There are increasing drivers on business to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions. Regulation and taxation will increasingly apply direct costs on organisations based on their carbon emissions, while customers are increasingly factoring in considerations surrounding sustainability performance and carbon emissions into the supplier selection process. Responsibility in reducing carbon emissions will be shared across any organisation, however information and communications technology is coming under particular scrutiny for its often significant contribution to overall energy consumption. So how can a ‘green’ ICT strategy enable reductions in carbon emissions?
How do you incorporate considerations surrounding carbon emissions into your ‘green’ ICT Strategy?”
July 21st, 2010Climategate to Copenhagen and beyond: the implications for robust science & policy
April 29th, 2010Abstract
“I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.”
Lord Kelvin 1883
The Copenhagen Accord reiterates the international community’s commitment to “hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius”. Similarly, the EU maintains it ‘must ensure global average temperature increases do not exceed 2°C’ and the UK’s 2009 Low Carbon Transition Plan, states that “to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change, average global temperatures must rise no more than 2°C”. Despite such unequivocal statements the accompanying policies or absence of policies demonstrate a pivotal disjuncture between high-level aspirations with regards to 2°C and the policy reality. In part this reflects the continued dominance of ‘end point’ targets rather than scientifically-credible emission budgets and pathways, but even within the UK, where the policy-community and legislation aligns more closely with the science of climate change, the disjuncture nevertheless remains.
Making sense of carbon offsetting: benefits, opportunities and pitfalls
December 15th, 2009Introduction: what is offsetting?
Offsetting is nothing new – offsetting schemes and providers have been around for more than ten years, and much has been written about them already. Despite renewed focus at the Copenhagen conference (COP15) on the role of carbon credits in climate change mitigation, there remains considerable lack of clarity on what they actually are, how they work, together with their advantages and potential pitfalls.
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Greenhouse Gas Reduction in the United States – Impacts & Benefits for US Business
October 6th, 2009Background
After a long period of inaction on climate change, the US is now pushing ahead with a range of regulatory mechanisms aimed at reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, the centrepiece of which is the Climate Change Bill, also known as the Waxman-Markey Bill. While the Bill is not yet guaranteed to become law, there is increasing certainty that US business will face regulation of its carbon emissions in the near future.
Effective Data Collection for Business GHG Reporting
August 11th, 2009Why is data collection so important?
As a result of mounting evidence of climate change and increasing public concern, existing regulatory mechanisms to reduce GHG emissions are being extended from energy-intensive industries to cover large non-energy intensive organisations. The UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment, for example, includes large service based corporations, local authorities and government. In addition, large corporations are now increasingly expected to report their environmental performance, including GHG emissions, as a result of customer, stakeholder and investor demands.
Emission factors – what are they and what are they for?
June 30th, 2009What are emission factors?
Carbon emission factors, sometimes called carbon conversion factors, are used to calculate the carbon emissions arising from an activity. For the greatest accuracy, the best way to measure carbon emissions would be to monitor them directly as they are emitted, for example by placing a sensor in a power station chimney. Given the large number of different sources of carbon emission that can be associated with a particular activity, this method would quickly become impractical. To simplify the calculation, emission factors were developed by measuring the average carbon emissions associated with a particular activity. Given the complexities of measuring carbon emissions directly, developing emission factors is a technical and scientific challenge.
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Preparing for CRC – what should organisations be doing now?
May 19th, 2009What is the CRC?
The forthcoming Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), scheduled to start in April 2010, will be the first ‘cap and trade’ scheme aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from non-energy intensive industries. Unlike previous emissions trading schemes, the CRC aims to encourage reductions in electricity use rather than directly limiting emissions from burning fossil fuels.
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