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EcoCentroGen is not only a practicing example of being a carbon neutral company, but also fully supports the company, CarbonNeutral, in it's commercial activities as there is a clear synergy between our corporate and collective ethos and brand values.
Human induced climate change – which results from increased ‘greenhouse’ gases – is probably mankind’s greatest own goal. Governments and most scientists working in this field, certainly acknowledge it’s the greatest environmental threat of this century.
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The earth, like our own bodies, cools or warms until the energy ‘inputs’ from warming (from the sun, for example) are in balance with energy lost through cooling. Greenhouse gases are emitted to the atmosphere when we burn fossil fuels to generate electricity or heat – or to power engines for travel. These gases (principally CO2) trap some of the sun’s energy within our atmosphere – like a greenhouse roof – increasing the temperature at which the earth achieves energy balance.
These human induced emissions have already caused the amount of solar energy that drives the planet’s climate system to increase by about 1%. If you think that doesn’t sound very high, it’s equivalent to burning 1.8 million tonnes of oil every minute. That’s 100 times the world’s current rate of commercial energy consumption.
We did this. All of us have to take responsibility.
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Pretty much. The main greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2) that accounts for about two thirds of the human induced warming effect. Methane, nitrous oxide and other gases account for the remaining third.
It’s true there have been a number of significant natural fluctuations in atmospheric CO2 concentration over the last 150,000 years. However, until the industrial revolution, these fluctuations were within a range of about 180-280 parts per million (ppm). In the last 200 years – since the industrial revolution - the concentration of CO2 has increased to the current level of about 380ppm. Scientific predictions calculate this could rise to 450ppm within the next 30 years.
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The Earth's climate has warmed, on average, by about 0.6°C over the past 100 years in response to human activities. That may not sound much, but it means rain and snowfall patterns have changed, sea levels have risen and most non-polar glaciers are retreating.
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More heat waves, floods and droughts – driven by significant changes in major phenomena such as El Niño.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2001), it appears that the impacts of weather related disasters are increasing two to three times more rapidly than impacts due to earthquakes.
It’s not going to get better. The same report concludes that the Earth’s climate is projected to warm an additional 1.4°C to 5.8°C between 1990 and 2100, depending on how mankind chooses to develop and the effort taken to combat climate change. At a recent conference of scientific experts the consensus was that a temperature increase of 2°C above pre-industrial levels may be a threshold which triggers melting of the Greenland ice cap. To have a high probability of not exceeding this 2°C limit, atmospheric CO2 concentrations should stay below 400ppm – which may be reached in 10-15 years at the current rate of increase. The same scientists highlighted the need for action now and that a delay of even 5 years in taking action could mean that much more dramatic responses are needed later.
Those least able to cope with climate change – developing countries – are likely to be among the most affected. It will further reduce access to drinking water, negatively affect the health of those living in poverty, and will pose a real threat to food security in many countries.
Although some sectors and regions may benefit from small (about 1C) increases in temperature – for example agriculture in the northern hemisphere, the impact in the developed world is also likely to be generally negative. Swiss Re, the reinsurance company, has found that losses from natural disasters are doubling approximately every 10 years and that if this continues, losses are likely to reach about $150 billion in 10 years. A significant part of this is down to climate change. In a study of the summer of 1995 in England and Wales, which was about 1.5°C warmer than average, it was estimated that net economic losses were about £1.5billion.
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The principal contributors to warming are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Man-made carbon dioxide results mainly from burning fossil fuels to produce the energy required for transport, industrial processes, electricity generation and the heating or cooling of buildings.
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Scientific evidence indicating climate change led to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992. This committed nations to take action to prevent catastrophic climate change. However no specific targets or timeframes were set.
After 5 years of negotiation, the Kyoto Protocol was agreed by a sub-set of the signatories to the UNFCCC. This mandated reductions (of an average of about 5% between the years 2008-12 compared to a 1990 baseline) among the developed economies. It also set out 3 ‘flexibility mechanisms’ – Emissions trading; The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM); and Joint Implementation (JI) – to enable these countries to meet their targets and to get developing countries involved to a limited extent.
However, nations representing 55% of all greenhouse gas emissions from developed countries first needed to ratify the Protocol in their own parliaments. Russia’s ratification in November 2004 led to the Protocol coming into force in February 2005. The first ‘commitment period’ will run from 2008-12.
Prior to ratification, organisations like the World Bank began to identify and stimulate the development of Kyoto-compliant carbon projects around the world through their funds. These include the Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF), Bio Carbon Fund (BCF) and Community Development Carbon Fund (CDCF).
The Kyoto Protocol is only a small step towards the long-term goal of stabilizing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. This objective will ultimately require much greater emission reductions. Many scientists feel that a target of a 60% reduction over 30 years should be set.
NB The Kyoto Protocol (KP) only directly affects countries – there is no direct impact on companies or individuals through the Kyoto Protocol.
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The European Union’s Emission Trading Scheme (EU–ETS) came into force on 1 January 2005 as a way for the EU to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. It imposes emissions caps on certain sectors (generally the heavy emitters such as power generation, cement manufacture etc.), It also establishes a trading platform, so that regulated parties and others can trade carbon to ensure that the reduction targets are met.
Since the real start of trading in EU Allowances (the permits to emit CO2 that are issued to companies by governments) in January 2005, the price has shown a high degree of volatility – starting at about €7 per tonne of CO2 and reaching a peak of over €30/t CO2 by mid 2005.
The first phase of the EU-ETS runs from 2005-2007. The second phase will run from 2008-12 – in parallel with the Kyoto Protocol. It is likely that other sectors, including transport, will be included in the second phase.
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Many, including some scientists, governments, businesses and NGOs believe that the Kyoto framework is flawed in a number of important ways:
• arbitrary emissions reduction targets are not linked to an agreed
‘safe’ atmospheric concentration of CO2
• insufficient involvement of developing countries, likely to become
heavy emitters in the future
• key economies are not included in the process (e.g. USA)
• agreement ends in 2012 – creating uncertainty for businesses making
investment decisions now with implications well after 2012.
So various organisations are starting to talk about alternative approaches – either running in parallel with the obligations of the Kyoto Protocol or as frameworks for a post-2012 agreement.
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In July 2005 a group of six countries (The USA, Australia, Japan, China, India and South Korea) announced a pact aimed at transferring clean technologies, as a way of helping reduce emissions.
Developing countries such as China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa all have rapidly growing populations and are industrializing at break-neck speed. If they follow the development path taken by the current developed countries, their increased emissions are likely to cancel out the reductions committed to by the developed countries.
Some technologies such as Carbon Capture and Storage (where carbon emissions from fossil fuel power stations are captured and stored underground), are potentially promising at helping to reduce emissions. This is particularly true in economies such as China where the increase in demand for energy is massive, short-term and likely to be fuelled by oil, coal and gas. However, since July, many have dismissed this pact as meaningless, unless it is backed up by binding targets to reduce emissions. At present the agreement is non-binding – meaning that it is basically a trade agreement.
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Since the Kyoto Protocol was agreed, a growing number of organisations have called for a long-term emissions reduction framework to be agreed post-2012. This would be based on the current understanding of the climate system, and the response of different ecological and socio-economic systems.
The point at which ecosystem damage – particularly in developing countries – is no longer acceptable, cannot be determined exactly. The best guidance suggests a goal of limiting the increase in global average temperature to 2°C above pre-industrial levels and limiting the rate of change to less than 0.2°C per decade. This means limiting atmospheric CO2 concentration to about 450ppm. Stabilizing this level over the next 100 years would, according to the IPCC, have a negligible effect on the growth of global GDP. It would also send a strong signal to the private sector, that markets will exist for climate friendly technologies.
If agreement can be reached on this ‘safe’ limit for atmospheric CO2 concentration, then the allowable total annual emissions of carbon can be calculated with a reasonable degree of certainty. It is then a question of agreeing on how this allowance should be shared between countries.
One method for this is called Contraction and Convergence. This is a science-based global framework for reducing total global emissions (i.e. contraction) to meet a specific agreed target for CO2 concentration. The per capita emissions of industrialized and developing countries converge over a (suitably long) time period, with the rate and magnitude of contraction and convergence being determined through the UNFCCC negotiating process.
Many believe that this method is fairer than the Kyoto Protocol.
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In parallel with these developments, organisations like The CarbonNeutral Company have been working with clients willing to take early, ‘beyond-compliance’ action on climate change. Some of the first companies to take action to measure and reduce to net zero their unavoidable emissions include Mazda, Avis, and the United Nations itself (certain key meetings went CarbonNeutral). The Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City was climate neutral, and over 40 leading US companies have signed up to the Chicago Climate Exchange to voluntarily enter into a cap and trade system similar to the EU’s.
Voluntary climate change programmes, by definition, have complete flexibility on how they are set up and what emissions reductions projects are used to offset emissions. As a way of bringing order to what can be a complicated non-standardised market, The CarbonNeutral Company developed – with input from various key stakeholders – the CarbonNeutral Protocol as a branded standard setting out the critical elements of a voluntary climate change programme.
Information supplied by The CarbonNeutral Company
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