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  Cutting GHG Emissions of Industrial Parks by 35% through Corporat ...

  March 17, 2013  

  Buy local, drive less, switch to renewable energy – these are just a few of the omnipresent suggestions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the personal level. By no means do I aim to discredit their significance, but it strikes me that they are pushed just everywhere, whereas measures on other levels are hard to find. Pragmatic ideas to improve an individual company's climate bills are less visible in the media, even if they do shape most of this blog. Nevertheless, be it in this blog or elsewhere, you hardly ever read anything about reducing the emissions in an entire industrial or comm...

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  Kyoto's CO2-Baseline Wrong by 7% – But Today's GHG Inventories Ar ...

  February 25, 2013  

  Regardless of how China is perceived in the west, in the medium term, the world's most ambitious energy efficiency goals can be found in that country. In only five years, from 2010 to 2015, it's seven biggest industrial regions have to meet energy efficiency targets of 16-19% and emission reductions of 17-21%. However, in order to achieve carbon emission targets, you first need a reliable baseline for reference. Read in this article how big the carbon gaps are between different statistical assessments, and not only in China, and why inherently inaccurate baseline figures don't automatically...

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  When Oil Majors Embrace Material Flow Analysis, New Hope for a Su ...

  February 18, 2013  

  There are manifold approaches to close the apparent gap between a shrinking resource base on the one hand and the ever rising human resource demand on the other. For the longest time, the world's big industrial players have followed a strategy to successfully ignore the former, since environmental and social costs were merely negligible external effects. We could call this approach a procrastinating one, because it is future generations who are forced to deal with the outcomes of today's ignorance. In the course of the last 20 years, however, corporate giants have shifted their strategy. It ...

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  67 Quick-Payoff Measures to Reduce Urban Carbon Emissions

  January 30, 2013  

  Transforming the energy supply from fossil to renewable sources is a goal that makes sense, but even so, it is not enough. As I wrote last week, the entire energy system needs a transformation, embracing a maximum of energy efficiency. A suitable approach would not be an isolated one, but rather one that integrates both the supply and the demand sides. This is one of the conclusions drawn from the last “synthesis report” published recently by the Low Carbon Society Research Network. The report summarized their fourth annual meeting, held in September in Oxford. Despite the fact that the three ...

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  10 Appropriate Indicators to Measure Green Growth in Industry

  December 17, 2012    5 Comments

  Green Growth, Sustainable Growth, Green Economy – All of these concepts require decoupling. A decoupling, in a nutshell, that maintains economic growth while achieving material de-growth. Instead of consuming ever more resources to produce ever more profits (“traditional” growth), decoupling refers to the idea of consuming less material resources and still generating more profits (green growth). What sounds good in theory, faces some technicalities in practice. The most important one is: how do you measure “greenness”? Which of all the shrinking resources should be saved, in order to merit get...

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  The Outweighed Efficiency Gain – 13 Rebound Effects in Detail

  December 12, 2012    5 Comments

  According to Tilman Santarius, one essential concept is missing in all the scenarios that lead toward a green economy. It is, so he wrote, that expectations for reduced energy consumption from efficiency gains need to be lowered by 50 percent because not all the energy that could be will actually be saved. How come? The story is called rebound effect and Santarius has researched it profoundly, as his paper “Green Growth Unravelled – How rebound effects baffle sustainability targets when the economy keeps growing” shows. The English version was published in October by the Heinrich Böll Foundati...

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  19 Industry Reports - How Global Compact Promotes Efficiency

  December 3, 2012  

  Energy costs are on the rise. Their increase is so steady that now even the United Nations has established a program to promote energy efficiency in the private sector. Sustainable Energy for All is the newest set of goals for the United Nations Global Compact. The Global Compact claims to be the world's largest corporate responsibility initiative and its newest set of goals has three objectives for business in 2030. First, universal access to modern energy services is sought. Second, energy efficiency is to be doubled. And third, the aspiration is to double the share of renewable energy. In ...

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  31 Innovations for Maximum Resource Efficiency in Manufacturing

  November 21, 2012    1 Comment

  The amount of manufacturing in Germany is vast. To guarantee survival in the global rotation of who is who among industrial nations, companies in Germany are forced to innovate. Every company that aims to stay competitive has to innovate? Yes, of course. But that goes even more so for the ones in well-established economies, than for their emerging competitors. Since the nature of innovation is multifarious, making the choice of what measure to invest in is far from obvious. What's clear, though: true innovations are those that not only save money, but also generate savings in resources – the ...

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  Burn or Bury? Analyzing Waste Management Options in Detail

  November 5, 2012    1 Comment

  Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – the waste imperative is as clear as it can get. What's less clear, however, is what we should we do with the remaining stuff. Even the greenest society is, at a certain point, confronted with the unusable leftovers of consumption. What should happen to these? Treatment of the leftovers is a well discussed question and the answer relies on three big alternatives: incineration, dumping and composting. All three have pros and cons, some of which are apparent, others rather surprising. In this article, let me introduce you to a life cycle assessment (LCA) that analyzes th...

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  “A Balanced Mix of Technologies and Strategies” - The Sustainable ...

  October 16, 2012  

  When it comes to discussing ways to limit human influence on global warming, the most popular reaction is to pass the buck: So who's in charge of making the needed substantial changes in the way things run? The Other. Why? Because they pollute more, because they're more powerful, because they have a historical responsibility, because it's easier for them... There seem to be more excuses for not acting than there are carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere. "Technology Will Save Us" Say Efficiency Advocates Even among those who are concerned with the environment and seek a way to increas...

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  Carbon Neutral Online Shopping – How Green are Mail Order Compani ...

  August 29, 2012    7 Comments

  In the last 150 years, three major trends have changed the way humanity consumes. First, industrialization shifted production from self-sufficiency to consumerism. Second, ongoing economic development allowed local economies to expand across entire countries, which was followed by globalization and worldwide markets. Globalization started with colonial powers trading goods between continents and has not yet achieved its peak, even if it has been more than 30 years now since China opened its markets. The third important development marking a substantial shift in the way we consume is telephone ...

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  Why and How the Manufacturing Industry Should Go 100% Renewable N ...

  August 13, 2012    4 Comments

  Renewable energy has a positive connotation in society and business, that's for sure. The Fukushima incidents have led to a run on renewable energy suppliers by private households in large parts of the western world. But what does the situation look like for industry? Do manufacturing companies meet their responsibility for taking action when everyone related to the sustainability field calls for a transition to 100% renewable energy? Manufacturing accounts for one third of the world's energy consumption. In view of countries like Sweden, which aims for 50% renewable energy generation by 20...

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  6 Options to Maintain Current Lifestyles with Far Less Raw Materi ...

  August 1, 2012    4 Comments

  There is this old, ever repeating view of humanity as a counter-productive force when it comes to nature conservation, and that action toward a sustainable world is therefore doomed to failure right from the start. This view seems tempting, since the reasoning makes sense at first sight. Even if we increased material efficiency noticeably, so it goes, the drastic growth in material demand will override any achievements. This view is what Julian Allwood and Jonathan Cullen called “with one eye open”. They wrote a comprehensive book about sustainable materials called “With Both Eyes Open,” avail...

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  A Challenging Task: Promoting Energy Efficiency in Tajikistan

  May 28, 2012    3 Comments

  knowtheflow: Marjolaine, you work for the French organization GERES, which deals with promoting energy efficiency. Marjolaine Boitard: Yes, it was founded in 1976 after the oil crisis. And you spent a year in Tajikistan, researching domestic energy consumption. I imagine that a Tajik household is very different from a French one. Yes, I used to spend 2-3 days a week with 20 Tajik families in two different regions. And actually, even between these two regions, you can see a difference. Tajikistan is a mountainous country and just from one valley to another you can note big differences. For s...