Carbon Footprint | News & Views

Boeing launches ‘greener’ 747

Boeing has announced the release of a more environmentally-friendly 747 and claims it has already received orders from a number of major airlines.

The 747-8 Intercontinental offers both improved financial and environmental performance, according to the manufacturer, which released its Dreamliner last year.

Boeing claims the Intercontinental has 16 percent better fuel economy and 16 percent less CO2 emissions than its predecessor, the 747-400. It also has a 30 percent smaller noise footprint.

Jim Albaugh, Boeing Commercial Airplanes president and chief executive officer, said: “The new 747-8 Intercontinental features the latest in innovative technologies – applying many of the breakthroughs also found on the 787 Dreamliner.”

Korean Air and Lufthansa are among those which have already placed orders, with the aircraft due to be delivered in the fourth quarter of the year.

Researchers at the German Aerospace Centre recently created an electric nose wheel, which would mean pilots would not have to use a craft’s main engine to travel around the airport, significantly cutting CO2 emissions.

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Fins have changed: The amazing cod that has become immune to river’s toxic chemicals in just 50 years

Taken from: The Daily Mail

Most people assume evolution is a process that takes place gradually over thousands of years.
But the Atlantic tomcod has evolved, in just 50 years, to become resistant to toxic chemicals that for decades poured into the Hudson and other rivers in New York and New Jersey.
While long-term evolution is a result of natural selection, scientists cite this is an example of pollution driving evolution.

Fins have changed: The amazing cod that has become immune to river’s toxic chemicals in just 50 years
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 4:16 PM on 18th February 2011
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Most people assume evolution is a process that takes place gradually over thousands of years.

But the Atlantic tomcod has evolved, in just 50 years, to become resistant to toxic chemicals that for decades poured into the Hudson and other rivers in New York and New Jersey. While long-term evolution is a result of natural selection, scientists cite this is an example of pollution driving evolution.

Pollution driving evolution: The Atlantic tomcod has evolved, in just 50 years, to become resistant to toxic chemicals from industry
The tomcod has a single genetic receptor that researchers say has made this quick evolutionary change possible.

Researcher Isaac Wirgin, an associate professor of environmental medicine at New York University School of Medicine, said: ‘These were not natural factors. You’re talking about very rapid evolution.’ This kind of reaction has been seen when insects develop resistance to certain insecticides, and bacteria to antibiotics.

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Climate change raises flood risk

Taken from: The BBC online

Greenhouse gas emissions are making extreme rainfall events more common, scientists say – and in the UK, have increased the risk of flooding.

Two research groups present their findings in the journal Nature.

Using real-world data and computer models, one team says it has proven the link between greenhouse emissions and the observed increase in extreme rains in the Northern Hemisphere.

The other says greenhouse warming made the UK floods of 2000 more likely.

That autumn saw the highest rains in England and Wales since records began in 1766.

The Hampshire village of Hambledon was underwater for six weeks, and insurers put the final cost to the country at more than £1bn.

A research team led from Oxford University ran computer models of the atmosphere as it actually was, and parallel models of the atmosphere as it would have been without the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that had accumulated from humanity’s emissions.

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Tropical forests ‘re-shaped’ by climate changes

Taken from: The BBC Online

Future climate change could change the profile of tropical forests, with possible consequences for carbon storage and biodiversity, a study says.

It suggests that if current trends continued, the drier conditions would favour deciduous, canopy species at the expense of other trees.

US researchers based their findings on the changes they recorded in a Costa Rican forest over a 20-year period.

The team’s paper has been published in the journal Global Change Biology.

“It is important because – depending on the rate of change, and the type of species that are found in the forests – it will influence a lot of ecosystem services and processes,” explained co-author Brian Enquist from the University of Arizona.

“For example, we need to know how much carbon tropical forests are storing, and will store in the future. We also need to know how much CO2 they are taking out of the air.”

Professor Enquist and his team examined how an area of forest had changed between 1976 and 1996.

“We were fortunate that between the two dates, there was a series of quite impressive droughts – those droughts have been increasing in severity over the longer term,” he told BBC News.

He said that there had been a “tremendous reduction” in the total number of trees in the forest.

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Al Gore, Gary Neville or Cheryl Cole: who would you trust on climate change?

From the Guardian

We are often told that we are living in the “age of celebrity”. Yes, it’s an utterly depressing thought, but some believe we should exploit this collective obsession by putting to good use the mighty influence many celebrities wield. Charities have long latched on to the idea that for their message to be heard in the media mêlée it must have a “face” attached. And, of course, the media is heavily complicit in this “game”, too.

Environmental campaigners, like everyone else, have actively sought the support of celebrities to help not only broadcast their message, but also add an air of authority. The reason is simple: many people – whether they admit it or not – look up to celebrities.

Ahead of Climate Week – a series of events scheduled for March which “offer an annual renewal of our ambition and confidence to combat climate change” – the organisers have commissioned a survey to illustrate which celebrities would most likely get us to “act on climate change”. The results are intriguing and perplexing in equal measure.

Climate Week asked Millward Brown, a brand research consultancy, to utilise its “Cebra” (celebrity-brand) index. Twenty celebrities were chosen to represent a spread of people who were either a “well-known activist”, “environmentally inclined but not an activist”, or “not known for activism”. A “nationally representative sample of 500 adults aged 16-65″ was then asked how much influence each celebrity had on environmental issues. They were also asked to allocate a score to each celebrity using the measures of “familiarity”, “affinity”, “media attention”, “role model” and “talent”. And here, in order of influence, are the results:

1) Al Gore
2) Bill Gates
3) Arnold Schwarzenegger
4) Boris Johnson
5) David Beckham
6) Ken Livingstone
7) Chris Martin
Cheryl Cole
9) Gwyneth Paltrow
10) Duncan Bannatyne
11) Phil Schofield
12) Robbie Williams
13) Fearne Cotton
14) Leonardo DiCaprio
15) Holly Willoughby
16) Colin Firth
17) Graham Norton
18) Sienna Miller
19) Paloma Faith
20) Gary Neville

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Carbon Economy to create 1 million jobs

More than a million jobs will be created by the low carbon industries, according to Business Secretary Lord Mandelson speaking at the Prime Minister’s job summit, Lord Mandelson said that the low carbon sector of the economy was set to grow dramatically and that it could help ease rising unemployment figures.

Lord Mandelson said:”The global market for low carbon and environmental goods and services is currently worth about £3 trillion, and it is projected to grow strongly over the next decade as both the developed and the emerging world makes the shift to low carbon or post-carbon.”

He added: “We could see more than a million jobs in this sector by the middle of the next decade”.Last year, Prime Minister Gordon Brown suggested that people facing unemployment could find jobs in the green industries and offered retraining for some to learn to install insulation.

An Oxfam report recently noted that environmental issues and poverty should be tackled side by side and pointed out that insulation helped people cut both their energy bills and their carbon emissions.

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US wind industry forged ahead in 2010

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the national trade association of America’s wind industry, emphasises that the wind power industry combated challenges in 2010 and laid the foundations for a strong return in 2011.

While the industry “saw the all-too-real impacts of having no long-term US policies toward renewable energy”, the industry nevertheless made significant advances in 2010, said Denise Bode, CEO of the association.

Bode highlighted that wind power supply chain manufacturers continued to announce new US plants despite an uncertain economic climate. The industry reached over 50% domestic content for turbines installed in the US. In addition, advances were made in regional transmission plans, the market for smaller turbines grew 15%, and offshore wind took major steps on the path to the first US installations, said Bode.

The year 2010 closed out with Congress extending by one more year the Section 1603 Investment Tax Credit for renewable energy, a policy that helped the industry emerge as a bright spot in the US economy and keep 85,000 Americans working even at the depth of the recession, Bode said.

The numbers posted by the US wind industry in the third quarter of 2010 made for its slowest quarter since 2007. According to AWEA, once the year’s final numbers are tallied, they are expected to show that China installed approximately three times as much wind-powered electricity as the US in 2010, and Europe twice as much, as US installations fell to just over half of 2009.

Factors in the US decline included an absence of long-term US energy policies (such as a Renewable Electricity Standard), resulting in an unstable business environment, and utilities being less eager to enter wind energy power purchase agreements.

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UK spends more on carbon labelled goods

From LowCarbonEconomy

The total annual retail value of consumer goods sold in the UK bearing the Carbon Reduction Label has reached £2 billion, and could double in the next two years, according to a report by the Centre for Retail Research.

The announcement comes as new research shows that 9 out of 10 homes in the UK bought a carbon labelled product last year.

The milestone figure was reached after Tesco confirmed it has added the Carbon Reduction Label to its own brand dried egg and dried Finest pasta. It means that the average UK household spends £77 on carbon labelled products per year.

If sales of business (B2B) products were added, the total sales value of goods bearing the label would rise to approximately £3 billion. CEMEX UK, Marshalls plc and Continental Clothing all feature the label on their B2B products.

The Carbon Reduction Label also continues to grow internationally. Last summer, Aldi put the label on the bottles of its own-brand olive oil in stores across Australia. And last month, the New Zealand Wine Company became the first wine maker to measure and commit to reduce the carbon footprint of a bottle of wine, putting the Carbon Reduction Label on their Mobius Marlborough sauvignon blanc.

Euan Murray, director of footprinting at the Carbon Trust said:

“It’s great to see carbon labelling growing both in the UK and internationally through our partnership in Australia with Planet Ark. With the emergence of a carbon conscious consumer we are confident that more and more international brands will commit to carbon labelling as it will help deliver the triple benefits of reducing cost by reducing energy spend, boosting their company’s reputation and helping to ensure customer loyalty.”

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Carbon trading tempts firms to make greenhouse gas

From The New Scientist

A handful of Chinese and Indian chemicals companies seemingly have the world over a barrel or rather a large number of barrels of a super-greenhouse gas called HFC-23, which is 14,800 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

This week, apparently following Chinese threats to vent stockpiles of HFC-23 into the atmosphere, a UN panel issued two million valuable carbon credits to a company called Juhua. It has a factory in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, where the gas can be destroyed.

Nobody needs HFC-23. It is a waste by-product of the manufacture of a refrigerant called HCFC-22, used mostly in developing nations. To curb the release of HFC-23 into the atmosphere, the signatories to the Kyoto protocol agreed to pay carbon credits to refrigerant manufacturers that agree to capture and destroy it. The manufacturers can then sell the credits to western companies that want to offset their obligations to cut emissions of other greenhouse gases, under a Kyoto scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The offer only applies to HCFC-22 plants that were built before 2000. Even so it has proved highly lucrative. By some estimates, the value of the carbon credits is up to 100 times the cost of incinerating HFC-23. The resulting income of Chinese companies alone is estimated to reach $1.6 billion by 2012.

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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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