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Friday Green Numbers round-up 10/01/2010

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Green Numbers

Photo credit trindade.joao

And here is this week’s Green numbers:

  • ISO Study Affirms the Grid Can Reliably Integrate a 20% RPS

    Maintaining a diverse fleet of power plants in California and taking advantage of the complementary nature of wind and solar power are two of the findings in a renewables portfolio standard (RPS) integration study recently released by the California Independent System Operator Corporation (ISO).

    ?This study provides a thorough analysis of the capability of the power grid to effectively manage an oncoming wave of highly intermittent energy resources and confirms the ISO is ready to manage the grid reliably under 20 percent RPS?

    The ISO and its study partners, including GE Energy Consulting, gained insights about grid dynamics through the ?Integration of Renewable Resources?Operational Requirements and Generation Fleet Capability at 20% RPS.? The study assumes California will add 2,246 megawatts of solar and 6,686 megawatts of wind resources by 2012.

  • Scotland Will Get 100% Of Its Electricity From Renewable Energy by 2025: First Minister

    Northern Ireland just outlined how it hopes to get 40% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020 and, apparently not to be outdone, First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond thinks that’s not an ambitious enough target. Speaking to Reuters, Salmond said Scotland should be able to produce 100% its electricity from low-carbon sources by 2025.

  • Never Mind the Atlantic Oil… Offshore Wind Power Can Electrify Half of East Coast

    A new report by Oceana outlines, as previous studies have done, just how bountiful the offshore wind power potential of the Atlantic coast of the United States is. While it varies from state to state, a handful of states could generate more electricity than they need, and more could supply a large part of their demand. Overall, offshore wind could generate more power than than the economically recoverable oil and gas reserves in the same locations.

  • Big OIl Spends Half a Billion Dollars to Oppose Climate Legislation

    Big oil companies and other special interests have spent millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions to defeat clean energy and global warming legislation, according to a new analysis released Monday by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

    The study ?Dirty Money? found that the top 35 spending companies and trade associations invested more than $500 million in lobbying and campaign contributions from January 2009 to June 2010 to defeat clean energy legislation.

  • Airplanes emissions kill around 8,000 people per annum

    Aviation emissions contribute to this health problem, according to a new study that suggests that airplanes flying at a cruise altitude of around 35,000 feet emit pollutants that contribute to about 8,000 deaths per year globally.

  • A fifth of all wild plant species face extinction

    They’re not as photogenic as pandas, nor as captivating as tigers: among conservationists, plants have tended to attract rather less attention than animals. That could start to change with the publication this week of the first list of extinction risks for the world’s plants.

    The Sampled Red List Index for Plants indicates that 22 per cent of all wild plant species face extinction, comparable to the figure for mammals (21 per cent) and higher than that for birds (12 per cent). Of the threatened plant species, 63 per cent are found in tropical rainforest areas which could soon be cleared.

  • UK businesses call for Green Investment Bank in 2011

    A group of businesses including British Airways, BT and The Co-operative as well as NGOs and MPs have issued a statement saying the GIB must be designed with a clear picture of the low carbon economy wants to achieve and over what timeframe.

    It said the government must ensure the GIB is sufficiently capitalised by at least ?4bn-6bn over the next four years.

  • Solar Wind could generate 1 billion billion gigawatts of power

    Using a massive 8,400-kilometer-wide (5,220-mile-wide) solar sail to harvest the power in solar wind, the team hopes their concept could generate 1 billion billion gigawatts of power, far more power than humanity needs — if they can get that power back to Earth.

  • CRC: Just one day left to register / green regulation news

    Time is running out to register for the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency scheme.
    Businesses have until September 30 to register for the CRC, the mandatory scheme to reduce the carbon emissions and improve the energy efficiency of UK businesses and organisations.

  • Ireland to get 4MW geothermal power plant

    One of Ireland’s biggest utility companies, GT Energy, has announced plans to build the country’s first geothermal electricity plant.

  • Massive Fisher Price Recall: More Than 10 Million Toys

    More than 10 million children’s toys have been recalled by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the toys’ manufacturer Fisher Price, the CPSC announced today.

  • There will be blood ? watch exclusive of 10:10 campaign’s ‘No Pressure’ film

    The 10:10 climate change campaign have given us the scoop on this highly explosive short film, written by Britain’s top comedy screenwriter Richard Curtis, ahead of its general release.

    It’s most definitely striking and if you haven’t watched it yet ? taking into account the warning that it contains scenes some people may find disturbing ? do so now, before I give too much away.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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The rise of the energy manager role

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computer

Photo credit jurvetson

One of the topics which I responded to on the recent IBM Eco Jam was “IT’s Central Role In Managing Energy & Carbon”.

This topic was raised by another analyst (again IBM has asked me not to mention participants by name but if the analyst in question sees this and wants me to name him/her, I have no problem so doing) when s/he posted the following:

Forrester’s research on energy & carbon management systems predicts that IT organizations will take on a central role in choosing, owning, and operating these systems. The challenge of managing energy & carbon emissions will increasingly be information-related, and it’s enterprise IT organizations that have the expertise to install and operate software systems of record across the entire company. Just like systems for managing customers (CRM), money, materials (ERP), and employees, carbon & energy management systems will collect, integrate, analyze, and report on the newest set of assets/liabilities that will be used by internal and external stakeholders to judge corporate performance.

Now, I have no issues whatsoever with IT organisations having a role in choosing Energy Management systems. IT’s function would involve installing and supporting the software so naturally they’d have a say in its purchase. They’d also have a role in crafting requirements documents and reviewing responses but “owning and operating” these systems? I don’t think so.

I realise part of this has to do with empire building ambitions by IT but really, since when was energy management a core competence of IT?

I absolutely realise that sustainability is all about information and data, and certainly IT has a role in ensuring that this information is always available but asking IT to own and operate energy management systems is, frankly, ludicrous. You might as well ask IT to own and operate the financial management systems.

So if not IT, who then should run these systems? I foresee the rise of a new role – the Energy manager, in companies. The Energy manager will likely report to the CFO, the COO or the CSO (Chief Sustainability Officer). The energy manager’s role will be to minimise the company’s energy (& probably water) footprint and to report savings in monetary, kWh and tons CO2.

With the increasing regulatory landscape around carbon emissions (i.e. the Carbon Reduction Commitment in the UK), carbon measurement and reporting will become mandatory for most companies. In that environment having someone specialised in energy management, responsible for this function will start to seem like a very good idea.

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UK’s Carbon reduction commitment legislation – the shape of things to come globally!

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Climate change

Screenshot credit Tom Raftery – data from NASA

The world is getting warmer. 2008 was the 9th warmest year on record. 2009, barring a sudden, severe, global cold snap, will end up being the 4th or 5th warmest year on record and with El Niño coming on in the Pacific, 2010 looks likely to set a new temperature record for the hottest year in recorded history.

Climate change is real and it is here, now. So what you say, what does that have to do with me? Or more to the point, what does that have to do with my work?

Well, if you are based in the UK, there is a strong chance that next April, it will have a very direct impact on your job, company, or business. This is because the UK has passed legislation called the Carbon Reduction Committment (CRC).

The CRC is a groundbreaking piece of legislation designed to help the UK meet its carbon reduction targets by 2020. Basically, the CRC scheme will apply to organisations that had a half-hourly metered electricity consumption greater than 6,000 MWh per year in 2008. Organisations qualifying for CRC would have all their energy use covered by the scheme, this includes emissions from direct energy use as well as electricity purchased. Initially, it is estimated, around 5,000 organisations will qualify, including supermarkets, water companies, banks, local authorities and all central Government Departments. Qualifying organisations mostly fall below the threshold for the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, but account for around 10% of the UK carbon emissions.

The organisations involved will need to register or make an information disclosure by 30 September 2010. A financial penalty (£5,000 plus a per diem charge for each subsequent working day an organisation fails to submit a report) will be imposed on organisations who fail to meet the deadline.

The first year of the scheme (April 2010-2011) is called the footprint year. Companies are required to submit an audited report of their emissions during the footprint year by 29 July 2011. Again financial penalties will be imposed for failing to meet the deadline.

In the second year, (2011-2012) participants will have to purchase emissions allowances to cover their forecast emissions for 2011/12. And in 2013 auctioning of carbon allowances begins, with all the income from the auctions recycled back to participants by the means of an annual payment based on participants’ average annual emissions since the start of the scheme.

There will be a bonus or penalty according to the organisation’s position in a CRC league table. The league table will be made public thereby enhancing the transparency of companies carbon reporting and hopefully shaming any egregious emitters into reducing their carbon footprint.

I have gone in to a bit of detail about the CRC here because it is difficult enough to find out information about the scheme and most UK business appear to be wholly unprepared for its implementation. The UK Department of Climate Change (I think it is interesting that the UK has a government department of climate change in the first place – how many other governments do?) has an easy to follow guide to the CRC [PDF] available for download which will help.

The CRC is going to be closely watched by other countries and you can be sure it will be used as a model by many to reduce their carbon emissions.

As I mentioned at the outset of this piece, climate change is here, it is real. Increasingly we are going to see bills like the CRC enacted so we can try to mitigate its effects.