Fiona Harvey wrote in the FT last week of how MPs are seeking to make airlines and other “carbon-intensive” businesses offer ways for customers to offset their environmental impact.
But earlier this year, the paper “uncovered numerous examples of companies selling at a high price offsets that were effectively worthless, as well as factories and carbon trading companies making large profits from selling cheaply acquired “carbon credits”, and has passed on its findings to the Office of Fair Trading.”
Tim Yeo, chairman of the environmental audit committee, called for better regulation of the market. He said: “We are concerned that the prospects for growth in carbon offsetting, and the accompanying benefits in terms of lower global emissions, are being held back by suspicions that a lack of regulation and transparency in the market is allowing some schemes to be promoted which do not achieve acceptable outcomes.”
CHINA WATCH China is introducing a labelling system to help inform people how green their cars are.
As the State Environmental Protection Administration revealed a week or two ago, the first of the Motor Vehicle Emission Standards will come into effect as of this year, othes following in 2010.
According to People.com.cn, Guangzhou, the southern city in the Guangdong Province, has taken the lead to implement the standard and is already slapping eco labels on its vehicles.
China has become the third-largest automobile manufacturer. Official statistics show that transportation accounted for 16.3 percent of China’s total energy consumption in 2005.
The UN has promised it will try to be carbon neutral within a few years.
According to a Reuters report, it claims the UN hasn’t really set the example it perhaps should have.
“We are behind. We’re obviously not the first. We can make a difference with the quality of the carbon offsets we use,” Janos Pasztor, the U.N. official heading the programme, said in a telephone interview.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described plans to make all U.N. premises and operations “climate neutral” in a letter addressed to heads of U.N. agencies earlier this month.
“We could add additional sustainable development criteria, for example to focus on energy efficiency or on projects in Africa, instead of buying HFC carbon credits,” he said.
“For our carbon offsetting programme I would say that Kyoto carbon credits are an absolute minimum criteria.”
CHINA WATCH Earlier this year, this Greenbanger excitedly read a story in Wired about a new eco-city that was being developed from scratch in China. The place, Dongtan, has been billed by its engineers, Arup, as the “world’s first sustainable city“–and the concept is truly compelling. This description pretty much sums it up:
The first of four eco-cities to be built in China by Arup, Dongtan will be ecologically friendly, with zero greenhouse-emission transit and self-sufficient water and energy systems. The city is being designed around a series of village-style neighborhoods to make it pedestrian rather than car friendly. Dongtan will generate all of its energy needs from renewable sources, with zero emissions produced by the city’s vehicles.
However, a fascinating feature in Popular science this month warns that the reality may end up being somewhat less than perfect–in Dongtan, and in other copycat eco-cities being developed elsewhere in China. …
The UK Treasury recently dropped taxes for anyone using less than 2,500 litres of biodiesel or vegetable oil in their vehicles. A guest blogger on Earth2Tech (from non-profit co-op BloomingFutures, which converts cars to use biodiesel) believes the change will help boost take up and innovation in this area.
The end of the tax will add encouragement for biodiesel producers and maybe even bring in a new crowd. Even more so it will be a boon for the straight vegetable oil market. The top of the range single-tank conversions on the most economical cars are just now becoming cost efficient for the first time.
The change can make a major difference for drivers, as this story (also from BloomingFutures) claims.
Using 2500 litres of [Pure Plant Oil, or PPO] a year equates to roughly 25000 miles of driving in a family car – leading to an annual saving on fuel of over £1,100 using current prices.
PPO is a diesel fuel alternative and using it requires that a professional engine modification is fitted to the engine. Once modified, PPO users report similar mileage and power outputs to fossil diesel. Thanks to the new tax advantage, the cost of the conversion can be quickly recovered from the savings in fuel.
We’re not the experts on this, so Greenbang would love to hear from anyone who’s actually done this–do let us know. For those keen to try anyway, a handy list of biodiesel filling stations (UK only) is available from this site. Or learn more about biodiesel and biofuels here.
Popular Science has a fantastic article on its site that details what laptop-makers could do to create their products far more eco-friendly. The piece covers a range of ideas, from chopping the toxic chemicals typically used in the manufacturing process to incorporating a photovoltaic cell into the design, to reduce the system’s power consumption from the grid.
PROBLEM: Petroleum-filled plastic
SOLUTION: Make cases from corn
New bioplastics—plant-based polymers—require less oil and energy to produce than traditional plastics. One challenge: upping heat resistance so electronics won’t melt them. Fujitsu makes a laptop with a half-natural, half-conventional case and is now testing a castor-oil plastic that’s up to 80 percent bio-content.
The Numbers Guy at the Wall Street Journal has done a little digging around to investigate the real impact of switching Google’s white background to black (ala Blackle) in order to reduce power consumption. On the plus side, there really is a power saving from switching to black. On the down side, the gain is only made on older CRT monitors, rather than newer LCD monitors. As the post points out:
On LCD displays, color may confer no benefit at all. In response to my inquiry, Steve Ryan, program manager for Energy Star’s power-management program, asked consulting firm Cadmus Group to run a quick test by loading Blackle, Google and the Web site of the New York Times (which is, like Google, mostly white on-screen) on two monitors — one CRT, one LCD — and connecting a power meter to both. “We found that the color on screen mattered very little to the energy color consumption of the LCD monitor,” said David Korn, principal at Cadmus, which specializes in energy and environment, and does work for the government. The changes were so slight as to be within the margin of error for the power meter. Tweaking brightness and contrast and settings had a bigger effect. The bulkier CRT screen did see savings with Blackle of between 5% and 20%. Mr. Korn emphasized that this was a quick test, not a rigorous study.
What a shame. Still, as the Blackle folks point out, there’s still some benefit in making people think about energy issues. And the consumer interest is real: Blackle’s servers recently fell over, due to massive interest in the site after the story was picked up in the media.
Arch-rival Dell also has a major recycling scheme, although its figures are somewhat more modest than HP’s. It recently announced that it is “ahead of schedule” in its plan to recycle about 125 million kilos of kit by 2009. By contrast, HP plans to recycling another 500 million kilos by 2010.
Anyway, it’s nice that they’re both getting into the race…
Graham Whitney, IBM’s leader of climate change and carbon management services, has a very long job title - as they all do in the IT industry.
But he says companies face massive changes after Christmas when the UK”s Climate Change Bill comes into force. He says: “There’ll be a whole new set of regulations. There’ll be a set of budgets. As the price of carbon is set, companies will have to understand what their carbnon budgets are.”
He adds that will open a can of worms with what people have to disclose…
80% of remanufactured toner cartridges and 86% of remanufactured inkjet cartridges are thrown away because remanufacturers have such a strong preference for cartridges that have not previously been remanufactured (aka “virgin empties”).
Through remanufacturing, 3rd party supplies companies are able, on average, to reduce overall demand for new cartridges by about 20%.
Remanufacturers surveyed generally were not aware of the details concerning the waste management service providers they utilized.
Transparent and public reporting of environmental performance was not available from several OEMs or any of the remanufacturers surveyed.
Excess and damaged cartridges, as well as non-virgin cartridges, may be sold several times to successively lower-quality remanufacturers before being discarded.
There are very few truly local remanufacturers; most local remanufacturers now outsource their products and no longer remanufacture directly.
16% of toner cartridges and 34% of inkjet cartridges remanufacturers collect cannot be profitably remanufactured.
3rd party supplies companies collect 70% more empty OEM toner cartridges and 700% more empty OEM inkjet cartridges than the OEMs themselves.
A significant amount of the cartridges collected by remanufacturers are disposed of due to damage or end of useful life, or because they are undesirable cartridges that have little or no value. The report contends that half of Europe’s laser cartridge remanufacturing waste is recycled, and 30% of inkjet cartridge remanufacturing waste is recycled or managed in some way. In addition, only about 10% of unusable laser cartridge waste is actually recycled by remanufacturers in the U.S., and almost no integrated inkjet cartridges are recycled. …
The UK Treasury recently dropped taxes for anyone using less than 2,500 litres of biodiesel or vegetable oil in their vehicles. 
The Numbers Guy at the Wall Street Journal
There’s an interesting