green and ethical" consumer market was worth £30 billion in 2006 and continues to grow rapidly. Companies that can respond to this opportunity new lower-carbon products and services stand to gain competitive advantage.
3. Engaging staff and customers: As I pointed out in an earlier post, employees expect their companies to be good environmental citizens. Developing a carbon footprint reduction strategy is a way to involve a cross section of staff in an exciting new initiative, secure a visible commitment from senior management, and strengthen morale.
4. Strengthening the brand: A report by the Carbon Trust indicates that climate change has put over £20 billion pounds of brand equity at risk. Communicating your low-carbon credentials in an effective manner can help companies protect and strengthen their brand in a low-carbon economy. For example, Walkers gained a tremendous amount of free publicity when it put carbon footprint labels on its potato chips. More and more companies are joining in.
5. Increasing peace of mind: Climate change creates winners and losers. Government policies, customer buying behaviour, investment criteria and business costs all change when we shift to a low-carbon economy. Measuring and analysing the corporate carbon footprint is the first step in understanding how climate change affects the company. That knowledge helps managers increase the likelihood that their company is a winner.

It's a shame that the Independent article doesn't mention any of these benefits. The main response they highlight from a business spokesperson is a negative one:

"The CBI said on Friday in response to the news that although it endorsed mandatory reporting and would like to see it implemented by 2013, the definition of carbon emissions was not sufficiently developed for the move to be introduced this year."

In fact, Carbon Clear and major corporations around the world have been using an international standard, ISO 14064-1, to measure carbon footprints for years. That standard was released two years ago and has been used by hundreds of governments, small businesses and multinational corporations. Other listed companies around the world are already reporting their emissions under a variant of this standard for the Carbon Disclosure Project. So the main objection to mandatory reporting - that there's no standard definition - goes away.

We'll keep watching as government policy evolves. After all, at Carbon Clear, we help companies and individuals take action to tackle climate change and gain as much benefit as possible from the shift to a low-carbon economy. The more tools we can give our partners, the better.

(Back to the Carbon Clear website)

Climate Change: Mitigate, Adapt or Suffer

My former grad school professor, John Holdren, is working with the United Nations Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development. His task is to harness the best scientific minds to recommend options for addressing the threat of climate change.

Late last year, John gave a speech where he summarised the main choices available to us:

• Mitigation - taking steps to cut our carbon emissions and reverse deforestation;
• Adaptation - investing in flood protection, shifting agriculture and other measures to adjust to a changing environment; and
• Suffering the consequence that we cannot otherwise avoid.

As Holdren points out, "We're already doing some mitigation, some adaptation, and some suffering...the question is what the future mix will be." You can see his entire presentation here.

Nicholas Stern has pointed out that mitigation provides the biggest bang for the buck - transitioning to a low-carbon economy would only cost 1-2% of global GDP. The advantage of mitigation is that it can keep us below a climate "tipping point", where we enter a runaway cycle of rising temperatures and emissions. So we can't just adapt our way out of the problem.

However, some adaptation will be inevitable as well - even if we could magically stop all our greenhouse gas emissions today, the temperature would still increase another 0.6 degrees C, thanks to all the extra heat stored in the oceans over the past century.

As a society, we have a choice of how much mitigation, adaption and suffering we will accept. Our job at Carbon Clear is to help companies and individuals make the right choice and take action.

UK CO2 Emissions Down in 2006

The UK Government yesterday released the results from its 2006 national greenhouse gas emissions inventory. The emissions inventory measures both greenhouse gas emissions from energy use, transport, agriculture and other activities, and absorption of CO2 by trees in the forestry sector. At 652 million tonnes CO2 equivalent, the total represents a 0.5% decrease from the 655 million tonnes recorded 2005.

0.5% is quite a bit below the 2-3% target that many experts want included in the national Climate Change Bill. Some sectors of the economy made significant reductions, while others actually saw their emissions increase. Energy emissions have increased 1.5% as rising gas prices stimulated a shift to coal-fired power generation. Other residential emissions have fallen 4%. On the aviation front, emissions from domestic flights have fallen 2.8%, while international aviation emissions rose 1.5%.

Interestingly, the Government also tracked the effect of carbon credits traded on the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS). The UK was a net buyer of these credits, purchasing 34 million tonnes of carbon offsets, 4% of total emissions.

A good start, but much more is needed.

What Success Means

Late last night I listened to the news reports from the Iowa Caucuses. Senator John Edwards, a democratic candidate, was making a commitment to the American people to focus on making them successful. Of course, this is par for the course for any candidate for office.

Something he said made me sit up and listen. He defined the promised success in an interesting way. He talked about the many generations of Americans who had improved their country for their children. Implicit in this was the idea of leaving our children better off than us. From my perspective, this is an excellent definition of success.

Unfortunately, to many of us today our definition of success is short-term. Success means a job with higher pay and more status. Success means several expensive holidays to far flung locations. Success means the large and luxurious car. In short, we define our success by the accumulation of consumer goods and by our ability to purchase yet more of them.

In a world that is resource constrained and that is suffering significant environmental damage due to our consumption, there may be a case for a new definition.

Perhaps John Edwards hit the nail on the head. Perhaps we should start to consider the future prosperity of our children when we think about success. For sure, we need to do all we can to maintain a stable environment and ample resources to allow our children and children's children to enjoy a peaceful and long life. Success for them will be impossible without this.

Following on from Jamal's challenge to reduce our carbon footprint, I'd like to issue this challenge; use the beginning of 2008 to re-evaluate your personal definition of success. Look at your decisions with a longer time frame in mind and make choices based on a balance of success now, and success in the future. Many businesses and individuals have already taken this challenge and are finding that change isn't painful, and very often brings huge benefits.

Time to take the challenge?

Carbon Clear Resolutions

The UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) reports that only 15% of Britons resolved to reduce their carbon footprint in 2008. That number seems surprisingly low; perhaps many people simply felt this resolution - like most - would be difficult to keep.

One reason that New Year's resolutions are hard to keep is that they are often phrased as overall goals instead of specific, easy to accomplish tasks. I recommend taking a relatively vague resolution like "reduce my carbon footprint", and breaking it up into easy-to-accomplish physical actions.

Defra provides a laundry list of typical lower-carbon measures that can reduce your carbon impact. These include riding your bike to work instead of driving, installing low-energy lightbulbs, and turning the thermostat down by one degree. This list is a good start, but may not be enough to help everyone keep those resolutions.

The problem is that we often face a series of barriers that must be overcome before we can do the thing we want. In other words, that action (ride bike to work), is actually an entire project. In order to ride my bike to work, I may need to:

1. Take the bike to the local shop for a tune-up;
2. Buy a rain jacket, waterproof gloves, and a bike light;
3. Identify a safe cycling route between home and work; and
   
4. Find a secure place to lock the bike during the day.

And "ride my bike to work" was not even the main New Year's resolution! No wonder these resolutions are so hard to keep.

In order to make progress on the transition to a low-carbon future, we have to set realistic and creative goals, and then lay out the specific steps to achieve that goal.

So here's a challenge: look at Defra's list of suggestions for a low-carbon New Year's Resolution and break it into manageable chunks. Sketch out the specific, tangible steps that you will need to take in order to make each one happen.

Next, take out a calendar and write each of those steps in for a specific date. Before you know it, you'll be ticking off those steps and making real progress towards keeping your New Year's Resolution.

At Carbon Clear, we're dedicated to helping you control your carbon impact, in 2008 and beyond. Visit our website to learn what else you can do at home and at work.

Happy New Year from Carbon Clear

Welcome to 2008.

For a long time, the climate change debate seems to have been about whether or not there is a problem, and whether humanity has caused it. Thankfully, 2007 saw even steadfast global warming skeptics acknowledge that this debate is over.

Now a new debate is underway.

On the one hand is a faction that claims we have already reached a "tipping point", and that it's too late to prevent serious climate change. Some people making this claim argue that we should shift our focus to adaptating to the impacts of living in a warmer world.

On the other hand are people who say that it's not too late, and who applaud the future-oriented targets of the recent Bali climate negotiations, the UK Climate Change Bill and elsewhere - with targets that reach to 2050 and beyond.

Either way, this debate means not enough effort right now to reduce our carbon impact.

Choosing to tackle climate change isn't an "either-or" decision, it's a matter of degree. We have a lot of choices to make:

• We have a choice over how much we want to fight global warming;
• We have a choice over how much energy we use, what type, and at what cost;
• We have a choice about how we want to work, travel, live and play;
  
• We have a choice over what kind of world we want to leave for our children, our friends, and the rest of humanity.

These are not difficult choices. Taking the carbon out of our lives does not have to be painful. On balance, the benefits - of which there are many - far outweigh the costs.

The Carbon Clear team is determined to speed businesses, governments, and individuals on the path to a low-carbon future. Everyone needs to control his or her carbon impact. Carbon Clear is here to help.

(To the Carbon Clear homepage)

US Senate Passes Major Carbon Reduction Bill

The tide is turning.

First Australia signed Kyoto. Now the U.S. Senate has approved a bill to cut greenhouse gas emissions 70 percent by the year 2050. Carbon Clear is committed to bold action to fight climate change, and looks forward to seeing this measure turned into law.

The Senate bill, which calls for emission reductions of 70% below 2005 levels, must also be approved by the House of Representatives before the President signs it into law. It would affect virtually every sector of the U.S. economy, and signal decisive leadership in the effort to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Like the emissions caps under the Kyoto Protocol, the proposed U.S. rules would allow trading and carbon offsetting between polluters, so that emissions take place at the lowest possible economic cost to society.

According to the New York Times, Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer called the measure "the greatest accomplishment of her 30-year career."

A 70% emissiosn cut would be great news. To be sure, it goes farther than the 60% cut originally proposed in the UK's own Climate Change Bill, and is a huge improvement on the original 12% overall cuts in the original Kyoto Protocol. And because the US is one of the world's largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, cuts of this magnituded will make a tangible difference in the fight to tackle climate change.

However, many scientists and activists think we need to reduce emissions by 80%. That's one reason Carbon Clear works with companies to help them achieve the maximum internal reductions possible, and then use carbon offset credits to achieve a 100% reduction.

In the fight against climate change, half measures aren't enough. Everyone needs to take bold action. Carbon Clear is here to help.

(Carbon Clear homepage)

Australia Joins the Fight Against Climate Change

Australia's new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, ratified the Kyoto Protocol today. It was his first official action after taking the oath of office.

According to the New York Times, "This is the first official act of the new Australian government, demonstrating my government's commitment to tackling climate change," Rudd said in a statement.

The previous government refused to back legally binding emisssions targets, arguing that they would harm the economy. The Times reports that this view has now shifted:

But a new report from the environment think tank the Climate Institute, written by government and university scientists, found that Australia's economy could easily cope with strong cuts in greenhouse emissions.

It said growth would fall by only 0.1 percent of gross domestic product annually if Australia set a target of 20 percent cuts in emissions by 2020 and aimed to be carbon neutral by 2050.

"Leading the way on climate is an affordable, prudent and achievable investment," Climate Institute chief executive John Connor said on Monday.

Australia's move means that the U.S. is the only industrialised country yet to endorse the global climate change agreement.

It would be interesting to see how this new commitment affects the existing carbon offsetting scheme set up under the previous government.

(Back to Carbon Clear)

Aligning Incentives for a Carbon Clear World

A new report by McKinsey & Co, a consulting firm, confirms what Carbon Clear has been saying all along: businesses and individuals can significantly lower their carbon footprint and save money at the same time.

The report says that the United States could cut greenhouse gas emissions by 28% at zero or even negative cost using readily available technology. Carbon Clear's own carbon management work with companies often uncovers even more low-cost carbon reduction options, from changing heating, cooling and lighting systems, to improving vehicle fleet efficiency or revisiting logistics plans. And, as one of the report's authors notes, "These changes have been around for 20 years."

Unfortunately, it isn't always so easy to put these low-carbon money-saving measures into practice.

Landlords and property developers often choose appliances, lighting systems and even building designs based on initial cost - regardless of efficiency. The tenant, with little influence over this initial decision, pays for the energy, either as part of their rent or via the utility bill.

In a nutshell, their incentives are not aligned for a low-carbon future. The landlord does not want to pay more for equipment that won't save her money, and the tenant doesn't get a say, even though he stands to benefit.

A thoughtful carbon management strategy can help better align low-carbon incentives. For example, the landlord and tenant could agree to share the monetary savings from carbon saving measures. In this case, the tenant should be willing to offset the cost of making energy efficiency investments, up to the value of the tenant's monthly utility bill savings. The extra money provides an incentive for the landlord to enact measures she would otherwise not consider. Everyone is better off and we've reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon Clear can help design other, more sophisticated approaches but the basic principle is the same. Working together, we can create win-win situations that cut carbon.

This isn't just tinkering at the margins. The Swedish utility Vattenfall estimated that there are seven billion tonnes per year of money-saving CO2 reduction options out there. It's possible for us to align the incentives to make them happen.

And that's good news for the climate.

(Carbon Clear homepage)

Eurostar offsets traveller emissions with Carbon Clear

As part of its new Tread Lightly campaign, Eurostar is now providing high-speed carbon-neutral journeys for all its passengers, at no extra cost to the traveller. In addition to its overall plans to reduce its emissions by 25% per passenger journey by 2012, where it is unable to eliminate emissions from a train journey, Eurostar is now offsetting them at its own expense.

Eurostar is working with leading carbon management company Carbon Clear to provide the carbon credits. Following a very stringent selection process, Eurostar and Carbon Clear have worked together to identify suitable projects and are currently investing in an Indian windfarm in Tamil Nadu and a Chinese small hydropower plant. These projects provide both environmental and social benefits by displacing fossil fuels in two of the developing world’s most polluting nations, while helping provide much-needed electricity and employment in poor communities.

Carbon Clear and Eurostar are jointly developing other sustainable energy projects that provide alternatives to traditionally polluting technologies. These include upgrading engines in Philippine mini-taxis and improving the performance of brick-kilns in Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in Latin America. Without Carbon Clear’s investment these projects would not happen.

Louisa Bell, Head of Environment for Eurostar, said: “We wanted to ensure that we sourced carbon credits from a reputable supplier, and that all our offsetting is done to the highest scientific and ethical standards. We wanted a company that is very close to its projects and could give us the opportunity to be involved in the choice of projects. Following an exacting selection process, we chose Carbon Clear to offset the emissions from Eurostar journeys.”

Mark Chadwick, CEO and founder of Carbon Clear, added: “Eurostar has a made a serious commitment to reduce its carbon footprint, and recognises that offsetting can reduce global emissions now whilst work continues on longer term measures. With Tread Lightly, Eurostar is one the greener options for short haul travel to Europe”.

Government unveils Carbon Offsetting Fund to combat emissions created by civil servants' flights

Sarah Griffiths, BusinessGreen, 12 Nov 2007

The government last week unveiled a new carbon offsetting fund, designed to offset the transport-related carbon emissions generated by a wide range of different public sector departments and organisations, including central government departments, Transport for London and the Royal Household.

DEFRA said government-funded projects will be undertaken in the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, India, China and Brazil that "would ensure that the carbon footprint of Government air travel was neutralised by ensuring emissions were avoided elsewhere".

It added that the government fund, which will be managed by EEA Fund Management Ltd, is the first of its kind in the world and will offset all official air travel from central government since 2006 and all future air travel emissions from up to 40 public sector organisations.

"This kind of offsetting is a good way to deal with unavoidable emissions," said Jamal Gore, managing director of offsetting company Carbon Clear. "Without funding from carbon credits, many worthwhile clean energy projects in the developing world would simply not prove cost-effective."

However, Greenpeace spokesman Charlie Kronick argued the new fund would have minimal impact. "This is just plain hypocritical of the government," he said. " Off-setting is a book-keeping trick that can't stop climate change, because once you've burned jet fuel at altitude there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop your emissions changing the climate."

Environment Minister Phil Woolas admitted that offsetting was not a panacea, but argued it still had a valid role to play in tackling climate change. " Offsetting emissions from transport isn't the answer to climate change," he accepted. "However, it's right that we are leading by example and offsetting every ton of CO2 emitted through projects that avoid emissions in developing countries, create jobs and improve the local standard of living."

Original article courtesy of Business Green

The Price of Change

A few weeks ago, the European Environment Agency announced tighter carbon dioxide emissions quotas for the 2008-2012 time period.

This means the price of carbon will rise, and we will see faster action to address the threat of climate change.

Most EU nations have signed the Kyoto Protocol and agreed to legally binding greenhouse gas reductions. Each country, in turn, has set annual emissions targets for power plants, factories, and other large sources of greenhouse gas pollution. Their maximum pollution allowance is gradually reduced each year, and companies have to pay a hefty fine if they exceed their cap.

Policymakers recognise that some emissions reductions will be easier than others, so to help organisations meet their targets cost-effectively, the European Environment Agency has set up the Emissions Trading System (ETS). This is basically a carbon offsetting programme. Under the ETS, a power plant that reduces emissions more than is required can claim credits for the extra savings, and sell those carbon credits onto the market. A factory that exceeds its targets must pay for credits to balance out its extra greenhouse gas pollution or pay the fine.

Of course, if everyone exceeds their target you get lots of carbon credit sellers and no buyers. This is exactly what happened in 2007. The national targets were so generous that firms had to enact few new measures to reduce emissions. The market was floodded with carbon credits, and the price deopped from around Euro 20 in 2006 to just 30 cents a few weeks ago. It's hard to know whether the reductions that produced those credits would have happened anyway, and therefore how much the ETS actually helped the environment beyond business as usual.

The new emissions targets are good news because the European Environment Agency has gone out of its way to make the quotas as tight as possible. Overall, European nations had requested much higher limits for their power plants and factories. Bulgaria, for example, wanted permission to release 67 million tonnes of CO2, but received a target of only 42.3 million tonnes. Overall, the EU Environment Agency cut those requests by an average of 10%, setting an emissions cap of 2.1 billion tonnes of CO2.

As a result, the anticipated price of carbon credits in 2008 immediately started climbing. That means that a lot of more expensive and tougher greenhouse gas reduction measures are cost effective. And that's good news because it means faster action towards a low-carbon future.

(Carbon Clear homepage)

Carbon Clear Wins International Environmental Certification

Carbon Clear announced today that it is the first full-service carbon management firm to achieve ISO 14001:2004 compliance*. The internationally recognised Environmental Management System Standard was awarded to Carbon Clear by Certification International, a UK–based assessment body.

Carbon Clear helps other companies operate in a more responsible way, so it was essential that its own processes and environmental standards met the strict criteria of ISO 14001:2004. In improving its already effective environmental management systems, Carbon Clear has demonstrated its ongoing commitment to environmental progress, and increased its scope of potential customers to include the growing number of businesses requesting ISO certification.

As part of its environmental management system, Carbon Clear works to ensure that its staff, contractors and suppliers meet or exceed legal environmental requirements, whilst minimising the company’s greenhouse gas emissions and contributing to overall environmental improvement.

Carbon Clear’s major environmental initiatives include:

- Going beyond greenhouse gas emissions to document the broader environmental impact of both its UK operations and emissions reduction projects in developing countries


- Instituting a carbon-minimising travel policy for staff and consultants


- Developing a "green referral system" for clients seeking lower-carbon suppliers of business products and services

Commenting on the certification, Mark Chadwick, CEO, Carbon Clear, said: “Our customers expect environmental protection to be an integral part of how we do business. ISO 14001 certification shows that Carbon Clear ‘walks the talk’. As a company, we choose to lead by example as we help customers make the transition to a low-carbon economy.”

ENDS

Notes to the Editors:

* Carbon Clear is the first full-service carbon management firm with ISO 14001 certification to be listed in the United Kingdom Register of Quality Assessed Companies, which includes entries for over 100,000 organisations. The Register includes companies both within and outside the UK.

For more information on Carbon Clear please contact Zoe Porteous at Boutique Communications on +44 (0)1273 620194 or email at zoe(_at_)boutiquecommunications.com.

About the ISO

ISO stands for the International Organization for Standardisation, located in Geneva, Switzerland. ISO promotes the development and implementation of voluntary international standards, both for particular products and for environmental management issues.

ISO 14001 is the global environmental management standard. It has been endorsed by the British Standards Institute as the national benchmark for certifying company environmental management systems. ISO 14001 treats environmental improvement as a continual process, not an endpoint. Companies that wish to gain ISO 14001 certification must: (1) develop an environmental policy, (2) review their business activities to determine their impact on the environment, (3) review relevant legislation, (4) develop objectives and targets for environmental improvement, (5) implement these measures and (6) assess progress on an ongoing basis.

(Carbon Clear Homepage)

Travel Green With Multimap and Carbon Clear

Multimap, Europe’s leading online mapping service provider, has enhanced its travel directions service to offer users information about the carbon footprint of journeys, as well as the ability to offset those journeys.

The service is provided through a partnership with Carbon Clear, a leading carbon management company that helps businesses and consumers manage their greenhouse gas emissions.

To use the carbon calculator, Multimap users click the “get directions” link on www.multimap.com, enter their journeys’ start and end points, click “find”, and are presented with step-by-step directions and route maps. The directions results now include information on the carbon footprint of the journey. A pull-down menu allows users to choose the correct engine size of their cars, and to compare the carbon footprint of the journey if they were to go by bus or train instead of driving. Users clicking on the “more info” link will find details of how the carbon footprint is calculated, and can visit the Carbon Clear website to take action to offset their journeys.

Multimap’s founder Sean Phelan, said, “We all know that driving has a negative effect on the environment. We’ve partnered with Carbon Clear to help raise users’ awareness of the impact of driving, and also to make it easier to offset the carbon emissions of those journeys. Carbon Clear invests in carbon-reducing projects that balance the greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, and we’re very pleased to support this work.”

Mark Chadwick, CEO and founder of Carbon Clear, added: “We’re really excited to be working together on this initiative. There is a real opportunity here to encourage behaviour change as so many people use Multimap to plan their journeys. It’s really important that we all understand the environmental impact of our travel. By using this innovative new tool everyone can get a much clearer picture of vehicle emissions and choose the lower-carbon option”.

More Buy One Get One Tree Goodness from innocent and Carbon Clear

We all know we need to do our bit for the environment. Small things can make a big difference, so innocent has teamed up with Carbon Clear for its Buy one Get one Tree promotion in October. For every innocent smoothie carton sold in leading supermarkets, innocent will get a tree planted in one of Carbon Clear’s dedicated reforestation projects. All you have to do is log on and register your unique code, and the rest will be taken care of for you.

The aim of the Buy one Get one Tree initiative is to get over 100,000 trees planted in rural communities in Africa and India. The groups choose the varieties of trees that best suit their needs themselves, and our donation will ensure they are looked after for 30 years. A quick recap of why trees are so great:

• The trees we plant will provide income - the communities planting the trees receive regular payments for maintaining the trees. These payments help to protect the community against economic downturn or crop failure.

• Trees protect food crops - the planted trees reduce soil erosion and provide shade.

• Trees help provide a livelihood - the species planted offer a variety of agricultural crops plus nutritional and medicinal uses.

• Trees help combat climate change - they absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.

Jessica Sansom, sustainability manager, innocent drinks says “Buy one get one tree is all about making it simple for innocent smoothie drinkers to do their little bit. Trees have so many positive benefits to offer local communities from providing a source of income, to enriching the soil and providing shade. We’re really excited about the scheme”

Look out for innocent drinks in the chilled juice aisle of your store.

For more information on Carbon Clear please contact Zoe on 01273 620194 or email her at zoe@boutiquecommunications.com.

For more information on innocent, please contact Ailana on 020 8600 3958, or email her at ailana@innocentdrinks.co.uk.

Climate Change and the Ozone Layer

Reuters reports that delegates at the United Nations Environment Program conference in Montreal reached agreement last Friday to speed up the elimination of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), a powerful greenhouse gas. A tonne of HCFCs has 5,000 to 8,000 times as much global warming impact as a tonne of carbon dioxide, so phasing out these chemicals can make a big impact.

HCFCs are used as a refrigerant in air conditioners, refrigerators and other cooling equipment. They became popular after the 1987 Montreal Protocol, as a substitute for chemicals that had a more damaging effect on the ozone layer. As I mentioned in a blog post last year, one of the unintended consequences of the Montreal Protocol was the more widespread use of chemicals that contribute to global climate change.

Last Friday's agreement gives developed countries until 2010 to reduce HCFC emissions by 75% and phase them out completely by 2020. Developing countries, meanwhile, have agreed to a 10% cut by 2015, with a gradual phase-out by 2030. The phase-out would likely reduce global greehouse gas emissions by several billion tonnes.

This is great news. Eliminating HCFCs is by itself not enough to tackle climate change - after all there's no signle solution. But this is a useful addition to our collective toolkit. The Carbon Clear team is committed to finding the best set of tools to help clients control their carbon impact.

(Back to Carbon Clear homepage)

"This Really Matters"

American pollster Frank Luntz recently held a focus group to determine British attitudes towards climate change. During the session, broadcast on BBC's "Newsnight" programme, something interesting happened.

Luntz noted that when he asks about politics, he normally needs to do a few warm-up exercises to get the group talking. But from the very first question to this group of climate change "sceptics and believers", "he couldn't get them to shut up." Everyone wanted to have their say, and Luntz could barely get a word in edge-wise.

I've seen the same thing. When the Carbon Clear team goes in to help a company with its carbon management strategy, everyone wants to get involved. Decisions that, for a similar montary value would be decided in one hour by a single purchasing manager, become discussions that last for weeks or months and involve every major department and the board of directors.

Why?

Frank Luntz asked his focus group the same question, and I'll paraphrase the answer from one respondent:

"It's because this really matters. When you ask who's going to win the next election, it doesn't really matter. This - it matters."

I think that's the right answer. Climate change isn't someone else's problem - it's everyone's problem. People feel they have a stake in the outcome, and want to get involved.

The popular view is that companies make a statement on climate change to add a bit of "green" to their corporate credentials. The reality is that it's a major strategic decision, and corporate decision-makers increasingly realise that if they don't propose solutions, someone else will propose something instead. It's better to get involved in the process and try to find an approach that works.

The steps a company takes to respond to climate change can have a major effect on its future competitiveness. When we work with businesses to develop their carbon management strategy, we look at the entire value chain - the source of their raw materials, their suppliers, what type of energy source they use, how their goods are delivered, even how their staff get to and from work. No wonder there are so many meetings.

Taking serious measures to help tackle climate change can change how a company does business, influence how their customers perceive them, and ultimately affect how profitable they will be in the future. At Carbon Clear, we work with companies to make the right decisions, and help them take action as swiftly and cost-effectively as possible.

As Frank Luntz observed, things can get a bit noisy, but we're quietly pleased when everyone wants to get involved. It shows that our clients are giving this issue the attention it deserves.

(Back to the Carbon Clear homepage)

Bellies vs. Fuel Tanks, Part 2

Has it been a year already?

In August 2006, I wrote a short post on the coming conflict between using corn, soya, and other crops to produce biofuels, and using them as food.

A few months later, environmental groups began campaigning actively around this issue. Now, in the face of rising grain prices in the U.S. and other countries, Governments have gotten in on the act.

Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported on the front page that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is criticising subsidies for biofuels made from food crops. The OECD is concerned that these measures are distorting the market and leading to food price inflation, without achieving significant greenhouse gas emissions savings. One credible study that I've seen estimates that we would need to use 60% of the planet's cultivable land to completely replace the petrol used in today's vehicles. This would, of course, never happen, so they're right in that regard.

What's more, food commodity prices are set at the margin, meaning that very small changes in supply and demand affect prices throughout the market. So even a small shift to biofuels is likely to cause price swings. So these changes are not unexpected. In fact, they generate healthy discussion by forcing us to confront how much we value these competing uses for food crops.

It's not too surprising that political leaders would sit up and pay attention to this issue now. Voters tend to complain a bit when the price of fuel rises, but things can get really ugly when the price of bread skyrockets.

Current-generation biofuels were never going to solve the problem of climate change by themselves. What is more likely is a portfolio of partial solutions. These include current-generation biofuels where they are economically feasible, vehicle fuel-efficiency improvements, so-called "second generation" biofuels made from agricultural waste products, public transport and town planning measures to encourage people to use their cars less, and perhaps increased use of electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles.

(Carbon Clear home)

The Arctic Gold Rush

Apologies for the light posting. Here's one I wrote a few weeks ago but didn't get around to posting:

For years climate scientists and environmental campaigners have worried about the impact that climate change is having on the Arctic. These impacts range from native villages sinking as the permafrost thaws, to more polar bears giving birth on land as the sea ice melts. And because the dark ocean water absorbs more heat than the reflective ice, a thawing Arctic could lead to faster and faster melting.

Now the world has recognised another unintended consequence of climate change in the Arctic.All that melting ice has uncovered a vast untapped frontier within easy reach of the industrialised economies. Geologists estimate that the ocean floor beneath the Arctic ice holds valuable deposits of iron, gold and other minerals - along with as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

And the rush is on. A month ago Russia launched a surprise expedition to plant a flag on the ocean floor beneath the North Pole and lay claim to a vast swathe of the Arctic sea floor. Then the Financial Times reported that Canada is also prepared to make a claim:

"The Russians sent a submarine to drop a small flag at the bottom of the ocean. We're sending ouor prime minister to reassert Canadian sovereignty," said a senior government official according to Canadian press."

Canada is focused on maintaining ownership of the Northwest Passage, an ice-free transit route that promises to slash shipping times between Asia and the Atlantic. With so much manufacturing taking place in China, that could help to reduce overall shipping-related carbon emissions.

But those savings would be dwarfed by the emissions from using all that oil, regardless of who owns it. It's ironic that climate change has exposed a vast new reserve of fossil fuels which, if used, will accelerate the warming.

UK Likely to Miss CO2 Targets

The Independent reports that the UK Government will probably miss its greenhouse gas emissions target "by a wide margin".

Britain has pledged to not only meet its Kyoto climate treaty target of reducing emissions 12.5 percent by 2010, but to cut emissions at least 20 percent by 2020. More recently, the draft Climate Change Bill proposed a 60 percent reduction by 2050, with an interim target of 26-32% by 2020.

However, according to the latest semi-annual analysis by the think tank Cambridge Econometrics, few of these targets are likely to be met. The reports findings include the following points:

• "...the government will miss its renewables electricity target for 2010 and 2015 by wide margins, but will nearly meet its target for 2020"
• "The projected fall in carbon emissions over 2005-10 will not be enough to achieve the government’s 20% domestic carbon-reduction goal"
• "Carbon emissions are expected to stabilise over 2010-15, but will resume their decline thereafter to 2020"
• "The UK is expected to meet the Kyoto target for greenhouse gases, despite the rise in CO2 emissions in 2004-06"
• "The government’s updated GHG projections for 2020, accompanying the 2007 Energy White Paper, may be optimistic."

(Carbon Clear Homepage)

Good Intentions

The old nursery rhyme begins, "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride."

And if good intentions were enough, climate change wouldn't be a problem. The fact is, though, that caring about the environment isn't enough - we have to back up these fine sentiments with action.

A recent survey showed that ninety percent of Americans say they are concerned about saving energy in their homes. However, few people are willing to spend more on energy efficiency improvements. To quote the article:

In fact, the survey found that if homeowners had the money to spend on their backyard, almost one in five would get a new deck, spa or hot tub - items that don't promote energy efficiency or sustainability.

A big part of our job here at Carbon Clear is helping people and companies bridge the gap between their good intentions and tangible actions that will help tackle climate change. Customers come to us for practical advice for cost effective reductions through both in-house reductions and high quality carbon offsets.

Let us know how we can help you.

Buy One Get One Tree with Innocent and Carbon Clear

innocent and Starbucks have got together with Carbon Clear to grow lots of trees in India to help fight climate change and provide income to local communities. The trees also provide food and medicine as well as supporting other crops by reducing soil erosion and providing shade.

From 16 July until 15 August, every innocent smoothie sold in Starbucks will have a unique code. Once this code is entered on the dedicated innocent site, it will be converted to investment in a tree in one of Carbon Clear’s dedicated reforestation projects.

For more information visit the innocent website and for your own tree get yourself down to Starbucks! You can find more information on all our carbon reducing projects here.

The Grid Is the Battery

Wind turbines are a great low-carbon power source because once you build the turbine, the "fuel" - the wind - is free. But the wind doesn't always blow when demand for power is high. For wind power to catch on, you need a way to store that power.

Last year I was contacted by a pair of MBA students at London Business School seeking technical help for a project. They were evaluating the prospects for an American company that's developed an innovative power storage system for large-scale wind turbines. That system, which uses compressed air to store energy, may offer some cost and environmental advantages over traditional banks of batteries.

"But there's another option," I told the students. If you occasionally have more power than you need, why not just sell it to someone else over the electricity grid? And when you have a shortfall because the wind isn't blowing, you can buy some back."

In other words, use the electricity grid as your battery. Even if you have to pay a premium for the electricity you buy back, this is often more cost-effective than investing in an expensive onsite power storage system.

On a household level this is called "reverse metering" (I blogged about this a few months ago), and it has helped solar power take off in California and elsewhere.

Now The Economist magazine has caught on. Last week they published a great article calling for an interconnected electricity grid covering all of Europe. A project like this could lead to a huge surge in windpower, big enough to provide 30% of Europe's electricity and displace some of the continent's coal and nuclear power stations. As the authors rightly point out, the wind is usually blowing somewhere, so if your local wind turbines aren't spinning, someone else's will be. And with a big enough pool of electricity users, your excess wind power can be used by someone else, without the need for batteries.

Decentralised windpower with batteries or compressed air storage is a great idea for remote installations that can't be reached by power lines.

But if you want to see wind power really take off, remember: the grid is the battery.

(Carbon Clear homepage)

Climate Change: The Debate Is Over

I wrote a few months ago about the manufactured controversy over the science of global warming. To the extent that there's scientific uncertainty these days, it's about things like, as one writer put it:

"why model predictions of outgoing longwave radiation at the top of the atmosphere in tropical latitudes differ from satellite readings, or how the size of ice crystals in cirrus clouds affect the amount of incoming shortwave reflected back into space, or precisely how much stratospheric cooling can be attributed to ozone depletion rather than an enhanced greenhouse effect."

The debate isn't about whether increased CO2 from human activity is causing climate change. That debate was over long ago.

Or at least it should have been. Unfortunately, climate-deniers have gotten a lot of media attention for hypotheses that claim solar activity is actually to blame. Until now.

Yet another nail in the coffin of climate-denial came yesterday, with a report by Mike Lockwood and a team at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

While the climate sceptics have argued that increasing solar activity is causing the warming, Lockwood and his team found that solar activity has actually decreased over the past 25 years. And temperatures keep rising.

Oops.

Commenting on the report, a spokesman for the UK's respected Royal Society said:

"This is an important contribution to the scientific debate on climate change. At present there is a small minority which is seeking to deliberately confuse the public on the causes of climate change. They are often misrepresenting the science, when the reality is that the evidence is getting stronger every day. We have reached a point where a failure to take action to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions would be irresponsible and dangerous."

(Back to the Carbon Clear homepage)

Controlling Carbon - How Much Does It Cost?

Many people are surprised at just how inexpensive it is to offset the carbon from flights, driving and other activities. Some people feel that, if the price of carbon is too low, we won't need to change our behaviour.

Actually, it would make sense to take action even if the price of carbon were zero. Carbon management doesn't have to hurt your pocketbook; it can even help.

Vattenfall, a Swedish electric utility looked at the global cost and effectiveness of all the major greenhouse gas reduction options.

They found that the world could cost-effectively reduce CO2 emissions by 27 billion tonnes per year - a 46% reduction, at a carbon price of EUR40 (about £27) per tonne. Some measures, like shutting down coal-fired power stations in favour of gas, only made sense when the price of carbon is around EUR30 (about £20) per tonne. Others, like large scale solar and wind energy, were sensible investments at around EUR20 (£14) per tonne.

But Vattenfall found over 7 billion tonnes of annual worldwide carbon reductions that had zero or negative cost. In other words, companies, communities, and households could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and actually come out ahead. There are a range of other measures that, while not free, are extremely low-cost.

That's where we come in. Carbon Clear helps companies find those very cost effective in-house reductions that will allow them to make a real difference in the fight against climate change. Then we go out and find other low-cost emissions reductions around the world to balance out those emissions that are too costly to eliminate at home. At least in the short term. What's more, these projects help to reduce energy poverty and improve livelihoods in some of the countries on the front lines of climate change.

At some point we'll have pursued all the very low-cost emissions reduction options and the price of carbon will rise. That's as it should be. But in the meantime, we'll continue working to make it as easy and cost-effective as possible to control your carbon impact.

(Carbon Clear Homepage)

Climate Change Sinks a Village

The New York Times reports that the permafrost on which an Alaskan village was built is melting due to climate change.

Newtok, a native Alaskan village, is collapsing into the mud as rising temperatures melt the frozen soil. The village, home to a Government-recognised Indian tribe, could completely wash away within a decade.

"The earth beneath much of Alaska is not what it used to be. The permanently frozen subsoil, known as permafrost, upon which Newtok and so many other Native Alaskan villages rest is melting, yielding to warming air temperatures and a warming ocean. Sea ice that would normally protect coastal villages is forming later in the year, allowing fall storms to pound away at the shoreline."

Practical Solutions to Climate Change

Hardly a day goes by without more dire warnings about the impacts of climate change.

Last week, however, there was some good news. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report stating that we could take action to avoid the worst impacts of climate change at negligible cost. They pointed out that there are a host of practical carbon-reducing solutions that will actually save people money and make their lives easier. There are other measures we can take that cost a little more than current practice - but result in much less climate pollution.

So good news, at last. But "negligible" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. A family in Ethiopia might need only $50-$100 (£27-£55) to buy an improved stove that will save ten tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime. To save the same amount with a solar water heater would cost a UK household at least £1,700 - and the Government is cutting its subsidies for renewable energy.

Businesses face the same challenge. While companies need to take responsiblity for their emissions, it can be difficult to convince the finance department to invest in a new heating and cooling system when other initiatives are competing for scarce funds. We may have to save up for a couple of years to enact some measures - it's hard to reduce your impact to zero overnight.

And while the cost might be "negligible" to us, that $100 clean cook stove might seem impossibly expensive to someone who earns just a few dollars per day.

Carbon offsets help bridge the gap. As far as global warming is concerned, it doesn't matter whether the CO2 comes from a car in America, a power plant in Britain, or a cookstove in Ethiopia. But each dollar or pound we spend in, for example, Ethiopia will achieve a greater carbon reduction than in the other two cases. cleaning up that cookstove provides the added benefit of reducing energy poverty and improving health in a poor community. Carbon offset payments provide funding for these kinds of practical, highly effective carbon reduction solutions. So you can balance out your unavoidable emissions now, while gearing up to make bigger changes at home.

If we work together, we may prove the IPCC right and make a real difference in reducing our global carbon impact.

(Carbon Clear Homepage)

Kingsferry Coaches Goes Carbon Clear!

Kingsferry Coaches has announced their new zero-carbon initiative.

The Carbon Clear team is thrilled with Kingsferry's achievement. They have followed all the steps we recommend when we help a company dedicated to controlling its carbon impact:

1. Know your carbon footprint. We worked with Kingsferry to calculate emissions from the offices and from their coaches.
2. Reduce what you can. Kingsferry has trained its coach drivers in fuel-efficient driving and is replacing its entire fleet with the most fuel-efficient vehicles on the road.
3. Offset your unavoidable emissions. Driving a 40-seat coach cannot help but release carbon into the atmosphere. Kingsferry is investing to help Nicaraguan artisan brick producers build new, energy efficient kilns to offset the emissions from their coach fleet.

We congratulate Kingsferry on going zero-carbon.

(Carbon Clear homepage)