Going green is the mantra I often hear among Indian IT companies today. Patni Computer Systems constructed a 175 crores worth IT/BPO campus that got certified as green. Cisco has adopted the "Let's Talk Cisco Green" program that aims to spread awareness among employees to keep the green aspect foremost on their minds. CSC spearheaded a car pool initiative that avoids the AC for six months a year and its ‘Save Trees, Go Green’ campaign which recognizes employees who save paper by minimal use of printers. Several Indian IT companies are adopting "Going green" as a integral part of their corporate wide policies. Why and what in the world is prompting the IT industry to go green?
Going green is all about "Sustainable Design of Products and Processes". The official definition of green engineering is
Green Engineering is the design, commercialization and use of processes and products that are feasible and economical while minimizing:
• Generation of pollution at the source.
• Risk to human health and the environment.
Launched as a program by Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics (OPPT), USA in 1998, t goals of the Green Engineering Program are to incorporate “green” or environmentally conscious thinking and approaches in the academic and industrial communities regarding the design, commercialization, and use of processes and products.
The recent news clips on global warming, climate changes, recurrences of high intensity hurricanes, breaking of ice shelves at the poles and the ultra rapid growth happening over a wide swathe of the planet have all induced an element of urgency in inculcating the green aspect into the DNA of every major corporation and institution. Just hoping we are not too late !!
Source:
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Copenhagen outcome good but not adequate: Pachauri
NEW DELHI: The Copenhagen Accord was a good outcome but not adequate to fight climate change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chief RK
Pachauri said on Wednesday.
"We expected much more from the Copenhagen summit. We need to work very hard and come out with a legally binding commitment. There is a urgency to reach an agreement by the end on 2010 as we are losing valuable time. If delayed further, it will get very difficult and expensive to limit global temperature rise to two degree Celsius," said Pachauri.
Under the accord, by Jan 31, 2010 both developed and developing countries will have to inform of their commitment to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing global warming.
"The developed countries will give percentage of emission reduction while developing countries will give nationally appropriate mitigation action. By February next year, we will have fair idea what countries are willing to commit," he said.
Pachauri said action will be taken soon after to use these submissions as a basis for creating a legally binding agreement within a reasonable period of time.
"The Copenhagen Accord does provide a foundation and framework that allows for a binding agreement to be developed incorporating the specific commitments by all countries, particularly industrialised countries," he said.
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/developmental-issues/Copenhagen-outcome-good-but-not-adequate-Pachauri-/articleshow/5370546.cms
Pachauri said on Wednesday.
"We expected much more from the Copenhagen summit. We need to work very hard and come out with a legally binding commitment. There is a urgency to reach an agreement by the end on 2010 as we are losing valuable time. If delayed further, it will get very difficult and expensive to limit global temperature rise to two degree Celsius," said Pachauri.
Under the accord, by Jan 31, 2010 both developed and developing countries will have to inform of their commitment to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing global warming.
"The developed countries will give percentage of emission reduction while developing countries will give nationally appropriate mitigation action. By February next year, we will have fair idea what countries are willing to commit," he said.
Pachauri said action will be taken soon after to use these submissions as a basis for creating a legally binding agreement within a reasonable period of time.
"The Copenhagen Accord does provide a foundation and framework that allows for a binding agreement to be developed incorporating the specific commitments by all countries, particularly industrialised countries," he said.
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/developmental-issues/Copenhagen-outcome-good-but-not-adequate-Pachauri-/articleshow/5370546.cms
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
The cost of saving Earth
If negotiators reach an accord at the climate talks in Copenhagen it will entail profound shifts in energy production , dislocations in how and
where people live, sweeping changes in agriculture and forestry and the creation of complex new markets in global warming pollution credits.
So what is all this going to cost?
The short answer is trillions of dollars over the next few decades. It is a significant sum but a relatively small fraction of the world's total economic output.
In energy infrastructure alone, the transformational ambitions that delegates to the UN climate change conference are expected to set in the coming days will cost more than $10 trillion in additional investment from 2010 to 2030, according to a new estimate from the International Energy Agency.
As scary as that number sounds, the agency said that the costs would ramp up relatively slowly and be largely offset by economic benefits in new jobs, improved lives, more secure energy supplies and a reduced danger of climate catastrophe.
Most of the investment will come from private rather than public funds, the agency contends. "People often ask about the costs," said Kevin Parker, the global head of Deutsche Bank Asset Management, who tracks climate policy for the bank. "But the figures people tend to cite don't take into account conservation and efficiency measures that are easily available. And they don't look at the cost of inaction, which is the extinction of the human race. Period."
Whatever global warming's effects - and most scientific projections are less dire - there are also varying estimates of the economic costs of failing to act to address the problem soon, some of them very high.
In Copenhagen, some of the most intense and difficult discussions for negotiators centre on any potential agreement's near-term financial arrangements.
Some of the poorest and most vulnerable nations are calling for a gigantic transfer of wealth from the industrialised world to island nations and countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America that are most likely to feel the ravages of a changing climate.
The money would be used to help developing nations reduce emissions by switching to renewable energy sources like wind and solar and by compensating landowners for not cutting down or burning forests, a major source of carbon dioxide emissions.
Other funds might be used be used to adjust to effects of a changing climate like rising sea levels, by building flood walls or relocating settlements to higher ground.
Perhaps the most detailed analysis of the financing needs of any climate change agreement comes from Project Catalyst, an initiative of the European Union and ClimateWorks , a foundation-supported policy group based in San Francisco.
The group's work has helped shape the negotiations in Copenhagen. The group estimates that roughly $100 billion will be needed by 2020 to finance climate change programs in the developing world.
About half could come from the growing global market in carbon emissions credits under a cap-and-trade system, which will be worth an estimated $2 trillion a year by 2020. A cap-and-trade system is already operating in Europe and is under consideration by Congress.
An additional $10 billion to $20 billion would come from taxes on fuels used in aviation and shipping. The rest, perhaps $25 billion to $35 billion, would be loans and grants from industrialised nations to poorer countries, split roughly three ways among the US, the European Union and Canada, Japan and Australia.
The good news is that everybody now is supporting our proposal for financing," said Umaña , the Costa Rican delegate at Copenhagen . "The bad news is that it's happening 15 years too late. Without real money on the table, this will be a disaster."
BUDGET DEFICIT
Roughly $100 billion will be needed by 2020 to finance climate-change schemes in the developing world. About half could come from the growing global market in carbon emissions credits under a cap-and-trade system. An additional $10 billion to $20 billion would come from taxes on fuels used in aviation and shipping. The rest, perhaps $25 billion to $35 billion, would be loans and grants from industrialised nations to poorer countries
YOUR POCKET
ENERGY
The overall costs of Copenhagen are impossible to quantify. Most of the money will be spent by rich countries switching to a "low carbon economy" in order to meet targets on cutting greenhouse gases. This will mean investing in renewables and nuclear energy and will most likely end up on your fuel bills. Electricity costs will rise, though in the distant future power could even be free as energy is generated from natural sources
TAXES
Carbon taxes that are imposed on polluting industries are likely to be passed onto the consumer. There could also be direct carbon taxes on individuals if "carbon allowances" are introduced to limit the amount of energy, travel and other electricity each person is allowed to use
AIR TRAVEL
Airlines do not currently have a lowcarbon alternative to jet fuel. Unless one is found, they will bear the full burden of higher fuel costs and carbon taxes, and average fares will rise by at least 140 per cent. Video conferencing and mobile technology should get cheaper as it becomes more popular as an alternative to travel
TRANSPORT
Developed countries will be investing in high speed trains to bring down emissions. But the prices will not fall in the short term because of the investment needed. Electric vehicles should become cheaper as nations encourage manufacture and a switch from petrol cars fuels demand
FOOD
Cost of food flown from abroad could go up with the cost of transport. Prices of locally-grown food could also increase because of a rise in the cost of fertilisers
OTHER GOODS
Cost of clothing is likely to rise by one per cent and of other household goods like washing machines by two per cent, according to a New Scientist study conducted this year
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/global-warming/The-cost-of-saving-Earth-/articleshow/5330087.cms
where people live, sweeping changes in agriculture and forestry and the creation of complex new markets in global warming pollution credits.
So what is all this going to cost?
The short answer is trillions of dollars over the next few decades. It is a significant sum but a relatively small fraction of the world's total economic output.
In energy infrastructure alone, the transformational ambitions that delegates to the UN climate change conference are expected to set in the coming days will cost more than $10 trillion in additional investment from 2010 to 2030, according to a new estimate from the International Energy Agency.
As scary as that number sounds, the agency said that the costs would ramp up relatively slowly and be largely offset by economic benefits in new jobs, improved lives, more secure energy supplies and a reduced danger of climate catastrophe.
Most of the investment will come from private rather than public funds, the agency contends. "People often ask about the costs," said Kevin Parker, the global head of Deutsche Bank Asset Management, who tracks climate policy for the bank. "But the figures people tend to cite don't take into account conservation and efficiency measures that are easily available. And they don't look at the cost of inaction, which is the extinction of the human race. Period."
Whatever global warming's effects - and most scientific projections are less dire - there are also varying estimates of the economic costs of failing to act to address the problem soon, some of them very high.
In Copenhagen, some of the most intense and difficult discussions for negotiators centre on any potential agreement's near-term financial arrangements.
Some of the poorest and most vulnerable nations are calling for a gigantic transfer of wealth from the industrialised world to island nations and countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America that are most likely to feel the ravages of a changing climate.
The money would be used to help developing nations reduce emissions by switching to renewable energy sources like wind and solar and by compensating landowners for not cutting down or burning forests, a major source of carbon dioxide emissions.
Other funds might be used be used to adjust to effects of a changing climate like rising sea levels, by building flood walls or relocating settlements to higher ground.
Perhaps the most detailed analysis of the financing needs of any climate change agreement comes from Project Catalyst, an initiative of the European Union and ClimateWorks , a foundation-supported policy group based in San Francisco.
The group's work has helped shape the negotiations in Copenhagen. The group estimates that roughly $100 billion will be needed by 2020 to finance climate change programs in the developing world.
About half could come from the growing global market in carbon emissions credits under a cap-and-trade system, which will be worth an estimated $2 trillion a year by 2020. A cap-and-trade system is already operating in Europe and is under consideration by Congress.
An additional $10 billion to $20 billion would come from taxes on fuels used in aviation and shipping. The rest, perhaps $25 billion to $35 billion, would be loans and grants from industrialised nations to poorer countries, split roughly three ways among the US, the European Union and Canada, Japan and Australia.
The good news is that everybody now is supporting our proposal for financing," said Umaña , the Costa Rican delegate at Copenhagen . "The bad news is that it's happening 15 years too late. Without real money on the table, this will be a disaster."
BUDGET DEFICIT
Roughly $100 billion will be needed by 2020 to finance climate-change schemes in the developing world. About half could come from the growing global market in carbon emissions credits under a cap-and-trade system. An additional $10 billion to $20 billion would come from taxes on fuels used in aviation and shipping. The rest, perhaps $25 billion to $35 billion, would be loans and grants from industrialised nations to poorer countries
YOUR POCKET
ENERGY
The overall costs of Copenhagen are impossible to quantify. Most of the money will be spent by rich countries switching to a "low carbon economy" in order to meet targets on cutting greenhouse gases. This will mean investing in renewables and nuclear energy and will most likely end up on your fuel bills. Electricity costs will rise, though in the distant future power could even be free as energy is generated from natural sources
TAXES
Carbon taxes that are imposed on polluting industries are likely to be passed onto the consumer. There could also be direct carbon taxes on individuals if "carbon allowances" are introduced to limit the amount of energy, travel and other electricity each person is allowed to use
AIR TRAVEL
Airlines do not currently have a lowcarbon alternative to jet fuel. Unless one is found, they will bear the full burden of higher fuel costs and carbon taxes, and average fares will rise by at least 140 per cent. Video conferencing and mobile technology should get cheaper as it becomes more popular as an alternative to travel
TRANSPORT
Developed countries will be investing in high speed trains to bring down emissions. But the prices will not fall in the short term because of the investment needed. Electric vehicles should become cheaper as nations encourage manufacture and a switch from petrol cars fuels demand
FOOD
Cost of food flown from abroad could go up with the cost of transport. Prices of locally-grown food could also increase because of a rise in the cost of fertilisers
OTHER GOODS
Cost of clothing is likely to rise by one per cent and of other household goods like washing machines by two per cent, according to a New Scientist study conducted this year
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/global-warming/The-cost-of-saving-Earth-/articleshow/5330087.cms
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Oceans becoming nosier thanks to pollution: Report
PARIS: The world's oceans are becoming noisier thanks to pollution, with potentially harmful effects for whales, dolphins and other marine life,
US scientists said in a study published Sunday.
Low-frequency sound in the ocean is produced by natural phenomena such as rain, waves and marine life, and by human activities such as sonar systems, shipping and construction.
The sound is absorbed mainly through the viscosity of the water and the presence of certain dissolved chemicals, said the report published in the science journal Nature.
But the concentration of chemicals that absorb sound in the oceans has declined as a result of ocean acidification, in turn caused by rising concentrations of carbon dioxide.
Rising levels of carbon dioxide come from human activity such as shipping, with the number of ships roughly doubling over the past 40 years, the scientists said.
This was in turn increasing the acidity of the ocean, shown by a lowering of its pH levels, they said.
Using model simulations, the scientists found that increases in acidity could reduce seawater sound absorption by as much as 60 percent by 2100 in high latitude oceans.
Concern about the negative effect of the sea's increased acidity had previously been concentrated on the reduced rate of calcification, such as in coral reefs.
"However, a less anticipated consequence of ocean acidification is its effect on underwater sound absorption," the authors said.
"A decrease in seawater pH lowers sound absorption in the low-frequency range and, as a result, leads to increasing sound transmission."
Future global warming due to an accumulation of greenhouse gases may further decrease the ocean's sound absorption capacity at certain frequencies, the study said.
"High levels of low-frequency sound have a number of behavioural and biological effects on marine life," it added.
This included tissue damage, mass stranding of mammals such as whales and temporary loss of hearing in dolphins associated with military tests using intense mid-frequency sonar, the report said.
Marine species had adapted to varying levels of noise but the consequences of the sea's decreased ability to absorb sound were uncertain and required further research, the scientists said.
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/pollution/Oceans-becoming-nosier-thanks-to-pollution-Report-/articleshow/5360546.cms
US scientists said in a study published Sunday.
Low-frequency sound in the ocean is produced by natural phenomena such as rain, waves and marine life, and by human activities such as sonar systems, shipping and construction.
The sound is absorbed mainly through the viscosity of the water and the presence of certain dissolved chemicals, said the report published in the science journal Nature.
But the concentration of chemicals that absorb sound in the oceans has declined as a result of ocean acidification, in turn caused by rising concentrations of carbon dioxide.
Rising levels of carbon dioxide come from human activity such as shipping, with the number of ships roughly doubling over the past 40 years, the scientists said.
This was in turn increasing the acidity of the ocean, shown by a lowering of its pH levels, they said.
Using model simulations, the scientists found that increases in acidity could reduce seawater sound absorption by as much as 60 percent by 2100 in high latitude oceans.
Concern about the negative effect of the sea's increased acidity had previously been concentrated on the reduced rate of calcification, such as in coral reefs.
"However, a less anticipated consequence of ocean acidification is its effect on underwater sound absorption," the authors said.
"A decrease in seawater pH lowers sound absorption in the low-frequency range and, as a result, leads to increasing sound transmission."
Future global warming due to an accumulation of greenhouse gases may further decrease the ocean's sound absorption capacity at certain frequencies, the study said.
"High levels of low-frequency sound have a number of behavioural and biological effects on marine life," it added.
This included tissue damage, mass stranding of mammals such as whales and temporary loss of hearing in dolphins associated with military tests using intense mid-frequency sonar, the report said.
Marine species had adapted to varying levels of noise but the consequences of the sea's decreased ability to absorb sound were uncertain and required further research, the scientists said.
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/pollution/Oceans-becoming-nosier-thanks-to-pollution-Report-/articleshow/5360546.cms
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Danish island becomes one of first places on Earth to be energy self-sufficient
The Danish island of Samsø has become one of the first industrialized places on Earth to qualify as completely energy self-sufficient.
The tiny island — just 30 miles long and 15 miles wide — first began its push toward sustainability in 1997. In just over a decade, Samsø erected 21 electricity-producing wind turbines and a heating system fueled by wood chip- and straw-burning furnaces accompanied by several small solar panels.
Eleven of Samsø’s turbines are onshore and ten are offshore; all generate one megawatt each. The onshore turbines produce more electricity than the island consumes — enough to offset 690,000 gallons of oil — while the offshore turbines produce enough power to handle the island’s transportation energy budget.
The island invests excess power in new energy projects.
If that’s not enough, the Samsø experiment has also inadvertently transformed the island’s workforce into green collar workers. Plumbers and carpenters regularly perform energy-efficient home conversions, and their expertise has allowed them to work on green projects elsewhere, including mainland Europe.
Source: http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/danish-island-becomes-one-of-first-places-on-earth-to-be-energy-self-sufficient/2443/
The tiny island — just 30 miles long and 15 miles wide — first began its push toward sustainability in 1997. In just over a decade, Samsø erected 21 electricity-producing wind turbines and a heating system fueled by wood chip- and straw-burning furnaces accompanied by several small solar panels.
Eleven of Samsø’s turbines are onshore and ten are offshore; all generate one megawatt each. The onshore turbines produce more electricity than the island consumes — enough to offset 690,000 gallons of oil — while the offshore turbines produce enough power to handle the island’s transportation energy budget.
The island invests excess power in new energy projects.
If that’s not enough, the Samsø experiment has also inadvertently transformed the island’s workforce into green collar workers. Plumbers and carpenters regularly perform energy-efficient home conversions, and their expertise has allowed them to work on green projects elsewhere, including mainland Europe.
Source: http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/danish-island-becomes-one-of-first-places-on-earth-to-be-energy-self-sufficient/2443/
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
'Crystalline sponge' can help capture CO2
Source: The Economic Times
To sequester carbon dioxide as part of any climate-change mitigation strategy, the gas first has to be captured from the flue at a power plant or
other source. The next step is just as important: the CO² has to be released from whatever captured it so that it can be pumped underground or otherwise stored for the long term.
That second step can be costly from an energy standpoint. Materials currently used to capture CO² have to be heated to release the gas.
But chemists at University of California
, Los Angeles, say that a new class of materials they developed called metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, hold promise for carbon capture. In the study, Omar Yaghi describes the performance of one MOF, which he says can free most of the CO² it captures at room temperature.
Yaghi described a metal-organic framework as a "crystalline sponge", a hybrid lattice of organic compounds and metal atoms that has a huge internal surface area where gas molecules can be absorbed. The MOF used in the study contains magnesium atoms, "which make just the right environment for binding carbon dioxide", he said.
In experiments, the material separated out CO² while allowing methane to pass. What was really surprising, though, was that at room temperature 87% of the CO² could be released.
To sequester carbon dioxide as part of any climate-change mitigation strategy, the gas first has to be captured from the flue at a power plant or
other source. The next step is just as important: the CO² has to be released from whatever captured it so that it can be pumped underground or otherwise stored for the long term.
That second step can be costly from an energy standpoint. Materials currently used to capture CO² have to be heated to release the gas.
But chemists at University of California
, Los Angeles, say that a new class of materials they developed called metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs, hold promise for carbon capture. In the study, Omar Yaghi describes the performance of one MOF, which he says can free most of the CO² it captures at room temperature.
Yaghi described a metal-organic framework as a "crystalline sponge", a hybrid lattice of organic compounds and metal atoms that has a huge internal surface area where gas molecules can be absorbed. The MOF used in the study contains magnesium atoms, "which make just the right environment for binding carbon dioxide", he said.
In experiments, the material separated out CO² while allowing methane to pass. What was really surprising, though, was that at room temperature 87% of the CO² could be released.
'2010 to be the world's warmest year'
LONDON: 2010 is likely to be the world's warmest year on record, the British Met Office has
predicted.
According to the Met Office, man-made climate change will be a factor and natural weather patterns would contribute less to 2010's temperature than they did in 1998, the current warmest year in the 160-year record.
El Niño effect, the cyclical heating of the Pacific Ocean, is much weaker than it was in 1998, but the Met Office expects the warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions to more than make up the difference, 'The Times' reported.
It predicts that the global average temperature next year to be almost 0.6 C warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average, and forecasts an annual average of 14.58 C.
The Met Office has also said that it expects half the years between 2010 and 2019 to be warmer than 1998. It sounded a note of caution, saying that a record year in 2010 was not a certainty, especially if the current El Niño began to decline earlier than normal or there was a large volcanic eruption.
However, experts are divided on the prediction. Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "If 2010 turns out to be the hottest year on record, it might go some way towards exploding the myth, spread by the climate conspiracy theorists that we're experiencing global cooling. In reality the world is getting possibly a lot hotter, and humans are causing it."
But, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, has accused the Met Office of making a "political intervention" in the international negotiations taking place in Copenhagen.
"Suggestions by the Met Office that a warming trend will resume in the next year or two should be treated with reserve in light of the recognised difficulties in making such confident predictions," it said.
predicted.
According to the Met Office, man-made climate change will be a factor and natural weather patterns would contribute less to 2010's temperature than they did in 1998, the current warmest year in the 160-year record.
El Niño effect, the cyclical heating of the Pacific Ocean, is much weaker than it was in 1998, but the Met Office expects the warming effect of greenhouse gas emissions to more than make up the difference, 'The Times' reported.
It predicts that the global average temperature next year to be almost 0.6 C warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average, and forecasts an annual average of 14.58 C.
The Met Office has also said that it expects half the years between 2010 and 2019 to be warmer than 1998. It sounded a note of caution, saying that a record year in 2010 was not a certainty, especially if the current El Niño began to decline earlier than normal or there was a large volcanic eruption.
However, experts are divided on the prediction. Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "If 2010 turns out to be the hottest year on record, it might go some way towards exploding the myth, spread by the climate conspiracy theorists that we're experiencing global cooling. In reality the world is getting possibly a lot hotter, and humans are causing it."
But, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, has accused the Met Office of making a "political intervention" in the international negotiations taking place in Copenhagen.
"Suggestions by the Met Office that a warming trend will resume in the next year or two should be treated with reserve in light of the recognised difficulties in making such confident predictions," it said.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Climate pledges will make Earth warmer by 3.5°C
Source: The Economic Times
PARIS: Current pledges from rich and developing nations for cutting carbon pollution will stoke potentially catastrophic warming by century’s
end, according to a study released on Sunday on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit.
National commitments proposed so far for the December 7-18 UN conference would mean the global temperature would rise by 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times, way over a 2.0 C (3.6 F) threshold widely considered safe, the study said.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO²) would hit about 650 parts per million (ppm), according to the tally published by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and energy specialists Ecofys. “The pledges on the table will not halt emissions growth before 2040, let alone by 2015 as indicated by the IPCC [the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
] and are far from halving emissions by 2050 as has been called for by the G8,” said Niklas Hoehne of Ecofys.
“Instead, global emissions are likely to be nearly double 1990 levels by 2040 based on present pledges.” The Copenhagen conference gathers the 192-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Its task is to craft a global pact that will dramatically reduce man-made carbon emissions — invisible gases that trap solar heat and warm the atmosphere, interfering with Earth’s delicate climate system.
Hoehne said that pledges by developed countries so far were currently projected to be 13 to 19 percent below 1990 levels.
PARIS: Current pledges from rich and developing nations for cutting carbon pollution will stoke potentially catastrophic warming by century’s
end, according to a study released on Sunday on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit.
National commitments proposed so far for the December 7-18 UN conference would mean the global temperature would rise by 3.5 degrees Celsius (6.3 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times, way over a 2.0 C (3.6 F) threshold widely considered safe, the study said.
Concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO²) would hit about 650 parts per million (ppm), according to the tally published by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and energy specialists Ecofys. “The pledges on the table will not halt emissions growth before 2040, let alone by 2015 as indicated by the IPCC [the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
] and are far from halving emissions by 2050 as has been called for by the G8,” said Niklas Hoehne of Ecofys.
“Instead, global emissions are likely to be nearly double 1990 levels by 2040 based on present pledges.” The Copenhagen conference gathers the 192-member UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Its task is to craft a global pact that will dramatically reduce man-made carbon emissions — invisible gases that trap solar heat and warm the atmosphere, interfering with Earth’s delicate climate system.
Hoehne said that pledges by developed countries so far were currently projected to be 13 to 19 percent below 1990 levels.
Copenhagen is Europe's greenest city: Study
Source: The Economic Times
BERLIN: Copenhagen, host city of the ongoing United Nations climate summit, is the greenest major city in Europe, according to a survey published
on Tuesday.
The study, presented by German industrial giant Siemens during the Copenhagen meeting, ranked 30 major European cities in eight categories, including carbon dioxide emissions, air quality and energy use.
Stockholm, Oslo, Vienna and Amsterdam were placed just behind Copenhagen at the top of the list. The least environmentally friendly cities were Kiev, Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade and Zagreb.
Among other major capitals, Berlin ranked eighth, Paris 10th, London 11th and Rome 14th.
James Watson, managing director of the Economist Intelligence Unit, said that almost all of the 30 cities had lower CO2 emissions per capita than EU countries as a whole.
"All of the cities face formidable challenges, however. For example, renewable sources of energy currently account for only seven percent of these cities' energy supply, which is significantly under the target of 20 percent set by the EU for 2020," said Watson.
The December 7-18 climate summit in Copenhagen has brought together 193 countries to hammer out a climate deal to curb global warming and help poor nations cope with its consequences.
BERLIN: Copenhagen, host city of the ongoing United Nations climate summit, is the greenest major city in Europe, according to a survey published
on Tuesday.
The study, presented by German industrial giant Siemens during the Copenhagen meeting, ranked 30 major European cities in eight categories, including carbon dioxide emissions, air quality and energy use.
Stockholm, Oslo, Vienna and Amsterdam were placed just behind Copenhagen at the top of the list. The least environmentally friendly cities were Kiev, Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade and Zagreb.
Among other major capitals, Berlin ranked eighth, Paris 10th, London 11th and Rome 14th.
James Watson, managing director of the Economist Intelligence Unit, said that almost all of the 30 cities had lower CO2 emissions per capita than EU countries as a whole.
"All of the cities face formidable challenges, however. For example, renewable sources of energy currently account for only seven percent of these cities' energy supply, which is significantly under the target of 20 percent set by the EU for 2020," said Watson.
The December 7-18 climate summit in Copenhagen has brought together 193 countries to hammer out a climate deal to curb global warming and help poor nations cope with its consequences.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Rice an unlikely global warming culprit
LOS BANOS, Philippines: Asian rice farmers typically do not fly around the world on holidays or own big-engine cars but scientists say they have
an important role to play in helping cut the world's output of greenhouse gases.
While much of the globe's focus in the climate change fight is on the burning of fossil fuels and the logging of rainforests, water-logged rice paddies are also a major source of global warming-causing methane.
"If you step through a rice field, there is a lot of gas bubbling out and the large bulk of that is methane," said Reiner Wassmann, a biologist specialising in climate change at the International Rice Research Institute.
While carbon dioxide is the most famous of the gases that cause global warming, methane is at least 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere.
In an interview with AFP from the institute's headquarters in Los Banos, a farming area on the Philippines' main island of Luzon, Wassmann explained that methane was responsible for one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions.
About 10 percent of the methane comes from rice farming, while other sources include the flatulence of cows and decomposing landfill garbage dumps.
Wassmann said it was essential that rice farmers in Asia and the rest of the world did their bit to tackle climate change, but lumping them in with more obvious, fossil-burning culprits of climate change was wrong.
"Culprit gives an emotional tone to it that is not necessary," he said, describing some calls by green groups for the billions of people who rely on rice as their staple to eat less of it as being too extreme.
"I have heard suggestions like that but I don't think that makes sense. The key is on the production side, not on the consumption side," he said.
However Trinidad Domingo, a 57-year-old rice farmer with a 2.5-hectare (six-acre) plot of land in northern Luzon, said it seemed unfair to ask people such as herself to make sacrifices as part of the climate change fight.
"If we are contributing to this problem, we are just trying to survive and don't do this intentionally," Domingo told AFP from her small brick home.
"The big factories and industrialists should be the ones to be blamed. Why pick on peasants like us? They are the big contributors to the problem."
Indeed, Domingo's carbon footprint would appear to be a fraction of that of an average businessmen in the United States or elsewhere in the developed world -- she does not own a car and her main luxury is a small television.
"I am a simple rice farmer, a peasant who just wants to eat three times a day," she said.
Offering some hope, Wassmann said reducing greenhouse gas emissions from rice fields did not necessarily require a sacrifice, rather the implementing of smarter and more efficient farming strategies.
The first step is for farmers to use less water, because the methane is created when submerged organic material decomposes.
Wassmann said this was a logical path to follow regardless of the climate change issue because water would only become more scarce in an increasingly populated world.
Using less water can be done through draining the rice fields regularly during the growing season.
However the complicating factor is that nitrous oxide -- an even more potent gas and which mostly originates from widely used nitrogen fertiliser -- is released from drained rice fields.
"The only solution to that we can see is that we couple water saving... with increasing efficiencies of nitrogen fertiliser," he said, adding this could be done without sacrificing yields.
However convincing rice farmers to use less fertiliser will be a huge challenge, as evidenced by the reaction of Domingo when asked if she would change her farming techniques.
"If it contributes less to climate change, we are willing to cut down on using it, but I am afraid my crops won't grow as fast, leading to lesser yields. There could be a problem there," she said.
"We are willing to find alternatives but, at the end of the day, we are just small farmers."
Wassmann also said that there was no concerted push across the world's rice farming industries to educate and help farmers.
"As far as methane is concerned, there is not a single project in the real world, outside of the experimental farms, where there are programmes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from rice," he said.
Wassmann also said he expected rice to be a virtual non-issue at this week's climate change summit in Copenhagen, and that he expected it would only be discussed in depth at follow-up, more technically focused meetings.
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/global-warming/Rice-an-unlikely-global-warming-culprit-/articleshow/5303516.cms
an important role to play in helping cut the world's output of greenhouse gases.
While much of the globe's focus in the climate change fight is on the burning of fossil fuels and the logging of rainforests, water-logged rice paddies are also a major source of global warming-causing methane.
"If you step through a rice field, there is a lot of gas bubbling out and the large bulk of that is methane," said Reiner Wassmann, a biologist specialising in climate change at the International Rice Research Institute.
While carbon dioxide is the most famous of the gases that cause global warming, methane is at least 20 times more effective at trapping heat in the earth's atmosphere.
In an interview with AFP from the institute's headquarters in Los Banos, a farming area on the Philippines' main island of Luzon, Wassmann explained that methane was responsible for one fifth of all greenhouse gas emissions.
About 10 percent of the methane comes from rice farming, while other sources include the flatulence of cows and decomposing landfill garbage dumps.
Wassmann said it was essential that rice farmers in Asia and the rest of the world did their bit to tackle climate change, but lumping them in with more obvious, fossil-burning culprits of climate change was wrong.
"Culprit gives an emotional tone to it that is not necessary," he said, describing some calls by green groups for the billions of people who rely on rice as their staple to eat less of it as being too extreme.
"I have heard suggestions like that but I don't think that makes sense. The key is on the production side, not on the consumption side," he said.
However Trinidad Domingo, a 57-year-old rice farmer with a 2.5-hectare (six-acre) plot of land in northern Luzon, said it seemed unfair to ask people such as herself to make sacrifices as part of the climate change fight.
"If we are contributing to this problem, we are just trying to survive and don't do this intentionally," Domingo told AFP from her small brick home.
"The big factories and industrialists should be the ones to be blamed. Why pick on peasants like us? They are the big contributors to the problem."
Indeed, Domingo's carbon footprint would appear to be a fraction of that of an average businessmen in the United States or elsewhere in the developed world -- she does not own a car and her main luxury is a small television.
"I am a simple rice farmer, a peasant who just wants to eat three times a day," she said.
Offering some hope, Wassmann said reducing greenhouse gas emissions from rice fields did not necessarily require a sacrifice, rather the implementing of smarter and more efficient farming strategies.
The first step is for farmers to use less water, because the methane is created when submerged organic material decomposes.
Wassmann said this was a logical path to follow regardless of the climate change issue because water would only become more scarce in an increasingly populated world.
Using less water can be done through draining the rice fields regularly during the growing season.
However the complicating factor is that nitrous oxide -- an even more potent gas and which mostly originates from widely used nitrogen fertiliser -- is released from drained rice fields.
"The only solution to that we can see is that we couple water saving... with increasing efficiencies of nitrogen fertiliser," he said, adding this could be done without sacrificing yields.
However convincing rice farmers to use less fertiliser will be a huge challenge, as evidenced by the reaction of Domingo when asked if she would change her farming techniques.
"If it contributes less to climate change, we are willing to cut down on using it, but I am afraid my crops won't grow as fast, leading to lesser yields. There could be a problem there," she said.
"We are willing to find alternatives but, at the end of the day, we are just small farmers."
Wassmann also said that there was no concerted push across the world's rice farming industries to educate and help farmers.
"As far as methane is concerned, there is not a single project in the real world, outside of the experimental farms, where there are programmes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from rice," he said.
Wassmann also said he expected rice to be a virtual non-issue at this week's climate change summit in Copenhagen, and that he expected it would only be discussed in depth at follow-up, more technically focused meetings.
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/environment/global-warming/Rice-an-unlikely-global-warming-culprit-/articleshow/5303516.cms
Monday, December 7, 2009
Climate: Copenhagen talks set to be a cliff-hanger
Source: The Times of India
COPENHAGEN: Driven by an ever-louder drumbeat of alarm, the world's nations come together on Monday in a bid to lift the curse of climate change
hanging over coming generations.
In the brief history of environmentalism -- and, some would argue, in the longer sweep of human history itself -- the stakes at the 12-day conference in Copenhagen have never been higher.
The goal: to roll back the peril of hunger, disease, drought, flood, storm and rising seas created by mankind's unwitting impact on the weather system.
To achieve this aim, the 192 members of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) must show solidarity and sacrifice on an unprecedented scale.
More than 100 leaders are set to attend the finale on December 18. They are under ratcheting pressure to seize the day rather than a photo opportunity, to seal a deal rather than preside over a fiasco.
Trillions of dollars, powerful economic and national interests and the livelihoods of millions underpin the Copenhagen moment.
Countries must agree to curb their use of coal, oil and gas, the fossil fuels hewn from the ground or drilled from beneath the earth that have powered our prosperity -- and helped create the carbon monster.
And they must set up a financial safety net for poor countries least to blame for global warming but most exposed to its wrath, and provide them with technology to avoid becoming big polluters in turn.
"The aim is nothing less than to slice through the Gordian knot intertwining climate change and development," says Jean-Charles Hourcade of the International Centre on Environment and Development (CIRED), a French thinktank.
Some thinkers, like British economist Nicholas Stern, liken the December 7-18 conference in importance to Bretton Woods, the 1944 conference that reshaped the world's monetary system.
Others see it as a do-or-die moment for the United Nations, for it raises core questions about the ability of nation states to cooperate.
"It is a very crucial test of the UN system," Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN panel of climate scientists, told AFP. "It is an extremely important test of the ability of nation states to get together and manage the global commons."
The road to Copenhagen began two years ago, at UNFCCC talks in Bali, Indonesia.
There, after arduous wrangling, countries set their eyes on a global pact that would take effect from 2013, after current pledges expire under the Kyoto Protocol, the world's first emissions-curbing accord.
Bit by bit, hopes that Copenhagen would yield a soup-to-nuts treaty have vanished.
The lesser objective now is a strong outline accord, one that can be fleshed out by further negotiations in 2010.
Yet there is no guarantee that even this skeletal agreement can be reached.
Mistrust is entrenched among -- and within -- the three main negotiation groups.
Poor countries are angry that rich countries, as a bloc, have not come nearly far enough on their emissions and funding proposals.
Developing nations, they say, will not sign up to any targeted, binding emissions of their own, arguing they too have the right to use cheap, plentiful fossil fuels to haul themselves out of poverty.
The European Union (EU), meanwhile, is looking to the United States, the world's No. 2 polluter, to dig deep into its pocket and its carbon pollution.
The US, meanwhile, is turning to the emerging giants -- China, No. 1 emitter, as well as India and Brazil -- for proof that their emissions measures, while voluntary, will be tough, transparent and verifiable.
Even if this negotiation triangle can be smoothed out into a consensus, another problem lurks: what kind of legal form should this agreement take?
Poorer countries are clamouring for a second round of pledges under the Kyoto Protocol, yet this seems out of the question so long as the United States remains outside that treaty.
The negotiations are likely to start low-paced, building to a crescendo in the middle of the second week with the arrival of environment ministers, followed by the heads of state or government, including the leaders of the United States, China, Germany, France and Britain.
The likelihood beckons of frenzied all-night climate poker in the back rooms.
Green activists have scheduled demonstrations on Saturday, December 12, while a hard-left group has threatened to interrupt the talks at Copenhagen's Bella Center on December 16.
COPENHAGEN: Driven by an ever-louder drumbeat of alarm, the world's nations come together on Monday in a bid to lift the curse of climate change
hanging over coming generations.
In the brief history of environmentalism -- and, some would argue, in the longer sweep of human history itself -- the stakes at the 12-day conference in Copenhagen have never been higher.
The goal: to roll back the peril of hunger, disease, drought, flood, storm and rising seas created by mankind's unwitting impact on the weather system.
To achieve this aim, the 192 members of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) must show solidarity and sacrifice on an unprecedented scale.
More than 100 leaders are set to attend the finale on December 18. They are under ratcheting pressure to seize the day rather than a photo opportunity, to seal a deal rather than preside over a fiasco.
Trillions of dollars, powerful economic and national interests and the livelihoods of millions underpin the Copenhagen moment.
Countries must agree to curb their use of coal, oil and gas, the fossil fuels hewn from the ground or drilled from beneath the earth that have powered our prosperity -- and helped create the carbon monster.
And they must set up a financial safety net for poor countries least to blame for global warming but most exposed to its wrath, and provide them with technology to avoid becoming big polluters in turn.
"The aim is nothing less than to slice through the Gordian knot intertwining climate change and development," says Jean-Charles Hourcade of the International Centre on Environment and Development (CIRED), a French thinktank.
Some thinkers, like British economist Nicholas Stern, liken the December 7-18 conference in importance to Bretton Woods, the 1944 conference that reshaped the world's monetary system.
Others see it as a do-or-die moment for the United Nations, for it raises core questions about the ability of nation states to cooperate.
"It is a very crucial test of the UN system," Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN panel of climate scientists, told AFP. "It is an extremely important test of the ability of nation states to get together and manage the global commons."
The road to Copenhagen began two years ago, at UNFCCC talks in Bali, Indonesia.
There, after arduous wrangling, countries set their eyes on a global pact that would take effect from 2013, after current pledges expire under the Kyoto Protocol, the world's first emissions-curbing accord.
Bit by bit, hopes that Copenhagen would yield a soup-to-nuts treaty have vanished.
The lesser objective now is a strong outline accord, one that can be fleshed out by further negotiations in 2010.
Yet there is no guarantee that even this skeletal agreement can be reached.
Mistrust is entrenched among -- and within -- the three main negotiation groups.
Poor countries are angry that rich countries, as a bloc, have not come nearly far enough on their emissions and funding proposals.
Developing nations, they say, will not sign up to any targeted, binding emissions of their own, arguing they too have the right to use cheap, plentiful fossil fuels to haul themselves out of poverty.
The European Union (EU), meanwhile, is looking to the United States, the world's No. 2 polluter, to dig deep into its pocket and its carbon pollution.
The US, meanwhile, is turning to the emerging giants -- China, No. 1 emitter, as well as India and Brazil -- for proof that their emissions measures, while voluntary, will be tough, transparent and verifiable.
Even if this negotiation triangle can be smoothed out into a consensus, another problem lurks: what kind of legal form should this agreement take?
Poorer countries are clamouring for a second round of pledges under the Kyoto Protocol, yet this seems out of the question so long as the United States remains outside that treaty.
The negotiations are likely to start low-paced, building to a crescendo in the middle of the second week with the arrival of environment ministers, followed by the heads of state or government, including the leaders of the United States, China, Germany, France and Britain.
The likelihood beckons of frenzied all-night climate poker in the back rooms.
Green activists have scheduled demonstrations on Saturday, December 12, while a hard-left group has threatened to interrupt the talks at Copenhagen's Bella Center on December 16.
Emission cuts: India follows China's footsteps
Published on Thu 3rd Dec 2009 12:39:25
Source: Zopang.com
New Delhi, December 3 :
Following in China's footsteps, India has also decided to slow down the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.
Last week, China had claimed that it would cut carbon emissions up to 45 percent by 2020. India has decided to cut its carbon intensity by 24 percent by 2020.
India is at present under immense pressure to pronounce the details of how it would cut its carbon intensity. New Delhi's position will strengthen at the Copenhagen summit if it is successful in its aim.
Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said, "We now have taken on performance targets in energy, building, forestry and various sectors of the economy. We are not going to be taking any legally binding emission cuts. That is simply out of the question, but we can look at various alternatives. Incidentally, our carbon intensity is very low. The Chinese have just announced a carbon intensity decline by 2020 and according to that, they will be in the year 2020 where India was in 2005 as far as carbon intensity is concerned."
With this stand, India is under immense pressure to set emissions targets ahead of the Copenhagen summit. The western countries are imposing their pressure on India to quantify the cuts.
To add to that, the developed countries want India to draw out and state a plan that India will follow to cut its emissions.
Source: Zopang.com
New Delhi, December 3 :
Following in China's footsteps, India has also decided to slow down the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.
Last week, China had claimed that it would cut carbon emissions up to 45 percent by 2020. India has decided to cut its carbon intensity by 24 percent by 2020.
India is at present under immense pressure to pronounce the details of how it would cut its carbon intensity. New Delhi's position will strengthen at the Copenhagen summit if it is successful in its aim.
Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said, "We now have taken on performance targets in energy, building, forestry and various sectors of the economy. We are not going to be taking any legally binding emission cuts. That is simply out of the question, but we can look at various alternatives. Incidentally, our carbon intensity is very low. The Chinese have just announced a carbon intensity decline by 2020 and according to that, they will be in the year 2020 where India was in 2005 as far as carbon intensity is concerned."
With this stand, India is under immense pressure to set emissions targets ahead of the Copenhagen summit. The western countries are imposing their pressure on India to quantify the cuts.
To add to that, the developed countries want India to draw out and state a plan that India will follow to cut its emissions.
Carbon capitalists warming to climate battle using derivatives
Source: The Economic Times
Across Uganda, thousands of women warm supper over new, $8 orange-painted stoves. The clay-and-metal pots burn about two-thirds the charcoal of
the open-fire cooking typical of East Africa, where forests are being chopped down in the struggle to feed the region’s 125 million people.
Four thousand miles away, at the Charles Hurst Land Rover dealership in southwest London, a Range Rover Vogue sells for £90,000 pounds. A blue windshield sticker proclaims that the gasoline-powered truck’s first 45,000 miles (72,421 km) will be carbon neutral.
That’s because Land Rover, official purveyor of 4x4s to Queen Elizabeth II, is helping Ugandans cut their greenhouse gas emissions with those new stoves.
These two worlds came together in the offices of Blythe Masters at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Masters, 40, oversees the New York bank’s environmental businesses as the firm’s global head of commodities. JPMorgan brokered a deal in 2007 for Land Rover to buy carbon credits from ClimateCare, an Oxford, England-based group that develops energy-efficiency projects around the world. Land Rover, now owned by Mumbai-based Tata Motors, is using the credits to offset some of the CO2 emissions produced by its vehicles.
For Wall Street, these kinds of voluntary carbon deals are just a dress rehearsal for the day when the US develops a mandatory trading program for greenhouse gas emissions. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley will be watching closely as 192 nations gather in Copenhagen next week to try to forge a new climate-change treaty that would, for the first time, include the US and China.
US CAP AND TRADE
Those two economies are the biggest emitters of CO2, the most ubiquitous of the gases found to cause global warming. The Kyoto Protocol, whose emissions targets will expire in 2012, spawned a carbon-trading system in Europe that the banks hope will be replicated in the US.
The US Senate is debating a clean-energy bill that would introduce cap and trade for US emissions. A similar bill passed the House of Representatives in June. The plan would transform US industry by forcing the biggest companies , such as utilities, oil and gas drillers and cement makers, to calculate the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases they emit and then pay for them.
Estimates of the potential size of the US cap-and-trade market range from $300 billion to $2 trillion.
BANKS MOVING IN
Banks intend to become the intermediaries in this fledgling market. Although US carbon legislation may not pass for a year or more, Wall Street has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars hiring lobbyists and making deals with companies that can supply them with “carbon offsets” to sell to clients.
JPMorgan, for instance, purchased ClimateCare in early 2008 for an undisclosed sum. This month, it paid $210 million for Eco-Securities Group, the biggest developer of projects used to generate credits offsetting government-regulated carbon emissions. Financial institutions have also been investing in alternative energy, such as wind and solar power, and lending to clean-technology entrepreneurs.
The banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell carbonrelated financial products to outside investors.
Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the mix, she says.
Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity — in this case, CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
‘HEAVY INVOLVEMENT’
“This requires a massive redirection of capital,” Masters says. “You can’t have a successful climate policy without the heavy, heavy involvement of financial institutions.”
As a young London banker in the early 1990s, Masters was part of JPMorgan’s team developing ideas for transferring risk to third parties. She went on to manage credit risk for JPMorgan’s investment bank.
Among the credit derivatives that grew from the bank’s early efforts was the credit-default swap. A CDS is a contract that functions like insurance by protecting debt holders against default. In 2008, after U.S. home prices plunged, the cost of protection against subprime-mortgage bond defaults jumped. Insurer American International Group Inc., which had sold billions in CDSs, was forced into government ownership, roiling markets and helping trigger the worst global recession since the 1930s.
LAWMAKERS LEERY
Now, that story — and the entire role the banks played in the credit crisis — has become central to the US carbon debate. Washington lawmakers are leery of handing Wall Street anything new to trade because the bitter taste of the credit debacle lingers. And their focus is on derivatives. Along with CDSs, the most-notorious derivatives are the collateralized-debt obligations they often insured. CDOs are bundles of subprime mortgages and other debt that were sliced into tranches and sold to investors.
Across Uganda, thousands of women warm supper over new, $8 orange-painted stoves. The clay-and-metal pots burn about two-thirds the charcoal of
the open-fire cooking typical of East Africa, where forests are being chopped down in the struggle to feed the region’s 125 million people.
Four thousand miles away, at the Charles Hurst Land Rover dealership in southwest London, a Range Rover Vogue sells for £90,000 pounds. A blue windshield sticker proclaims that the gasoline-powered truck’s first 45,000 miles (72,421 km) will be carbon neutral.
That’s because Land Rover, official purveyor of 4x4s to Queen Elizabeth II, is helping Ugandans cut their greenhouse gas emissions with those new stoves.
These two worlds came together in the offices of Blythe Masters at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Masters, 40, oversees the New York bank’s environmental businesses as the firm’s global head of commodities. JPMorgan brokered a deal in 2007 for Land Rover to buy carbon credits from ClimateCare, an Oxford, England-based group that develops energy-efficiency projects around the world. Land Rover, now owned by Mumbai-based Tata Motors, is using the credits to offset some of the CO2 emissions produced by its vehicles.
For Wall Street, these kinds of voluntary carbon deals are just a dress rehearsal for the day when the US develops a mandatory trading program for greenhouse gas emissions. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley will be watching closely as 192 nations gather in Copenhagen next week to try to forge a new climate-change treaty that would, for the first time, include the US and China.
US CAP AND TRADE
Those two economies are the biggest emitters of CO2, the most ubiquitous of the gases found to cause global warming. The Kyoto Protocol, whose emissions targets will expire in 2012, spawned a carbon-trading system in Europe that the banks hope will be replicated in the US.
The US Senate is debating a clean-energy bill that would introduce cap and trade for US emissions. A similar bill passed the House of Representatives in June. The plan would transform US industry by forcing the biggest companies , such as utilities, oil and gas drillers and cement makers, to calculate the amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases they emit and then pay for them.
Estimates of the potential size of the US cap-and-trade market range from $300 billion to $2 trillion.
BANKS MOVING IN
Banks intend to become the intermediaries in this fledgling market. Although US carbon legislation may not pass for a year or more, Wall Street has already spent hundreds of millions of dollars hiring lobbyists and making deals with companies that can supply them with “carbon offsets” to sell to clients.
JPMorgan, for instance, purchased ClimateCare in early 2008 for an undisclosed sum. This month, it paid $210 million for Eco-Securities Group, the biggest developer of projects used to generate credits offsetting government-regulated carbon emissions. Financial institutions have also been investing in alternative energy, such as wind and solar power, and lending to clean-technology entrepreneurs.
The banks are preparing to do with carbon what they’ve done before: design and market derivatives contracts that will help client companies hedge their price risk over the long term. They’re also ready to sell carbonrelated financial products to outside investors.
Masters says banks must be allowed to lead the way if a mandatory carbon-trading system is going to help save the planet at the lowest possible cost. And derivatives related to carbon must be part of the mix, she says.
Derivatives are securities whose value is derived from the value of an underlying commodity — in this case, CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
‘HEAVY INVOLVEMENT’
“This requires a massive redirection of capital,” Masters says. “You can’t have a successful climate policy without the heavy, heavy involvement of financial institutions.”
As a young London banker in the early 1990s, Masters was part of JPMorgan’s team developing ideas for transferring risk to third parties. She went on to manage credit risk for JPMorgan’s investment bank.
Among the credit derivatives that grew from the bank’s early efforts was the credit-default swap. A CDS is a contract that functions like insurance by protecting debt holders against default. In 2008, after U.S. home prices plunged, the cost of protection against subprime-mortgage bond defaults jumped. Insurer American International Group Inc., which had sold billions in CDSs, was forced into government ownership, roiling markets and helping trigger the worst global recession since the 1930s.
LAWMAKERS LEERY
Now, that story — and the entire role the banks played in the credit crisis — has become central to the US carbon debate. Washington lawmakers are leery of handing Wall Street anything new to trade because the bitter taste of the credit debacle lingers. And their focus is on derivatives. Along with CDSs, the most-notorious derivatives are the collateralized-debt obligations they often insured. CDOs are bundles of subprime mortgages and other debt that were sliced into tranches and sold to investors.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Melting Himalayan glaciers threaten 1.3 billion Asians
Source: The Economic Times/Dated: 6th Dec, 2009
KATHMANDU: More than a billion people in Asia depend on Himalayan glaciers for water, but experts say they are melting at an alarming rate,
threatening to bring drought to large swathes of the continent.
Glaciers in the Himalayas, a 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) range that sweeps through Pakistan, India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, provide headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers, lifelines for the 1.3 billion people who live downstream.
But temperatures in the region have increased by between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius (0.27 and 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade for the last 30 years, dramatically accelerating the rate at which glaciers are shrinking.
As world leaders gather in Copenhagen this month for a crucial climate change summit, campaigners warn that some Himalayan glaciers could disappear altogether within a few decades.
"Scientists predict that most glaciers will be gone in 40 years as a result of climate change," said Prashant Singh, leader of environmental group WWF's Climate for Life campaign.
"The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people living in the Himalayan drainage systems who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body regarded as the world's top authority on climate change, has warned Himalayan glaciers could "disappear altogether by 2035" and experts say the effects of global warming are already being felt in the region.
In Nepal and Bhutan, the receding glaciers have formed vast lakes that threaten to burst, devastating villages downstream.
Nepalese mountaineer and environmental campaigner Dawa Steven Sherpa said he first became interested in climate change after a close call when part of the Khumbu icefall above Everest base camp collapsed during an expedition in 2007.
Sherpa, who has scaled Everest three times, was walking on the glacier minutes before the collapse, and said his near miss alerted him to the dramatic toll that global warming is already taking on the Himalayas.
"Every time I go to the mountains the older Sherpas tell me this is the warmest year yet," Sherpa, who will take part in a special "summiteers' summit" in Copenhagen, told AFP.
"Initially it struck me how much more dangerous mountaineering would become. But then I realised it was much bigger than that. Entire villages could be wiped out if one of the glacial lakes burst."
In China, studies have shown that the rapid melting of the glaciers will result in an increase in flooding in the short term, state news agency Xinhua has reported.
In the longer term, it said, the continued retreat of glaciers would lead to a gradual decrease in river flows, severely affecting large parts of western China.
Experts say the resulting water shortages could hit the economic development of China and India, with potentially dire consequences for development in two of the world's most populated countries.
Even in low-lying Bangladesh, prone to severe floods, the IPCC has said rivers could run dry by the end of the century.
But research on the impact of global warming on the rugged and inaccessible Himalayas remains sparse, with the IPCC describing the region as a "blank spot" due to a lack of scientific data.
Even the experts disagree on the issue, with some arguing that some of the Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing.
India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh recently came under fire for denying that climate change was causing Himalayan glaciers to melt, citing research by the Indian geologist Vijay Kumar Raina.
The Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has studied the Himalayan region for more than three decades and warns of an "urgent need" for more research on the impact of climate change.
"There are so many uncertainties surrounding where, how and to what extent the Himalayan region will be affected by climate change," ICIMOD climate change expert Arun Shrestha told AFP.
"But most experts accept that temperatures are changing, and this is happening more rapidly at altitude."
ICIMOD has warned that the current trends in glacial melt suggest flows in major Asian rivers including the Ganges, Indus and Yellow Rivers will be "substantially reduced" in the coming decades.
"The situation may appear to be normal in the region for several decades to come, and even with increased amounts of water available to satisfy dry season demands," it said in a recent report on the Himalayas.
"However, when the shortage arrives, it may happen abruptly, with water systems going from plenty to scarce in perhaps a few decades or less."
Shrestha added: "When the glaciers get hotter, you get more water, but there comes a point when the water will run out.
"It's like a bank balance, if you're not putting money in, you can't take it out."
KATHMANDU: More than a billion people in Asia depend on Himalayan glaciers for water, but experts say they are melting at an alarming rate,
threatening to bring drought to large swathes of the continent.
Glaciers in the Himalayas, a 2,400-kilometre (1,500-mile) range that sweeps through Pakistan, India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, provide headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers, lifelines for the 1.3 billion people who live downstream.
But temperatures in the region have increased by between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius (0.27 and 1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) each decade for the last 30 years, dramatically accelerating the rate at which glaciers are shrinking.
As world leaders gather in Copenhagen this month for a crucial climate change summit, campaigners warn that some Himalayan glaciers could disappear altogether within a few decades.
"Scientists predict that most glaciers will be gone in 40 years as a result of climate change," said Prashant Singh, leader of environmental group WWF's Climate for Life campaign.
"The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people living in the Himalayan drainage systems who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN body regarded as the world's top authority on climate change, has warned Himalayan glaciers could "disappear altogether by 2035" and experts say the effects of global warming are already being felt in the region.
In Nepal and Bhutan, the receding glaciers have formed vast lakes that threaten to burst, devastating villages downstream.
Nepalese mountaineer and environmental campaigner Dawa Steven Sherpa said he first became interested in climate change after a close call when part of the Khumbu icefall above Everest base camp collapsed during an expedition in 2007.
Sherpa, who has scaled Everest three times, was walking on the glacier minutes before the collapse, and said his near miss alerted him to the dramatic toll that global warming is already taking on the Himalayas.
"Every time I go to the mountains the older Sherpas tell me this is the warmest year yet," Sherpa, who will take part in a special "summiteers' summit" in Copenhagen, told AFP.
"Initially it struck me how much more dangerous mountaineering would become. But then I realised it was much bigger than that. Entire villages could be wiped out if one of the glacial lakes burst."
In China, studies have shown that the rapid melting of the glaciers will result in an increase in flooding in the short term, state news agency Xinhua has reported.
In the longer term, it said, the continued retreat of glaciers would lead to a gradual decrease in river flows, severely affecting large parts of western China.
Experts say the resulting water shortages could hit the economic development of China and India, with potentially dire consequences for development in two of the world's most populated countries.
Even in low-lying Bangladesh, prone to severe floods, the IPCC has said rivers could run dry by the end of the century.
But research on the impact of global warming on the rugged and inaccessible Himalayas remains sparse, with the IPCC describing the region as a "blank spot" due to a lack of scientific data.
Even the experts disagree on the issue, with some arguing that some of the Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing.
India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh recently came under fire for denying that climate change was causing Himalayan glaciers to melt, citing research by the Indian geologist Vijay Kumar Raina.
The Nepal-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) has studied the Himalayan region for more than three decades and warns of an "urgent need" for more research on the impact of climate change.
"There are so many uncertainties surrounding where, how and to what extent the Himalayan region will be affected by climate change," ICIMOD climate change expert Arun Shrestha told AFP.
"But most experts accept that temperatures are changing, and this is happening more rapidly at altitude."
ICIMOD has warned that the current trends in glacial melt suggest flows in major Asian rivers including the Ganges, Indus and Yellow Rivers will be "substantially reduced" in the coming decades.
"The situation may appear to be normal in the region for several decades to come, and even with increased amounts of water available to satisfy dry season demands," it said in a recent report on the Himalayas.
"However, when the shortage arrives, it may happen abruptly, with water systems going from plenty to scarce in perhaps a few decades or less."
Shrestha added: "When the glaciers get hotter, you get more water, but there comes a point when the water will run out.
"It's like a bank balance, if you're not putting money in, you can't take it out."
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