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Friday Green Numbers round-up for Jan 14th 2011

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Green Numbers

And here are this week’s Green numbers…

  1. 2010 ties 2005 for warmest year on record

    Last year tied with 2005 as the warmest year on record for global surface temperature, US government scientists said in a report on Wednesday that offered the latest data on climate change.

    The Earth in 2010 experienced temperatures higher than the 20th century average for the 34th year in a row, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

    Overall, 2010 and 2005 were 1.12 degrees Fahrenheit (0.62 Celsius) above the 20th century average when taking a combination of land and water surface temperatures across the world, it said.

    Those two years were also the highest in temperature since record-keeping began in 1880.

    Last year was the wettest on record, NOAA said citing Global Historical Climatology Network which made the calculation based on global average precipitation, even though regional patterns varied widely.

    When it came to hurricanes and storms, the Pacific Ocean saw the fewest number of hurricanes and named storms, three and seven respectively, since the 1960s.

    But the Atlantic Ocean told a different story, with 12 hurricanes and 19 named storms, which include tropical storms and depressions, marking the second highest number of hurricanes on record and third highest for storms.

  2. IBM Reveals Five Innovations That Will Change Our Lives in the Next Five Years

    IBM formally unveiled the fifth annual “Next Five in Five” ? a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and play over the next five years:
    ? You’ll beam up your friends in 3-D
    ? Batteries will breathe air to power our devices
    ? You won?t need to be a scientist to save the planet
    ? Your commute will be personalized
    ? Computers will help energize your city

  3. Chris Tuppen’s 20 year CRS reflection

    Chris left BT after a long and influential career in the company to pursue new pastures in sustainability. He kindly agreed to provide some personal reflections after a 20 year career in the field.

    Reflecting back over twenty years of corporate sustainability and then attempting to summarise that into a 500 word blog is an almost impossible task.

    Much has changed. Twenty years ago…

  4. GE buys 3rd energy co. in 3 months – Lineage Power for $520m

    General Electric has made its first move into the fast-growing business of cutting electricity consumption by the telecoms and computer industries, buying Lineage Power for $520m from The Gores Group, a private equity firm.

    The deal is GE?s third acquisition of an energy business in the past three months, as the group implements its plan to focus on infrastructure markets and reduce its reliance on financial services.

  5. Top 10 Carbon Reporting Trends in 2010

    Corporate greenhouse gas emissions reporting continues to evolve at a rapid pace. As we celebrate the New Year, it’s instructional to take the opportunity to reflect on the highlights of 2010 and their impact on this market. Many of the changes are healthy as sustainability and emissions reporting moves away from “feel good” disclosures towards risk identification and competitive advantage.

    Here is my list of the top 10 Carbon Reporting Trends in 2010…

  6. Siemens constructing 65km 2GW HVDC line between France and Spain

    Siemens Energy is currently erecting the power converter stations for a high-voltage direct-current (HVDC) transmission link between Baixas, to the west of Perpignan in France, and Santa Llogaia, south-west of Figueras in Spain, as important components of the Trans-European Network for electrical power. The installation can transmit a rated power of 2000 megawatts (MW) ? enough to transport large amounts of electric power with a minimum of transmission losses.

  7. Why Greentech Money Is Sliding From Supply to Demand

    With 2010 finally behind us, and a full year of data to play with, it appears that green technology investments are firmly shifting from the supply side of the equation to the demand side. In other words, solar and wind power were on the outs last year, and energy efficiency was the up-and-comer.

    That?s the conclusion I draw in my weekly update at GigaOm Pro (subscription required), and while it may not come as a surprise to industry watchers, it?s nice to have some numbers to back it up. Although solar startups continued to draw the most money in venture capital investment last year, energy efficiency startups garnered…

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Photo credit millicent_bystander

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Where is Adobe’s commitment to Sustainability?

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Adobe

Photo credit midiman

I was extremely lucky to be given a tour of Adobe’s triple platinum LEED certified HQ in Palo Alto last year. I video’d highlights of the tour and posted them here. At the time I was extremely impressed with Adobe’s sustainability initiatives.

However, since then I have been more and more wondering if the building is a one-off and if Adobe has any significant commitment to Sustainability.

Why do I say this?

  1. Adobe’s 2009 CSR report, while slightly better than its 2008 report, it is still a triumph of style over content. There is no adherence to GRI reporting standards, no external audit and no mention of targets set or previous targets reached
  2. No-where on the Adobe site or in its CSR reports (that I could find) does it mention who in the organisation has responsibility for Sustainability. If no-one has overall responsibility for it, then we shouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t get done
  3. Adobe’s LiveCycle Enterprise Suite gets a passing mention in the 2009 CSR report when it says

    The United States Government Printing Office used Adobe? LiveCycle? and Adobe Acrobat? to generate, authenticate, and disseminate documents electronically, saving more than 20 tons of paper and $1 million over five years.

    Where are the white papers or case studies to back this up? Surely others are using LiveCycle and also saving paper. Why aren’t we hearing more about them? Similarly for Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro, and

  4. A more trivial example, but as I reported a few weeks back, Adobe charge more for downloadable, soft copies of their software, than they do for physical shipped product (which includes carbon associated with media, packaging and transportation)! This wouldn’t be allowed to happen in a company with any focus whatsoever on Sustainability. Software companies should be actively pushing customers to downloadable versions of their products

So, if a company of Adobe’s size and success can get away with such a passing regard for sustainability – are companies who take corporate responsibility seriously like SAP, BT and IBM wasting their time and energy?

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Global telco’s sustainability reports reviewed

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Nature's fragility

Photo credit WTL photos

When I published my review of tech company sustainability reports a couple of weeks back, it was suggested that I should add in telco’s as well. Instead, for clarity, I decided to publish a separate review of telco sustainability reports here.

[table id=9 /]

Some points to note from the review:

  • BT & Telefonica both produced very good reports (though Telefonica’s was only in Spanish which limits how accessible it is outside of the Spanish-speaking world)
  • T-Mobile were let down by their chairman, Ren? Obermann, whose contribution was a cut & paste of an online interview he did a couple of months back as opposed to a report specific communication. Matters were made worse by the fact that the picture of the chairman in the report shows him with bottled water. In their Sustainability Report!
  • China Mobile produced an excellent report (in Chinese and English) which was let down only by the lack of external audit
  • Telecom Italia’s report was one of the best in terms of data transparency
  • AT&T’s 2008 report is very nicely laid out but it is dated, only to GRI level C and not externally assured
  • Telenor didn’t bother producing a report (that I could find) but they do have a Corporate Responsibility site while
  • 3 (owned by Hutchinson Whampoa) don’t have any Corporate Responsibility site or report that I could find on any of its sites. For shame.

If you have any updates or would like to suggest a company, please feel free to do so in the comments below and I’ll happily update the post.

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Friday Morning Green Numbers round-up 02/12/2010

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Green numbers

Photo credit Unhindered by Talent

Here is this Friday’s Green Numbers round-up:

  • Iberdrola Renovables Buys Spain?s Largest Wind Park (Update1) – BusinessWeek

    Iberdrola Renovables SA, the world?s largest operator of wind parks, agreed to buy Spain?s largest wind farm from Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica SA.

    Renovables, based in Valencia, paid Gamesa 320 million euros ($441 million) for 244 megawatts of power capacity in Andevalo, Spain

    tags: iberdrola, iberdrola renovables, gamesa, Wind farm, greennumbers

  • Ten board level energy saving and environmental issues CIOs must address – In-Depth – CIO UK Magazine

    IBM recently ran a ‘Jam’ – an online discussion – on environmental sustainability and why it is important for CIOs, CEOs and CFOs to address it. The Jam involved thousands of practitioners and subject matter experts from some 200 organisations. It focused primarily on business issues and practical actions.

    Take a look at the check list below and it becomes rapidly apparent, C-level management need to tackle the issue before it is foisted upon them.

    IBM’s Institute for Business Value will fully analyse the 2080 Jam contributions, but this is the essential CIO checklist derived from comments made during the Eco-Jam.

    tags: ibm, ecojam, eco jam, cio, greennumbers

  • HP Opens it’s First 100% Air-Cooled Data Center

    Data centers are, thankfully, getting a lot of attention when it comes to making them more efficient. Considering that roughly 60% of the electricity used at a data center goes to keeping the servers cool, focusing on smart cooling tactics is essential. HP has taken this to heart and has opened it’s first wind-cooled data center, and it’s the company’s most efficient data center to date.

    In this piece, HP claims that their data center is the world’s first wind-cooled data center – I’m not sure just how valid this is as I have heard BT only do wind-cooled data centers!

    tags: hp, bt, data center, datacenter, wind cooled, air cooled, greennumbers

  • Branson warns of oil crunch within five years | Business | The Guardian

    “Sir Richard Branson and fellow leading businessmen will warn ministers this week that the world is running out of oil and faces an oil crunch within five years.

    The founder of the Virgin group, whose rail, airline and travel companies are sensitive to energy prices, will say that the ?coming crisis could be even more serious than the credit crunch.

    “The next five years will see us face another crunch ? the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well,” Branson will say.”

    tags: richard branson, oil crunch, peak oil, virgin, greennumbers

  • Topsoil could vanish in 60 years, says study – 04 Feb 2010 – BusinessGreen.com

    “Fertile soil is being lost faster than it can be replenished making it much harder to grow crops around the world, according to a study by the University of Sydney.

    The study, reported in The Daily Telegraph, claims bad soil mismanagement, climate change and rising populations are leading to a decline in suitable farming soil.

    An estimated 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost annually with more than 80 per cent of the world’s farming land “moderately or severely eroded”, the report found.

    Soil is being lost in China 57 times faster than it can be replaced through natural processes, in Europe 17 times faster and in America 10 times faster.

    The study said all suitable farming soil could vanish within 60 years if quick action was not taken, leading to a global food crisis.”

    tags: greennumbers, soil, topsoil, soil fertility

  • Chevron hires twelve public relations firms to discredit indigenous Indians in Ecuador

    In response to an environmental lawsuit filed against the oil giant, Chevron has fortified its defenses with at least twelve different public relations firms whose purpose is to debunk the claims made against the company by indigenous people living in the Amazon forests of Ecuador. According to them, Chevron dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Amazon between 1964 and 1990, causing damages assessed at more than $27 billion.

    tags: chevron, ecuador, greennumbers, amazon rainforest, amazon, toxic waste, pollution

  • Joint venture plans 13GW renewables project in India

    Indian mobile phone and commodity export firm Airvoice Group has formed a joint venture with public sector body Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam to build 13GW of solar and wind capacity in a sparsely populated part of Karnataka district in south west India.

    The joint venture is budgeting to invest $50 billion over a period of 10 years, claiming it to be the largest single renewable energy project in the world.

    tags: greennumbers, india, airvoice, solar, wind, renewables, karnataka, renewable energy

  • Each Ton of CO2 Worth $40 in Health Costs : CleanTechnica

    Using coal for electricity produces CO2, and climate policy aims to prevent greenhouse gases from hurting our habitat. But it also produces SOx and NOx and particulate matter that have immediate health dangers.

    A University of Wisconsin study was able to put an economic value on just the immediate health benefits of enacting climate policy. Implications of incorporating air-quality co-benefits into climate change policymaking found coal is really costing us about $40 per each ton of CO2.

    tags: greennumbers, coal, sox, nox, particulate matter, greenhouse gases, health

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

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More reasons for agreed standards and lower carbon footprints

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Verizon
Photo Credit runway27r

I was at a BT analyst briefing during the week and at this meeting I was delighted to hear Donna Young, BT’s Head of Climate Change say that amongst other things, BT are going to start requiring suppliers to follow the BT ethos on carbon footprinting. They will be auditing suppliers on a scale of 0-3 where 0 means the supplier hasn’t started working on their carbon footprint yet and 3 indicates that they have auditable results. Further, BT will be using this scale to rule companies into or out of tender processes. Excellent.

Then this evening via April and via Bo in Nortel I came across the release from Verizon where they announced that from January 1st 2009 their target is for new gear from their suppliers to be 20% more energy efficient.

Mark Wegleitner, Verizon’s senior vice president-corporate network and technology said:

The Verizon network requires power costing hundreds of millions of dollars annually to provide the most advanced services available anywhere in the world. The energy dollars are well spent, as the network supports consumers and businesses in dynamic new ways. For example, our customers engage in energy-efficient activities like videoconferencing and e-commerce every day over our network.

Aside from the potential cost reductions involved, as a responsible corporate citizen, we want to be part of the drive toward greater energy efficiency. Part of our plan to accomplish this is to request our suppliers’ help in meeting our conservation goals.

Verizon are ahead of the curve in this respect. In fact, as I noted previously, there are no agreed standards against which to measure equipment so Verizon went ahead and wrote ther own:

Verizon established a series of Telecommunications Equipment Energy Efficiency Ratings based on formulas that test the consumption of equipment in various operating conditions and settings. Test data are entered into formulas developed for each type of equipment, which will indicate whether or not they achieve the target rating…. The concepts and measurement methods have been submitted for consideration by appropriate standards bodies, such as ATIS’ Network Interface, Power and Protection Committee (NIPP).

There is still a dearth of agreed standards around carbon accounting and energy efficiency. It is interesting to see, in the absence of such standards, companies coming up with their own and starting to use these measures as part of their purchasing process. Increasingly your company’s carbon footprint will not alone affect your energy costs but will also start to affect your sales.

More reasons for agreed standards and lower carbon footprints!