Welcome
Welcome to another two weekly review of energy and environmental events and developments from both here in New Zealand and on an international basis. As always we hope you find our collection of stories to be of interest as the rising cost of oil impacts society as we know it.
People are protesting around the world about the rising cost of fuel – just goes to show that oil is the lifeblood of the society as we know it.
The International Energy Agency has run some scenarios – suggesting that US$45 Trillion expenditure on renewable energy will be required in order to reduce production of global warming gasses by 50% by 2050, equivalent to 1.1% of global GDP.
Meanwhile, 24 airlines have gone bust in the last 6 months – with kerosene accounting for up to 40% of airline operating cost.
Local government in the US is taking a holistic approach to sustainability within the urban environment – the goal being to plan for and adapt to climate change. Planning and executing retrofit of services within existing infrastructure and buildings with new technologies is making a difference – from LED streetlights to localised waste-to gas generation facilities – technology is being brought to market sooner than otherwise expected.
Back in the early 90’s when petrol was cheap, my mates and I used to race around town in an old 1956 series one Land Rover. It would out-drag Ford Escorts up the Rosebank hill, and could go along dirt tracks that Mike’s mum’s Corolla just wasn't able to reach, but that’s another story…
It looked like a brick, sounded like a tractor, and went like the wind. Now the cost of oil makes this all but a memory, however an Auckland sculptor has developed a wind-powered Land Rover – a highly innovative approach that allows the vehicle to travel up 90 mile beach (in Northland, NZ) at up to 30km/h. I guess this makes it carbon neutral, well as much it can whilst relying on diesel when the wind doesn't blow…
We thought this week a bit of a stir wouldn't go amiss. Apparently in Sweden, single men consume 20% more energy than single women (largely through transport and dining out), whilst single women tend to consume more embedded energy (healthcare, pharmaceuticals and clothing). We won't go into who pays for dinner, or who picks who up, but they are supposedly quite a sophisticated society.
Over the last month I've had a bit of a fling with a tarty French model (diesel and low maintenance) which brings us onto another argument – which is better – diesel or a petrol hybrid? Given that the diesel engine has been around for a while, it is expected to be more efficient than the newer, less mature hybrid lithium ion technology. One thing is for sure, with fuel prices where they are, fuel economy is becoming much more important than ever before.
Whilst the world protests, the mail must get through (rain, hail, shine, high-oil prices). To this end, the International Post Association has undertaken to measure and report on its carbon emissions. One member has even replaced 100 diesel trucks with electric trucks.
At the same time, British Telecom has undertaken to develop a carbon emissions reporting model, allowing it to normalse carbon emissions through growth or acquisitions. It is fine to set a target, but when it is not met, or the business grows – how do you measure carbon emissions performance?
In the workplace, people are getting green, with volunteers within organisations stepping up and undertaking to improve the environmental performance of the workplace – seems that this is more of a religion nowadays than the once-a-week showing of “the good life”.
Back to the USA, where the World Trade Centre re-development is happening – where a cluster of four 1.2MW fuel cells will be used to generate electricity. This sends a fairly clear message of New York’s commitment to “greater energy security and reduced dependence on foreign oil”.
New Zealand farmers are to be the first in the world to pay for exceeding carbon emissions levels according to an LA Times article, and scientists are doing their bit to help reduce animal emissions – looks like daisy may be getting a re-design…
The final article this week brings us back to the road – asphalt - as a byproduct of oil refining process is becoming more expensive. Currently the Asphalt Research Consortium is looking at ways to reduce the energy content of roading materials. Looks as though recycled plastics may be making their way onto the highway – albeit indirectly.
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FACTBOX - The spread of protests over rising fuel prices
Wed Jun 11, 2008 3:13pm BST
(Reuters) - Protests over rising fuel prices have spread across the globe. Here are some details:
* FRANCE:
-- Truck drivers try to block access for vehicles trying to enter Spain.
* PORTUGAL:
-- Truck drivers went on strike on Monday, with picket lines put up in some places around the country.
-- Several petrol stations in Lisbon ran out of petrol on Wednesday and there were long queues at others as drivers tried to fill up their cars.
-- Retailers have said food stocks at supermarkets are beginning to run out.
-- Lisbon's main airport has run out of fuel because of the strike by truck drivers, causing flight delays but no cancellations.
-- One protester has died as he tried to stop a truck on a road north of the capital Lisbon.
* SPAIN:
-- Spain's car industry said on Wednesday it had been paralysed by a strike by truck drivers angry at fuel costs.
-- Car makers association Anfac said by Thursday all 18 car factories in Spain would be off line because of a lack of parts and fuel.
-- Truck drivers began an indefinite strike on Monday. Lines of trucks up to 5 miles (8 km) long formed at Spanish-French border crossings in Catalonia and the Basque Country.
-- One striking truck driver was killed near a Grenada market in southern Spain on Tuesday.
* INDIA:
-- A one day strike to protest against fuel price rises shut shops and banks in Indian Kashmir, coinciding with a protest by transporters demanding they be allowed to raise fares and freight charges.
-- Wednesday was also the third day of a four-day strike in Kashmir called by the state's transport operators demanding an increase in passenger fares and freight charges.
-- India increased petrol and diesel prices by around 10 percent last week after the cost of subsidising fuel brought state oil companies close to bankruptcy.
* MALAYSIA:
-- A protest against fuel price rise by opposition parties is planned for Friday ahead of one planned for July 12 when the opposition plans to bring 100,000 onto the streets.
-- Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, trying to calm public anger over a steep rise in fuel prices, said on Wednesday there would not be more hikes.
* NEPAL:
-- Student activists burned tyres on roads and blocked traffic in Kathmandu on Tuesday to protest against a hefty increase in fuel prices.
-- Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) on Monday increased petrol and diesel prices by about a 25 percent to stem losses at the state-run oil company and help overcome a domestic fuel shortage.
* SOUTH KOREA:
-- The cabinet offered to resign in the face of huge street protests on Tuesday about the policies of its unpopular President Lee Myung-bak.
-- South Korean truck drivers voted to strike on Monday, ignoring a $10.2 billion government aid package designed to cushion the impact of fuel price rises.
* THAILAND:
-- Thousands of truckers went on a half-day strike on Wednesday demanding government help against rising fuel prices.
-- Thongyu Khongkan, secretary-general of the Land Transport Federation of Thailand, said that if the government did not meet its demands by June 17 it would mobilise its trucks in Bangkok.
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$45 trillion needed to combat warming
By JOSEPH COLEMAN – Jun 6, 2008
TOKYO (AP) — The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday. The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a "energy revolution" that would greatly reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth. "Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale," IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said. A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels. Scientists say temperature increases beyond that could trigger devastating effects, such as widespread loss of species, famines and droughts, and swamping of heavily populated coastal areas by rising oceans. Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and Russia backed the 50 percent target in a meeting in Japan last month and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July. The IEA report mapped out two main scenarios: one in which emissions are reduced to 2005 levels by 2050, and a second that would bring them to half of 2005 levels by mid-century. The scenario for deeper cuts would require massive investment in energy technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy. Assuming an average 3.3 percent global economic growth over the 2010-2050 period, governments and the private sector would have to make additional investments of $45 trillion in energy, or 1.1 percent of the world's gross domestic product, the report said. That would be an investment more than three times the current size of the entire U.S. economy. The second scenario also calls for an accelerated ramping up of development of so-called "carbon capture and storage" technology allowing coal-powered power plants to catch emissions and inject them underground. The study said that an average of 35 coal-powered plants and 20 gas-powered power plants would have to be fitted with carbon capture and storage equipment each year between 2010 and 2050. In addition, the world would have to construct 32 new nuclear power plants each year, and wind-power turbines would have to be increased by 17,000 units annually. Nations would have to achieve an eight-fold reduction in carbon intensity — the amount of carbon needed to produce a unit of energy — in the transport sector. Such action would drastically reduce oil demand to 27 percent of 2005 demand. Failure to act would lead to a doubling of energy demand and a 130 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, IEA officials said. "This development is clearly not sustainable," said Dolf Gielen, an IEA energy analyst and leader for the project. Gielen said most of the $45 trillion forecast investment — about $27 trillion — would be borne by developing countries, which will be responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Most of the money would be in the commercialization of energy technologies developed by governments and the private sector. "If industry is convinced there will be policy for serious, deep CO2 emission cuts, then these investments will be made by the private sector," Gielen said.
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Buckle up
Jun 3rd 2008
From Economist.com
Global Research, March 15, 2007 |
SUDDEN loss of altitude is a constant worry for airline pilots. Now the whole airlines industry is braced for a feeling of plummeting. High oil prices and widespread economic gloom are putting the squeeze on an industry that, until recently, seemed to face a relatively rosy future.
A slew of bad news was capped on Monday June 2nd by black forecasts from the International Air Transport Association (IATA). The industry body calculates that if the oil price were to stay at about $135 a barrel, a record from which it has retreated in recent days, then the world’s airlines would suffer a combined loss of $6.1 billion this year. Even if oil prices fall by 20% or so the industry would still face big losses. A couple of months ago IATA thought that the industry would be in profit over the same period to the tune of around $4.5 billion. In the past year fuel prices have doubled: kerosene now accounts for as much as 40% of an airline’s operating costs. Willie Walsh, the boss of British Airways, concludes that the industry is in crisis.
Mr Walsh’s big airline is one of the better placed to ride out the storm. But the list of victims is growing. IATA’s boss, Giovanni Bisignani, says that 24 airlines have gone bust in the past six months alone. Last week Silverjet, a business-only carrier linking Britain, America and Dubai, was the latest casualty, collapsing after it had failed to secure fresh capital. Maxjet, a similar airline, folded in December. Oasis Hong Kong, a long-haul low-cost carrier, failed in April.
In America four smaller airlines filed for bankruptcy in a matter of weeks—Aloha, Skybus, ATA and Frontier. Delta and Northwest have elected to plough ahead with plans to merge despite objections from powerful unionised pilots. They clearly reckon that the advantages of attempting to force through a deal in the face of such parlous conditions is worth the gamble.
Costs are not the only problem. Just as worrying is that passenger numbers look vulnerable to a slowdown in the world’s big economies. According to IATA, global passenger numbers grew by a seemingly healthy 4% in the first four months of the year. But that compares badly with a 6.7% increase in the same period last year. Of greater concern is that fewer lucrative business and first-class flyers are taking to the air. Their numbers fell by 3.9% worldwide in March compared with a year before and by a staggering 8.5% in North America.
Merging is one way that the industry will cope. Airlines are also being forced to cut costs and capacity. American Airlines recently said that it would slash domestic capacity by as much as 12% by the end of the year, with others promising steep cuts too. Many are introducing fuel surcharges and other costs for travellers, for example for carrying baggage in the hold or for in-flight meals and drinks. Such measures, however, will only go so far to mitigate the high costs.
Worse, the more ruthless the airlines become in cutting costs, the more the impact on travellers. Weaker airlines will be knocked out of the sky and fares will rise. Some airlines may not have the financial wherewithal to replace older gas-guzzling aircraft with newer more frugal models. That sounds unpleasant for airlines and their passengers. Consolidation and lowering capacity may mean that profitability eventually improves again, but a period of widespread, dirt-cheap, air fares seems to be coming to an end.
http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11484142 |
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Cities take lead in climate change
Posted by Martin LaMonica
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--City governments' response to climate change ranges from cutting-edge distributed energy to adding more bike lanes and trees.
Climate change experts from four cities--London, Toronto, Chicago, and New York--spoke about the connections between sustainable urban design, energy, the economy, and human health on Monday at the Mass Impact Symposium, organized by the Boston Society of Architects and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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Beijing traffic. Click on the image to see a photo gallery of different cities' responses to climate change.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)
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The cities' climate action plans, some of which have yet to be fully rolled out, call for aggressive goals to measure, reduce, and monitor greenhouse gas levels--on the range of 50 percent to 80 percent in the next three decades.
Under that over-arching goal are dozens of programs, including promotion of green technologies to lower energy consumption in transportation and buildings.
"We can't just do one thing," said Ariella Maron, deputy director of New York's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. She said the city's plan covers clean energy, efficient buildings, transportation, and avoiding sprawl--all of which impact water, land use, and air quality.
Called PlaNYC, the program stems from simple demographics: another 1 million people will join its current population of 8.25 million by 2030.
It's not just New York. Urbanization is rapidly accelerating around the world. That means the "tipping point" toward greenhouse gas reductions will come from making cities more sustainable, particularly in developing countries, said John Fernandez, an associate professor at MIT's architecture department.
More than half of the world's residents now live in cities, and 85 percent of the world's population growth will be in urban areas in the coming decades, mostly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, Fernandez said.
Green retrofits
Top on the list of these cities' programs is building energy efficiency. Overall, energy use in buildings is about one-third of the U.S.' energy use but it can be a lot higher in cities--in New York, it's 80 percent of energy use and rising.
Chicago requires city buildings requesting funding to meet the U.S. Green Building Council's Silver-level LEED certification.
But while cities can make visible commitments to environment stewardship, it's typically a drop in the bucket when it comes to carbon emissions. That's because 80 percent of buildings that exist today will still be around in two decades, making technologies to retrofit existing buildings more important, city representatives said.
There are also opportunities for individuals or neighborhoods to generate their own energy. Toronto is experimenting with a program called SolarCity to encourage communities to purchase solar hot water systems.
At the end of this month, the PlaNYC program will announce details of a program to lower buildings' carbon emissions 30 percent by 2017 by promoting micro-power generation and waste-to-power technologies, Maron said.
London, meanwhile, is exploring more futuristic approaches, where whole neighborhoods would generate their own energy.
Nicky Gavron, the former deputy mayor of London, said city planners envision replacing natural gas production either by producing bio-gas from organic wastes in anaerobic digesters or using waste to make synthetic gas through plasma arc gasification.
The energy from waste would be used in either individual or neighborhood combined heat and power systems. "We have an opportunity to usher in a new era of municipally owned enterprises around low-carbon technologies," said Gavron, who was member of a hydrogen committee.
Not keeping pace with technology?
City governments are eager to show leadership by adopting green technologies in their own operations.
Toronto's LightSavers pilot is testing to see whether more efficient LED lighting with controls can be used for street lights, parking garages, and pedestrian areas.
And the FleetWise plug-in hybrid pilot has allowed the city government to improve its fuel economy by 50 percent, said Philip Jessup, director of the Toronto Atmospheric Fund. In Winnipeg, Canada, already 70 percent of taxis are hybrids.
Water treatment is an important feature of climate change response, according to planners.
With more extreme precipitation, New York is enlisting trees to try to capture run-off and pollutants. The city is trying to add more green spaces to its streets and change the tree pit specifications so that they are big enough to retain more water, Maron said.
It's also looking to reestablish its mussel and oyster industry, which will filter pollutants from storm water run-off--a move that stresses energy-intensive treatment plants, she said.
"We are already feeling the impacts of climate change," with higher levels of precipitation and higher temperatures, she said. "If a category 3 hurricane hit New York, it's catastrophic."
Despite the good intentions, representatives from these cities said that politics--particularly with regard to funding--make climate change all the more challenging.
To get different sources of revenue, London has taken a minority stake in an energy services company that uses savings from energy efficiency to offset upfront investments.
Toronto's Atmospheric Fund was created and sustained by the savings from building energy retrofits.
Another challenge is that political institutions are falling behind the technology advances in areas like lighting and transportation, said Toronto's Jessup.
"The job descriptions, the bureaucracies, have not changed fast enough for these new technologies so they just don't get it," he said.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9963600-54.html |
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Oil shock puts the wind in driver's sails
5:00AM Monday June 16, 2008
By Simon Collins
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Fed up with rising petrol costs? Try hitching a sail to the car and harnessing the power of nature. That's the advice from an enterprising Auckland sculptor, Dan Tucker, who sailed his Land Rover up Northland's Ninety Mile Beach on pure wind power.
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Dan Tucker sails his Land Rover up Ninety Mile Beach. Photo / Summer Moon Te Kowhai
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"I talked to a few people about it and they said it couldn't be done. That just made me more determined to do it," said Tucker, 32. "The beaches are perfect - you have steady winds, a flat surface, and it's wide and generally quite straight." The vehicle hit speeds of up to 30 km/h in winds gusting up to 40 km/h. When the wind died down to 10 km/h, Mr Tucker got out and pushed to supplement the wind. Mr Tucker grew up as a sailor. His parents, John and Barbara Tucker, have lived on a boat for the past 15 years, first in Auckland and for the past four years in Hobart, Tasmania. He believes sailing is poised to make a comeback as the oil era ends. "It's crazy. Even today I went in to fill up my car and it was $2.07 a litre. It just keeps going up," he said.
"It's not going to drop down, that's the scary thing. We are facing the reality that we are going to run out of oil. "We'll go back to the old days of sail power rather than flying, but with modern materials boats are getting faster and faster." Commercial shippers are already harnessing wind power. A German company, Beluga, launched a freighter late last year with a kite the size of a football field that it said would cut fuel use by up to half. Californian company KiteShip is making sails to fly logs out of remote forests, as well as for ships. Mr Tucker said sailing vehicles were never likely to be feasible on crowded city streets, but were ideal for beaches. "You'd almost get from Auckland to North Cape by beach sailing." His Land Rover didn't make the full length of Ninety Mile Beach because it took most of the day to rig up the sail with bamboo. "We could have gone all the way to North Cape if we'd had time."
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10516468 |
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Study says men use more energy than women
Jun 11, 2008 |
STOCKHOLM (AFP) — Swedish men consume far more energy than women, especially when it comes to transportation, a study by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) indicated Wednesday. "Single men consume, according to our calculations, about 20 percent more energy than single women," FOI said in a 60-page report. The figures appeared strongly linked to the fact that women are statistically more concerned about the impact of their personal energy consumption on the environment, the group added. The study, part of a joint project by Sweden, Germany and Spain, measured energy consumption in the households of single adults with no children to most clearly show different male and female usage patterns, the group said. The report measured direct energy consumption, like a car burning fuel, and indirect energy consumption, measuring the power used to produce the products and food people buy. Based on numbers compiled by Sweden's national statistics agency, FOI compared the energy use of 556 men and 538 women between 2003 and 2005. "The largest difference between the single woman and single man households is to be found in transportation," the report said, pointing out that 40 percent of men's energy use went to transport while only 25 percent of women's did. "Men spend more money on buying cars, and they drive cars more. Thereby they also consume more fuel," FOI said. Men's energy use when it comes to eating out and consuming alcohol and tobacco was also nearly double that of women's. Women meanwhile used far more indirect energy than men in the areas of health care and pharmaceuticals, and on clothing. "The study indicates that men use more of their energy consumption on direct energy than women," FOI said. The group said women appeared more interested in buying products proven to be less harmful to the environment, and were more likely to drive less or slower in an attempt to limit their energy use.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5i4CU_1C-7ZD0MgJgCsG_gq9H8bbg |
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Hybrids aren't as economical as diesels, says study
10:04AM Thursday June 12, 2008 |
Hybrid vehicles - promoted as the planet's eco-saviours - are not as economical as common diesel models. Results of a test by British green motoring website Clean Green Cars showed that the Toyota Prius had a real-world consumption figure of just 7.8l/100km despite its claimed figure of over 4.7l/100km (60mpg). When tested against a diesel SUV, the Jeep Patriot, the Patriot managed marginally less over the same journey, recording an average of 7.26 l/100km. Equally the Ford Focus Econetic proved more economical than a Honda Civic IMA, with a real-world figure of 5.36 l/100km compared to the Honda hybrid's 7.02 l/100km. Jay Nagley, publisher of Clean Green Cars said, "People may be surprised to learn that hybrids are no better in the real world than diesels, but our tests confirmed what we had long suspected. Hybrid technology offers the prospect of real benefits, but only with the next generation of plug-in hybrids using more advanced lithium-ion batteries which are expected from 2010. Current models only confer dinner-party bragging rights".
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Hybrids like Toyota's awkward-looking Prius 'only confer dinner-party bragging rights'.
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The reason behind the lower economy of hybrids is said to be due to the fact that the cars spend little time running on just the battery - with the exception of the Lexus GS450h, which can drive at 32km/h, on just battery power. Clean Green Cars also reveals that the main advantage of hybrids - the fact that the engine doesn't idle at traffic lights - has no more benefit than a modern diesel with stop-start technology. Richard Bremner, Editor of Clean Green Cars, said, "We are not anti-hybrids. The concept offers the prospect of genuine fuel saving with models promised from 2010 that will drive up to 65kms on electric charge. However, today's models using current battery technology offer no real environmental benefits for British drivers. For your next new car, we would generally recommend an economical conventional engine - for the one after that a hybrid may make sense." - REUTERS
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/9/story.cfm?c_id=9&objectid=10515931 |
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Postal Services Around the Globe to Begin Tracking Emissions
By ClimateBiz Staff
Published June 3, 2008 |
BRUSSELS, BE -- Twenty-four postal services yesterday announced the creation of a carbon-measurement and -monitoring system that aims to standardize how the global mail industry reports its greenhouse gas emissions.
The system was created by the member posts of the International Post Corporation, the trade association that includes postal services from Europe, North America and Asia. Yesterday's announcement involved the creation of a pilot program to fine-tune the standards by which members report their emissions.
Currently based on international reporting standards including ISO 14001, Global Reporting Initiative's sustainability reportin guidelines, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the FTSE4Good standard and the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, the new standard will use a scorecard system to grade performance across 10 areas of carbon management. Among the areas included in the evaluation are strategy of management, employee engagement, measurement and verification, setting targets for performance, disclosure and reporting, and managing the value chain.
"This is the first time that a supply industry has come together to address its impact on the environment." said the CEO of the IPC, Herbert-Michael Zapf. "The IPC Environmental Measurement and Monitoring System provides our members with a way of measuring and benchmarking their initiatives and optimizing their effectiveness. It can be used by all postal operators, regardless of size or what stage they are at in their environmental programs."
Although this is the first group effort to green the postal service, individual members of the IPC have already begun implementing carbon-reduction strategies. The U.S. Postal Service, for instance, recently launched its free ewaste recycling program, and just over a year ago became the first shipping company to receive Cradle to Cradle certification for some of its packages.
The U.K.'s Royal Mail has been involved in promoting carbon reductions and offset schemes; it has adopted 100 percent renewable electric energy and unveiled a carbon-neutral product last year and a calculator for reducing an individual's carbon footprint.
German logistics company Deutsche Post World Net has started down a path to cut its European fleet emissions to 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, which it aims to achieve by maximizing efficiency in its vehicles and shipping routes, as well as incorporating alternative fuels into its operations. Along those lines, Dutch logistics company TNT last month added 100 electric trucks to replace its existing diesel models.
http://climatebiz.com/news/2008/06/03/postal-services-begin-tracking-emissions |
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Growing Your Company While Reducing Emissions
By James Murray, BusinessGreen
Published: June 11, 2008
Goals & Commitments; Measure & Verify |
Emission reduction targets are at the centrepiece of any credible green business policy but as many firms are now discovering, setting the right target is far more difficult than it first appears.
With growing numbers of companies having had emission targets in place for a number of years, the realization is dawning that simply setting a 20, 60 or even 80 percent emission target in line with the latest political or scientific consensus can soon result in unexpected levels of complexity followed by significant PR headaches.
What happens to that target if, for example, you acquire a new company, or sell off part of your operations, or even happen upon a new product that goes stratospheric?
You are quickly left with an emissions target that is either unattainable or meaningless -- and a step designed to display an enlightened attitude to corporate responsibility becomes little more than a handy stick with which environmentalists can attack you.
It is a dilemma that became apparent to telcoms giant BT when it began to assess how to apply its emissions reduction target for its U.K. operations to the entire business.
"We set an absolute target of cutting emissions from U.K. operations by 80 percent on 2006-07 levels by 2016," explains Chris Tuppen, director of sustainable development at the company. "We then wanted to set a similar target for our international operations, but the problem was that in 2006-07 we had virtually no emissions outside the U.K. Now we have 200,000 tonnes of emissions from an international business growing at over 20 percent per year, but you can't really set a precentage target for cutting emissions when your baseline is zero."
It is a problem familiar to almost every firm that has set itself an emissions target, according to Paul Dickinson, chief executive of corporate reporting lobby group the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). "People have been really struggling with the idea of how to bring down emissions without surrendering growth," he explains. "There is a sense that if you emit 1 million tonnes and set a target of cutting that by 5 percent that's fine, but if you then go out and buy another company that emits 1 million tonnes, the whole process is stuffed."
http://climatebiz.com/feature/2008/06/11/growing-your-company-while-reducing-emissions |
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Corporate Green Teams: Sustainable Business from the Bottom Up
By Quynh Nguyen
Published June 8, 2008 |
With sky high gas prices and a growing sense of belief that global warming may be a real and imminent threat, many individuals are starting to ask themselves, "What can I do about this now?" This rhetorical question often inspires people to change personal habits such as taking public transportation, getting a hybrid car, or bringing their own grocery bags to the store. But this is a question that people are increasingly taking from their personal lives into their working lives.
An April 2007 survey by Adecco, an international HR company, found that 52 percent of employed adults felt their companies should do more to be environmentally friendly. "Green Teams", a formal or informal group of people in a company who are passionate about environmental issues, are gathering in offices across America to brainstorm solutions and promote ways in which their company's practices can become more environmentally sustainable.
Green teams develop in any number of ways: sometimes they're convened by top management at large companies as part of a corporate sustainability initiative, but also common are self-started groups that build momentum and are incorporated into a company's structure.
However they come together, these groups offer many benefits to their companies. By uniting like-minded folks who are passionate about the environment, employees can increase the sense of community as well as employee engagement in the company. When employees get excited about something at the workplace -- even something not directly related to their jobs, this passion can spill over to existing projects, infusing more productivity.
Green teams can also help companies attract and retain top talent: The 2007 Adecco HR survey also shows a trend that companies are highlighting their green activities to market themselves and attract new employees. In a separate survey, commissioned by National Geographic magazine in Feb 2008, more than 80 percent of U.S. workers polled said they believe it is important to work for a company or organization that makes the environment a top priority.
Every Green Team has its own history, its own processes and its own successes and challenges. This article explores the activities of three teams -- from the online world, biotechnology, and architecture -- in a variety of industries as they travel on the journey of creating change in their companies.
Making the Sale at eBay
eBay's Green Team formed one year ago and currently has 1182 members worldwide. The team started out at the San Jose location and has expanded globally with members from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia and Australia. The effort has sparked eBay's employee engagement as many employees welcomed the opportunity to gather, discuss, and learn about environmental issues.
Many meetings are structured around employee ideas for addressing environmental concerns. Some key activities the eBay Green Team has sponsored include: solar employee incentive program, preferred parking for hybrid vehicles, CFL bulb and reusable shopping totes giveaways, a program to calculate carbon footprints and discussion on the process of carbon offsets, and a Funky Mug contest, in which employees brought in unwanted mugs from home and voted for their favorite.
When asked about how the team will grow in the future, Libby Reder, eBay's Environmental Program Manager for Global Citizenship, explained, “The Green Team has clearly captured the imagination of a whole lot of people who are interested in learning and taking action. The next step for us is to keep fueling the movement with unique content and opportunities, and then to calculate and aggregate our positive impact.”
Genentech: Sustainability in Their Genes
The Green Genes team at Genentech is 5 years in the making and has nearly 500 members, mostly located in South San Francisco. With their newly implemented Sustainability Suggestion website, the team is harvesting ideas from the entire company to capture ideas that may improve Genentech's environmental performance.
The team will then do research to prioritize the ideas, and facilitate the process to link the viable ideas to internal environmental programs. Key activities include: projects that work to reduce energy and water consumption and waste generation, community service events like beach clean-ups, a Kill-a-Watt Lending program that allows employees to measure their power consumption, educational and fun monthly speaker series and regular movie nights focusing on sustainable practices.
Members of the team said their "Eco Ho-Ho," a yearly green fair, has been a successful event that attracts employees and their guests to learn about sustainable practices and the company's efforts.
Michael Brodie, the chairperson of the Green Genes Energy team, says "If, by our example, we can inspire just a small change in behavior from the average employee -- turning off lights in their own offices or conference rooms, or printing double-sided -- we'll raise awareness to the point where good things start to be done because it's expected."
Building a Sustainable Community at BJG
BJG Architecture and Engineering's Green Team formed a year ago and has become more formal in the last 6 months. They have 9 members, which for a 45 person company means 20 percent participation. Members participate from all their sites: Las Vegas, Reno and Pleasanton.
BJG's president sits on the Green Team and is an active participant. Key internal activities include: bike to work week, revamping purchasing processes to focus on recycled goods, optimize use of resources and reducing waste (ex. double sided printing), and developing fun internal competitions to measure and become more aware of employee recycling efforts (best recycling team gets free BBQ).
The BJG Green Team has also developed initiatives to help their clients be more sustainable. Some of BJG's client-oriented green initiatives include developing a design process for LEED certification, specifying green building materials, and educating clients about sustainable building practices.
Teresa Kulesza, a Green Team member and a Vice President at BJG, has a long list of goals for the future: “Our green team has a long list of ideas: We are ramping up our measurement efforts from weighing trash to reviewing utility bills to measure our carbon footprint. We are planning in house movie times to watch inspiring as well as educational videos on sustainability issues."
Further down the road, the group may undertake projects like offering an electric or fuel efficient company car for bikers and carpoolers to use for off-site meetings, installing a renewable energy generation system at their offices, and getting their facilities LEED-certified. BJG's projects go beyond in-house efforts to include outreach to clients as well. Kulesza said the group is developing a list of 10 free green improvements for each project.
Common challenges
Green teams find that they encounter common challenges. Some challenges include:
- Companies exist to make money vs. being green as an objective. Unless the leader of the company see being green as a priority, programs may be slow to evolve.
- For teams that are comprised mainly of employee volunteers, people can be over committed in their full time jobs and then struggle to try to squeeze out extra time to participate in green team activities.
- It takes time and effort to research alternatives to current practices. Often, solutions are iterative rather than final.
Easy Tips for Successful Teamwork
No matter the differences between these teams or their companies or the challenges they encounter, several ideas emerged that are applicable to almost any situation:
Be inclusive. Green team leaders stressed that involving stakeholders who may be directly affected by green initiatives (e.g. facilities or purchasing) in the early planning phases is very important for success of any initiative.
Choose projects wisely. It's important to tackle projects that are most impactful and whose success can be quantitatively measured.
Make green goals part of the job. Participating in Green Team efforts is often an opportunity for the employee to develop and enhance leadership and teamwork skills. Having Green Team goals written into team member's quarterly goals will help support the employee in their development process.
Bigger is better for green teams. Since teams are mostly voluntary and time availability will vary with members depending on what work projects are going on, engaging a wider network of people to do activities is a key factor in keeping the momentum going.
Make sure communication channels are appropriate. As teams grow in size, email distribution lists may become unmanageable and teams should consider using other communication technologies such as blogs, digital dashboards, wikis and other tech tools to share information.
Small-scale focus can lead to more productivity. Having a single group when your company is dispersed nationally or internationally is unwieldy. Local issues will vary (for instance, water conservation for the Southwest) and different countries will have different practices. It's good to have local teams for each region and then an overarching team structure that unites local teams together for company wide initiatives.
Making it fun works to engage people in green team initiatives. Among the successful goals some teams have used to energize their companies include: Giving away fun incentives like CFL bulbs, free mugs, or gift certificates is an effective way to recruit new members and keep the energy fun amongst existing members; Sustainability Movie Nights; Funky Mug Contests; Office competitions to spur impact, for instance measuring how much each project team is actually recycling vs. throwing away trash with a free BBQ party reward for the winning team.
Green Teams: A New Twist on an Old Idea
Harnessing the creativity of employees to learn through sharing and collaboratively developing best practices is not a new practice among corporations: One of the most successful results from tapping employee ideas is Toyota, who follows the Kaizen Ideas Generation process.
As part of the Kaizen process, managers and supervisors encourage and even require employees to come up with ideas for improvement and then work to finesse and implement most of the ideas. Since the mid-1970s, Toyota plants worldwide have averaged some 20 to 30 ideas per employee per year, of which more than 80 percent were implemented. This has contributed greatly to Toyota's success as an innovative car company.
An article from the April 2008 issue of Entrepreneur magazine urges companies to "make your employees part of the solution by tapping them for environmentally friendly ideas.” Green Teams are an excellent vehicle for companies to tap into employees' passion and creativity and harvest innovation.
Here are some resources for starting and evolving your company's green team efforts:
KansasGreenTeams.org
Portland, Oregon's guide to setting up a recycling program for your business.
What Makes a Green Team Thrive, a presentation from the Sustainable Silicon Valley Educational Forum.
Incorporating Sustainability into Corporate Culture, an article by Leo Pierre Roy.
And case study presentations of all three of the companies profiled here are posted online at the Sustainable Silicon Valley website.
Quynh Nguyen started Adobe's Sustainability Catalyst employee group and is a student at the Presidio School of Management Sustainable MBA program.
http://greenbiz.com/feature/2008/06/08/corporate-green-teams-sustainable-business-bottom-up |
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NYPA Announces Pivotal Step To Provide Clean Renewable Power For Rebuilt World Trade Center
June 12, 2008 |
White Plains, NY - The New York Power Authority (NYPA) recently announced that it has reached an agreement that will make the redeveloped World Trade Center the site of one of the largest fuel cell installations in the world.
The agreement, valued at $10.6M, was reached with UTC Power of South Windsor, Conn., for equipment purchases to provide heat and power for the new towers.
The fuel cells, totaling 4.8 megawatts (mw) of generating capacity, will provide an on-site supplement to the renewable power and other clean energy the rebuilt World Trade Center will receive via power lines from off-site sources. Together with design measures to minimize energy use, the "green" power arrangements will make the Freedom Tower and three other towers that are part of the Trade Center a model for environmentally friendly energy and for energy efficiency. The Freedom Tower is being developed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the other towers by Silverstein Properties.
"One of the most important building projects in the nation will be equipped with space-age energy technology that uses an electrochemical process to produce clean on-site power," Gov. David A. Paterson said. "The fuel cells and other measures will help make the new World Trade Center towers an exemplar of environmental sustainability and will signal to the world New York State's commitment to greater energy security and reduced dependence on foreign oil. I can think of few sites in the country where the symbolism of this is more important."
"We are committed to helping make clean energy initiatives at the new World Trade Center site a reality," said Roger B. Kelley, NYPA president and chief executive officer. "Fuel cells are one of the environmentally beneficial technologies that the
Power Authority is investing in under Governor Paterson's leadership to combat greenhouse gas emissions and diversify the state's energy mix. To date, we've installed 15 fuel cells in New York City and other locations, and expect to add to this total in support of the Governor's ambitious goals for significant increases in the state's renewable power."
Fuel cells generate electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen in a chemical reaction.
They require few moving parts, making them a quiet, reliable and safe source of power suitable for around-the-clock operation.
The buildings at the World Trade Center site will also benefit from wind power-purchase agreements that NYPA reached in late 2006 with two renewable power developers in upstate New York on behalf of various governmental customers in New York City. They include the Port Authority, which is responsible for building several projects at the World Trade Center site, including the Freedom Tower and Tower 5.
"With construction and real estate accounting for more than half of the region's carbon footprint, making our buildings green is one of the most important steps we can take to preserve our environment—a message we're driving home at every stage of the World Trade Center project," said Christopher Ward, executive director of the Port Authority.
UTC Power, a unit of United Technologies Corp., was the successful bidder among the qualified firms responding to a Request for Proposals that NYPA issued in October 2007 for four 1.2 mw fuel-cell systems for the World Trade Center. (One megawatt is enough power to serve approximately 800 to 1,000 homes.)
The first of the fuel cells will be delivered to the Freedom Tower in January 2009. It will be owned and operated by the Port Authority, the owner of the building. The fuel cells at the three towers being developed by Silverstein Properties, at 150, 175 and 200 Greenwich St., will be owned and operated by World Trade Center Properties, LLC, an affiliate.
"When 7 World Trade Center opened in 2006, it was the first office tower in city history to achieve official LEED certification as a green building," said Larry A. Silverstein, president and CEO of Silverstein Properties, citing the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Program. "We vowed then that each successive World Trade Center tower would also be cutting edge in terms of environmental sustainable design, construction and operation. More broadly, however, these buildings will be part of a new downtown neighborhood that is fast becoming the greenest community in the city with both commercial and residential buildings that are sustainable, as well as new parks and waterfront access, and generous open spaces."
The Port Authority will receive financing for the Freedom Tower fuel cell from NYPA's energy services program for governmental customers, with the Power Authority recovering its costs over a period of up to 20 years. Funding for the fuel cells slated for 150, 175 and 200 Greenwich will come from the Lower Manhattan Energy Independence Initiative established by the State of New York.
New York's Renewable Portfolio Standard Program seeks to increase to 25 percent the amount of the state's total electricity generated from renewable technologies such as fuel cells by 2013. This is part of a broad range of efforts under Governor Paterson to bring about transformative changes in the state's energy supplies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance fuel diversity and energy security and create new industries and jobs.
SOURCE: NYPA
http://www.electricnet.com/article.mvc/NYPA-Announces-Pivotal-Step-To-Provide-Clean-0001?VNETCOOKIE=NO |
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New Zealand seeks to curb livestock's gas emissions
By Paul Watson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 8, 2008
Herd-produced methane, considered a major culprit in global warming, poses a challenge as the nation tries to become the world's first carbon-neutral country.
WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND --
Over thousands of years of evolution, sheep, cattle and other cud chewers developed a nasty habit. They burp and break wind a lot.
That gives New Zealand a distressing gas problem.
The country's 4 million people share two islands in the South Pacific with 40 million sheep, 9 million beef and dairy cattle and more than a million farmed deer, all producing the methane that many climate scientists say is one of the worst culprits behind global warming.
It may be a small country on the edge of the world, but New Zealand has big ambitions in the fight against climate change. Last year, Prime Minister Helen Clark set a national goal of becoming the world's first carbon-neutral country.
Livestock farmers, long among the country's major export earners, are worried. They say the cost of fighting greenhouse gases could drive many of them into bankruptcy, and they feel they're being singled out because New Zealand has relatively few big industrial polluters.
"There's no other country in the world that's so clean of chimney stacks that its animals are the biggest polluters," said farmer Charlie Pedersen. "It's kind of an ironic situation."
He owns an organic farm with 9,000 head of cattle and sheep in the seaside community of Foxton, 60 miles northeast of Wellington, New Zealand's capital. It's a quiet place of wind-swept sand dunes and an authentic Dutch windmill that's easily missed sitting next to Highway 1, the two-lane road linking Wellington with New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland.
But as president of the Federated Farmers of New Zealand, Pedersen speaks for the owners of 14,000 farms, roughly two-thirds of the country's total, and his voice carries into the corridors of power.
Five years ago, farmers revolted to defeat a plan to levy a tax on each head of cattle, sheep, goat and deer to fund research on controlling their gas emissions. The anger is building again, this time against a proposal to make the farmers the world's first forced to pay if they exceed government-imposed limits on greenhouse gases.
If it goes ahead, the plan could slash New Zealand farmers' profits by half over the next five years, driving big exporters out of business in the middle of a global food crisis, Pedersen warned.
"We're going to put our system under those costs with no opportunity to get any more from the market for our food," he said. "The consumer tends to be -- I'll reluctantly say this -- a little bit of a hypocrite.
"They want food to have all sorts of fine attributes as far as animal welfare, and to be as sustainable as possible with minimal or no effect on the environment in which it's produced. But they also rely on the supermarket to bid the price down as much as possible, and give the food producer as little return as possible."
Livestock produce an estimated 20% of the world's methane output, which also comes from landfill sites, coal mining, rice paddies and other sources. Methane and the even more potent nitrous oxide make up about half the greenhouse gases that New Zealand adds to Earth's air.
Most of it rises from bucolic pastures where the country's iconic sheep and cattle graze, chewing, regurgitating and chewing again, and pumping out methane -- the bulk of it in their belches.
A team of New Zealand scientists, backed by millions of dollars from the farm industry and the government, are conducting world-leading research into possible solutions, including genetic engineering, cloning and a vaccine for gassy animals.
"Given that we're trying to turn around hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, it's no small challenge," said Mark Aspin, manager of the Pastoral Greenhouse Gas Research Consortium, which is jointly funded by the farming industry and the government.
As the world debates how to limit suspected man-made causes of climate change, carbon dioxide is getting most of the attention. It's the most abundant greenhouse gas, spewed from vehicle exhaust, coal-fired power plants and other industrial sources.
But methane and nitrous oxide, which is produced as bacteria feed on grazing animals' dung and urine, come in a significant second. Methane is about 23 times more powerful by weight in warming the atmosphere than is carbon dioxide, and nitrous oxide is 310 times more potent.
Together, they make up almost a third of greenhouse gases contributed by human activities since preindustrial times, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the scientific body set up the by the United Nations to provide information on global warming.
If the 25 full-time researchers in Aspin's labs discover the secret to making livestock less belchy and flatulent, they could help make billions of farm animals around the world more environmentally friendly.
Cud-chewing farm animals produce a lot of methane because their food passes through a first stomach, called the rumen, where it ferments in a soup of saliva, bacteria and other microbes. Those bugs break down the food for digestion.
New Zealand researchers are looking for ways to inhibit or eliminate a group of microbes called methanogens, which transform rumen gases into methane. They're also studying the animals' diet to see whether low-fiber, high-sugar substitutes will help the climate.
Farm animals fed plants higher in tannin produce less methane, but such food costs more.
Some scientists have seen promise in feed additives, such as a kind of yeast or garlic, which doesn't help animals grazing in pastures much.
Breeding may hold the solution, because not all sheep and cattle are created equal. Some are high methane emitters, others low. If that's an inheritable trait, then genetic engineering could rid the world of gassy livestock.
Aspin's researchers are under new pressure to find the answers. Clark's government is the world's first to propose that farmers be included in a plan that encourages greenhouse gas reductions by setting emission limits and forcing producers to buy credits on the open market if they exceed them.
Farmers could go bankrupt buying carbon credits so their livestock can keep doing what comes naturally, Pedersen warned.
In the fight against global warming, farmers are unarmed, and it's up to scientists to give them the weapons they need, Aspin said.
"There's a very strong ethos in New Zealand farmers," he added. "They do feel like they are stewards of the land. We're only here for a short time, so we have to leave it in a better state than we found it."
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Paving the way for greener asphalt
Posted by Elsa Wenzel
Most efforts to "green" transportation focus on car technology, but roads can also be revamped to reduce carbon emissions. A national effort to improve millions of miles of highways and streets seeks to make asphalt more eco-friendly and less expensive.
The Asphalt Research Consortium aims to increase the use of recycled materials and improve energy efficiency of asphalt, which makes up more than 90 percent of U.S. roads.
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Sand and other binder materials are being explored to make asphalt at the Modified Asphalt Research Center (MARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
(Credit: Jeff Miller/University of Wisconsin-Madison)
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"It has been a challenge to get the industry to look at this seriously just because our pavements have been performing relatively well and there have not been many complaints about failures," said Hussain Bahia, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which is using $5 million for the studies.
The research project includes five institutions and is backed by the Federal Highway Administration. Increasing costs of energy and materials are driving up interest.
Until recently, asphalt has been relatively cheap to make in the United States. But the price of paving and repairing roads is rising along with that of gasoline. Asphalt costs of $568 per ton have risen from $315 last May, according to the California Department of Transportation.
Asphalt is a byproduct of the process of refining crude oil for fuel and lubricants. To prepare the gooey substance for application on roadways, Americans and Europeans may heat asphalt up to 300 degrees Fahrenheit, creating hefty emissions of greenhouse gases.
Less-wealthy nations including South Africa and India have many years of headway in using so-called cold or warm mixes of asphalt, which require less heat and energy.
South Africans shave asphalt into smaller bits and mix it in water and soap-like surfactants, which don't harden until after being laid on the road.
Bahia is interested in exploring modified, cold mix asphalts that might use plastics to achieve a longer-lasting, quieter, and safer end result.
And cold mixes also can use more recycled materials. Asphalt is the most frequently recycled material in the nation, according to the industry. Still, recycled asphalt contains only about about 15 percent reused materials, which Bahia wants to help expand.
"My best hope is to get the paving industry to recognize that they can save tremendous amounts of energy and impact on the environment by using different ideas in building our roads," Bahia said.
Porous asphalt, used on Italian toll roads, is also considered more eco-friendly because it allows rainwater to seep into the ground and reduces noise. And it helps to reduce skidding and accidents. Bahia said cold mix, porous asphalt might be a possibility to explore.
In the remaining four years of the U.S. asphalt project, Bahia said he hopes cold mixes from the labs will be good enough for the asphalt industry to test in the field. Down the road, getting approval for any new material from state highway agencies will be another challenge.
Also involved in the Asphalt Research Consortium are the Western Research Institute, Advanced Asphalt Technologies, Texas A&M University, and the University of Nevada at Reno.
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Quote of the week |
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"If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age."
Jacques Barzun
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