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San Francisco rolls out carbon tax

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I see the LA Times is reporting that the San Francisco Bay Area Air Quality Management District‘s board of directors voted overwhelmingly (15-1) in favour of levying a carbon tax on businesses.

The tax will be 4.4 cents per tonne of CO2 emitted which, in reality is paltry:

More than 2,500 businesses will be required to pay the proposed fees. About seven power plants and oil refineries would have to pay more than $50,000 a year, but the majority of businesses would pay less than $1, according to district estimates.

But this rate will increase with time and this news is massively significant in other ways.

This is the first instance of a carbon tax in the US, according to the piece in the LA Times, although the New York Times reports that Boulder Colorado was first when it imposed a carbon tax in Nov 2006 on both businesses and homes.

Either way, this is an indication of things to come. The best way to reduce carbon emissions is to charge for them (and the damage they wreak).

More and more we will see the implementation of carbon taxes and this more than anything else will force us to reduce our CO2 output.

We in GreenMonk are firm believers that we need to get off the carbon economy as soon as possible and so we strongly welcome this new carbon tax.

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Reduce your carbon footprint using virtual worlds

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One of Credit Agricole\'s training rooms in Second Life (photo courtesy of Stonefield Inworld)

Virtual Worlds such as Second Life are largely dismissed as trivial and a waste of time by many people (myself included until recently!).

However a recent conversation with Pierre-Olivier Carles changed all that for me. Pierre is the co-founder and CEO of Stonefield Inworld – a company which builds things for people in virtual worlds.

For example, the photo above is a training room for the French banking group Crédit Agricole. According to their Wikipedia entry, Crédit Agricole are the 8th largest bank in the world! Stonefield have purpose built training rooms for Crédit Agricole on the bank’s private island in Second Life.

In a pilot program rolled out for a small part of the group, Crédit Agricole expect to save between €200,000 and €300,000 this year on travel expenses alone by holding training sessions in-world. If this is rolled out to the group, annual savings would be in the order of €5-€6m. I’m not sure what that is in terms of reduced CO2 emissions but you can take it that it is a pretty big number!

And that is just in travel expenses. When companies start to be taxed for their carbon emissions, the savings from holding in-world training will be even greater.

Of course, the success of something like this is all in the execution and from talking to Pierre-Olivier, Stonefield seem to have nailed it. They have audio (for the presenter), video, slideware, and whiteboards in the training room. They take ‘coffee’ breaks to allow for the networking which happens in ‘real’ training as well as the opportunities for one-on-one with the trainer (“what you said in there is all very well in theory but in the case of our org…”).

The trainees can even give feedback on their understanding of the topic by migrating to the green side of the room to indicate all is going well or moving to the red side to signal that they are falling behind. As someone who gives talks and has done training, this kind of trainee feedback is invaluable to the successful running of a class.

Then there is the added benefits to the trainee of not having to worry about getting through security, catching that plane, lost luggage, traffic jams, breakdowns or worse. Does anyone have any statistics on the number of employees lost to work-related travel accidents annually?

With travel making up such a large part of our global CO2 emissions and companies increasing requirements to upskill their employees on an ongoing basis, initiatives like this are going to be vital for cost efficiencies and reduced carbon footprints.

Cross-posted from LowerFootprint.com

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The sooner oil hits $200 per barrel, the better!

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Four bucks a gallon
Creative Commons License photo credit: johnmarkos

Back in 2004 the government’s worst case scenarios had oil reaching $26 per barrel by 2025. This afternoon oil reached $125.98, the fifth day this week we had a record high price for oil. And we are not even halfway through 2008 yet.

Goldman Sachs recently pronounced that oil may soon reach $200 per barrel. I hope they are right. In fact the sooner the better, to my mind!

Why do I say that?
We need to get off our dependence on carbon as an energy source. The CO2 given off by burning oil for energy is poisoning the planet and wiping out animal and plant species at a hitherto unprecedented rate.

We have known this for quite some time now. Scientists were discussing Global Warming and climate change up to 40 years ago. The reason we have done very little to move off oil is that the alternatives were always too expensive. This also meant that raising money for research into renewable power sources was difficult and so alternative energy sources remained high cost.

However, now with oil at $126 per barrel and rising, renewables are starting to look very attractive. Suddenly money is pouring into companies who are trying to research and commercialize Green energy. This is a good thing! This will only continue as long as it is perceived to be profitable. In other words, as long as oil is expensive.

The worst thing that could happen right now for the future of the planet is if oil prices dropped. Roll on $200 per barrel, I say.