welcome

The annual UN climate change conference ended shortly before 3:00 am today in Poznan with a commitment from governments to shift into full negotiating mode next year in order to shape a effective international response to climate change, to be agreed in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.

Negotiators agreed that the board of the Kyoto Protocol's Adaptation Fund would have the legal capacity to grant developing countries direct access to about $60 million to help them adapt to the effects of global warming.

Until now, the Adaptation Fund board could not operate because it was not allowed to approve and sign such contracts.

Yvo de Boer, left, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, listens to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

The Adaptation Fund is fed by voluntary contributions and a two percent share of proceeds from the protocol's Clean Development Mechanism. The CDM allows the industrial nations governed by the protocol to receive credit towards their emissions limits by investing in green projects in developing countries.

But governments were unable to reach consensus on scaling up funding for adaptation by agreeing to put a levy on the other two Kyoto Protocol mechanisms, Joint Implementation and Emissions Trading.

Progress was made in the area of technology with the endorsement of the Global Environment Facility's "Poznan Strategic Programme on Technology Transfer."

The aim of this program is to scale up the level of investment by leveraging private investments that developing countries need for climate mitigation and adaptation technologies.

"We will now move to the next level of negotiations, which involves crafting a concrete negotiating text for the agreed outcome," said the president of the conference, Polish Environment Minister Maciej Nowicki.

Parties agreed that a first draft of the negotiating text would be available at a gathering of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn in June 2009.

"In addition to having agreed the work program for next year, we have cleared the decks of many technical issues," Nowicki said. "Poznan is the place where the partnership between the developing and developed world to fight climate change has shifted beyond rhetoric and turned into real action," he said.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon listens to Polish President Lech Kacynski (Photo courtesy ENB)

Polish President Lech Kacynski emphasized the need to alleviate poverty and address climate change, and highlighted the EU's leading role in combating climate change as one of the best expressions of solidarity.

Governments meeting under the Kyoto Protocol agreed that commitments of industrialized countries after 2012 should take the form of quantified emission limitation and reduction targets, similar to the type of targets they have undertaken during first five-year commitment period 2008 - 2012.

"Governments have sent a strong political signal that despite the financial and economic crisis, significant funds can be mobilized for both mitigation and adaptation in developing countries with the help of a clever financial architecture and the institutions to deliver the financial support," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC.

"We now have a much clearer sense of where we need to go in designing an outcome which will spell out the commitments of developed countries, the financial support required and the institutions that will deliver that support as part of the Copenhagen outcome," he said.

Addressing the ministers on Thursday, de Boer warned that there are already "clear signs of urgency."

"Mauritania is already in the grip of a triple stranglehold: a growing desert, encroaching ocean and worsening floods," he said. "The Maldives are saving up for exodus because of rising seas."

De Boer pointed with hope to commitments that have been made on a national level to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions driving global warming.

"President-elect [Barack] Obama wants to return to 1990 levels by 2020. The EU is assuring us that it will stick to minus 20 percent by 2020. And there is more. By 2020, Norway intends to be at minus 30 percent, the United Kingdom has committed to minus 26 percent and Sweden is discussing a target of minus 35 percent," he said.

Regardless of a financial crisis or an economic down-turn, climate change will not slow down, said de Boer. "And when the world has recovered from the economic recession, it will not have recovered from climate change."

De Boer suggests that governments should aim for, "A self-financing climate compact, using resources created through climate regulations, for example through levies on emissions trading or auctioning of emissions permits can further push that green growth."

A joint ministerial declaration was launched in Poznan today to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation. The statement commits a number of developed and key tropical developing countries to take early action to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, a process known as REDD, in the developing world.

Drawn up at the initiative of the United Kingdom, the declaration sets out what both rainforest countries and the international community should be working towards in order to protect tropical forests.

"Tropical deforestation is a major source of the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global warming, so action on this is essential under the global climate agreement which the international community must conclude at the end of next year," said European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas who endorsed the declaration.

"The European Commission has proposed the creation of an international financial mechanism to reward developing countries for their efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation," Dimas said.

Al Gore addresses delegates at Poznan. (Photo courtesy ENB)

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, who shared last year's Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness of climate change, urged the conference to stay focused on reducing the global carbon emissions that have already begun to change the conditions of life on Earth.

Gore warned the ministers to strengthen their carbon emission reduction targets to take account of growing evidence that global warming will strike harder and sooner than scientists had previously thought.

He called for a new global goal of limiting carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm) - current levels are already over 380ppm, up from 280ppm before the Industrial Revolution.

"I call on the people of the world to speak up more forcefully," Gore said. "We need to focus clearly and unblinkingly on this crisis rather than spending so much time on OJ Simpson, Paris Hilton and Anna Nicole Smith."

This challenge "affects the survival of human civilization," Gore said.

"We cannot negotiate with the facts, we cannot negotiate with the truth about our situation, we cannot negotiate with the consequences of unrestrained dumping of 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet every 24 hours," he said.

While he was not in Poznan, the election of Barack Obama as president of the United States brought hope that the U.S. position of denial and delay over the past eight years of the Bush administraton would soon give way to greater cooperation from the world's second largest greenhouse gas emitter.

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said, "My representatives in Poland tell me that there is a new commitment to address the challenge of global warming after the U.S. election. This is very positive for the future of the planet and an opportunity to spur economic recovery with the investment in clean energy and green jobs."

Addressing the ministers gathered for the start of the high-level session on Thursday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for renewed global solidarity to tackle the twin challenges of climate change and the financial crisis.

The world cannot afford to let economic woes hinder progress on "the defining challenge of our era," said Ban. "The world is watching us. The next generation is counting on us. We must not fail."

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

European leaders today agreed to hold fast to their plan to battle climate change through growth in renewable energy sources and 20 percent cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, and on ways to share the costs.

The plan includes concessions to heavy industry and to countries in Eastern Europe concerned that the cost of curbing greenhouse gas emissions would also curb their economic growth.

"This is really historic," French President Nicolas Sarkozy, holder of the EU's rotating presidency, said at the conclusion of the two-day Council meeting in Brussels. "There's not one continent that has rules as strict as we're adopting."

French President Nicholas Sarkozy announces the outcome of the European Council meeting. (Photo courtesy French Presidency)

Sarkozy said the decisive breakthrough will allow the European Union to honor its ambitious commitments and retain its leading role in seeking a global agreement at the World Climate Conference that will be held in Copenhagen next year.

EU leaders delayed plans to end after 2012 the free allocation of emissions allowances on which carbon dioxide quotas are based. Instead, the European Council agreed on a compromise setting the auctioning rate to be reached in 2013 at 20 percent.

By 2020 the auctioning rate is set at 70 percent, with a view to reaching 100 percent in 2027, the Council agreed. The agreement should be able to be finalized with the European Parliament by the end of the year.

The leaders of the 27 EU member states said today in a declaration, "The European Council underlines the vital importance of achieving the strategic objective of limiting the global average temperature increase to not more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. It stresses the need for decisive and immediate action, in order for the challenges of climate change to be tackled effectively. International collective action will be critical in driving an effective, efficient and equitable response in the scale required to face climate change challenges."

"In this context, agreement on the energy-climate package is a major contribution to safeguard the future of our planet, strengthening the European leading role in the fight against climate change," the leaders declared.

Half of the revenues generated from the auctioning of allowances in the EU greenhouse gas emissions trading system will be used to reduce emissions, mitigate and adapt to climate change, and for measures to avoid deforestation, to develop renewable energies, energy efficiency and other technologies to move towards a safe and sustainable low-carbon economy, the leaders agreed.

"In the context of an international agreement on climate change in Copenhagen in 2009, and for those who wish so, part of this amount will be used to enable and finance actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change in developing countries that will have ratified this agreement, in particular in least developed countries," they said.

"The EU climate and energy package will contribute to EU efforts to provide finance for actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change, in particular through the carbon market in the context of a wider international agreement," they stated.

In Poznan, Poland, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Yvo de Boer welcomed the news that the European Union member states reached an agreement on climate change.

"The European Union's climate deal sends a clear message to the negotiations in Poznan and onwards to Copenhagen that difficult roadblocks can be overcome and resolved," he said.

"This is a sign of developed countries' resolve and courage that the world has been waiting for in Poznan," de Boer said.

"It shows the world that ambitious emission reduction goals by 2020 are in line with moving economic recovery in a green direction. This will contribute to propelling the world towards a strong, ambitious and ratifiable outcome in Copenhagen in 2009," he said.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

President-elect Barack Obama signaled that he is ready to tackle the climate crisis immediately upon taking office, following a meeting Tuesday with former Vice President Al Gore and Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

"All three of us are in agreement that the time for delay is over, the time for denial is over," Obama said.

The three men met at the Transition's Chicago headquarters to discuss energy and climate policy - and how addressing those issues can drive the nation's economic recovery.

"This is a matter of urgency and national security," Obama said. "It is not only a problem, it is also an opportunity."

From left, Vice president-elect Joseph Biden, President-elect Barack Obama, former Vice President Al Gore at Transition headquarters. December 9, 2008 (Photo courtesy Obama Transition Team)

"We have the opportunity now to create jobs all across this country in all 50 states to repower America," said Obama, "to redesign how we use energy and think about how we are increasing efficiency to make our economy stronger, make us more safe, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and make us competitive for decades to come - even as we save the planet."

Obama's "repower America" comment Tuesday is an echo of Gore's plan, made public in July, to Repower America with 100 percent clean electricity within 10 years.

The plan to Repower America outlines immediate investments in three areas: energy efficiency, renewable generation and transmission.

Energy Efficiency: A national upgrade to eliminate waste, save money, and improve comfort. Make every bit of energy we produce work harder for us.

Renewable Generation: Accelerate the ramp-up of clean, renewable electricity sources through policies that support increased private and public investment in technologies that work, like wind, solar, and geothermal.

Unified National Smart Grid: Modernize transmission infrastructure so that clean electricity generated anywhere in America can power homes and businesses across the nation. National electricity ‘interstates’ that move power quickly and cheaply to where it needs to be; local smart grids that buy and sell power from households and support clean plug-in cars.

The president-elect and the former vice president appear to be in accord on the urgent need to address global warming after eight years of denial, delay and neglect during the Bush administration. Obama is taking advice from Gore, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for his work to publicize the dangers of global warming through his Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."

In November, the We Can Solve It campaign mounted by Gore's nonprofit Alliance for Climate Protection launched an advertising and grassroots effort to support the president-elect as he enacts policies to revitalize the American economy and help solve the climate crisis.

Obama is not waiting until he takes office to go green. His will be the first eco-friendly inaugural celebration in American history.

Event Emissary, a DC-based event planning company, announced today that it will host the Green Ball to kick off the Obama Inaugural on January 17, 2009 at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium. www.greeninauguralball.com

Co-founder Jenna Mack explains, " With millions of visitors headed to Washington for President-elect Obama's swearing in ceremony and accompanying celebrations, the impact on our environment will be substantial. Our goal is to create an unforgettable evening while treading lightly on the Earth."

Every facet of The Green Ball is designed to reduce the impact on the environment. Catering will be 100 percent organic and include both vegetarian and vegan options. The bars will feature local and organic beverages. Food waste and floral arrangements will be composted and bottles will be recycled.

Decorative lighting will focus on the use of LED Color Blasts that utilize a fraction of the power compared to more traditional lighting sources. Entertainment audio-visual production will be tailored to minimize environmental impact, using only the most efficient lighting and equipment.

"That which cannot be reduced will be offset," says Mack. "Energy usage will be measured closely and offset through the purchase of wind power credits. Transportation for deliveries to the event, as well as vendor and staff transportation will be offset through the purchase of carbon credits."

Event Emissary Co-founder Stephanie Campbell said, "While one green event is a step in the right direction, our goal is to bring attention to this issue while the Presidential Inaugural Committee and many other groups are still early in their planning. We hope to set an example to other organizations and encourage them to green their events, as well."

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

PARIS, Dec. 8, 2008 (AFP) -- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told U.N. delegates locked in climate talks Monday that the world economic crisis should not slow down the fight against global warming.

"There are some people who say that we can't afford the fight against global warming while our economies are down, but the exact opposite is true," he told some 10,000 delegates in Poznan, Poland in a video message.

"The green rules and regulations that will help save our planet will also revive our economies," he said.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is charged with hammering out for a new global climate pact by the end of next year.

"There is far more economic risk in the status quo -- wasting energy, burning fossil fuels and destroying forests -- than there is in fighting climate change by developing clean, renewable energy and saving forests," the governor said.

Schwarzenegger announced he would attend the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen next December, the deadline set for reaching a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, whose provisions expire in 2012.

"States and provinces have long been at the forefront of developing green technologies and protecting our economy so that they are setting great examples for our federal counterparts," he said.

Thirty-two other U.S. states had already forged their own plans to reduce the greenhouse gases that drive global warming.

If it were a country California would be the world's fifth largest economy and 12th biggest emitter of carbon dioxide.

Though a Republican, like President George W. Bush, Schwarzenegger has aggressively sought to implement measures in the spirit of the Kyoto Protocol that Bush rejected shortly after taking office.

This week, California is finalising work on climate legislation aimed at cutting state emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 -- the same goal targeted by the European Union.

Copyright 2008 -- Agence France-Presse

As climate change and greenhouse gas emissions move to the forefront of corporate awareness, leading U.S. businesses are starting to tie the non-financial performance of their companies to their compensation metrics, according to a 2008 study of S&P 500 companies.

Data found in the Carbon Disclosures Project (CDP) Report 2008 on the S&P 500, which asked companies on that index to report and measure their greenhouse gas emissions, shows that 93 of 321 respondents -- or nearly 29 percent -- have begun building environmental responsibility and climate awareness into executive incentives.

One of those companies is Xcel Energy Corp., an electricity and natural gas company serving more than 5 million customers in Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas and Wisconsin.

Xcel "believes strongly in providing long-term incentive opportunities that deliver awards upon the achievement of specific performance goals linked to the success of the company and its long-term strategy in the core utility business," said Xcel Spokeswoman Patti Nystuen. "These include financial and environmental goals."

Seventy-five percent of Xcel's award incentives have a performance-based vesting schedule based on earnings per share growth. The remaining 25 percent of Xcel's awarded incentives are performance-based, relating to their environmental strategy, such as decreases in emissions.

"In 2007, payouts of annual incentive awards for the NEOs (Named Executive Officers) and all executive officers, including those reporting to the CEO, were determined entirely by attainment of corporate goals, which included targeted earnings per share, an environmental metric related to carbon dioxide emissions, and safety," Nystuen said.

Nissan's Companywide CO2 Program

• Carbon dioxide emission targets are added into each department’s annual business plan at Nissan.  Each middle manager’s salary the following year is pegged to the how well the targets are met. • Program directors, whose job it involves maximize the profitability of each vehicle model, must also meet CO2 emission targets. In this way, Nissan looks to meet both profitability goals and CO2 targets. • Beyond management, Nissan singles out employees throughout the company who make outstanding efforts to meet commitment targets • Nissan also rewards suppliers and communities who work to reduce CO2 and develop innovative technologies with the Global Quality Award and the Global Innovation Award.

Xcel measures emissions intensity by the amount of emissions per megawatt hour for certain emissions including nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide. Their emissions reduction targets are 2 pounds per megawatt hour (lbs/MWh) for nitrogen oxide, 2.9 lbs/MWh for sulfur dioxide, and 1,379 lbs/MWh for carbon dioxide. Performance against these environmental targets is measured annually at the end of each fiscal year.

Driving Green Incentives

The Carbon Disclosure Project's Global 500 2008 Report (which sends questionnaires to the 500 largest global companies) notes that half of the responding companies in the utilities sector have incentives for managers tied to meeting environmental goals.

The CDP's Global 500 Report further states that the utilities sector has the highest number of respondents that incorporate meeting carbon targets with management remuneration. The report proposes that "this partly reflects the fact that improved efficiency leads to direct financial savings for the company as well as having a beneficial impact on emissions."

There are a number of reasons why companies have started to link incentives to meeting environmental targets, specifically CO2 reduction. Investors increasingly see climate change as a material issue for companies and require information on corporate strategy and understanding of risk and opportunity associated with climate change to inform their investment decisions.

"First, measurable reductions in carbon footprint are increasingly part of performance evaluations as companies recognize a cost of carbon in their businesses," said Neil Braun, CEO the CarbonNeutral Company. "Second, some companies have successfully differentiated their products and services through environmental performance that grows the top line, which is reflected in performance evaluations."

The CarbonNeutral Company has worked with nearly 200 carbon-offset projects across six continents and with more than 300 corporate clients.

"Our clients report substantial economic savings achieved by putting a real cost of carbon on the P/L and assigning specific reduction targets to line management," said Braun.  "Many of our clients also report significant top line growth driven by product and service differentiation through an integrated carbon reduction plan. "

Executives in the U.S. are also going to have to respond to coming regulatory changes regarding CO2 reductions.

"There is also an increase in regulatory systems -- in the U.K., Australia and likely to be in the USA under the new administration," said Joanna Lee, CDP spokeswoman. "As a result, increased numbers of companies will be required to measure and report their emissions. Barack Obama has indicated his support for a cap-and-trade system both during his campaign and following his election and we anticipate there will be a USA federal scheme."

Braun agreed.

"There is both a quantifiable cost of carbon and a quantifiable benefit of being carbon neutral so there will be increased carbon budgeting in the U.S.," Braun said. "All signs are that one way or another there will be legislation that imposes a cost of carbon, and the reality is that, even without a regulatory cost of carbon, business travel, electricity and manufacturing processes can be made more efficient by applying a carbon budgeting discipline. And, as U.S. businesses see European case studies of top line growth achieved through a well-integrated carbon management strategy, there will be growing interest on the revenue side too."
Which Way Will They Go?

The current financial crisis seems to be pushing companies in two apparently contradictory directions. Some shareholders are demanding both increased transparency regarding corporate governance and executive compensation, as well as increased corporate responsibility for reducing carbon footprints. At the same time, companies are working to turn any profit at all.

Making a profit and reducing CO2 emissions, however, are not inherently at odds with each other.

"The current financial crisis is going to bring increased focus to corporate governance issues, including the linkage between executive pay and performance," Braun said. "The impact of climate change on business, the legal risk resulting from emissions, and the economic risks and rewards relating to effective carbon management are going to increasingly be on the agenda of corporate boards."

Yet one executive pay expert, Jesse Fried, a University of California law professor and co-author of "Pay without Performance: the Unfulfilled Promise of Executive Compensation," suggests that pay for CEOs and other executives should stay focused on their fiduciary duties.

"I think that pay should be tied to long-term shareholder value, not Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance," Fried explained. "For-profit corporations are created by shareholders to serve their financial interests. The problem in publicly traded for-profit corporations is that the boards and managers appointed by shareholders often seek to serve their own interests rather than shareholders'".

Fried suggested instead working to align managers' interests with those of shareholders while also acknowledging that all citizens have a stake in corporations' environmental conduct.  

"But these concerns are best addressed through regulations of all businesses and non-profit organizations," Fried said. "Trying to use pay arrangements in publicly traded for-profit corporations to address environmental concerns seems overly narrow  -- why just these corporations? -- and can potentially increase agency costs to the extent managers use environmental performance to justify higher pay even when they do a poor job for shareholders."

Anne Moore Odell is a freelance writer based in Brattleboro, Vt.

By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Add another economic worry to inflation and deflation: ecoflation, the rising cost of doing business in a world with a changing climate.

Ecoflation could hit consumer goods hard in the next five to 10 years, according to a report by World Resources Institute and A.T. Kearney, a global management consulting firm.

Companies that make fast-moving consumer goods, everything from cereal to shampoo, could see earnings drop by 13 percent to 31 percent by 2013 and 19 percent to 47 percent by 2018 if they do not adopt sustainable environmental practices, the report said.

The costs of global warming are showing up now in the form of worse heat waves, droughts, wildfires and possibly more severe tropical storms but they are not yet reflected in consumer prices, said the institute's Andrew Aulisi after the report's December 2 release.

Instead, these costs are paid by governments and society, Aulisi said in a telephone interview. That could change if President-elect Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress push for a system that puts a price on the emission of climate-warming carbon dioxide, Aulisi said.

This is unlikely to happen next year in time for a December 2009 deadline to craft an international pact to fight climate change but it is more likely to happen in 2010.

These rising costs and possible tightening regulation of greenhouse gas emissions are not necessarily a bad thing, he said.

"The message we don't see in this study is that regulation is going to cost ... a lot of money," Aulisi said. "We think the analysis is a catalyst to convince companies to take greater action on these important issues."

LESS PLASTIC

In fact, some companies are already looking at ways to cut their emissions in advance of any new regulation, said Daniel Mahler of A.T. Kearney.

One example is consumer giant Procter & Gamble, which has a team looking across the company's varied laundry, hair-care and health-care businesses to see how they can use less plastic, a fossil-based material, Mahler said by telephone.

But the changes may need to go deeper and wider, he said, spreading to the basics of how supply chains are managed.

For instance, companies that presumed U.S. transportation costs would be low and U.S. labor costs would be high had their goods made in countries where employees would work for less. But a new cost to the carbon emitted by long-distance transport could change that equation, making foreign manufacturing less attractive, Mahler said.

Within the United States, there could be a move away from big, centralized manufacturing plants to smaller, more widely dispersed ones, according to Mahler.

"That is not a little tactical change," he said. "It is an infrastructure change that we see companies ... addressing much more aggressively than they had been in the past." 

Under the ecoflation scenario, the world's major economies are likely to set a price on carbon emissions of $50 a tonne, Aulisi said.

That is between five and 10 times the price of carbon being traded on voluntary markets in the United States now. There is no mandatory U.S. carbon market, though the first regional market will begin trading in January.

(Editing by Bill Trott)

Trash has crashed.

“We never saw this coming,” said Johnny Gold, an official of the Newark Group, at the company’s plant in Salem, Mass.

The economic downturn has decimated the market for recycled materials like cardboard, plastic, newspaper and metals. Across the country, this junk is accumulating by the ton in the yards and warehouses of recycling contractors, which are unable to find buyers or are unwilling to sell at rock-bottom prices.

Ordinarily the material would be turned into products like car parts, book covers and boxes for electronics. But with the slump in the scrap market, a trickle is starting to head for landfills instead of a second life.

“It’s awful,” said Briana Sternberg, education and outreach coordinator for Sedona Recycles, a nonprofit group in Arizona that recently stopped taking certain types of cardboard, like old cereal, rice and pasta boxes. There is no market for these, and the organization’s quarter-acre yard is already packed fence to fence.

“Either it goes to landfill or it begins to cost us money,” Ms. Sternberg said.

In West Virginia, an official of Kanawha County, which includes Charleston, the state capital, has called on residents to stockpile their own plastic and metals, which the county mostly stopped taking on Friday. In eastern Pennsylvania, the small town of Frackville recently suspended its recycling program when it became cheaper to dump than to recycle. In Montana, a recycler near Yellowstone National Park no longer takes anything but cardboard.

There are no signs yet of a nationwide abandonment of recycling programs. But industry executives say that after years of growth, the whole system is facing an abrupt slowdown.

Many large recyclers now say they are accumulating tons of material, either because they have contracts with big cities to continue to take the scrap or because they are banking on a price rebound in the next six months to a year.

“We’re warehousing it and warehousing it and warehousing it,” said Johnny Gold, senior vice president at the Newark Group, a company that has 13 recycling plants across the country. Mr. Gold said the industry had seen downturns before but not like this. “We never saw this coming.”

The precipitous drop in prices for recyclables makes the stock market’s performance seem almost enviable.

On the West Coast, for example, mixed paper is selling for $20 to $25 a ton, down from $105 in October, according to Official Board Markets, a newsletter that tracks paper prices. And recyclers say tin is worth about $5 a ton, down from $327 earlier this year. There is greater domestic demand for glass, so its price has not fallen as much.

This is a cyclical industry that has seen price swings before. The scrap market in general is closely tied to economic conditions because demand for some recyclables tracks closely with markets for new products. Cardboard, for instance, turns into the boxes that package electronics, rubber goes to shoe soles, and metal is made into auto parts.

One reason prices slid so rapidly this time is that demand from China, the biggest export market for recyclables from the United States, quickly dried up as the global economy slowed. China’s influence is so great that in recent years recyclables have been worth much less in areas of the United States that lack easy access to ports that can ship there.

The downturn offers some insight into the forces behind the recycling boom of recent years. Environmentally conscious consumers have been able to pat themselves on the back and feel good about sorting their recycling and putting it on the curb. But most recycling programs have been driven as much by raw economics as by activism.

Cities and their contractors made recycling easy in part because there was money to be made. Businesses, too — like grocery chains and other retailers — have profited by recycling thousands of tons of materials like cardboard each month.

But the drop in prices has made the profits shrink, or even disappear, undermining one rationale for recycling programs and their costly infrastructure.

“Before, you could be green by being greedy,” said Jim Wilcox, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. “Now you’ve really got to rely more on your notions of civic participation.”

The impact of the downturn on individual recycling efforts varies. Most cities are keeping their recycling programs, in some cases because they are required by law, but also because the economics, while they have soured, still favor recycling over landfills.

In New York City, for instance, the city is getting paid $10 for a ton of paper, down from $50 or more before October, but it has no plans to cease recycling, said Robert Lange, the city’s recycling director. In Boston, one of the hardest-hit markets, prices are down to $5 a ton, and the city expects it will soon have to pay to unload its paper. But city officials said that would still be better than paying $80 a ton to put it in a landfill.

Some small towns are refusing to recycle some material, particularly the less lucrative plastics and metals, and experts say more are likely to do so if the price slump persists.

Businesses and institutions face their own challenges and decisions. Harvard, for instance, sends mixed recyclables — including soda bottles and student newspapers — to a nearby recycling center that used to pay $10 a ton. In November, Harvard received two letters from the recycler, the first saying it would begin charging $10 a ton and the second saying the price had risen to $20.

“I haven’t checked my mail today, but I hope there isn’t another one in there,” said Rob Gogan, the recycling and waste manager for the university’s facilities division. He said he did not mind paying as long as the price was less than $87 a ton, the cost for trash disposal.

The collapse of the market is slowing the momentum of recycling overall, said Mark Arzoumanian, editor in chief of Official Board Markets. He said the problem would hurt individual recycling businesses, but also major retailers, like Wal-Mart Stores, that profit by selling refuse.

Mr. Arzoumanian said paper mills in China and the United States that had signed contracts requiring them to buy recycled paper were seeking wiggle room, invoking clauses that cover extraordinary circumstances. “They are declaring ‘force majeure,’ which is a phrase I’d never thought I’d hear in paper recycling,” he said.

Mr. Arzoumanian and others said mills were also starting to become pickier about what they take in, rejecting cardboard and other products that they say are “contaminated” by plastic ties or other material.

The situation has also been rough on junk poachers — people who made a profitable trade of picking off cardboard and other refuse from bins before the recycling trucks could get to it. Those poachers have shut their operations, said Michael Sangiacomo, chief executive of Norcal Waste Systems, a recycling and garbage company that serves Northern California.

“I knew it was really bad a few weeks ago when our guys showed up and the corrugated cardboard was still there,” he said. “People started calling, saying ‘You didn’t pick up our cardboard,’ and I said, ‘We haven’t picked up your cardboard for years.’ ”

The recycling slump has even provoked a protest of sorts. At Ruthlawn Elementary School in South Charleston, W.V., second-graders who began recycling at the school in September were told that the program might be discontinued. They chose to forgo recess and instead use the time to write letters to the governor and mayor, imploring them to keep recycling, Rachel Fisk, their teacher, said.

The students’ pleas seem to have been heard; the city plans to start trucking the recyclables to Kentucky.

“They were telling them, ‘We really don’t care what you say about the economy. If you don’t recycle, our planet will be dirty,’ ” Ms. Fisk said.

Operation

According to the second law of thermodynamics heat cannot spontaneously flow from a colder location to a hotter area; work is required to achieve this.Heat pumps differ in how they apply this work to move heat, but they can essentially be thought of as heat engines operating in reverse. A heat engine allows energy to flow from a hot 'source' to a cold heat 'sink', extracting a fraction of it as work in the process. Conversely, a heat pump requires work to move thermal energy from a cold source to a warmer heat sink.

Since the heat pump uses a certain amount of work to move the heat, the amount of energy deposited at the hot side is greater than the energy taken from the cold side by an amount equal to the work required. Conversely, for a heat engine, the amount of energy taken from the hot side is greater than the amount of energy deposited in the cold heat sink since some of the heat has been converted to work.

One common type of heat pump works by exploiting the physical properties of an evaporating and condensing fluid known as a refrigerant.

The working fluid, in its gaseous state, is pressurized and circulated through the system by a compressor. On the discharge side of the compressor, the now hot and highly pressurized gas is cooled in a heat exchanger, called a condenser, until it condenses into a high pressure, moderate temperature liquid. The condensed refrigerant then passes through a pressure-lowering device like an expansion valve, capillary tube, or possibly a work-extracting device such as a turbine. This device then passes the low pressure, (almost) liquid refrigerant to another heat exchanger, the evaporator where the refrigerant evaporates into a gas via heat absorption. The refrigerant then returns to the compressor and the cycle is repeated.

In such a system it is essential that the refrigerant reaches a sufficiently high temperature when it is compressed, since the second law of thermodynamics prevents heat from flowing from a cold fluid to a hot heat sink. Similarly, the fluid must reach a sufficiently low temperature when allowed to expand, or heat cannot flow from the cold region into the fluid. In particular, the pressure difference must be great enough for the fluid to condense at the hot side and still evaporate in the lower pressure region at the cold side. The greater the temperature difference, the greater the required pressure difference, and consequently more energy is needed to compress the fluid. Thus as with all heat pumps, the energy efficiency (amount of heat moved per unit of input work required) decreases with increasing temperature difference.

Due to the variations required in temperatures and pressures, many different refrigerants are available. Refrigerators, air conditioners, and some heating systems are common applications that use this technology.

In HVAC applications, a heat pump normally refers to a vapor-compression refrigeration device that includes a reversing valve and optimized heat exchangers so that the direction of heat flow may be reversed. The reversing valve switches the direction of refrigerant through the cycle and therefore the heat pump may deliver either heating or cooling to a building. In the cooler climates the default setting of the reversing valve is heating. The default setting in warmer climates is cooling. Because the two heat exchangers, the condenser and evaporator, must swap functions, they are optimized to perform adequately in both modes. As such, the efficiency of a reversible heat pump is typically slightly less than two separately-optimized machines.

In plumbing applications, a heat pump is sometimes used to heat or preheat water for swimming pools or domestic water heaters.

In somewhat rare applications, both the heat extraction and addition capabilities of a single heat pump can be useful, and typically results in very effective use of the input energy. For example, when an air cooling need can be matched to a water heating load, a single heat pump can serve two useful purposes. Unfortunately, these situations are rare because the demand profiles for heating and cooling are often significantly different.

Efficiency

When comparing the performance of heat pumps, it is best to avoid the word "efficiency" which has a very specific thermodynamic definition. The term coefficient of performance (COP) is used to describe the ratio of useful heat movement to work input. Most vapor-compression heat pumps utilize electrically powered motors for their work input. However, in most vehicle applications, shaft work, via their internal combustion engines, provide the needed work.

When used for heating a building on a mild day, a typical air-source heat pump has a COP of 3 - 4, whereas a typical electric resistance heater has a COP of 1.0. That is, one joule of electrical energy will cause a resistance heater to produce one joule of useful heat, while under ideal conditions, one joule of electrical energy can cause a heat pump to move much more than one joule of heat from a cooler place to a warmer place. Sometimes this is inappropriately expressed as an efficiency value greater than 100%, as in the statement, "XYZ brand heat pumps operate at up to 400% efficiency!" This is inaccurate, since the work does not make heat, but instead moves existing heat "upstream"; if the claim were true, this would be a perpetual-motion machine. The effective heating per watt of electric energy used can be up to 450% as much as resistance heating however, making this more an issue of semantics than science.

Note that when there is a wide temperature differential, e.g., when an air-source heat pump is used to heat a house on a very cold winter day, it takes more work to move the same amount of heat indoors than on a mild day. Ultimately, due to Carnot efficiency limits, the heat pump's performance will approach 1.0 as the outdoor-to-indoor temperature difference increases. This typically occurs around -18 °C (0 °F) outdoor temperature for air source heat pumps. Also, as the heat pump takes heat out of the air, some moisture in the outdoor air may condense and possibly freeze on the outdoor heat exchanger. The system must periodically melt this ice. In other words, when it is extremely cold outside, it is simpler, and wears the machine less, to heat using an electric-resistance heater than to strain an air-source heat pump. (Geothermal heat pumps are dependent upon the temperature underground, which is "mild" all year round. Their COP is therefore always in the range of 3.5-4.0).

In cooling mode a heat pump's operating performance is described as its energy efficiency ratio (EER) or seasonal energy efficiency ratio (SEER), and both measures have units of BTU/(h·W). A larger EER number indicates better performance. The manufacturer's literature should provide both a COP to describe performance in heating mode and an EER or SEER to describe performance in cooling mode. Actual performance varies, however, and depends on many factors such as installation, temperature differences, site elevation, and maintenance.

Heat pumps are more effective for heating than for cooling if the temperature difference is held equal. This is because the compressor's input energy is largely converted to useful heat when in heating mode, and is discharged along with the moved heat via the condenser. But for cooling, the condenser is normally outdoors, and the compressor's dissipated work is rejected rather than put to a useful purpose.

For the same reason, opening a food refrigerator or freezer heats up the kitchen rather than cooling it because its refrigeration cycle rejects heat to the indoor air. This heat includes the compressor's dissipated work as well as the heat removed from the inside of the appliance.

Heat sources

Most commonly, heat pumps draw heat from the air (outside or inside air) or from the ground (groundwater or soil) ^[6]. The heat drawn from the ground is in most cases stored solar heat, and it should not be confused with geothermal heat, though the latter will contribute in some small measure to all heat in the ground. Other heat sources include water; nearby streams and other natural water bodies have been used, and sometimes domestic waste water which is often warmer than the ambient temperature.

Types_of_heat_pumpsA number of sources have been used for the heat source for heating private and communal buildings ^[7]. The two main types of heat pumps are compression heat pumps and absorption heat pumps. Compression heat pumps always operate on mechanical energy (through electricity), while absorption heat pumps may also run on heat as an energy source (through electricity or burnable fuels). ^[8]

Air-source heat pumps

Air source heat pumps are relatively easy (and inexpensive) to install and have therefore historically been the most widely used heat pump type. However, they suffer limitations due to their use of the outside air as a heat source or sink. The higher temperature differential during periods of extreme cold or heat leads to a lower efficiency, as explained above. In mild weather, COP may be around 3.5, while at temperatures below around -5°C (23°F) an air-source heat pump's COP will drop below 2. The average COP over seasonal variation is typically 2.5-2.8,^[9] and high efficiency model in Japan over 6.0(2.8kW) written in the IPCC 4th Working Group III report chapter 6 ^[10].

Ground source heat pumps

Ground source heat pumps, which are also confusingly referred to as Geothermal heat pumps, typically have higher efficiencies than air-source heat pumps. This is because they draw heat from the ground or groundwater which is at a relatively constant temperature all year round below a depth of about eight feet (2.5 m). This means that the temperature differential is lower, leading to higher efficiency. Ground-source heat pumps typically have COPs of 3.5-4.0 at the beginning of the heating season, with lower COPs as heat is drawn from the ground. The tradeoff for this improved performance is that a ground-source heat pump is more expensive to install due to the need for the digging of wells or trenches in which to place the pipes that carry the heat exchange fluid. When compared versus each other, groundwater heat pumps are generally more efficient than heat pumps using heat from the soil.

Solid state heat pumps

In 1881, the German physicist Emil Warburg put a block of iron into a strong magnetic field and found that it increased very slightly in temperature. Some commercial ventures to implement this technology are underway, claiming to cut energy consumption by 40% compared to current domestic refrigerators.^[11] The process works as follows: Powdered gadolinium is moved into a magnetic field, heating the material by 2 to 5 °C. The heat is removed by a circulating fluid. The material is then moved out of the magnetic field, reducing its temperature below its starting temperature.