Carbon Footprint | News & Views

Marketing campaign carbon calculator launched

A new tool has been launched by Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) and Envido that will allow businesses to calculate the carbon footprint of advertising campaigns.

CarbonTrack, which has been developed in association with the Carbon Trust, has provided a benchmark for the UK advertising industry, estimating it produces two million tonnes of CO2 each year.

This figure is equivalent to the carbon footprint of heating 364,000 homes for 12 months.

The system is capable of taking into account emissions produced from “TV to radio, outdoor, magazines, newspapers, digital display and search”.

Ifti Akbar, co-managing director of Envido, energy, carbon and sustainability consultants, said the development reflects the fact carbon accounting is becoming “more sophisticated and widespread”.

“Companies utilising CarbonTrack will be ahead of the UK legislation curve and actively contributing to reducing the emissions of their industry,” he added.

Over 100 different suppliers have so far provided CarbonTrack with data, however, the system will not allow direct comparisons between different media enterprises.

The Guardian News and Media Group was recently awarded the Carbon Trust Standard for cutting its emissions by 28 percent in three years.

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Cancun delegates reach climate change deal

Delegates at the United Nations’ (UN) summit in Cancun reached an agreement on curbing climate change, although the pledge was not as strong as some had hoped.

The deal called for stricter restrictions to be placed on carbon emissions and efforts being made by developing countries to curb carbon emissions to be brought within the UN system.

Also included to aid developing countries in combating climate change, was the establishment of the Green Climate Fund and the creation of mechanisms which will allow them to access low carbon technology.

However, detailed information on how such measures will be achieved are not included.

Many believe the deal lays the foundations for creating a legally-binding agreement when the delegates meet again in South Africa next year.

UK energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne commented: “A global deal on climate change is now back on track.”

Neil Bentley, Confederation of Business Industry director of business environment, added: “Such a deal could unlock great new low-carbon markets for our economy, and until this is reached, concerted action will be slow.”

The UN summit was attended by 15,000 delegates from 190 countries and produced 25,000 tonnes of carbon emissions.

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CCC: UK should cut emissions by 60% by 2030

The UK should aim to cut carbon emissions by 46 percent on today’s levels within the next two decades, the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) has recommended.

Releasing its fourth carbon budget report, for the years 2023 to 2027, the CCC called for a 60 percent cut in emissions on 1990 levels by 2030.

It also recommended the current 2020 carbon budget should be “tightened” from a 34 percent reduction on 1990 levels to a 37 percent cut.

This is higher than the European Union target, which calls for a 20 percent cut by 2020.

Lord Adair Turner, head of the CCC, claimed: “Any less ambition would not be compatible with the 2050 target in the Climate Change Act.”

The committee named a number of factors it believes could lead to the emissions reductions required, including a “radical decarbonisation and reform of the electricity market”.

In addition, it called for a more widespread use of electric vehicles, the transformation of the UK’s built environment, and the use of more carbon-efficient practices on farms.

A combination of the use of carbon capture and storage technology, biomass and biogas heating and more energy efficient practices was said to be able to cut emissions from industry by half.

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What’s the carbon footprint of … a load of laundry?

From The Guardian

The carbon footprint of a load of laundry:
0.6 kg CO2e washed at 30°C, dried on the line
0.7 kg CO2e washed at 40°C, dried on the line
2.4 kg CO2e washed at 40°C, tumble-dried in a vented dryer
3.3 kg CO2e washed at 60°C, dried in a combined washer-dryer

Depending on how you do it, and how many loads you get through each week, laundry can contribute a surprising amount to your carbon footprint. Washing and drying a load every two days creates around 440kg of CO2e each year, which is equivalent to flying from London to Glasgow and back with 15-mile taxi rides to and from the airports.

Modern washing powders work just as well at 30°C, so there is a very simple saving to be had here of 100g per wash just by turning the temperature down. But the much bigger savings relate to drying. As the numbers above show, for a typical 40°C wash nearly three-quarters of the carbon footprint comes from the drying rather than the washing – which reflects the general rule of thumb that the more heat an appliance generates, the more energy it takes to run.

Part of the problem is that tumble dryers (like dishwashers and washing machines) generally use electricity to generate their heat. This is typically more than twice as carbon-intensive as creating heat from gas – for the simple reason that, in the case of electricity, most of the energy in the fuel gets wasted up the cooling tower of a power plant, with yet more getting lost in transmission to the home. Gas tumble-dryers do exist but aren’t yet popular, despite consuming far less energy.

However your dryer is powered, if you use a conventional vented model, most of the heat is simply pumped out to the outside world, which is sensible in the summer but wasteful in the colder months when you will simultaneously be heating the home by other means. Unvented condensing dryers use a little bit more energy per cycle, but in the winter all that heat stays inside your house, where theoretically it should reduce the burden on the heating system. So the relative impact of each depends on whether you use the dryer all year around or just in the winter when the clothes-lines doesn’t work as well. (Where the machine is positioned is also relevant, as the captured heat will be more of a benefit in, say, the kitchen, than it will in a garage.)

Ultimately, though, all tumble drying is wasteful. A household running a dryer 200 times a year could save nearly half a tonne of CO2e by switching to a clothes rack or washing line. When drying clothes inside on a rack, the evaporation from the wet fabrics will cool the home to cool down a fraction but this is a marginal effect – and although it’s a disadvantage in the winter, it’s a bonus on a hot summer’s day, when you’ll get some free air conditioning.

Whichever way you dry you clothes, it makes sense to use a washer with a good spin function. It is much quicker and more efficient to remove most of the water by spinning it off than by evaporating it in a dryer.

All the figures listed above are based on a full 5kg load (half loads use a little less energy each time but they work out as much less efficient per garment washed). They include around 220g per wash for the embodied emissions in the appliances themselves. If this estimate is correct, the manufacture and delivery of the appliances accounts for nearly 10% of the total carbon footprint of each wash.

You can probably improve on the lifetime of your washer and/or dryer if you look after it and get it repaired when it breaks. Switching from a typical 1998 machine to a new one with an ‘A’ rating might gain you around 10% in efficiency – just enough to offset the emissions created in the new machine’s manufacture and delivery. In other words, unless your machine is particularly cranky and inefficient there is no real carbon case for getting a new one unless you have to.

The final piece of the puzzle is the frequency with which you wash stuff. No one wants to go around smelly, but it’s worth at least asking the question: does stuff go in the wash unnecessarily often? If you can reduce the number of loads you do without yourself or anyone else noticing any difference, there is a time saving to be had, too.

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Open shop doors ‘waste 10 tonnes of carbon emissions’

British retailers could save up to ten tonnes of carbon each year if they were to shut their doors, a new study suggests.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge suggested shops are wasting a significant amount of energy generating heat, which then escapes through open doors.

It was estimated that shops could slash their energy bills by up to 50 percent if they were to close their doors during the winter months.

The ten tonnes of carbon is equivalent to that produced by three flights between London and Hong Kong.

Commenting on the findings, Jeannie Dawkins, director of the Close the Doors Campaign, which commissioned the research, said: “It’s time for retailers to acknowledge the massive contribution they are making to energy waste and carbon emissions if they heat the street.”

The findings are based on the emissions of the independent Cambridge Toy shop and the branch of Ryman stationary shop in the city.

Foreign secretary William Hague and Professor Sir David King, a former government chief scientific adviser and director of Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, Oxford, have both pledged support for the Close the Doors campaign.

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Rainforests ‘can cope with global warming’

Previous assumptions that rainforests could become extinct due to global warming have been challenged in a new study.  Conducted by The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and published in the journal Science, the report looked at plant remains embedded in rocks during a period called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, where carbon levels increased.

During this period world temperatures were increased by three to five degrees C for a period of around 200,000 years.  The researchers found that the forests could actually have been considered to thrive in these conditions, with new plants evolving much faster than existing species, leading to an increase in biodiversity.

Carlos Jaramillo said that evidence suggests plants are already capable of coping with increases in both temperatures and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  ”What we found was the opposite to what we were expecting: we didn’t find any extinction event [in plants] associated with the increase in temperature, we didn’t find that the precipitation decreased,” the Guardian quoted the expert as saying.

The findings perhaps contradict those of a study published in the same journal earlier this year, which suggested droughts in the southern hemisphere have decreased the ability of the world’s forests to absorb CO2.

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Nuclear opposition ‘has added to carbon emissions’

One billion extra tonnes of carbon has been emitted because of opposition to nuclear power generation, experts have claimed.  Speaking to producers of a Channel 4 documentary, campaigners claimed that environmental advocates are in danger of repeating the mistakes of the past by continuing to oppose nuclear power, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Campaigner Mark Lynas said that nuclear opposition has already added to the levels of carbon in the atmosphere, because the objection to the technology in the 1970s and 80s led to the construction of highly-polluting coal power plants.  ”In hindsight that was obviously a mistake, but it is one that today’s environmental lobby groups seem determined to repeat,” he is quoted by the news provider as saying.  But, Ben Stewart from Greenpeace, said a real debate on the issue is needed.

“With the threat of climate change we look at all options but in our opinion [nuclear power and GM] do not stack up,” he is quoted as saying.  A KPMG report released earlier this year suggested that investment in nuclear power is needed if the UK is to meet its carbon reduction targets.

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Brits ‘not focussing on smarter driving techniques’

Drivers are focussing on buying more economical cars rather than learning more fuel-efficient driving techniques.

Nigel Underdown, Energy Saving Trust’s head of transport advice, explained that many motorists are yet to understand “how big an impact their driving style has on the final outcome”.

“Smarter driving relies primarily on better anticipation – reading the road and traffic conditions to avoid harsh acceleration and harsh braking,” he explained.

Maintaining a steady speed and changing to a higher gear at low revs was also said to be important. Mr Underdown explained that on average adopting this style could help drivers improve by as much as 15 per cent.

The Energy Saving Trust is currently holding its national energy saving week, with each day focussing on a different aspect of conserving power.

Tuesday October 26th will educate members of the public about insulation, followed by a day dedicated to generating energy and one dealing with energy saving products, before attention turns to energy-efficient transport on Friday October 29th.

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Environment quangos: It could be worse, but fears persist

Green campaigners will be relieved that the three main environmental quangos, Natural England, the Environment Agency and the Forestry Commission, have at least survived the cull; there had been fears since the election that the first two would be merged and the last abolished.

However, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says the three will be transformed in a “radical and comprehensive” way, which may be one way of saying that their budget cuts next week will be so enormous that they will have to undergo major restructuring just to function.

Another hint of what may be coming lurks in the ominous phrases that they will “stop activity that Government does not need to do”, which may mean handing over the network of national nature reserves in England to wildlife charities.

They are also to “stop policy-making and lobbying activities”. This announcement closes the door on any environmental, non-departmental, public body telling the Government in future that it is going about things in the wrong way – at least publicly.

Another major green quango, British Waterways, which looks after the 2,200-mile network of canals, is ceasing to be a quango and will re-invent itself as a charity.

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TUC: Govt cuts could hamper green economy

The opportunity to create thousands of green jobs could be missed if the government cuts investment in the low carbon economy, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has claimed.

In a letter to Chancellor George Osborne, the TUC, Friends of the Earth and the Aldersgate Group warned that the market cannot be relied on to “drive the move to a low carbon economy”.

A reduction in government investment would also be a “huge blow” to the development of carbon capture and storage technologies, the document added.

Speaking at the TUC Alliances for Green Growth Conference, deputy general secretary Frances O’Grady said that green investment is “essential” to ensure the economic recovery of the UK.

“Cutting green funding in the spending review would not just risk economic recovery, it would also mean many lost opportunities to create green jobs, develop technologies that could reduce our carbon emissions, and save businesses and taxpayers billions of pounds,” she said.

Ms Grady also reiterated the needed for the Green Investment Bank to provide capital for green initiatives.

Mr Osborne will be announcing the comprehensive spending review, which lays out the government’s spending plans for the next four years, on Wednesday October 20th.

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