I made the statement in my newsletter this week that if small to medium business is left out of the emission trading scheme and the big emitters are exempted there is no chance of anything other than failure to meet even the ridiculously low emission targets.  If the emission trading scheme does not result in emission reduction it is just greenwash.  I also firmly believe that we should reduce our carbon footprint as much as possible before we start to use carbon offsets.

For those who missed it, here is the link to the newsletter http://www.enviro-action.com/news/is_australia_s_emission_trading_system_greenwash_.html

Interestingly comments from the Financial Review made similar comments.

Small to medium-size enterprises that want to reduce their carbon emissions are being hampered by the lack of a voluntary standard.

Under the existing national greenhouse and energy reporting system, between 700 and 900 mainly large companies have to publicly report on their greenhouse emissions using a technical guideline of about 300 pages.

But those organisations not covered by mandatory reporting are increasingly being asked by their customers about their carbon emissions.

There is nothing in place for small to medium business and I really don’t see most of them sitting down to read a 300 page technical guideline!  A word beginning with b and ending with s comes to mind for this approach.

The Department of Climate Change has released a discussion paper aimed at establishing a national carbon offset standard for the purposes of becoming carbon neutral.

Nobody seems to be thinking about reducing carbon first before they start to offset.

Supply chain emissions fall within the scope three category in international and local guidelines. While they are not required to be reported by the customer of the goods and services under mandatory schemes such as the existing National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System, they are essential for companies wishing to calculate the entire carbon footprint.

It seems as though someone has actually noticed the high cost of collection of this data.  This was the first thing that occurred to me when the scheme was first mooted.

SMEs that lack the resources of big companies want a plain English approach to reporting their emissions which would provide transparent, accurate information in a standardised format that would satisfy their customers.

“There is nothing out there at the moment. Organisations can pick parts of their greenhouse emissions footprint and talk about that in isolation to the rest. And they don’t have to qualify how they do it.

“A prime example is a business saying the product or services are carbon neutral without that being verified in any way. There is a lack of consistency which makes it difficult to compare the claims of companies.”

There are calls for a set of uniform voluntary national emissions reporting standards to guide the development of emissions reporting and accelerate reduction of emissions by companies lying outside mandatory reporting regimes.

In a related development, the Institute of Chartered Accountants welcomed the release of a guidance paper issued by the Dept of Climate Change last month on the assessment and audit process for activities that may be eligible for assistance as emissions-intensive trade-exposed activities under the carbon pollution reduction scheme (CRPS).

It also included the audit and assurance requirements for the data that is to be audited to the same level as financial statements.

Technorati Tags: Carbon emissions, Carbon offset, Climate change, Emission targets, Emission Trading, Greenhouse and energy reporting, reducing carbon, Reduce our carbon footprint

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

Tweet This Post

According 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery, a type of charcoal called Biochar not only sequesters carbon, but it also provides energy and improves the agricultural output of poor soils.

Krull  from CSIRO in Adelaide, Australia says that “Biochar can be produced in a carbon negative way, which means it has a carbon sequestration potential. Applied to soil, it can result in enhanced nutrient retention, and due to its high absorptive capacity, [it] can also decrease the uptake of soil toxins.”

Biochar is charcoal made in an enclosed space under low-oxygen conditions. By keeping the oxygen levels low, more carbon remains in the char, which lasts at least 100 years.  It has a chemical structure that makes it very difficult to break

We can burn a wide range of biomass to produce biochar.  This can include manure collected from a feedlot, cane trash left over from sugar cane production, woodchips from a sawmill, or a dedicated biofuel crop.

Sequestering the carbon from these wastes is the main climate mitigation action of biochar, but its benefits don’t stop there because applying the biochar to soil improves the soil’s structure, helping it to retain water and nutrients and reducing the amount of nitrogen fertiliser required, especially for fertiliser-intensive crops like vegetables.

AND biochar also reduces emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas produced by soil microbes that’s 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, by up to 80 per cent.  It seems that when you apply the biochar, the nitrogen transformation process is inhibited.

Technorati Tags: Biochar, charcoal, carbon negative, greenhouse gs, nitorus oxide, soil microbes, Tim Flannery

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

Tweet This Post

Traditional food production areas, such as the Mediterranean and large parts of southern Australia, may become unsuitable for agriculture because of soaring temperatures and low rainfall.

New Zealand may no longer be able to grow kiwi fruit; parts of Asia will struggle to maintain rice crops; Germany may take over from Italy as the world’s chief chianti producer; and the ideal climate to produce sparkling and burgundy wines may be in Britain, a notion bound to cause great consternation among the French.

There will be some winners; northern Europe, Canada and parts of the former Soviet Union may have longer growing seasons and fewer frosts but many more losers.

We can expect more droughts, extreme temperatures, hail storms, more intense cyclones and hurricanes, as well as the spread of pests and diseases.  This will all impact on food production.  The world’s population is still growing but the predictions I have read in serious journals are that in about 40 years time this will turn around and nearly the world’s human population will halve over the next 50 years.

Do you think this will cause political chaos and conflict?.  Some people say the conflict in Sudan is the first climate war.  It began when severe drought in the Sudan reduced the amount of arable land and led to tensions between the settled farmers and the nomadic herders, two groups which had co-existed for many years.

This is the world we are bringing our children into if we don’t all begin to reduce ourcarbon footprint.  I look at my grandchildren and worry about what they will face in their forties.

Can any of us truly look our children in the eye and say we love them, and do nothing to prevent global warming?
[tags] children, conflict, food production, global warming, hungry refugeees, political chaos, wars
………..

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

Tweet This Post

Electric cars have been getting a lot of news lately, but in many parts of the world, and especially Australia, electricity is made from coal and an electric car actually emits more greenhouse gas than a petrol one.  Now they are suggesting making liquid fuel from coal.  They have developed a new method to do this cheaply but it is still environmentally unfriendly fuel

If oil prices rise again, there could be a push to use this coal-derived fuel could produce as much as twice as much CO2 as traditional petroleum fuels and at very best could be best will emit at least as much of the greenhouse gas.

The list of contenders to replace oil is long and diverse. Alternative fuels could include next-gen ethanol, algal biofuel, hydrogen and natural gas, or cars could go largely electric if there is sustainable power generation..

But the problem with all the new fuels is that they have to scale up — and that’s harder than it sounds. Plus, many fear that biofuels could cause massive, negative land-use changes.

It is insanity to turn food into biofuel for cars and then watch people starve.

I like the option of growing algae on sewage ponds because one resource that is not diminishing is shit if you will excuse the term.

Improving a fossil-fuel technology could slow the adoption of other, more sustainable transportation options.

Technorati Tags: algal biofuel, biofuel, coal, coal-devived fuel, electric cars, electricity, ethanol

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

Tweet This Post

I read a headline saying “Rudd gives emissions trading advice in US.”  As I do not think Australia has this sorted out yet, I find it scary.

AND Congress has been addressed by a British climate change nutter and been told to ignore President Barack Obama’s plan to place limits on carbon emissions because climate change does not exist.  Plus they were addressed on the biblical view that “sees Earth and its ecosystems as the effect of a wise God’s creation and … therefore robust, resilient, and self-regulating, like the product of any good engineer.”

Let us hope that the US does not ignore small business, and households (other than to compensate instead of encouraging them) and exempt the big emitters.

Let’s hope that their US president ignores Rudd’s lead of getting up on TV and telling everyone how difficult it is going to be.  What a disincentive to action that is.

My only comment is Blimey!  Thankfully Obama appears to be a sensible man.

Technorati Tags: carbon emissions, climate change, emission trading, Households, Obama, Rudd,   small business

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

Tweet This Post

The head of the Australia Institute’s Think Tank says that the Federal Government’s emissions trading scheme will have too many permits and will not reduce carbon emissions.

The Australia Institute’s executive director, Dr Richard Denniss, said the scheme’s flaws related to the 5 to 15 per cent emissions reduction targets, which he described as ”ridiculously low”, and he said there would be too many permits.  Dr Dennis said that “We won’t achieve the policy goal, which is to reduce emissions.”

Dr Denniss told the Senate that ”[If] we pass this legislation, we’ve got it for the next 10 years. And anyone that’s got a good idea a year later, it’s not going to help. This legislation is designed to not be tinkered with.”

Professor Clive Hamilton, from the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, said the proposed scheme had damaged Australia’s reputation. A reduction target of at least 25 per cent needed to be set if the Government wanted credibility on the world stage.   Australia would be better off taking no policy than the proposed model to the December climate change talks in Copenhagen, he said.  ‘It not only lowers the ambition of the world community but also excludes Australia from being a forceful player in negotiating … a strong international agreement.”

The investment and finance sector want to avoid calls for delay because this causes confusion.

There is a heavy responsibility on the Senate to make sure that the legislation is flexible to allow for new technology.  To lock in anything for 10 years when the technology is still emerging is nothing short of crazy.

Technorati Tags: Australia, cerbon emissions, emission reduction,   emissions trading scheme

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

Tweet This Post

The average household can be responsible for nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the average car.  If you can reduce your carbon emissions you also reduce your power bill!

Change your most frequently used light bulbs.  Gradually change the lot but start with the most frequent.  There is an increasing range of compact Fluorescent and LED globes we can use instead including for the outside flood lights and the little downlights.

Look for products that have earned the ENERGY STARs s in more than 50 product categories, including lighting, home electronics, heating and cooling equipment and appliances.

Heating and Cooling.   Clean and replace air filters regularly. Avoid heating or cooling an empty house or empty rooms, use ceiling fans or specially designed outlets to make sure that heat reaches the bottom half of the room and doesn’t stay on the ceiling. Seal up your drafts especially around windows and doors

Turn off appliances at the wall or even unplug them if they are not being used.  Game consoles and phone chargers waste huge amounts of energy when they are just left on.

Talk about saving energy and saving money with friends. Spread the word that energy efficiency is good for your home and good for the environment..

Technorati Tags: carbon emissions, energy, greenhouse gas emissions, households

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

Tweet This Post

Any policy that undermines voluntary action is unacceptable.

A ministerial brief to the Victorian Government confirms criticism that cuts in greenhouse gas emissions achieved by households and governments will not be additional to industry targets under the emissions trading scheme, but will instead decrease pressure on industry to cut emissions.

The brief advises that the state should only bother with green measures if they are more cost-effective than alternatives.  They have been told to rethink programs such as subsidies for solar farms and hybrid car fleets because these will not contribute to any additional emission cuts under the federal scheme.

It appears that emission trading scheme is even more industry-friendly than the overall target of 5 to 15 per cent cuts in emissions by 2020.  Senator Wong has some explaining to do if Australians are not to be discouraged from doing all the things — whether buying GreenPower, installing solar panels or catching public transport — that they should be doing to achieve a national transformation to sustainable consumption and energy use.

In the Senate, the Greens have concerns about the cost of emission permits being reduced by the actions of households, councils and governments, hence reducing industry’s incentive to cut emissions.

I agree that the government needs to be concerned about job losses that major emitters say will result from the costs of carbon permits. However, this ignores large-scale creation of jobs in new industries — as is happening already in innovative nations overseas.  Experience from around the world — in the US, Europe, in China, in India — is you get rapid deployment of capital into the renewable sector and tens of thousands of jobs are created and those jobs are more secure than those in the manufacturing and fossil fuel sectors.  Additionally development of 21st-century technology and expertise would put Australia and its workers in a more competitive position relative to low-wage, low-skill nations that

This is more than simply an economic debate. We all need to pull together including individuals and households who should also be reducing their emissions. Achieving sustainability is a grassroots exercise that involves the entire community, and Australians are becoming aware of the need to remake the economy and society. The momentum must not be lost.

It is government’s responsibility to articulate this future direction to industry and business, rather than pander to entrenched interests rooted in 19th and 20th-century economic models. Many Australians see beyond the old paradigm and a majority of voters elected the Rudd

Government in large part because they believed it would lead the way in responding to climate change. It must do so.

Technorati Tags: carbon permits, emissions trading scheme, greenhouse emissions

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

Tweet This Post

Read this for a fascinating and frustrating story about how to circumvent planning approval and public opinion.

Victoria Park is a 72 hectares area on the eastern side of the city and part of Adelaide’s highly valued and iconic Parklands.

It is also very historically interesting as a major part of Colonel Light’s plan for the defence of Adelaide.  While this sounds massively paranoid in this day and age, defence was perceived as a need because there was no army here because the state was settled entirely by free settlers and had no convicts.  The defences consisted of Military Road along the coast with 3 forts and the city was surrounded by parklands, a cannon shot width.  East terrace, on the city side of Victoria Park is steps as a classic defensive formation.  Odd now, but historically interesting.

The park is widely used by the public for sporting, leisure and recreational activities. And until recently was also a racecourse.  This is the park that has a loop of the Clipsal 500 V8 Supercar racing track.

The race organisers usually take approximately 2-3 months to put up and take down temporary seating and a demountable pit structure and we have 2-3 weeks of traffic chaos.  There has been a very passionate public consultation about the desire by race organisers and some members of the Government to build a permanent pit and management building.  This was rejected and I think in a large part because they refused to even think about other suggestions.

Personally I would have voted for a permanent building if it was along the road that runs through the parklands and forms part of the street circuit.  As the horse racing has finished and the derelict old racecourse buildings are due to come down this could have been done with some realignment of the track within the park.  However they were to determined to build a four storey permanent building in a place that would totally alienate the suburb from the park.  This was voted out.

The next move is interesting.  A new demountable pit pavilion 220m long three storey structure complete with windows and the lot.  It looks remarkably like a permanent building.  The ground floor will provide 30 garages plus support facilities for the racing teams; the first floor and second floor will be used principally for hospitality, administration, race control and media.

The upper two floors have open decks and verandas that will be used as viewing platforms. “These elements are not only functional by providing outdoor sun protected areas, they also create architectural interest and breaks up the mass of the building” is the official description.  Why something that is only there for 4 days then pulled down again needs architectural interest is a good question..

They claim that the new pit pavilion takes approximately five months to construct, utilize for the event and then to dismantle.  It cost $20 million although some of that was for the shade covers on other stands which I do think are sensible.

They started building this thing in mid November 2008 which means that it needs to all be down again by mid April to fit into 5 months.  As it is now late March I don’t see it.  I reckon it will be a 7-8 month each year erection and pull down then when this stretches because they no longer want to work weekends it will become a permanent building by stealth right in the centre of the park.  Our formerly lovely park has become a building site for more than half the year.  So much for recreation with forklifts and cranes tearing around and beeping like crazy plus all the other noise and bustle of a major construction site.

And all so men can drive round and round in circles and others can drink copious amounts of beer and become deafened.

Even though I have concerns about environmental issues around motor racing, I have previously always supported the race as a major event that brings business to SA.  However this building by stealth and theft of our parklands is WRONG.

Technorati Tags: Adelaide, Clipsal 500 V8 supercar race, Environmental issues, motor racing, planning approval, public opinion, Victoria Park

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

Tweet This Post

Increasing numbers of Australians are putting their money where their mouths are when it comes to the environment, with around 880,000 households now purchasing green electricity.

According to independent energy price comparison service switchwise.com.au, the public’s move to green energy has grown as ‘GreenPower’ prices become more competitive.

The latest National GreenPower Accreditation Program Status Report shows that as at December 31, 2008, 877,875 households nationally had subscribed to a GreenPower plan, representing an increase of 26 per cent over the past 12 months.

The greenest states when it comes to household electricity use are

• Victoria
• NSW
• Queensland and Queensland is moving up fast

However 90% are yet to make the switch

It is important that consumers compare prices before deciding to switch to green electricity because the pricing does vary.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Green electricity, GreenPower

envirojean

Save Money with Simple and Effective Management Systems

Jean Cannon is an award winning consultant and trainer helping people and businesses around the world who want to save money by implementing simple and effective management systems. Sign up to discover how YOU can save money with sensible energy management and ISO 14001.

Tweet This Post