CARBON IN THE NEWS
WEEK 20 2012
Premiership football club kicks off carbon outreach project
Fulham Football Club has teamed up with Veolia to engage with young people on the importance of green issues through a 'carbon boot print' initiative. The club's social outreach foundation is piloting a six-week programme, led by Veolia Carbon, across six local schools this month. The weekly one hour lessons will involve a classroom-based session as well as football and sport activity. The project will use the power of football to engage with hundreds of pupils about the environment during its initial trial phase. The programme will cover a number of subjects all designed to promote a greener way of living such as the 3Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle), energy, transport and food and drink. The partnership is hoping to roll the pilot out further to over 30 schools during the next academic year. Fulham Football Club Foundation's chief executive Steven Day believes the club has a "moral duty" to try and help preserve the environment for future generations. To read this article in full click here
Mining Industry ‘to Spend $20bn on Renewable Energy and Conservation by 2020′
Worldwide investment by the mining industry in renewable energy and energy conservation will reach about $8.4 billion by 2016 and nearly $20 billion by 2020, according to a new report from Pike Research. And under a more aggressive scenario, in which the global economy expands more rapidly and policy mandates pertaining to climate change are more robust, spending could reach $15.6 billion by 2016 and $30 billion annually by 2020, the cleantech market intelligence firm forecasts. Ever-increasing pressure from governments, customers, and other stakeholders will drive this shift toward solar, wind geothermal and other renewables, according to the report. Several companies are already using carbon credits and carbon trading to augment revenue streams and address climate change regulations and taxes, it says. To read this article in full click here
Planet's largest cities commit to measuring and reporting emissions
Forty of the world’s most populous cities have launched a programme to measure, report and verify their carbon emissions. The deal – the first of its kind involving so many cities – includes the likes of Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Paris, Portland – USA and Taipei.
Brokered by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership group, the new protocol could play a key role in harmonizing emission measurement and reporting processes across the world. The protocol will initially be piloted in selected cities to establish a single standard to measure greenhouse gas emissions. It should provide policymakers with more understanding of what the key drivers of emissions within cities are, and what mitigation programmes have had the most success. Speaking to RTCC just after the launch, ICLEI President and former Vancouver deputy Mayor David Cadman said the announcement heralded a new age in climate change policymaking. To read this article in full click here
Cafédirect Using Carbon Credits to Fund Green Coffee
Cafedirect – the UK’s largest fair trade hot drink supplier – is using the carbon market to fund adaptation projects that, in turn, support the sustainability of its own coffee production. As one of the four pilot groups of Cafédirect’sAdapCC project, the Peruvian cooperative of Cepicafe began investigating ways the carbon market could be used to help increase the sustainability of local farming, according to a Cafédirect report, Coffee Climate Crisis. For generations farming in the area that Cepicafe operates has used slash and burn techniques as a way of gathering firewood and creating farmland. Over time this has led to a shortage of shade trees on both the land used to grow coffee and further up mountains, where subsistence farmers of other crops live. The lack of trees further up the hills has led to increased rainwater runoff, washing away the coffee plants’ soil and nutrients, and in extreme cases leading to mudslides. These processes actually decrease the amount of water available to the coffee plants in drier periods. To read this article in full click here
Green Telecom Networks
Telecom service providers today must manage a delicate balancing act. On one hand, they are driven to increase their subscriber bases and drive more traffic on their networks, while maintaining a high level of service quality and availability. At the same time, they must keep a close eye on the bottom line and meet their public pledges to reduce capital and operating expenditures, total cost of ownership, and CO2 emissions. To achieve these goals, operators are working to reduce energy-related expenses, increase operational efficiency, reduce costs associated with network deployments, and increase their utilization of clean energy sources.In this context, network operators and telecom equipment vendors continue to invest in initiatives to improve the energy efficiency of telecom networks and reduce their associated carbon emissions. Pike Research's analysis indicates that these initiatives are likely to result in a significant reduction in energy-related operating expenses in addition to a dramatic decrease in GHG emissions related to telecom network operations.This Pike Research report focuses on the direct impact of green technologies and practices as applied to telecommunications networks. To read this article in full click here
UN to help give world’s poor fairer share of carbon credits
Efforts by the United Nations to ease rules for carbon-cutting projects may encourage investments in small-scale projects in solar water heaters and efficient cookstoves in Africa and Asia. The UN Clean Development Mechanism’s Executive Board, regulator of the world’s second-biggest carbon market by traded volume, agreed last week to consider ways to quicken the approval procedure for some emission-reduction activities. The new process would help ease difficulties facing projects that produce fewer emission reductions than others, including those that create usable fuel from animal dung and renewable energy initiatives small enough to power a light-bulb. “It’s definitely a good thing,” Gareth Phillips, chief climate change officer at Sindicatum Sustainable Resources Group, a Singapore-based developer of carbon offset projects, said in a phone interview from Jakarta yesterday. “Small-scale projects sometimes end up being more complex and harder to do than normal-scale projects, because the methodologies are shorter and sometimes didn’t address questions that the auditors and regulators had, so they were left hanging.” Small-scale projects are defined by the UN as those generating less than 15,000 tons of credits a year. To read this article in full click here
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