Burning Food And Fuel

Two hungry, hungry sources are responsible for most of the world’s environmental impacts: our mouths and our gas tanks.

According to a report prepared for the “International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management,” convened under the United Nations Environment Programme , food and fuel consumption are taking considerable tolls on the environment that include reducing freshwater supplies, destroying ecosystems and intensifying disease and death rates. It’s not a rosy picture, and one of the report’s more interesting recommendations isn’t any more pleasant for meat eaters: switching to vegetable-based foods over animal-based proteins. (Of course, as far as carbon intensity, not all plants are created equal either).

In Canada, agriculture contributed 8.5 per cent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2008, but energy provided the lion’s share, with 81 per cent. Changing the way we use energy is at the heart of everything we write here at Flow, so there are clear indications across the board that Canadians and Canadian industry are willing to take steps to improve their energy use. From energy efficiency to renewable energy projects, provincial energy strategies show that the entire country recognizes the importance of our energy.

And the agricultural industry has taken notice of its environmental footprint as well. In addition to projects like farm-based methane capture that make better use of existing emissions, techniques like no-till farming are designed to reduce the volume of total emissions by reducing the disturbance of soil. And even more basic methods, like using straw residue to keep nitrogen from escaping into groundwater, are aimed at reducing farming’s environmental impact.

Whether or not the report’s recommendations are followed to the letter, the way the world uses energy and grows its food will certainly change. But it’s also an uphill battle — there aren’t many things we need more than fuel and food.

Via Science Blog

PecoBOO watches you

You know you should be saving energy, and that every little bit helps. But sometimes you just plain forget to turn things off.

If only there was something to remind you…

Very PC understands and has developed software that will do the remembering for you. The program is called PecoBOO (that’s p-ECO-boo, get it?) and it’s designed to save energy every time you get up from your computer.

Using face detection software in combination with your webcam, PecoBOO will actually turn off your computer monitor when you’re not using it. You can set it to sleep or hibernate whenever you get a coffee, go to the bathroom, or chat with co-workers down the hall.

When you return, PecoBOO can tell you’re ready to get back to work, and will turn the monitor back on for you. You could call it a no-brainer. You could also call it lazy – but be realistic: who turns off their monitor every time they step away?

This simple and automatic way to save energy comes from Very PC, a computer company known for manufacturing low-energy desktop computers. They understand that computers are just a fact of life, but they have a huge environmental impact, especially with everybody using them.

Very PC does their bit to reduce the energy requirements in as many ways as possible. The developers at the company came up with PecoBOO when they began to think of the lights in their refrigerators – it’s only ever turned on when you need it.

You certainly don’t need to remember to turn that off.

Responsibility rewards

It’s one of the great debates of our time: do companies and corporations have a responsibility to protect the environment and promote conservation? Of course, companies are legally obligated to conform to environmental legislation. But that’s not quite the idea. Put simply: is there a social responsibility to do more than the minimum? Can businesses become green leaders? It’s easy to answer “of course,” but it’s not so simple.

Companies have an obligation to shareholders to maximize their profits, and are expected to provide for things such as employee pension funds. Short of ensuring business operations don’t contravene environmental laws, is it fair or reasonable to expect companies to do more?

Some do. Some companies see themselves as constituent members of their local and global community, and are embracing social responsibility. Some companies are driving the unfolding green revolution, rather than lamenting how much it might cost them. GE, Google and Waste Management are three Fortune 500 companies with seemingly little in common beyond sheer success. So what do the world leader in power generation, a free Internet search tool and a waste company have in common?

The common thread linking all three – if you’ll forgive an obvious metaphor – is green. Each has put its money where its public spokesperson is, so to speak, and actively funds and supports green initiatives.

GE   Take GE. A huge corporation by anyone’s standards, its power division alone had $29.3 billion in revenue in 2008. With operations literally around the globe, GE deals in many different types of energy – including non-renewables such as coal and natural gas, but also significantly invests in and promotes solar, biogas, and in particular, wind.

Quite simply, GE is the world leader in wind power. In 2008, GE’s wind turbine business was approximately $6 billion, and has grown dramatically in a short period of time. As recently as 2005, GE was making about 500 turbines per year. GE expected to make more than 3,000 in 2008.

In total, it has installed more than 10,000 wind turbines around the world, comprising over 15,000 megawatts of capacity. GE manufactures turbines in its main facility in Germany, but also in Spain, China, Canada, and the US.

GE has also developed tools to help individual electricity consumers make better decisions. GE’s SmartMeter makes consumers aware of their energy use, especially during peak times. This enables time-of-use pricing, where applicable. The goal is to decrease peak-time energy use, which is more expensive, and increase energy efficiency, saving money for both utilities and their customers.

Waste Management   What’s more “brown” than trash? Waste management used to be about finding an empty field within trucking distance of a town, and filling it with stuff people throw away. Responsible waste management used to mean digging a pit first, so there’d be more space to throw garbage into. Waste Management is trying to do things differently.

Quite simply, Waste Management is trying to effect a culture change – trash doesn’t have to be brown. Indeed, their website ThinkGreen.com reflects a conscious paradigm shift. Trash can be green if it’s put to good use – but what use is trash?

Plenty, says Waste Management. A new facility will liquefy and purify landfill gas into natural gas, which will fuel garbage collection trucks. The first phase of the program will involve 300 trucks in California, reducing annual greenhouse gas emissions by 30,000 tons. The medium-term goal is to reduce Waste Management’s overall truck emissions by 15 per cent by 2020.

Google   It’s only appropriate for energy and waste companies to be more environmentally responsible – after all, they are best-placed to make the biggest difference. Companies in all sorts of divergent industries are taking steps to ensure they make the right sort of impact.

Take Google. Yes, the search engine. If it’s not immediately obvious to you how a free service provider can be financially successful, Google had over $16 billion of revenue in 2008 – mostly from online advertising.

Whereas GE figures it can best act responsibly by building and selling clean energy, Google funds and conducts energy research. For example, in October 2008, Google announced an ambitious plan to wean the United States off coal and oil by 2030, and to cut the use of cars by 40 per cent. Google’s contributions are more than theoretical. Google has also invested $45 million into wind, solar and geothermal start-up companies as part of its Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal campaign.

The big THREE are just the start…

Are those the only three companies seeking to do something about the environment? Far from it. Many smaller companies further from the green industry are greening up their business.

Take the National Bank as an example. The Drive Eco program, launched in September 2007, plants trees on behalf of its young drivers customers. The amount and type of trees depends on the model and make of the car, specifically calculated to offset the vehicle’s carbon dioxide emissions. In less than two years, more than 5,000 trees have been planted, reforesting five hectares of land – about 10 football fields.

Other companies aren’t just taking action to be more environmentally responsible, they’re keeping track of companies that do – and don’t – make a similar effort.

The Conference Board of Canada, for example, analyses corporate responses to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and publishes a report. The top 200 companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange are encouraged “disclose information on the financial and business implications of climate change risks and opportunities, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting, and GHG management strategies to institutional investors.”

The annual report illustrates the actions companies are taking to combat, or at least adapt to, climate change. The trends are encouraging; each year, more companies participate – 55 per cent in 2008, up from 45 per cent the previous year, and 28 per cent before that.

What’s more, there seems to be a general sense among companies that change is needed, and steps are being taken. To that end, almost half of the companies report having implemented formal greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan or policies , and more than half have established committees with mandates to track and seek ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Corporate responsibility used to be seen as a humorous oxymoron; like military intelligence, or civil war. Increasingly, however, independent companies and corporations are taking steps to, at the very least, mitigate their environmental footprints and reduce their harmful emissions. Sometimes “the man” isn’t so bad after all.

Calculating your carbon footprint

In an increasingly environmentally conscious world, keeping track of our impact on the environment has become as essential to our lives as understanding the food we eat. And if the comparison seems forced, consider that Japan recently announced it would be including carbon footprint information on products, strikingly similar to existing nutritional information.

In fact, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that tracking our carbon footprint has become something of an obsession, even to the point of making consumers cautious when making any decisions at all. From energy-efficient homes to a campaign of “green” marketing campaigns so ever-present they’ve been given their own name, environmental consciousness has become a global pastime.

But with the current focus on greenhouse gas emissions, one of the most popular measures of our environmental impact is the carbon calculator. Easily accessible and simple, these electronic resources help measure the impact of your daily energy use in metric tonnes of carbon dioxide, sometimes even including a few spiffy interactive components to while your day away.

Online, there are literally thousands of resources available for calculating your energy use. It’s worth noting that many such carbon calculators, like EcoNeutral’s, are tied into carbon dioxide offset programs, with the results of your consumption bumping you to a dollar amount of offset credits. Airlines in particular, including Air Canada and WestJet, have made carbon offset credits a part of their business models, often making the credits available during the ticket purchase process.

The carbon calculator has even been taken advantage of as a political maneuver, as in the case of the Nova Scotia Conservative Party. In response to federal Liberal leader Stephane Dion’s “Green Shift” carbon tax plan, the provincial Tories posted a carbon calculator purporting to show the increased tax burden on Nova Scotians in the event of such a tax.

But not all carbon calculators are designed to sell a product or win political points.

The federal government has assembled many of the available energy calculators created by various governmental bodies on its ecoACTION website, and on provincial websites like the Ontario region’s. From appliance efficiency to vehicle idling, these calculators offer measurements of many of our most common energy consuming behaviours, albeit without the simplicity of a single set of basic questions, as with SafeClimate’s.

There are a dizzying number of factors that make up our individual carbon emissions. Broadly, for example, we already know there’s a direct relationship between wealth and our carbon footprint. In particular, we contribute to greenhouse gas emissions whenever we eat (meat or vegetables), drive or contribute to a wide range of essential Canadian industries. Together, these add up to megatonnes of CO2 emissions nationally, which may or may not eventually find its way into our atmosphere.

The bottom line is that, while knowing Canada produced 1,920 kilotonnes of CO2 emissions in forestry and agriculture in 2006 might seem like a daunting number, knowing exactly how much you personally produce is a far simpler place to begin evaluating your energy use.

Add calculators, subtract energy use. How much simpler can it be?

Toe-tapping (not enviro-stomping) festivals

Summertime in Canada, while fleeting and far from tropical, brings out a nation-wide phonic phenomenon known as the music festival. It’s as though Canadians, having spent the last 6 – 10 months separated from people and nature due to perpetually inclement weather, feel an instinct to connect over music with thousands of other people in a field or park.

It’s nice. We like it. An opportunity to dance and burn in that bit of sunshine we’ve missed for so long. This is music and food and shopping and people and green space.

And then, there’s the energy needed to make it all happen.

Consider the environmental impact of powering all the outdoor stages and electric guitars, of the transportation needed for the thousands to attend each festival, or even of the electricity needed to chill beverages in the beer garden. It takes a lot of energy for us to dig the groovy tunes, so it’s no surprise that people have started to take notice of the footprint these outdoor behemoth events are causing.

It may have been the hippies leading the charge, but it’s not just the landscape-dotting folk fests that are making a bid to reduce environmental impact, including energy use. Other festivals, such as Virgin Fest, are greening up their act by incorporating recycling and renewable energy into the mix of mini-donuts and temporary tattoos.

Given Richard Branson’s appreciation for all things green, it seemed like a natural step for the Virgin founder to encourage other corporations to step up and help enviro-fy his music festival. TD Canada Trust, for example, not only sponsored a music stage at the Canadian Virgin Festivals, but also a booth with solar-powered laptops, phone and mp3 player chargers. The bank also brought onsite a working backyard biodiesel demonstration as an illustration of one of the many enviro-friendly programs it sponsors through the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation.

Major outdoor music festivals may be a major user of energy, but savvy event organizers can hear the sound of the trend to reduce impact where possible. Whether it be encouraging carpooling and alternative transportation, renewable energy sources or developing solar-powered musical instruments, every little bit makes a difference—especially since Canadians likely won’t be giving up the summer music festival anytime soon.