Green from the roots up, Sustainable from the top down
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Australia sets new climate target
Australia has said it will start a carbon trading scheme by the middle of 2010, despite appeals from the business community for a delay.
The plan will cover 75% of the country’s emissions.
It has also announced that it will cut greenhouse gas emissions by between 5% and 15% by 2020, from the 2000 levels.
Modest targets, well below international expectations.
The Energy Roadmap – Ground breaking ‘Dry water’ method developed to store natural gas in a powder
Have you ever held natural gas in your hand?
“It (‘dry water’) looks like a powder, but if you wipe it on your skin, it smears and feels cold” says Andrew Cooper University of Liverpool, UK
What happened?
Chemists at the University of Liverpool have developed a reliable way of converting methane gas into a powder form in order to make it more transportable.
The researchers use a white powder material made of a mixture of silica and water to soak up large quantities of methane molecules.
East African geothermal tests ‘successful’ | Environment | guardian.co.uk
Geothermal energy generation in Africa could take a leap forward in 2009 after exploratory studies in Kenya exceeded all expectations, it was announced Tuesday.
Calif. adopts major global warming plan – Climate Change- msnbc.com
California air regulators on Thursday approved a climate plan that would require the state’s utilities, refineries and large factories to transform their operations to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The California Air Resources Board adopted what will be the nation’s most sweeping global warming plan, outlining for the first time how individuals and businesses will have to meet a landmark 2006 law that made the state a leader on curbing warming emissions.
Super-Concrete to Store Solar Power in Works : TreeHugger
Researchers at the University of Arkansas are working to develop a new way of storing thermal energy in concrete. They were given an award from the U.S. Department of Energy in the sum of $770, 000 dollars as part of the federal government‘s program to create inexpensive solar energy storage
Fake Christmas Trees Not So Green | LiveScience
Still debating on whether to go real or artificial for this year’s Christmas tree? According to Newswise, the winner is that old-fashioned, living, breathing, carbon-sequestering noble fir (or any living Christmas tree, for that matter).
My guest on this podcast is Chris Preist. Chris is a principal scientist at HP Labs, based at HPL’s European research centre in Bristol, UK.
HP Labs and Forum for the Future, together published a report called Climate Futures(6.7MB pdf). This report goes through 5 possible scenarios for how the world will respond to the climate changes we are seeing, or as they say on the Forum for the Future page:
Climate Futures analyses the social, political, economic and psychological consequences of climate change and describes how different global responses to the problem could lead to five very different worlds by 2030.
Chris was one of the authors of the report so I asked him to come on the show to discuss it and what followed was a fascinating discussion.
Download the entire interview here
(20.2mb mp3)
I just received news that AMEE has landed funding. We have mentioned AMEE already a ton of times on GreenMonk, but that is because they share our open-source philosophy and they are Green. In fact, AMEE CEO Gavin Starks is the one who came up with the MegaTom concept!
From the press release:
AMEE, the World’s Energy Meter, has secured substantial Series A financing from leading VC funds in the USA and UK.
AMEE is a web-based service (API) that combines measurement, calculation, profiling and transactional systems, representing emissions data from 150 countries and regions. As a neutral data aggregation platform, AMEE’s vision is to enable the measurement of the “Carbon Footprint” of everything on Earth. AMEE aims to assist with the development of energy and carbon as a global currency, assisting governments and companies that need to account for and trade internationally in CO2 emissions.
The collaboration between O’Reilly Alphatech Ventures (OATV), Union Square Ventures (USV) and The Accelerator Group (TAG) will enable AMEE to expand its reach by enhancing its data, and extend globally.
The AMEE platform is already used internationally by many organisations including; UK Government (Defra/DECC), Morgan Stanley, Google, Radiohead, Nesta, the Irish Government, the Welsh Assembly, the Energy Saving Trust, BRE, Sun Microsystems, plus numerous other IT, business services and software companies.
Gavin Starks, Founder and CEO of AMEE commented, “AMEE’s growth over the past 12 months has been quite remarkable. We are delighted to have the financial and strategic support of such experienced investors to take our business forward.
AMEE’s is driving change by increasing the accuracy and transparency of emissions and consumption in a manner that has not been achieved by any legislation, market or service to date. We have developed and demonstrated a forward-thinking and innovative business model. It is based around neutrality, scale and collaboration. This reflects the dramatic changes that will impact our societies, their financial and social systems in the years to come.
The execution of the Climate Change Act in the UK last week, combined with President Elect Obama’s forward-looking Federal Cap & Trade statements are indicators of the scale of change approaching us.”
Bryony Worthington, Head of International Policy at AMEE added, “As one of the authors of the UK Climate Change Act, I am delighted to be bringing dedicated solutions to industry and consumers. The time to act is now.”
Mark P. Jacobsen, Managing Director of O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures (“OATV”), commented: “AMEE’s vision to aggregate all of the energy data in the world fits OATV’s mission to invest in stuff that matters. With the recent sea change in America’s political climate, we look forward to AMEE bringing its platform-based data service to clients in the States.”
Ablert Wenger, Partner at Union Square Ventures, commented, “We believe that emissions information is critical to better decision making by individuals and companies. We are excited that AMEE’s service helps to substantially improve the timeliness and accuracy of emissions measurement.”
Great news, congrats Gavin and team. With the slew of funding announcements in the Green space, despite the trying financial times (because of…), Green is quickly becoming the new black!
maribo: Is climate science strong enough for the courts?
Myles Allen, a physicist at Oxford University, said a breakthrough that allows scientists to judge the role man-made climate change played in extreme weather events could see a rush to the courts over the next decade. He said: “We are starting to get to the point that when an adverse weather event occurs we can quantify how much more likely it was made by human activity. And people adversely affected by climate change today are in a position to document and quantify their losses. This is going to be hugely important.”
The cream of the UK climate science community sat in stunned silence as Kevin Anderson pointed out that carbon emissions since 2000 have risen much faster than anyone thought possible, driven mainly by the coal-fuelled economic boom in the developing world. So much extra pollution is being pumped out, he said, that most of the climate targets debated by politicians and campaigners are fanciful at best, and “dangerously misguided” at worst.
In the jargon used to count the steady accumulation of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s thin layer of atmosphere, he said it was “improbable” that levels could now be restricted to 650 parts per million (ppm).
Global Temperature Increase on Flickr – Photo Sharing!
This time series shows the combined global land and marine surface temperature record from 1850 to 2008.
Taken from the UK’s Climate Research Unit (see www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/).
For the foreseeable future, the global financial-services sector will be wrestling with the grim realities of credit losses, deleveraging, and challenges to traditional business models. With dramatic industry restructuring already underway and a clear need for players to concentrate on the here and now, it would be easy to lose sight of a nascent but significant long-term opportunity: facilitating carbon trading.
I guess the first question should be does your company have a Sustainability Communications Program? If not, why not?
As I mentioned in my last post, it is now time for everyone to
band together not only at national levels, but at company and community levels to do everything we can to work to reduce our impact on the planet. Don’t rely on your politicians to do it for you. Get together with friends, neighbours, co-workers and make a change.
So, what is your company doing about sustainability? Some companies invest heavily in this space. Others roll it under the marketing umbrella and still more, don’t even have a sustainability policy.
How do you improve your company’s sustainability policies? I don’t know! But more than likely, you or others in your organisation have great ideas about ways your company can be more environmentally responsible. Why not poll them?
Roll out a bottom-up Sustainability Suggestions Wiki in your organisation today. Most people have excellent ideas on how to improve things in their company but assume they will not be listened to. A wiki allows people to make suggestions in a transparent, meritocratic manner.
Incent people to do so. Give prizes for best suggestions every month. Prizes could be anything from something small like a CFL light bulb, or a Current Cost meter, all the way up to sponsorship of an MBA in Sustainable Business, or any number of things in between.
Go further, video and podcast interviews with winners – make them heroes in the company. The rewards for the company will often be cost savings through efficiencies but also a more highly motivated workforce, who see the company as being responsible and caring of what they (the employees) think.
Enabling bottom-up suggestions in this manner (and subsequently acting on them) promotes a “We are all in this together” spirit and empowers people to make a real difference in the fight against climate change, a difference which they may be unable to make as individuals.
Why wouldn’t you do this?
The graph above, taken from the UK’s Climate Research Unit, is very sobering. I first noticed the graph when Joseph Romm did an excellent analysis of it on his Climate Progress site.
A few points to note from Joe’s piece:
- * the 2000s are on track to be nearly 0.2°C warmer than the 1990s
- * since the 1990s were only 0.14°C warmer than the 1980s => global warming is accelerating
- * 2008, though cooler than most of the 2000s is on track to be almost 0.1°C warmer than the decade of the 1990s as a whole
- * The 2000s will easily be the hottest decade in recorded history
- * The “coming decade” (2010-20) is poised to be the warmest on record, globally
- * The coming decade is poised to see faster temperature rise than any decade since the authors’ calculations began in 1960
- * The fast warming would likely begin early in the next decade — similar to the 2007 prediction by the Hadley Center in Science (see “Climate Forecast: Hot — and then Very Hot“)
In case anyone had any doubts that global warming is occurring, this should set those doubts to rest.
Governments are acting too slowly on this. It is up to individuals and companies to take actions to reduce our impact on the planet.
The companies we cover on this blog: IBM, Microsoft, HP, Siemens, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Dell, SAP, Oracle, Nortel, Cisco, etc. are all making significant efforts to reduce their impacts on the planet (or we wouldn’t be covering them!).
However, as the graph above indicates, our way of life is under threat. Now, as George Monbiot says,
We need to resurrect the old-fashioned virtues of uniting in the face of a crisis, of resourcefulness and community action
We all need to band together not only at national levels, but at company and community levels to do everything we can to work to reduce our impact on the planet. Don’t rely on your politicians to do it for you. Get together with friends, neighbours, co-workers and make a change. Today.
The hidden cost of our growing taste for meat | Environment | The Observer
As the west’s appetite for meat increases, so too does the demand for soya – used as animal feed by farmers. But the planting of huge tracts of land is causing deforestation and destroying eco-systems in developing countries.
Ever since last week’s announcement of a deal to roll out Project Better Place’s model for recharging electric cars in Hawaii, I’ve been curious about how it would work out, if the supplies of new renewable electricity needed to wean the Islands’ million or so cars and light trucks off of oil were not forthcoming, or at least didn’t materialize as quickly as the company and state hope. If I’ve done my sums right this morning, it appears that electrifying Hawaii’s passenger cars would still save large quantities of oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly, even if every kilowatt-hour (kWh) to run them was generated from the state’s oil-fired power plants.
America’s Addiction Fuels Desire For Coffee Ground Biodiesel : Gas 2.0
Researchers are reporting they have successfully made a high quality biodiesel from spent coffee grounds. They estimate that the coffee ground biodiesel industry could generate as much as $8,000,000 in profits annually using waste from US Starbucks stores alone.
Arctic will have first ice-free summer in 2015: Researcher
The ice that has covered the Arctic basin for a million years will be gone in little more than six years because of global warming, a University of Manitoba geoscientist said.
Climate change: Sci-fi solutions no longer in the margins
With political efforts to tackle global warming advancing slower than a Greenland glacier, schemes for saving Earth’s climate system that once were dismissed as crazy or dangerous are gaining in status.
Negotiating a multilateral treaty on curbing greenhouse gases is being so outstripped by the scale of the problem that those promoting a deus ex-machina — a technical fix that would at least gain time — are getting a serious hearing.
To the outsider, these ideas to manipulate the climate may look as if they are inspired by science fiction.
Research on nuclear fusion continues apace…
MIT researchers are keeping hope alive in the long quest for fusion energy. Researchers have advanced our ability to harnesses one of the most complicated forms of energy science in the universe, but add a word of caution that real scalable reactors could still be ‘decades away’ as all eyes now focus on the ITER in France.
Defense Tech Briefs – Silicon Nanowires for Anodes of Rechargeable Li Power Cells
Battery technologies are improving every day!
Charge capacities could be increased substantially over those of carbon-based anodes.
Silicon nanowires have been investigated as alternatives to the graphite heretofore widely used as an anode material in rechargeable lithium-ion power cells. The theoretical specific charge capacity of graphite, corresponding to the maximum Li content (at a composition of LiC6) is 372 mA•hr/g. In contrast, the theoretical specific charge capacity of Si corresponding to the maximum Li content (at a composition of Li4.4Si) is much greater — 4.2 A•hr/g.
IEEE Spectrum: The Price Is Wrong for Oil Shale and Tar Sand Tech
Looks like oil isn’t going to go away any time soon without a fight!
The huge run-up in oil prices over the last several years, reaching a peak of close to US $150 per barrel this past summer, has given energy companies a big incentive to find new ways of harvesting unconventional oil, especially in North America.
Smart electricity meter projects are being rolled out all over the globe at this stage (here’s a map of the Smart Meter projects in the US), and with the Smart Meters, come Smart Grids and Demand Response programs whereby the utilities implement peak shaving programs (and in certain cases demand stimulation) to match demand and supply curves. This will lead to a more stable grid and therefore increase the amount of variable generators (i.e. weather based renewables) it is possible to add to the grid. Great.
However, this is not nearly ambitious enough as far as I am concerned. First off, as I have said previously, cheaper electricity typically has a higher % of renewables in the generation mix. Therefore, if I am getting a smart meter, I want it to be a very smart meter. I want my meter to be going out across the grid, checking the realtime price from all utilities and dynamically sourcing the energy from the cheapest supplier at any given time. Nothing too new there, I have written about that concept previously.
Taking that idea to the next level. Imagine if utilities were mandated to publish, not only the price of electricity in realtime, but also the generation mix. I could then have a Smart Meter which would actively chose the greenest electricity for me at any time. Or the one with the best price/renewables mix.
And if we had a SuperGrid in place, then that Green electricity might be coming from Danish windfarms, Icelandic geothermal generation or North African solar farms.
Now that would be a Really Smart Meter!
UPDATE – I have been asked the relevance of the photo above – it is subtle, anyone care to guess?