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By Andrew Newton on 22 Sep, 2009 - 02:06 UTC

It is certainly an ambitious exercise, looking at estimated carbon emissions, company environmental policies and reputation perceptions.


Newsweek defends its methodology on the customary point of criticism: how can you compare a utility, say, with a bank? They point out that over 50% of the score relates to the strength of green policies (which anyone can implement) and reputation, all of which evens out the score somewhat.


I would add that there is no problem comparing high emitting industries with low emitting industries and finding that there is a cluster of high emitters near the bottom of the ranking. That is how it should be. Dirty industries should appear as they are. This table is not a ranking of overall social utility but of environmental credentials. If a cluster of oil extraction companies appeared in the top 100 it would be more than suspect; it would be incredible.


A particular concern I had was whether indirect impacts were adequately taken into account. Financial services have small direct footprints, but are the ultimate dirty industry in that they choose to finance all the others. The analysis of green policies brings this factor into the equation but a lack of transparency about the carbon impact of their loan and investment portfolios reduces the quality of analysis. For me this is a more worrying weak spot than the ranking's validity in comparing companies across different sectors.


One last observation: it is great to see that Newsweek used the extensive experience of two firms whose founders I have had the pleasure to meet: Peter Kinder's KLD Analytics and Paul Scott's CorporateRegister.com. Great to see such high caliber teams involved in producing the detail of something this high profile. Well done both.

In a rare move, the Chinese environmental regulator has halted the development of a string of hydropower stations in the upper Yangtze.

 

The hyrdopower developments were ruled illegal as environmental permissions had not been sought.

 

The developments were being implemented by China's two largest power companies.

According to researchers at Yale, once sustainable practices put in place, a polluted ecosystem will recover within a generation or two.  Which is very good news, even though the study is talking about more, er, traditional forms of pollution, and not about climate change. 

 

From Yale's website: "The Yale researchers found that forest ecosystems recovered in 42 years on average, while ocean bottoms recovered in less than 10 years. When examined by disturbance type, ecosystems undergoing multiple, interacting disturbances recovered in 56 years, and those affected by either invasive species, mining, oil spills or trawling recovered in as little as five years. Most ecosystems took longer to recover from human-induced disturbances than from natural events, such as hurricanes." 

 

It's like Jeff Goldblum said in Jurassic Park: life finds a way.

 

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Cap and Trade passes House committee
By A P Newton on 22 May, 2009 - 06:09 UTC

A bill seeking to curb greenhouse gases has made its way through the committee process and is on its way to a vote by the House of Representatives.  According to the Washington Post, "The bill calls for a 17 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020 and an 83 percent reduction by 2050."  Although the bill is considered too weak by some environmental groups, Greenpeace chief among them, a majority of environmentalists appear to approve the bill as being a good first step in reducing the US' carbon emissions.  The bill also has the support of President Obama, although, again, it is weaker than he had hoped it would be, and weaker than the platform he campaigned on. 

Member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council are considering the imposition of a "green tax" on environmentally damaging products.

 

A green tax in one of the world's biggest communities of oil producing states? This should be interesting.

James Hansen, a climate modeller with Nasa argues that corporate lobbying is undermining the democratic response to climate change.

 

From The Guardian report:

 

Speaking on the eve of joining a protest against the headquarters of power firm E.ON in Coventry, Hansen said: "The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.

"The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. So, I'm not surprised that people are getting frustrated. I think that peaceful demonstration is not out of order, because we're running out of time."

Hansen said he was taking part in the Coventry demonstration tomorrow because he wants a worldwide moratorium on new coal power stations. E.ON wants to build such a station at Kingsnorth in Kent,

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Sweden's proposed energy and climate change legislation could serve as a model for other European countries, according to WWF.

From Environmental News Network: "Sweden’s Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said that his country now aims by 2020 for renewable energy to comprise 50 percent of all energy produced, for the Swedish car fleet to be independent of fossil fuels 10 years later and for the country to be carbon neutral by 2050.

“We think it is fantastic that the government recognises the important role that eco-efficiency plays in improving the economy,” Lasse Gustavsson, Secretary general of WWF in Sweden said.
“If the Swedish government can convince other industrial countries to adapt Sweden’s ambitious climate package, the world would be better suited for combating destructive climate change,” he said.

Sweden, which now plans to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent from its 1990 levels within the next 11 years, was asked to cut CO2 output by just 17 percent.

The government said it would stay committed to the proposed goals and that they were independent of whether or not a global climate agreement is achieved."
In the latest of several blows to China's environmental policies, a number of stimulus projects are being rubber stamped on environmental impacts.

The South China Morning Post catalogues this and other recent policy shifts prioritizing development over sustainability:

"Since the release of the 4 trillion yuan (HK$4.5 trillion) stimulus package in November, the Ministry of Environmental Protection has approved 970 billion yuan in projects while putting on hold 14 others totalling 104 billion yuan, according to Vice-Minister Wu Xiaoqing.

He said the ministry had sped up mandatory environmental impact assessment for large projects that the State Council considered necessary to boost the economy.
...
The mainland’s anti-pollution drive has suffered several heavy blows recently, with the much-touted “green GDP” project scrapped and a big cut in funding for pollution control.

While Beijing raised its budget for public housing, education and health care, it quietly cut spending earmarked for cutting pollution and energy waste in the revised stimulus package unveiled last week, from 350 billion yuan to 210 billion yuan."
The British government has announced it will give £27 million to Jaguar Land Rover to develop its hybrid-diesel "green" Range Rover, which it promises will be its "smallest, lightest and most efficient Range Rover ever produced." The government money is part of a stimulus package aimed at keeping British automakers afloat in the economic crisis.

According to Fast Company, "The commercial Range Rover is expected to get a whopping 60 MPG." [http://tinyurl.com/c5xdpr] If this ends up being the case, the new Range Rover will indeed be a vast improvement over the current model, which gets 12 MPG city and 18 MPG highway.
The US Army has rolled out a "triple bottom line" that talks about community engagement and sustainability. But here's a question: what about the Army's independent contractors? They seem to have only one bottom line, their own profitability.

From This is my USA: "The Army has adopted a strategy called “Triple Bottom Line—Plus.” The three bottom lines are: mission, environment and community. The "plus" stands for economic benefits that sustainability proffers, including reduced costs and impacts and accelerated innovation.

On March 6, I was invited to participate in a conference call with Tad Davis, the Army's Deputy Assistant Secretary of Environment, Safety and Occupational Health.

Davis helped start Army sustainability in 2001 at Fort Bragg. Since then, he's progressively been working to develop an Army-wide sustainability concept.

"Our Army, your Army, is building green, buying green and going green," Davis said."
Talk "about waste not, want not." A California dairy is making use of their cows' waste products to fuel its diesel trucks. A $600,000 grant from the California Air Resources Board’s Alternative Fuel Incentive Program, a division of the California EPA, is funding Hilarides Dairy's project to convert cow manure to fuel for their trucks, the dairy announced at the World Agricultural Fair on Wednesday. The dairy has so far converted two heavy-duty diesel trucks to run on manure converted to bio-methane, and has plans to convert five pickup trucks as well.

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