Posts tagged as:

carbon reductions

Carbon Market Headlines, Fri Mar 5, 2010

Opinion: 3p on Carbon Trading: Will Markets Solve the Climate Crisis?

Carbon offsets, carbon exchange markets, emissions credits, cap and trade, emissions trading. These assorted terms all describe the various forms of carbon trading, from the individual wishing to offset his or her airline flight, to heavy industry compliance with federally mandated emissions reductions schemes, to the speculator simply plying the market for profit. While the mechanics may differ from one program to the next, the fundamental idea is the same – the commoditization of carbon emissions.

Continue Reading at TriplePundit

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Point Carbon and S&P to offer credit ratings for carbon trading

Carbon market analysis group Point Carbon and ratings agency Standard & Poors are looking at setting up a joint venture to investigate carbon offset project risk assessment products and services.
By signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) the two parties hope to give more transparency to markets and improve investor confidence by providing in-depth analysis of each project and trade.

Continue Reading at Risk

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North East England eyes low carbon future

“It is a watertight, fingertight, dustproof box,” grins David Fothergill as he installs a charging point for electric cars in the Newcastle City Council car park.

Continue Reading at News.BBC

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Press Release: Second Edition of Alternative Solution for Carbon Emissions and Global Warming Is Out

In his new structural strategy for global warming and the environment, Henderson articulates a powerful approach that goes to the root of environmental problems: the foundations of the market economies.

Continue Reading at FreepressReleases

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United Kingdom Warehousing Association working with Carbon Trust on emissions toolkit

Warehouse owners are set to benefit from an ‘emissions toolkit’ that will help warehouse operators cut their carbon footprint and save on costs.

Continue Reading at MHWmagazine
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Calgon Carbon Doubles 4Q Earnings

Calgon Carbon (CCC: 16.39, 0.15, 0.92%) reported its fourth-quarter earnings more than doubled due to increased demand from its coal-fired power plants and an increase in margins.

Continue Reading at FoxBusiness

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London’s Carbon Neutral US Embassy Looks Like Apple’s Fifth Ave Manhattan Store

If you visit the US embassy in London now, it’s a pit of concrete, barbed wire, bollards and soldiers with machine guns. You feel like a criminal just walking past it. This carbon neutral redesign is radical in comparison.

Continue Reading at Gizmodo

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Expert warns of potential legal costs of carbon capture technology

An expert in risk management is raising some warning flags about pumping CO2 emissions underground without thinking of the potential long term legal impacts.

Continue Reading at AM770CHQR

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Opinion: Inconvenient Carbon Truths About China

Muller & Associates has a sterling roster of clients — governmental, international, and private — that attests to Mr. Muller’s reputation and skills. You can see that list here.

Muller wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal at the end of last year in which he clarified some really inconvenient truths about China and carbon.

Continue Reading at GreentechMedia

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Local company brings carbon reduction innovator to town

For most of us, the concept of absorption is likely limited to evaluating the capabilities of a paper towel in the face of spilt milk.

But American researcher Kent Knaebel believes it just might be a key component to solving global warming without pulling everyone out of their cars and putting an end to construction.

Continue Reading at BClocalNews

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House members seek to block EPA carbon limits

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two senior Democrats in the U.S. House filed a resolution to block the Obama administration from regulating greenhouse gases on its own if a climate change bill fails to pass Congress soon.

Continue Reading at UK.Reuters

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Ireland – €330m Carbon tax will cost farmers

IFA Deputy President Eddie Downey said the EPA/ESRI Strive report shows how Government policy decisions continue to discriminate massively against rural Ireland.

Continue Reading at MeatTradeNewsDaily

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Press Release: CARBON JUNGLE, INC. OBTAINS GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

Carbon Jungle, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: CBJG) recently signed an agreement with the People’s Republic of China to construct a glass recycling facility in Xiao Guan Zhuang and/or Baoying County. The government agrees to provide support in, among other things, “facilitating the… successful undertaking of the project.” With this agreement, Carbon Jungle now has the necessary go ahead, and government backing, to begin construction of their first recycling facility in China. Such a facility can be constructed in a relatively short period of time and begin producing viable glass cullet almost immediately. With the abundance of materials available, and the government’s pledge to provide Carbon Jungle with all they need, there is great potential for continued growth. “We are very happy to have reached the first of hopefully many agreements with the Chinese government and continue to look forward to a prosperous future,” states Lee Davidson, President of Carbon Jungle. Once completed, Carbon Jungle will be able to sell glass cullet to a prosperous manufacturing industry all throughout China. The government certification of the agreement is available in both Chinese and English on their website http://www.carbonjungle.us in the news section.

Continue Reading at PR-USA

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Opinion: Health groups call for ambitious 40% reduction target on carbon emissions

The Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) – EPHA’s sister network – together with Health Care Without Harm Europe (HCWHE), have launched a call on EU Heads of States to increase the European target on climate change. They are seeking a 40% unconditional emissions reduction target by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. The reductions should be made through domestic action, which they say could bring substantial benefits in improving people’s health and reducing healthcare costs.

Continue Reading at EPHA

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RRCC to get grants for cutting carbon

Rainy River Community College is among 23 public high schools, colleges and universities across Minnesota are receiving grants for projects designed to cut their carbon footprints.

Continue Reading at IFallsDailyJournal

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Posted on March 5, 2010 · in Global

Carbon Market Headlines, Sat Feb 27, 2010

Opinion: What’s the Future of Climate Change and Carbon Trading?

With the Obama Administration focusing on passing health care legislation as its No. 1 priority and financial services overhaul as its second goal, the future of climate change legislation and carbon trading looks uncertain, at least for 2010.

Continue Reading at WallStreetAndTech
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RI should ‘vie for’ UNFCCC top post

Indonesia, the host of the much-hailed Bali climate change conference, should run for the UN’s top post on climate change, which will be vacant after its chief, Yvo de Boer, resigns in July, observers said.

Legislator Muhammad Safrudin from the House of Representatives’ Commission VII overseeing environmental affairs said Indonesia should seek support from other countries to vie for the post.

Continue Reading at TheJakartaPost

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Forest Fires Put Carbon Credits At Risk

A forest fire burning near Dunedin is highlighting the risk of natural disasters to carbon which run into millions of dollars, Carbon News reports this morning.

Continue Reading at Scoop

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Opinion: Any excessive dependence on the sale of forest carbon credits could turn out to be problematic

Some interesting questions are raised as one looks at the news reports surrounding the new 300 page report ‘Climate Cure’ released by Norway on February 17. It’s targeting emission cuts of 30% by 2020 from 1990 levels. The current emission levels are around 54 million tons v about 50 million tons in 1990, and the report is looking at ways to reduce emissions by 15-17 million tons/ year by 2020.

Continue Reading at StabroekNews

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Yes, nuclear plants have carbon footprint

Misinformation, if repeated often enough, has the effect of lulling the public into acceptance. One particularly disturbing bit of misinformation repeated in the Feb. 4 essay is that nuclear power is environmentally friendly because nuclear power plants don’t emit greenhouse gases.

Continue Reading at DesmoinesRegister

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Press Release: ERA Carbon Offsets raises $5.34 million through private placement

ERA Carbon Offsets, Ltd., a Canada-based provider of forest-based carbon offset programs, has completed a private placement of 7,360,000 common shares at a price of CAD$0.75 ($0.73) per share for total gross proceeds of CAD$5.52 million ($5.34 million).

Continue Reading at TradingMarkets
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Opinion: Winter Olympics 2010: Big carbon footprints in the snow

When Vancouver set out in 2003 to achieve the “greenest ever” Winter Olympics, it never expected to be so successful. The city that gave birth to Greenpeace put up energy-efficient buildings, encouraged spectators to travel by bus, used rainwater to flush the loos, and even heated the Olympic villages with energy recovered from sewage. But all its earnest efforts were trumped by something it did not foresee – the weather, which left the slopes unfortunately grassy.

Continue Reading at Telegraph

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Opinion: UN Says ‘Fart Tax’ One Way to Slow the Ever-Growing Carbon Footprint of Livestock

A new report from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has calculated livestock produce 6% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions; one measure the UN recommends to reduce this number is to issue a methane emissions tax.

Continue Reading at EnergyBoom

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Press Release: WREA Inc. offers extensive enterprise carbon equivalence and GHG accounting for the Power Generation and Transmission Sector

Reno, NV, Feb 19, ‘10- Western Renewable Energy Analysts Inc. (WREA Inc.), a company specializing in engineering services for the Power Generation and Transmission sector, including Utilities, announced support tools for Greenhouse Gas Inventorying and Management through an resale agreement with Papros Inc. for EMSPRO(TM). It also offers computations of combined cycle efficiencies and emissions distributions for Cogeneration plants. It supports advanced computation and record keeping requirements and enterprise wide carbon equivalence accounting.

Continue Reading at WebWire
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Opinion: Proposed Beijing district to reduce carbon emissions and energy use

Skidmore, Owings and Merrill LLP (SOM) has just unveiled details of the first phase for the expansion and redevelopment of three business districts in China’s capital city, Beijing. Key to the success of the project is the installation of a Central Park area which will help to heat and cool energy efficient buildings in the Dawangjing District by geothermal exchange instead of relying on energy-intensive cooling towers.

Continue Reading at Gizmag

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UN urges for more ambitious action to cut CO2 emission

The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said Tuesday that countries will have to be far more ambitious in cutting greenhouse gas emission if the world is to effectively curb a rise in global temperature at 2 degrees Celsius or less.

Continue Reading at China
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Press Release: CO2 Solution Featured in New York Times

CO2 Solution Inc. (”CO2 Solution” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce that it was featured in an article published on February 16, 2010 in the New York Times entitled Injecting Tiny Proteins Into the Hunt for ‘Clean Coal’, which highlights the potential of the Company’s enzyme based technology for capturing carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants at low cost.

Continue Reading at PR-USA
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Mayor to get behind CO2 initiative

Don’t be surprised if you see Queenstown Lakes Mayor Clive Geddes zipping around on his Ducati motorbike or push-bike next month.

Mr Geddes has committed to reducing his carbon footprint by swapping his car for alternative forms of travel for March – which will see him on his push-bike twice a week – and he’s asking other residents in the district to “think very seriously” about changing their travel behaviour for at least one day next month.

Continue Reading at ODT
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Opinion: Timing is Everything: EPA Delays CO2 Regulations

Let’s wait until the economy recovers a little before we step on it with costly environmental regulations. That was the message from Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson in a response to eight Democratic senators from industrial coal states the authority of the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. Administrator Jackson said by April she will “take actions to ensure that no stationary source will be required to get a Clean Air Act permit to cover its greenhouse gas emissions in calendar year 2010.”

Continue Reading at Blog.Heritage

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Press Release: NYK and MHI Begin Experiments on Air-Lubrication System; 10% CO2 Reduction Expected by Lowering Seawater Resistance

Tokyo, Feb 24, 2010 – (JCN Newswire) – NYK and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. are to begin experiments on an air-lubrication system to reduce CO2 emissions during marine transport. Jointly developed by the two companies, the system effectively reduces the frictional resistance between a vessel’s bottom and the seawater by means of bubbles generated by supplying air to the vessel’s bottom. The world’s first permanent installation of the system using an air-blower is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by approximately 10 percent. The experiments will be conducted using module carriers* operated by an NYK Group company, NYK-Hinode Line, Ltd. (head office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan; president: Sumio Kinoshita) Construction of the vessels will be completed on March 31 and in late November 2010.

Continue Reading at JapanCorp

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Posted on February 27, 2010 · in Global

Carbon Market Headlines, Fri Feb 26, 2010

Ruling kills Romanian OTC carbon permit trading

* Romanian regulators class EUAs as financial instruments

* Foreign traders must join exchanges, OTC to suffer

* Ruling, exchange trade to prevent EUA tax fraud -SIBEX

* Traders say move possibly illegal as EU Commission weighs

BUCHREST/LONDON, Feb 24 (Reuters) – Romania’s securities regulator have defined European Union carbon permits as financial instruments, a move which will force all its emissions trading onto one of the country’s exchanges.

Continue Reading at ForexYard

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Opinion: Greening Deserts for Carbon Credits

Poor farming practices have degraded the world’s soils causing them to release carbon that should have stayed in the soil. In the past 150 years soils have released twice as much carbon as fuel burning. Improved farming methods could quickly rebuild degraded land and store enough carbon to offset the damage already done by fuel burning. Dr Rattan Lal of Ohio State University, a leading expert on soil carbon, estimates that the potential of economical carbon sequestration in world soils may be .65 billion to 1.1 billion tons per year for the next 50 years. This is enough to draw down atmospheric CO2 by 50 ppm by 2100. This is a one-time opportunity, however. We must ultimately stop burning fossil fuels.

Continue Reading at RenewableEnergyworld

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Opinion: California to Withdraw Harmful “Carbon Credits for Clearcuts” Forest Policy

SACRAMENTO – February 12 – In response to a formal legal letter filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, the California Air Resources Board has proposed to withdraw its adoption of a “Forest Project Protocol” that would have allowed logging companies to earn valuable carbon credits for clearcutting projects and other destructive practices. At its February 25 meeting, the Board will consider reversing its adoption of the protocol pending a legally required review of environmental impacts to forests and the climate.

Continue Reading at CommonDreams

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Opinion: Olympic carbon offsets for dummies

The problem with the political discussion about climate change these days is its “let’s pretend” nature.

Much like Environment Minister Jim Prentice was pretending this week that the $150,000 Canada is spending on carbon offsets will “help offset the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of its Olympic Games.”

Continue Reading at TorontoSun

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Press Release: To date 25,000t of CO2 Emissions Avoided by Photovoltaic Plants Arsol-1 and Arsol Toledo

The two plants developed by Aries Ingeniería y Sistemas have produced a total of 55 GWh since they came into operation two years ago Both plants, located in Ciudad Real and Toledo, Spain, are producing highly efficient clean energy with a total of 15 MW of power.

Continue Reading at RenewableEnergyWorld

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Lancashire drivers urged to lower CO2 for Lent

DRIVERS are urged to consider lowering their CO2 emissions for Lent.

Lancashire County Council said it could also help save money on fuel and make roads safer.

Continue Reading at LancashireTelegraph

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Opinion: Texas takes legal action against federal government over EPA CO2 mandates

Gov. Rick Perry, Attorney General Greg Abbott and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples said the state is taking legal action in the U.S. Court of Appeals, challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding for greenhouse gases.

Continue Reading at KingsvilleRecord

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£60m bill for the CO2 of our political class

One could not want a better vignette of the gulf that has opened up between our “political class” and the rest of us than a bizarre little item which emerged last week on an obscure part of the European Commission’s website. The British Government, as revealed by the EU’s Official Journal, has allocated £60 million of taxpayers’ money to be spent on buying carbon credits from the Third World for the use of government buildings and other official purposes – so that our civil servants can continue to benefit from the CO2 emissions needed to keep their offices warm and lit.

Continue Reading at Telegraph

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CO2 emissions down from 2008 to 2009

According to a recent analysis of US Environmental Protection Agency carbon dioxide (CO2) data for 2008-2009, there has been an overall CO2 improvement of 2.8 per cent across all US cars and trucks.

Continue Reading at TheGreenCarWebsite

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Governments ‘misjudging’ scale of CO2 emissions

Policy makers in Europe and United States are markedly underestimating the changes needed to mitigate CO2 emission required to prevent dangerous climate change because they work in ’silos’, according to pioneering research.

Continue Reading at Physorg

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Opinion: Firms delay CO2 cap technology

Companies in the UAE are delaying their investments into technologies that help cap carbon dioxide emissions by three years, insiders of the carbon trade industry told Emirates Business.

The Middle East carbon trade potential is estimated to be worth $5 billion (Dh18.3bn) annually. Carbon trade market in Europe is estimated to be worth €100bn (Dh499.8bn) and is expected to grow to €800bn by 2020.

Continue Reading at Zawya

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Opinion: Calculating a car’s CO2 emissions from its mpg

Motorists who drive cars that were first registered before 2001 are unlikely to be aware of how much CO2 their vehicle emits.

Continue Reading at ETA

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Opinion: CO2 Mass Extinction Of Species And Climate Change

The release of more than 370 billion tons of carbon (GtC) from buried early biospheres, adding more than one half of the original carbon inventory of the atmosphere (~590 GtC), as well as the depletion of vegetation, have triggered a fundamental shift in the state of the atmosphere [1]. Raising atmospheric CO2 level at a rate of 2 ppm/year, a pace unprecedented in the geological record, with the exception of the effects of CO2 released from craters excavated by large asteroid impacts, the deleterious effects of pollution and deforestation have reached a geological dimension, tracking toward conditions which existed on Earth in the mid-Pliocene, about 2.8 million years ago [2].

Continue Reading at CounterCurrents

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UPDATE 2-U.S. EPA to soften CO2 requirements on industry

* EPA considers raising greenhouse gas permit threshold

* Senators from coal states complained rules too tough

* Sen. Rockefeller hints at legislation stopping EPA

* EPA to issue greenhouse gas rules next month (Releads, adds byline, Rockefeller, environmentalists)

WASHINGTON, Feb 22 (Reuters) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday it would slow a phase-in of new limits on carbon dioxide from coal and other heavy industry plants to ease concerns about the impact on the economy.

Continue Reading at UK.Reuters

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U.S. Northeast Carbon Falls as Federal CO2 Trading Bill Stalls

Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) — Carbon dioxide permits in the U.S. Northeast’s cap-and-trade program for power plants fell to their lowest level this year on waning public concern over emissions that scientists blame for global warming.

Continue Reading at BusinessWeek

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Posted on February 26, 2010 · in Global

Opinion: Loneliness of the carbon warrior crossing the line

There is always something poignant about a lone backbencher taking a public stand against their political party, but it assumes an agonising edge when that backbencher is a freshly dumped leader.

Continue Reading at TheAge

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Posted on February 15, 2010 · in Australasia

| Sourced From News.prnewswire.com |

New Molecular Toolkit Optimizes Algae Performance and Productivity

ALAMEDA, Calif., Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ — Today, Aurora Biofuels announces a technological milestone in the company’s path to becoming the premier producer of low-cost advanced biofuels. Through a series of biotechnology achievements, Aurora has succeeded in optimizing its base algae strains to more than double CO2 consumption and fuel production, and has proven these results in an outdoor open system over the last several months.

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Posted on August 21, 2009 · in Press Releases

Sharing global CO2 emission reductions among one billion high emitters

| Sourced From Docuticker.com |

We present a framework for allocating a global carbon reduction target among nations, in which the concept of “common but differentiated responsibilities” refers to the emissions of individuals instead of nations. We use the income distribution of a country to estimate how its fossil fuel CO2 emissions are distributed among its citizens, from which we build up a global CO2 distribution.

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Posted on August 4, 2009 · in Global