From the experience of the City of Palo Alto, participants will gain independent, real-world information on how to approach and plan for implementation of a carbon management system. Karl Van Orsdol, sustainability leader and energy risk manager for the City of Palo Alto, will describe the city’s recent experience implementing carbon management software (from Hara Software, Inc), including a discussion of target reduction goals, motivating factors, system selection and implementation, new processes and organizational responsibilities, key challenges, and achievement of $300-600,000 in annual cost savings.

For a broader look at carbon management information systems as a rapidly emerging solution class, Don Bray, president of AltaTerra Research will provide background analysis on business drivers, concepts, practices and system capabilities. “Palo Alto’s experience demonstrates that manually gathering baseline information and using spreadsheets to calculate and track results is not sustainable,” said Mr. Bray. “Achieving meaningful, long-term reductions in resource use, emissions, and associated dollars requires new processes, tools, and operating responsibilities.”

Further information and registration for the event are available by clicking here.

Like this post? See all my “Greening Print Marketing” posts.

Image: Courtesy of The Stock Exchange (image uploaded by hisks) 

A top China central government think tank yesterday released a framework for quantifying countries’ historical emissions. Under this proposed framework, the State Council Development Research Center (DRC) would create a “historic account” of past emissions, used to benchmark developing countries with lower accumulated emissions - like China - against countries with higher accumulated emissions and assign emissions “deficits” to countries who have emitted less. Using this quantitative assessment, countries with emissions “deficits” would get the green light to emit, or trade emissions credits with countries that have already exceeded their allowance.

The release of this plan supports external analysis that China believes it should have the right to develop free from carbon reductions until their accumulated emissions are on par with industrialized countries. A recent Brookings Institute report: “Overcoming Obstacles to US-China Cooperation on Climate Change” articulated Beijing’s stance, which included the conviction that:

Countries should be held responsible not only for their current emissions but also for their cumulative historical emissions, given that greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere over many decades.

This plan is Beijing’s most comprehensive effort to date to both highlight and quantify development inequalities as a justification for releasing China and other developing countries from emissions reduction expectations.

Read more of this story »

The speech was widely covered here on Green Options and in the general media, with many feeling that this was a case of too little, too late.

Of course, this was not particularly surprising, and few people were gearing themselves up for the potential announcement of a dramatic change in policy. But what has been interesting is the unprecedented criticism from world leaders disappointed with the lack of US commitment:

Read more of this story »