Green Options

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The European Union’s heavy industry carbon dioxide emissions during 2007 reached around 1.914 billion metric tons according to data released Wednesday. The numbers were 93% complete, because some of the 10,500 companies registered on the Europe’s carbon trading platform had failed to meet the March 31 submission deadline. Prices on the secondary carbon market rallied on the news Wednesday. The price of benchmark European Union Allowances (EUAs) futures increased 88 cents, a 3.9% rise.

The numbers are important for traders on the European Climate Exchange, who take guidance from the level of actual carbon emissions to gauge what demand for offsets is likely to be.

The data indicate there’s been a 1.1% rise in CO2 emissions according to Oslo-based Point Carbon. The release of the data marks the start of the second phase of the European Trading Scheme, a market-based cap-and-trade system which has been going for three years already.

All participants to the EU Emissions Trading Scheme ought to have submitted crucial data on their 2007 greenhouse gas emissions levels by 31 March. The greenhouse gas data would be sourced by around 10,500 companies involved in carbon trading and is an important factor influencing the market price of traded carbon.

But many of the parties failed to meet the deadline, which is why the EU authorities in charge of the information said they will release the data to the public at a later date.

Emissions data is of vital importance for market traders because it shows the level of demand for the instruments they trade. The data is seen as a benchmark number setting the appropriate carbon price.

The British capital markets watchdog, the Financial Services Authority, has released a report warning that many emissions trading companies make false claims about their green credentials.

The FSA says that the integrity of the carbon trading market is under threat. The information that carbon emissions traders relay to clients often has a truth content that’s lower than you’d expect. In many cases there’s also no clarity over the regulations involved, a lack of credible data. Investors are also frequently offered climate change related products that are totally unsuitable for their goals.

Companies involved in offsetting their carbon footprint have access to over twenty tools to calculate their emissions, most of which have been launched in the last year. So far, the voluntary carbon offsetting market is dominated by European players. Reviews of their efforts have not been all too positive, so US companies following in their footsteps do best to avoid the pitfalls.

The main criticism centers on what’s left out of the equation. Companies embarking on greening up their business practices are faced with a daunting task and most go about it the “easy way” at first. There’s the option to simply offset carbons on the Chicago Climate Exchange, the European Climate Exchange or on the newly established NYMEX venture, the Green Exchange. Businesses have access to these exchanges if they wish to reduce their overall greenhouse gas emissions by as little as 1%.

The Green Exchange was launched with bells and whistles a few months back. Last week the exchange traded for the first time and activity and volume it surpassed all expectations.

The Green Exchange is part of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). During its first week, the equivalent of 1.59 million tons of carbon was traded. That volume makes the Green Exchange “the most successful launch of exchange-traded carbon contracts,” according to a report in the SunHerald.

Green collar jobs are rapidly becoming fashionable. The new trend represents a shift to the mainstream of the good old environmentalist approach to life. But what exactly makes a job green? The experts are far from agreed.

Green collar jobs have a magic lure to them. Not only because the people involved in the sector are supposedly making a conscious effort to salvage what’s left of the earth’s natural resources, but also because they’re hoping to drag the ailing economy out of its current quagmire.

The environmentalist visionary Van Jones, who heads up the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, is drawing massive crowds across the country to his speeches about the green sector. He has helped initiate a green jobs program in Oakland and it is in part due to his work that the Presidential candidates have included green collar jobs in their programs.

A climate change summit is taking place March 31st-April 4 in Bangkok. Representatives of over 170 countries are meeting to get a draft accord in place for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012. The deadline to reach a new protocol has been set for a December 2009 meeting in Denmark.

An interim summit held in Japan mid March convened representatives of the world’s top 20 greenhouse gas emitting countries responsible for 80% of the world’s pollution. It appeared that little progress was made. But all countries including the US agreed in Bali that they’d participate in the negotiations to the Kyoto’s successor and that promise was upheld two weeks ago. What was termed a “principle of common but differentiated responsibility” was accepted as a framework for negotiations. In other words, the new pact will bind all countries to various actions.

Lifestyles Of Health And Sustainability, LOHAS, for short, is an incremental part of the green marketing effort. The concept received a boost recently when marketing research giant Nielsen teamed up with the Natural Marketing Institute (NMI) to create an in-depth study of LOHAS.

The two research houses put the LOHAS market size down at $209 billion. This number includes services as well as tangible products. LOHAS are determined by NMI and Nielsen as people who “have a meaningful sense of environmental and social responsibility and incorporates those values into their purchase decisions.”

Meet Beatrice Ahimbisibwe. She’s a widowed single mother and a school-teacher in Uganda. Plus she creates 5.7 tons worth of carbon offsetting credits annually for TetraPak UK, a company intent on reducing its carbon footprint.

Ahimbisibwe owns a little plot of land on which she grows some of the trees involved in TetraPak’s contract to produce fresh air for all the pollution caused by its production processes. A case study of the carbon sequestration project on EcoSystemMarketplace.com reveals interesting insights into the practices of an emissions offsetting program.

The UK’s first eco community has been granted permission to start building a mini eco village. The community will consist of nine families who are going to build their houses from straw bale, mud and timber in the Welsh village of Glandwr.

The community is called the Lammas and the members will build four detached dwellings and a row of five attached houses on a plot of 76 acres. They’re going to live off-grid and collect their water from a spring that’s existing on site as well as from rain water captured on the turf-made roofs of their houses.