emissions
Last edited 28 February 2008 at 12:39pm
Reacting to news of a major initiative to "retrofit" London's public buildings -
including police and fire stations - to cut energy waste, Greenpeace Chief
Scientist Dr Doug Parr said:
"London is setting the pace, and if we're
going to beat climate change then we need to see this level of ambition in
cities across the world. Slashing energy waste and decentralising power across
the capital will save Londoners money and cut emissions, but just as importantly
it will mean our city is seen as an environmental trailblazer.
Last edited 1 January 1970 at 1:00am
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Posted by jamie — 25 February 2008 at 2:28pm
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With all the excitement happening today at Terminal One, it's worth remembering that yesterday was another eventful one in Heathrow's calendar as a Virgin Atlantic plane steered
away from its usual transatlantic route to fly between Heathrow and Amsterdam. No, the
guidance systems weren't malfunctioning: it was a test flight to demonstrate
that biofuels can be used in aircraft. But what's that dripping from the
undercarriage? Could it be a tonne of greenwash?
Virgin announced its plans to test biofuels
some time ago but has been reluctant to say exactly what kind of biofuel they would
be using. To quell concerns about the impact on the cost of food, a press
release assured us that it wouldn't "compete with food and fresh water
resources". The rumour was that it would be made from algae, but in the
end it turned out to be a mixture of coconut and babassu oil. These aren't food
crops as such, but if the aviation industry leaps on them as an apparently easy
way to reduce emissions, that's going to have a huge environmental impact.
Posted by jamie — 22 February 2008 at 5:11pm
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London mayor Ken
Livingstone was never going to get an easy ride over his planned changes to the
congestion charge, and Porsche's threat of a legal challenge is perhaps no big
surprise. Famed for its fast, sleek, inefficient cars, it claims the new
£25-a-day charge on gas guzzlers is "unfair and disproportionate".
As well as the promised judicial review, the
company has started a petition for the Jeremy
Clarksons of this world to voice their opposition to Ken's plan. "We know that huge numbers of people in London and across the
rest of the country support our case," they claim. "They agree with
us that it would be bad for London - that it is
unfair and sends the wrong message about what sort of a city London is whilst having no meaningful benefit
on the environment."
Posted by jamie — 22 February 2008 at 2:19pm
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My carbon footprint according to Defra
As I've been winding down my experiments with
carbon calculators, I've been noticing more and more just how variable they can
be. The results they spit out fluctuate wildly but as they all ask slightly
different questions, that's not surprising. What surprises me are the
differences between what they claim the CO2 emissions of your average Briton
are, and if your trying to figure out whether you're a relatively big emitter
or a teeny tiny one, that can be something of a problem.
Posted by jamie — 13 February 2008 at 6:48pm
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As
reported in yesterday's news, London's
congestion charge is being modified again to improve the capital's green
credentials. From October, vehicles emitting the highest amounts of CO2 will
have to pay £25 a day which gets a big thumbs-up, while the most efficient cars will get into central London free of charge.
Some
commentators have pointed out that this effectively changes the purpose of the
charge from reducing congestion to reducing pollution, and that's no bad thing.
According to the World Resources Institute, road transport spews out around 10
per cent of global emissions (pdf), so providing incentives to move to more efficient
models is going to do a lot to cut those exhaust fumes.
Posted by jamie — 30 January 2008 at 1:34pm
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Emissions from municipal services such as road maintenance are included as part of indirect emissions © Greenpeace/Steve Morgan
In my last
post about carbon calculators, the tricky question of indirect emissions came
up. I'm putting my own life through various calculators and seeing how they
compare, but in trying to log my daily activities that consume energy and
resources there are a number of unknowables.
Posted by jamie — 17 January 2008 at 5:32pm
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In the
past, I've been a bit sniffy about carbon calculators and have tended to
dismiss them, although if I'm honest it's been on principle rather than
first-hand experience. From what I've seen, they oversimplify an incredibly
complex issue and, as a colleague pointed out, shift the weight of
responsibility onto individuals when it should be an energy-efficient
government that leads the way.
But then I
came across mobGAS, a calculator produced by the European Commission's Joint
Research Centre which sits on your mobile phone and allows you to enter daily
updates about your energy consumption. Hurray, a new application for me to
fiddle with in a borderline obsessive-compulsive manner, and an excuse for a
broader look at carbon calculators in general.
Last edited 20 December 2007 at 2:03pm
EUROPEAN environment ministers are today expected to ditch plans to place caps on aviation emissions - the fastest growing source of global warming gases.
Instead, airlines such as BA are expected to be handed permits to pollute, with the chance to buy more permits from outside the airline industry in order to increase their emissions.
Last edited 19 December 2007 at 2:13pm
Commenting on today's announcement of a proposed new EU law on car emissions, Anna Jones, transport campaigner for Greenpeace, said:
"These Brussels bureaucrats must be driven to distraction. They should hang their petrol-heads in shame at their kowtowing to a car industry seemingly obsessed with wrecking the climate.
"The EU has let car manufacturers speed off with a weak proposal that lacks any long-term standards and offers an open road to overweight gas-guzzlers."