Green Options

The worldwide economic slowdown is having an unexpected positive impact in the fight against global warming: Emissions of carbon dioxide are falling, records collected by governments show.

Across the globe, a slowdown in manufacturing has resulted in lower CO2 emissions.

The Clean Coal discussion is not as simple as anyone (on either side of the propaganda machine) wants to make it out to be. To quote Bruce Niles from the Sierra Club: “Clean Coal means different things to different people.” If clean coal is what the coal industry wants, it’s already here. Environmental scientists agree that Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) has some potential to make coal cleaner. But that nuance is lost in this discussion.

It’s been said many a time that one way to reduce a company’s footprint is by using web conferencing tools rather than flying everybody to meet in person. Noble, efficient and potentially cost saving as that is, there’s one problem: There’s been no way to quantify just how much of a difference it’s actually making. Sure, saved costs of flight, transport, accommodations are easy to calculate. But how about reduced emissions? And even if you were to know that, how can that be translated into a figure meaningful to our everyday lives?

iLinc has created the Green Meter to give concreteness and life to the abstract. It calculates the CO2, cost, and travel reductions accrued while using their service, down to the individual level. When companies are required to reduce their carbon footprint, whether internally or by the government where they do business, this will prove an invaluable tool. And in this fragile, downwardly spiraling economy, being financially  prudent with your expenses will be increasingly important.

For perhaps the first time ever, U.S. businesses could be fined based on the amount of global warming pollution they emit. The Bay Area Quality Air Management District in San Fransisco has proposed a fine of 4.2 cents per metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) on every power plant, factory and even small business. CO2 is a major contributor to global warming.

The proposal would affect about 10,000 “stationary sources” of pollution and [...]

The Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences has just received $590,000 to support research into how diet affects a cow’s methane emissions. Livestock are blamed for 28 percent of the world’s human-caused emissions of methane, a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Photo courtesy of Man vyi at Wikimedia Commons

The U.K. Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has ordered UK ministers to factor in climate change consequences for all policy and financial decisions related to transportation, construction, energy, housing and planning.

To do this, carbon dioxide (CO2) - a major contributor to global warming - has been assigned a “shadow price” that government officials will have to consider. This theoretical cost of carbon will, of course, drive up the price tag of projects like new coal plants and new roads. And that’s the point: Assigning a cost to carbon will increase the costs of traditional, dirty projects (and show a truer value in a world more and more likely to assign a cost to CO2) and make cleaner, more efficient projects more attractive and less expensive.

Government economists have set the price at £25.50 per carbon tonne for 2007. That cost will rise each year until it reaches £59.60 per tonne in 2050. The price was set at a level by which the government can meet its target of stabilizing CO2 emissions at 450-550 parts per million, which was recommended by a review for the Treasury. The price is intended to reflect the global costs of carbon’s damage in the atmosphere (more on how and why the price of carbon was determined can be found here).

Well, at least they're not storing it in coffins with silk lining. In what's sure to trigger great debate, the International Maritime Association has approved measures that would allow organizations to pump C02 waste under the seabed. Previously, C02 — which is toxic in large concentrations to sea creatures and can asphyxiate people, animals and plants — was unclassified for sea-dumping. These new rules, however, pave the way for massive investment in sub-sea carbon storage

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