WWF counts emissions from goods that a country imports as attributed to that country. But in the United Nations’ methodology, adopted by Singapore, those emissions are attributed to the country producing those goods. There’s the rub. What’s more, the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Asian Green City Index last year assessed Singapore as Asia’s greenest metropolis which ranked “well above average” for its policies on energy and carbon emissions.

TODAY newspaper on (14 March 2012):

Singapore – The National Climate Change Secretariat (NCCS) has responded to environmental group World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF) findings that the Republic has the largest carbon footprint per capita in the Asia-Pacific.

The NCCS issued its response to “provide a better understanding of the facts” and took issue with the WWF citing Singapore as “a society that may be one of the best examples of what we should not do” – a statement which “seriously misrepresents the situation”, said the NCCS.

The secretariat cited how the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Asian Green City Index last year had assessed Singapore as Asia’s greenest metropolis and said Singapore ranked “well above average” for its policies on energy and carbon emissions.

The EIU study found that Singapore used three megajoules of energy to generate US$1 (S$1.30) of gross domestic product (GDP) – half the Index’s average of six megajoules. The Index had examined the environmental performance of 22 Asian cities in eight categories including environmental governance, air quality, energy and carbon dioxide emissions.

The NCCS also noted that the methodology used by the WWF in its upcoming Asia Footprint Report differs from that of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The latter attributes emissions from goods to the country where they are produced, while WWF attributes carbon emissions from the goods to the importing country.

Based on the UNFCCC’s method, Singapore ranked below countries such as Brunei, Australia and South Korea in terms of per capita emissions, said the NCCS.

Even so, the NCCS noted “inherent limitations” in the use of per capita indicators to measure carbon emissions. “Carbon emissions per capita as a measure disadvantages countries with small populations,” it said.

This is so for Singapore due to its small land area, with no readily available alternative energy sources.

Singapore ranks favourably when it comes to energy intensity, the NCCS also pointed out.

Its carbon-dioxide emissions per dollar or GDP is among “the lowest internationally” – or 123 out of 137 countries, based on data from the International Energy Agency.

“Singapore will strive to be an even more environmentally green city, even given our inherent limitations as an island state,” the NCCS said.

Last Monday, the WWF had revealed that Singapore topped the list of carbon emitters per capita in the Asia-Pacific, saying its high GDP per capita fuelled consumption habits and citing the corporate sector and construction industry as a significant contributor.

Exact carbon emission levels of various countries will be revealed when its Asia Footprint Report is out in June.

Source: www.nccs.gov.sg

By Grace Chua, The Straits Times ( 18 March 2012):.

Your carbon emissions are still too high but, hey, Singapore is doing a great job when it comes to energy efficiency and others can learn from you.

That seems to be the ‘yes, but…’ response from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), in the wake of a rebuttal by Singapore’s National Climate Change Secretariat (NCCS) to scathing remarks about the Republic’s greening efforts.

Earlier this month, media reports said that the WWF’s Living Planet Report (2010) had named Singapore as having the highest per capita carbon footprint in the Asia-Pacific region.

WWF President Yolada Kakabadse had called Singapore ‘…maybe one of the best examples of what we should not do’.

Last week, the NCCS – which comes under the Prime Minister’s Office – responded sharply, saying the comment ‘seriously misrepresents the situation’.

The key bone of contention is the methodology. The WWF counts emissions from goods that a country imports as attributed to that country.

But in the United Nations’ methodology, adopted by Singapore, those emissions are attributed to the country producing those goods.

The NCCS also pointed out that ranking countries by per capita carbon emissions disadvantages countries with small populations, and does not reflect Singapore’s lack of alternative energy sources.

In the WWF statement put out on Friday, its Singapore chief executive Elaine Tan said: ‘Singapore deserves recognition for the many achievements it has made in reducing its carbon footprint, particularly in energy efficiency.

‘But in terms of carbon emissions per capita, the country can do more. So WWF welcomes the opportunity to work with the people, private and public sectors, to reduce the burden our current lifestyles are placing on the planet.’

On WWF’s methodology, she said: ‘Consumption activities are the primary drivers of environmental pressure but production activities are easier to regulate. Therefore both are important.

‘However, if you want to understand the environmental impact a high-consumption lifestyle has on a particular place, then you need to look at the final destination.’

National University of Singapore geography associate professor Victor Savage, who studies sustainable development, agreed with the NCCS’ point about ‘per capita’ distortions.

He said using per capita emissions ratings lets large carbon emitters like China, Germany and Australia off the hook. They may not have high per capita emissions, but they are large overall emitters.

But he added that a high per capita emissions ranking can help governments broach the issue with its citizens. ‘You can say, ‘Your per capita usage of energy is so high; we need to do something.”

Singapore’s performance in environmental rankings has varied sharply by the methods and measures used.

In February, a University of British Columbia study ranked the Republic bottom of 150 countries in its ‘ecological deficits’, meaning it used far more of the earth’s resources than it could supply.

In response to that study, the Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources said Singapore should be compared with other city-states, not larger nations with more natural resources.

The Asian Green City Index by technology firm Siemens last year rated Singapore tops in its management of waste and water resources, and gave it high marks in sanitation and environmental governance.

Source: www.greenbusinesstimes.com

Climate-related disasters have displaced more than 42 million people in Asia over the past two years, the Asian Development Bank said in a report, calling for swift action to avert future crises. Asia and the Pacific is the global area most prone to natural disasters, both in terms of the absolute number of disasters and of populations affected.

Channel News Asia (13 March 2012):

BANGKOK: Climate-related disasters have displaced more than 42 million people in Asia over the past two years, the Asian Development Bank in a report calling for swift action to avert future crises.

“Asia and the Pacific is the global area most prone to natural disasters, both in terms of the absolute number of disasters and of populations affected,” said the report launched in Bangkok, which was itself affected by flooding last year.

About 31.8 million people in the region were displaced by climate-related disasters and extreme weather in 2010 — a particularly bad year — including more than 10 million in Pakistan owing to massive flooding.

A further 10.7 million were forced to flee their homes last year, it said, warning that such events will become more frequent with climate change.

“While many of those displaced returned to their homes as conditions improved, others were less fortunate, struggling to build new lives elsewhere after incurring substantial personal losses,” ADB vice president Bindu Lohani said in a foreword to the report, released at an Asian climate forum.

The bank says Asia has six of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change, with Bangladesh and India in the top two places on a list that also includes Nepal, the Philippines, Afghanistan and Myanmar.

“The environment is becoming a significant driver of migration in Asia and the Pacific as the population grows in vulnerable areas, such as low-lying coastal zones and eroding river banks,” Lohani said in a separate statement.

“Governments should not wait to act. By taking steps now, they can reduce vulnerability, strengthen resiliency, and use migration as an adaptation tool rather than let it become an act of desperation.”

The report, titled Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific, said governments in disaster-prone Asia-Pacific countries must enact a range of measures to stave off future crises.

Among other things, it recommended greater investment in urban infrastructure and basic services to accommodate the anticipated increase in migrant flows to the region’s megacities.

“By taking actions today, governments can reduce the likelihood of future humanitarian crises and maximise the possibilities that people can remain in their communities or — should deteriorating environmental conditions make that impractical — that they have the real option to relocate to a more secure place with livelihood options,” it said.

The ADB says the Asia-Pacific region needs to spend about $40 billion a year through 2050 to “climate proof” against the impact of global warming.

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

Experts gathering at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago this month said an estimated 30 to 50% of the food produced globally goes to waste. On average, Americans throw away about 33 pounds (15kg) of food each month. In the UK, one example of a company tackling food waste in a ‘super sized’ fashion is waste management firm Biffa, which recently opened its 120,000 tonne per year capacity facility.

CBS News report (17 March 2012):

Experts gathering this week at the Reuters Food and Agriculture Summit in Chicago said an estimated 30 to 50 percent of the food produced globally goes to waste.

Reuters reports that on average, Americans throw away about 33 pounds of food each month which adds up to 396 lbs. in lost groceries a year, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Food production also hurts the environment by taking the world’s water supply, emitting greenhouse gases and consumes a large amount of energy and chemicals.

As the world’s population rises so too does demand for food and pressure on farmers. By 2050, experts estimate the population will grow from an estimated 7 to 9 billion people.

A growing population means more demand and high food prices.

NRDC specialist Dana Gunders said that no matter how sustainable farming is, “If the food’s not getting eaten … it’s not a good use of our resources.”

Depending where you live, waste comes in different forms. For developing nations, food spoils more readily if it is not properly refrigerated. In wealthier Western countries, people often throw away good food.

In 2010 alone, 33 million tons of food ended up in landfills and incinerators across the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA have suggested some possible solutions including recycling unused food to shelters and soup kitchens, while clarifying the difference between “sell by” and “use by” dates. That could help some people from throwing away their produce too soon.

Source: www.cbsnews.com

Ben Messenger is associate editor of Waste Management World magazine:

Packaging often proves a challenge for biowaste processing facilities. A new ‘super’ £24 million anaerobic digestion facility in the UK has the technology to overcome this and well as set the standard for large-scale infrastructure, explains Ben Messenger.

Around 10 million people in East Africa are currently at risk of starving, in what aid agencies are calling the worst drought for 60 years. It is more than a little perplexing, therefore, that a recent study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) shows that one third of the entire World’s food production – about 1.3 billion tonnes – goes to waste. Every year, consumers in rich countries waste 230 million tonnes of food, almost as much as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa. According to the FAO, North American and European consumers are each discarding an average of 100 kg food waste per year, with the largest constituent being fresh fruit and vegetables.

Financial incentives

In the UK, figures from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), show that around 16 million tonnes of food waste is generated each year, with around half of this coming from businesses, and at least 40% currently ending up in landfill. And all that waste raises more than just moral questions. It causes half of all waste related CO2 equivalent emissions in the UK – 3% of the national total. Because of this, as in many countries around the world, the UK government has identified food as a priority waste stream.

While the government’s recent Waste Review identifies prevention as the most effective means of tackling the issue of food waste, it also recognises that some food waste is unavoidable. The key to negating the impact of such waste lies in treating it in the most sustainable way, it says. By aiming to treat food waste as high up the waste hierarchy as possible, the government has identified Anaerobic Digestion (AD) and in-vessel composting as the most appropriate technologies with which to treat food waste.

To this end a number of financial incentives are being offered by the government to encourage the development of AD, including Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) per MWh, Feed in Tariffs (FiTs) and a Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) for biogas combustion. As a result, a number of companies are investing in food waste infrastructure projects around the country.

One example of a company tackling food waste in a ‘super sized’ fashion is waste management firm Biffa, which recently opened its 120,000 tonne per year capacity food waste AD facility adjacent to its landfill site in Poplars, Staffordshire.

The UK’s new big hitter

Speaking at the opening of the £24 million Poplars facility, Ian Wakelin, Biffa chief executive, explains that this ‘super’ facility is a strategically important step forward in the company’s plans, and makes more sense than having lots of small plants dotted around the country.

“Firstly it’s cheaper,” he says. “It’s cheaper for us and it’s cheaper for our customers. Secondly you can deploy more technology in bigger plants.”

With plans to roll out a further three to five such facilities in the coming years, this is a strategy that Biffa intends to follow. The idea sounds like a good one. Scale up the facilities and use economies of scale to invest in more sophisticated technologies that will allow for greater yields, less downtime and higher quality outputs. But what makes this facility ‘super’?

According to Wakelin one of the problems that AD food waste facilities typically face is that of packaging. When Biffa began designing this plant two years ago it was very keen that it should be able to accept as wide a range of food wastes as possible. By leveraging its size the Poplars facility has been able to install sophisticated machinery that will strip the packaging away from the food and send the plastics for recycling. The development of the plant was heavily influenced by lessons the company learned in extracting gas from mixed black bag waste at the Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) plant in Leicester, which it has been running since 2003, explains Dr John Casey, director of engineering and quality at Biffa.

As such the company applied the same design principles of creating a robust system, with built in redundancy that allows for one part of the plant to undergo maintenance without shutting down the whole operation. The whole design and build of the facility has been completed in two years, with work continuing through winter temperatures that sank as low as -20°C.

Source: www.waste-management-world.com

Singapore is raising the mandatory energy-efficiency standards of refrigerators and air-conditioners from next year, as these two items typically make up half a household’s energy consumption. And companies which use lots of energy will have to appoint an energy manager to monitor and reduce their use, under a proposed law introduced in Parliament by Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan.

By Jessica Cheam in Straits Times (7 March 2012):

The appliances in your home are about to get greener – and electricity bills could shrink in tandem.

The Government is raising the mandatory energy-efficiency standards of refrigerators and air-conditioners sold on the market from next year. These two items typically make up half a household’s energy consumption. The standards for lights will also be raised, by 2014.

This means that more of such appliances that do not hit a certain energy efficiency target will not be approved for sale.

It will also be harder to qualify for the three- or four-tick classification. The more ticks a gadget carries, the more energy-efficient it is. Four ticks are the maximum. Those with no ticks cannot be sold.

Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan announced the tougher standards in Parliament yesterday, adding that the scheme might include television sets in future.

He was responding to MP Teo Ho Pin (Bukit Panjang) who asked what measures the Government was taking to promote energy efficiency in households.

Dr Balakrishnan said that by removing inefficient models from the market, ‘consumers avoid being locked into the high operating cost of inefficient appliances’.

One home owner who has already decided against inefficient appliances is Mrs Kim Lin Harbick, 32. ‘It makes sense to get energy-efficient appliances for the home as it saves money. I’m glad the Government is also raising the standards.’

Manufacturers The Straits Times spoke to said they had been preparing for stricter standards.

Panasonic Asia-Pacific spokesman Christopher Lim said the company welcomes the move but added that the Government could have sought the views of affected companies before setting the standards. He said his company has seen more sales of its energy-efficient products. ‘Consumers are starting to understand the benefits of these products even if the initial cost of energy-efficient products may be slightly higher.’

Source: www.nccs.gov.sg

Proposed law to get firms to improve energy management

Straits Times (9 March 2012):

COMPANIES that are heavy users of energy will have to appoint an energy manager to monitor and reduce their use, under a proposed law introduced in Parliament yesterday.

The introduction of the Energy Conservation Bill was indicated by Minister for the Environment and Water Resources Vivian Balakrishnan the previous day.

He had said in Parliament, during the debate on his ministry’s budget, that a new law will make it compulsory for heavy energy users in the industry and transport sectors to put in place energy management practices.

These include monitoring and reporting energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as submitting plans to improve energy efficiency.

It also consolidates current energy performance standards and labelling schemes for household products and cars governed by other laws. These include energy efficiency labelling for air-conditioners, refrigerators and clothes dryers, and fuel economy labelling for cars.

Two other Bills were also introduced yesterday to give a further boost to Singapore’s drive to be an international arbitration centre.

The first Bill amends the International Arbitration Act to let Singapore courts recognise oral arbitration agreements, in addition to those made in writing.

Other changes include giving the courts powers to review positive and negative rulings made by other tribunals.

In the Financial Limitation Periods Bill, the proposed law spells out how Singapore laws apply to contractual disputes that are heard here, but where the contracts are governed by the laws of another country.

Another two Bills to amend the Public Utilities Act and the Sewerage and Drainage Act were also introduced yesterday.

The proposal also consolidates current energy performance standards and labelling schemes for household products and cars governed by other laws.

Source: www.singaporelawwatch.sg

Japan is scrambling to find alternative energy sources as the lights go out at its nuclear power plants this year. On February 20, Kansai Electric Power shut down its last nuclear reactor, leaving only two in the nation still in operation, out of a total of 54. By the end of next month, the remaining two will also be turned off for regular maintenance. European countries, including Germany, Italy and Switzerland are turning away from nuclear but the fear is that many will revert to fossil fuels instead of making a commitment to genuine clean energy.

As Richard Matthews writes in “Global Warming is Real” : Nuclear reactors are located adjacent to sources of water for cooling. With many of the world’s 442 nuclear power reactors located by the sea, these power plants must integrate additional safeguards against flooding and tsunamis. This is a legitimate concern as ocean levels are rising due to global warming.

Kwan Weng Kin, Japan Correspondent, Straits Times (10 March 2012):

TOKYO: Japan is scrambling to find alternative energy sources as the lights go out at its nuclear power plants this year.

On Feb 20, Kansai Electric Power shut down its last nuclear reactor, leaving only two in the nation still in operation, out of a total of 54. By the end of next month, the remaining two will also be turned off for regular maintenance.

Before the disaster at the Fukushima plant on March 11 last year, nuclear energy supplied a third of Japan’s power needs, while coal, oil and natural gas supplied slightly more than half.

People like Assistant Professor Hiroaki Koide, a nuclear researcher at Kyoto University, have long pressed for the nuclear plants to be shut down immediately. The Fukushima disaster has boosted their cause.

‘Nuclear reactors are extremely dangerous as they produce very toxic, radioactive by-products. I am confident that existing fossil-based power stations will be able to supply all the power that we need,’ he said.

Will they’

So far, the gradual switch to fossil- based energy after March 11 has proceeded smoothly, with the country experiencing no unintended power blackouts.

Despite the unusually frigid temperatures this winter, power companies have not had to appeal to consumers to save power even though demand sometimes exceeded 90 per cent of peak supply.

But fossil-based power plants, on which the country is now increasingly dependent, are not without their own problems. Since last July, there have been more than 10 instances of operational problems, fuelling worries of instability of supply.

To address fears of a potential power shortage, the Japanese government is considering deregulation to boost the development of alternative energies.

A government panel has drawn up plans to relax rules in 183 energy-related fields to encourage the construction of mega plants for the production of solar, geothermal and wind energies.

Currently, renewable energies account for only about 1 per cent of Japan’s energy needs. Deregulation is a means by which the government hopes to boost that figure to 3 per cent in three years.

For instance, existing laws limit the size of a power plant to 50 per cent of the area of the land it stands on.

Stripping away such rules would enable the building of much bigger plants and hence the more efficient generation of power.

The government also proposes to allow geothermal and wind power plants to be built in Japan’s national parks, which is currently illegal.

It is even eyeing the use of the country’s nearly 400,000ha of unused farmland, of which about 170,000ha is deemed suitable for building solar or wind power plants.

The only snag is that much of this dormant land lies scattered around the country, requiring the use of land swops or other means to consolidate them into bigger properties for building power plants.

Recently, the government has shown interest in exploring for methane hydrate off the coast of central Japan.

Methane hydrate – an ice-like substance consisting of crystallised methane gas molecules trapped in water – can be used to produce methane gas for use in gas-fired plants.

The seabed surrounding Japan is believed to contain enough methane hydrate to supply the country with 90 years’ supply of natural gas.

In the meantime, efforts are being stepped up to find more efficient ways of using energy .

One post-March 11 innovation being explored is a new type of building material for use on the walls of buildings to generate power from sunlight.

This material, which uses organic semiconductors and is thinner and lighter than traditional solar panels, when applied on one or two skyscrapers, is said to be able to produce the same amount of electricity as a large-scale solar power plant.

Source: www.power-eng.com

Richard Matthews in Global Warming is real:

The safe operation of nuclear power plants will be aggravated by climate change. In the age of global warming, additional safeguards are required to make nuclear power safer. Nuclear reactors are located adjacent to sources of water for cooling. With many of the world’s 442 nuclear power reactors located by the sea, these power plants must integrate additional safeguards against flooding and tsunamis. This is a legitimate concern as ocean levels are rising due to global warming.

Even nuclear reactors located near inland waterways pose problems because they remain vulnerable to heat waves, which are another corollary of climate change. A 2003 heat wave in Europe forced Electricite de France to close or lower output at about half its 19 nuclear plants because of temperature limits on the water it returns to rivers.

There are still other issues for nuclear reactors related to climate change that are not typically subject to heat waves or water-born risks. Tornadoes, also a corollary of climate change, are increasingly a concern. Last year tornadoes crippled three nuclear reactors in Browns Ferry in Athens, Ala., and knocked out power at two nuclear reactors at Surry Power Station in Surry, Va.

When it comes to building new reactors, the NRC said that “redesigning nuclear plants to address newer threats from climate change may also be too expensive at many locations.”

Source: www.globalwarmingisreal.com

Sustainability’s Megatrends and Megaforces

We have been saying for a while that sustainability makes real good business sense. Now there’s a Harvard Business Review study which confirms it. Go sustainable and go for the long term. And we draw attention to 10 Global Sustainability Megaforces.  Energy efficiency regularly gets the star treatment here too. Europe has to put its money – what little is left – where its mouth is. It will help the Euro and jobs. How about three smart solutions to deal with climate change and rising temperatures or three good news items from the auto industry? People in the news: R.K.Pachauri, and Muhammad Yunus. Nike is dying to go green, while the Heartand Institute springs a leak.  Singapore Airshow was the place to see more than aircraft –a row over aviation emissions and Europe’s plan to tax international airlines. Australia is looking at solar as a way to make a big switch from coal fired to renewable energy, while China’s big carbon schemes come under more scrutiny.  Last word is about some leaders who are lost to the climate cause, but hopefully not for good. – Ken Hickson

Profile: Professor Muhammad Yunus

Using innovative social business and micro credit  models, Grameen Bank founder and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus has shown how “bottom of the pyramid” market opportunities can be successfully served. He is also joining hands with the Indian Institute of Management to float a fund to seed social ventures. He shares his experience and insights at the National University of Singapore Business School this week, which also goes on a live webcast.  Read More

National University of Singapore Business School:

925 million people around the world do not have enough to eat and 98 percent of them live in developing countries (2010 United Nations). Using innovative social business models, Grameen Bank founder and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and other social entrepreneurs have shown how Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) market opportunities can be successfully served.

This forum brings Prof. Yunus together with the leaders of some global corporations to share their experience and insights at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School.

Co-organised with the Asia Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy (ASCEP) at the NUS Business School, this Forum brings Prof Yunus together with the leaders of a number of these far-sighted global corporations to share their experience and insights in embracing social business models to do good AND do well.

Live webcast 22 February 10am Singapore time (GMT+8)

http://bschool.nus.edu/yunus.aspx

At the end of the Forum, selected innovative social businesses being incubated by GCL@NUS will showcase their social ventures and pitch to potential corporate partners and social venture investors.

Professor Muhammad Yunus established the Grameen Bank in 1983 which gave loans to the poor. The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was jointly awarded to Prof. Yunus and the Grameen Bank “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below”.

Ahona Ghosh in The Economic Times, India (16 February 2012):

Professor Muhammad Yunus, the father of microfinance and chairman of the Yunus Centre in Bangladesh, has finally found a taker for his brand of social businesses in India. He is joining hands with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) to float a Rs 50-crore fund to seed social ventures.

He will help raise the corpus and mentor social entrepreneurs. “I am in talks with several industrialists (in India),” Yunus said. He met some of Mumbai’s biggest industrialists during his visit to the city this week.

For the uninitiated, Yunus defines a social business as one that pays no dividend to shareholders, but ploughs all profits back into the company whose purpose is to serve social needs. “It’s a new class of non-dividend business done in a serious way to solve social problems,” he said.

Yunus has pioneered many such social businesses, including a JV with Danone that sells fortified yoghurt to poor children for 6 Bangladeshi Taka; Veolia that sells clean water to 100,000 people across five villages for 1 taka (for 5 litres); and a third JV with chemicals multinational BASF that sells long-lasting insecticidal nets and multi-micronutrient sachets to the poor.

His alliance with IIM-A fructified after one year of discussions with its Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE).

STRONG MENTORING NETWORK

We are exploring a collaboration with Yunus to build a stronger ecosystem to support fledgling entrepreneurs who are creating innovative solutions in the social sector,” Rakesh Basant, chairperson of CIIE and professor of economics at IIM-A, said.

The CIIE has been involved in incubating early-stage enterprises across the healthcare, education and livelihood space. They will collaborate with the Mumbai-based arm of Grameen Creative Lab (GCL).

GCL, which seeds social businesses, is a joint venture between the Yunus Centre and circ-responsibility, a consulting company in Germany.

The CIIE and Yunus will collaborate to create a strong mentoring network, an incubation program to be designed by GCL to help entrepreneurs identify and build viable social business options.

The CIIE’s initial idea was to raise a Rs 5-10 crore fund, Basant said. But Yunus raised the bar with the proposal for a Rs 50-crore fund. “Fund-raising has not started yet and we don’t yet know how much we will be able to raise,” he added.

This is the Nobel Laureate’s second visit to India in the past 26 months. He has been building the case for Indian industrialists to start social enterprises that do not return profits to shareholders. None has responded yet. Hence, the plan for a Rs 50-crore fund. Yunus hopes to raise the corpus from Indian corporate and philanthropic foundations.

“Rich industrialists in India prefer charity than investing in business without any return expectations,” says Vineet Rai, founder and CEO of Aavishkaar, which invests in social impact enterprises with a profit motive. India as a country has only now started discovering the risk-reward paradigm and it will be a few more years before the Yunus model will find takers, he said.

Anu Aga, director on the board of Thermax, a $1-billion engineering solutions company, who met the professor in Mumbai last Sunday, is intrigued by the model but is not yet ready to try it out.

There are some exceptions, though. Recently, Piramal Group Chairman Ajay Piramal and Dr Reddy’s Laboratories Founder K Anji Reddy independently started working on social businesses similar to the Yunus model. Reddy’s project provides villagers with pure drinking water. Piramal has a low-cost healthcare delivery model and a rural BPO. Both do not expect returns, but plough profits back to scale up the businesses.

Yunus’ personal journey in this sector has been long, and controversial in the recent past. On April 2011, Bangladesh’s highest court dismissed Yunus as managing director of Grameen Bank, the path-breaking microfinance institution he founded. But Yunus is undeterred and has set up three international joint ventures and about eight social business enterprises over the last five years.

Muhammad Yunus was born in 28th June, 1940 in the village of Bathua, in Hathazari, Chittagong, the business centre of what was then Eastern Bengal. He was the third of 14 children of whom five died in infancy. His father was a successful goldsmith who always encouraged his sons to seek higher education. But his biggest influence was his mother, Sufia Khatun, who always helped any poor that knocked on their door. This inspired him to commit himself to eradication of poverty. His early childhood years were spent in the village. In 1947, his family moved to the city of Chittagong, where his father had the jewelery business.

Biography:

In 1974, Professor Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist from Chittagong University, led his students on a field trip to a poor village. They interviewed a woman who made bamboo stools, and learnt that she had to borrow the equivalent of 15p to buy raw bamboo for each stool made. After repaying the middleman, sometimes at rates as high as 10% a week, she was left with a penny profit margin. Had she been able to borrow at more advantageous rates, she would have been able to amass an economic cushion and raise herself above subsistence level.

Realizing that there must be something terribly wrong with the economics he was teaching, Yunus took matters into his own hands, and from his own pocket lent the equivalent of ? 17 to 42 basket-weavers. He found that it was possible with this tiny amount not only to help them survive, but also to create the spark of personal initiative and enterprise necessary to pull themselves out of poverty.

Against the advice of banks and government, Yunus carried on giving out ‘micro-loans’, and in 1983 formed the Grameen Bank, meaning ‘village bank’ founded on principles of trust and solidarity. In Bangladesh today, Grameen has 2,564 branches, with 19,800 staff serving 8.29 million borrowers in 81,367 villages. On any working day Grameen collects an average of $1.5 million in weekly installments. Of the borrowers, 97% are women and over 97% of the loans are paid back, a recovery rate higher than any other banking system. Grameen methods are applied in projects in 58 countries, including the US, Canada, France, The Netherlands and Norway.

Source: www.articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com and www.grameen-info.org/

Sustainability Pays in the Long Term

When Harvard Business School studied the performance of 180 companies over 18 years, it found that those firms (90 of them) which adopted environmentally and socially responsible policies significantly outperformed their peers. Even so, in the current space, it’s difficult to identify companies that are really doing something in terms of sustainability rather than claiming to do something. The report is the most rigorous attempt yet to identify which companies were transforming themselves in sustainable ways before sustainability was “cool.” Read More

By Tom Randall for Bloomberg (18 February 2012):

For most investors, “sustainability” isn’t about doing the right thing. The conversation has evolved. It’s about doing the smart thing. This demands an answer to the fundamental question: Does it pay to invest in sustainability?

Early results are in.

The chart, drawn from a Harvard Business School study – http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/12-035.pdf –  tracks the performance of 180 companies over 18 years. The 90 firms that adopted environmentally and socially responsible policies significantly outperformed their peers. Every dollar invested in a portfolio of sustainable companies (blue line) in 1993 would have grown to $22.60 by 2011. That beats the rise to $15.40 for a portfolio of companies less focused on sustainability (purple line).

The Harvard report is the most rigorous attempt yet to identify which companies were transforming themselves in sustainable ways before sustainability was “cool.” It’s also the first study to follow companies’ performance for decades — the kind of time frame needed to evaluate transformative long-term strategies — authors Robert Eccles and George Serafeim said in an interview.

“These things take time to pay off,” Serafeim said. “If you are short-term oriented, is this a good strategy? No, it won’t pay off. But if you are patient, it will.”

The pressures on the planet are vast. The global middle class is set to nearly triple to 4.9 billion consumers in 2030. That’s a lot of stuff people will buy and use and throw away. The challenge to companies and governments is how to satisfy the new markets without using up strategic resources or breaking the tenuous balance between humans and the environment.

Measuring corporate sustainability is tough; the long-term pressures from resource constraints are unique to every business. Many attempts to rank sustainability efforts have underperformed. In the last decade, the gold standard Dow Jones Sustainability World Index has climbed 41 percent, falling short of the 70 percent gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

The Harvard study took some unusual steps to determine which companies were enacting sustainable strategies in their formal policies and corporate cultures. They scoured company filings, websites and sustainability reports and interviewed executives. They weighed dozens of metrics, including whether companies had policies to reduce emissions, used environmental criteria in choosing suppliers, took steps to improve energy or water efficiency, and tied environmental performance to executive compensation.

They even analyzed old conference calls to find the ratio of references to time periods of more than a year to those of less than a year to determine whether a company was more focused on long- or short-term prospects.
Corporate sustainability means investing for the future. Such investments can reduce margins and weigh on performance in the short term.

In some ways, the challenge of identifying and measuring sustainability is harder today than it was 20 years ago, Harvard’s Serafeim said. “In the current space, it’s difficult to identify companies that are really doing something in terms of sustainability rather than claiming to do something and really doing nothing,” he said.

The business case for sustainability is at the heart of a report released yesterday by Generation Investment Management — and authored by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and former Goldman Sachs executive David Blood. Drawing in part from the Harvard study, Gore and Blood recommend investors identify “stranded assets” whose value could change significantly under certain scenarios, such as a price being set for carbon or for water. They say investors should use environmental, social and governance data like those used in the Harvard study to augment the financial data typically used to value companies.

Gore draws an analogy between climate change and the subprime mortgage crisis: “These subprime carbon assets have an asserted value based on the assumption that it’s perfectly OK to put 90 million tons of global warming pollution into the atmosphere every 24 hours,” Gore told Bloomberg News reporter Simon Clark. “Actually it’s not.”

Source: www.bloomberg.com

EU Must Invest More in EE Policy To Boost Euro & Jobs

Energy efficiency and low carbon investment is gaining traction as a financial asset class, but to deepen confidence the European Union must deliver “investment grade policy” a senior executive at HSBC said. European Commission figures have shown improved energy efficiency could create around half a million jobs and 34 billion euros ($44.94 billion) in Gross Domestic Product in 2020. Read More

By Barbara Lewis for Reuters (13 February 2012):

Energy efficiency and low carbon investment is gaining traction as a financial asset class, but to deepen confidence the European Union must deliver “investment grade policy” a senior executive at HSBC said on Monday.

He was speaking on the eve of a debate by energy ministers on the EU’s draft Energy Efficiency Directive, on which Denmark, current holder of the rotating EU presidency, hopes to get a political agreement by the end of June.

Without policy reform, the EU is likely to only half meet a policy goal set in 2007 of a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency by 2020 through measures such as better building insulation.

Nick Robins, head of HSBC’s Climate Change Centre of Excellence, said the EU would be delivering clear signals, or “investment grade policy”, provided it met Denmark’s deadline.

Robins, who is also co-chair of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative Climate Change Working Group, said negative sentiment on green investment was “bottoming out” after being depressed by economic crisis.

“We have the beginnings of a case for being more quietly optimistic. We are recognizing the case for energy efficiency,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference.

European Commission figures have shown improved energy efficiency could create around half a million jobs and 34 billion euros ($44.94 billion) in Gross Domestic Product in 2020.

They also put the cost to the energy companies at only one euro cent for every kilowatt hour of energy saved.

HEATED DEBATE

Still the draft efficiency directive has attracted heated debate and environmental groups are worried it could be derailed by hundreds of highly technical amendments.

One of the proposed amendments seeks to address the weakness of carbon on the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which could fall further if improved energy efficiency added to a surplus of carbon permits caused by recession.

At less than 8 euros a ton, carbon prices are already far below the level needed to spur green investment.

Robins said the EU ETS had a role, but it was “just one of many tools” on green energy.

Other speakers at Monday’s conference organized by the European Alliance to Save Energy underlined the significance of low carbon for the investment community.

A director from the BT Pension Scheme – Britain’s largest with 36 billion pounds ($56.86 billion) under management – said the shift to a low carbon economy touched all assets.

“The issue of carbonisation is totally embedded into every single asset class,” Donald MacDonald, a trustee director of the BT Pension Scheme, told Reuters.

“Failure to take this up in investment policies could be a failure of fiduciary duty.”

(Reporting by Barbara Lewis; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Source: http://www.reuters.com

Who Should Pay the Price of Pollution in Europe’s Airspace?

The Singapore Airshow became the scene for a battle between Asian airlines and the European Union over plans to charges all airlines for their greenhouse gas emissions. Mr Siim Kallas, vice-president of the European Commission and its Transport Commissioner said there is now a sense of urgency among the various parties to tackle the reason behind the scheme – the need for airlines to put in place concrete measures to reduce carbon emissions. Boeing is playing its part by introducing its cleaner, greener jet, the Dreamliner, which it showcased in Singapore. Read More

By Karamjit Kaur, Aviation Correspondent Straits Times, Singapore (14 February 2012):

THE European Union (EU) will stick to its guns on its unpopular carbon emissions scheme, unless the aviation industry can propose a concrete alternative, a key official said yesterday.

Mr Siim Kallas, who is the vice-president of the European Commission and its Transport Commissioner, added that some good has come out of all the unhappiness over the scheme.

He noted that there is now a sense of urgency among the various parties to tackle the reason behind the scheme – that is, the need for airlines to put in place concrete measures to reduce carbon emissions

‘At least, the issue has become much more high-level. It has also become much more urgent now due to the declarations from countries to introduce retaliatory measures,’ he said.

He was speaking to The Straits Times at an aviation conference ahead of the Singapore Airshow 2012, which opens today.

In 2008, the EU made known its intention to charge airlines flying in and out of Europe for carbon emissions. It would do this by adding aviation to the bloc’s market-based carbon trading scheme.

What this means is that airlines will have to keep to a stipulated amount of carbon emissions or buy extra units from the carbon trading market.

The scheme kicked off on Jan 1 this year but airlines need to start paying for extra units only from April next year.

SIA and other carriers have so far not said how much they expect to pay.

Opposition to the EU scheme by airlines and governments has been mounting since, with the pace picking up of late.

Last week, China declared that it has banned its airlines from complying with the scheme. More than 40 other countries including the United States, Russia, India and Singapore are also objecting to it.

A few have threatened retaliation, including exploring legal action against the EU’s unilateral move. Others have accused Europe of trying to regulate the world.

Defending the EU position, Mr Kallas said that a lack of action on the global front was what drove Europe to make its decision.

He told The Straits Times: ‘This has been discussed for years and years… but it was limited only to talks.’ Thus, the EU decided to take its own concrete measures to deal with the issue, he added.

Mr Kallas, who was invited to speak at the Singapore Airshow Aviation Leadership Summit held at Raffles City, also touched on the emissions scheme in his speech.

But some of the other delegates, who included airline and airport chiefs, clearly did not buy his argument.

Mr Tony Tyler, director-general and chief executive of the International Air Transport Association (Iata), said that while airlines understood the need for measures such as emissions trading, it must be a global initiative led by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (Icao) – the United Nations arm that oversees the aviation sector.

Airbus chief executive Tom Enders said he was ‘very worried’ that the EU’s move ‘could spark a trade war between Europe and the rest of the world’.

‘What started out as a solution for the environment has become a source of potential trade conflict,’ he said during a panel discussion.

Airlines, especially Asian carriers like Singapore Airlines, have also pointed out that the scheme penalises airlines that operate long haul non-stop flights.

They are charged for the carbon they emit during the entire flight instead of just what they burn over Europe.

There was no logic to that, said Singapore Airlines’ chief executive officer Goh Choon Phong, who spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the conference.

‘In our case, we are charged for the whole Singapore-Europe journey but another carrier that has an intermediate stop is charged only from there to Europe. Who is burning more fuel? Obviously the airline that has a stop. The whole principle does not make sense,’ he said.

Asked by The Straits Times to comment on Mr Goh’s remarks, Mr Kallas was initially at a loss for words, then said: ‘You should ask the authors who wrote the directive which was adopted.’

He later added: ‘If it is the objective to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, then the scheme should be for the whole flight. Our policy is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.’

Michael Richardson writing in the Straits Times (13 February 2012):

AIRLINES that carry passengers and cargo around the world contribute only a small, although growing, portion of the global warming gas emissions from human activity. So should they pay for their pollution and, if so, how?

This industry plays a key role in tying the world together. It contributes over US$3.5 trillion (S$4.4 trillion) to global economic activity, equivalent to about 7.5 per cent of global gross domestic product.

Yet the major players are politically divided and may be heading for a trade war, pitting Europe against a rainbow coalition of non-European states, including Asia’s leading economies.

Later this month, 26 countries are meeting in Moscow to decide how to react to a controversial new European Union scheme to start charging all airlines that land in the EU for their emissions of carbon dioxide, even though they might have flown for much of the way over other nations.

Starting this year, European law has brought all these airlines into the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, the 27-nation bloc’s main policy to combat global warming.

Countries meeting in Moscow strongly oppose their airlines’ inclusion in the scheme, arguing that it ‘violates the cardinal principle of state sovereignty’ over airspace laid down in the Chicago Convention governing civil aviation. Leading the fight are China, India, Russia and the United States. But other concerned countries include Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa as well as Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea. Asian representation is strong because civil aviation is growing fast in this region.

China last week banned its airlines from taking part in the European scheme if the EU continues to calculate the carbon cost over the whole flight, not just within Europe. Beijing has denounced the EU move as a trade barrier and warned that retaliatory action might follow.

In October, the United States House of Representatives passed legislation that would make it illegal to comply with EU law. Such moves could put international airlines in the invidious position of being in breach of one authority or another, severely disrupting operations and raising costs in an industry beset by high fuel prices.

The first year of the EU scheme may cost the industry between US$825 million and US$1.5 billion. Initially, airlines will be given allowances by the EU to cover some 85 per cent of their emissions. But the charge will become progressively heavier and airlines have complained the bill could amount to nearly US$24 billion over eight years.

Europe has acted out of frustration. Under the United Nations climate change negotiations, advanced economies that have signed the Kyoto Protocol are supposed to control aviation greenhouse gas emissions by working through the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), a UN agency with 190 member states.

Yet the ICAO has dithered and disagreed over how to proceed, reflecting many of the divisions – especially between developed and developing nations – that have slowed the UN negotiations on how to cope with climate change.

Meanwhile, aviation emissions are set to grow. Climate scientists advising the UN say aviation currently produces about 2 per cent of global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. By 2050, this figure could rise to 3 per cent. If aviation’s other greenhouse gases are included, the industry could be responsible for 5 per cent of warming by then.

However, the ICAO has so far failed to produce a credible emissions control plan. Developing countries led by China and India refuse to be bound by the same obligations as those of developed countries. The last ICAO assembly in 2010 proposed a global action plan, based on national plans to be submitted by mid-2012. It also decided that its governing council should develop a framework for market-based measures, including emissions trading, for the next ICAO assembly due by 2013.

Market-based measures to reduce aviation emissions can include a wide range of actions from increased engine efficiency, lighter aircraft and renewable energy fuel to improvements in air traffic management and airport systems.

However such advances may not be sufficient to reach even ICAO’s aspirational target of stabilising aviation CO2 emissions at 2020 levels. ICAO itself has forecast that the annual number of passengers worldwide will rise from 2.5 billion to five billion over the next 20 years, and the number of flights from 26 million to 50 million.

A 2009 report by the US Government Accountability Office concluded that even if many of the planned improvements in civil aviation performance are adopted, they are unlikely to greatly reduce global warming emissions from aircraft by 2050.

Foreign airlines landing in the EU are not due to be billed for their emissions until April 2013. So there is still time for reaching a compromise solution. One way to do so for the non-EU countries is to cut aircraft pollution and so earn exemption from the EU scheme.

However, the gulf between the two sides is wide and seems to be growing wider. It may be an uphill battle to stitch together a patchwork quilt of equivalent measures for curbing aviation emissions inside and outside the EU, in time to head off a tit-for-tat trade conflict.

The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

Boeing made it an event to show off its dream of an airliner the new lighter weight carbon fibre shell and fuel efficient 787, while Singapore Airlines gave its jumbo jet 747 fleet a send-off.

Singapore Airshow, Asia’s largest and one of the three most important aerospace and defence exhibitions in the world, drew a record number of trade and public visitors at this year’s edition of the biennial event.

Over the six-day show from 14-19 February, Singapore Airshow 2012 welcomed some 145,000 visitors. Visitorship over the four trade days from 14-17 February stood at nearly 45,000 from 128 countries/regions, with over 30% coming from overseas.

Singapore Airshow 2012 also played host to the largest ever number of top level delegations, with 266 from over 80 countries. Tickets for the public day weekend over 18 and 19 February, were completely sold out, and Changi Exhibition Centre, the Airshow site, saw some 100,000 visitors over the two days, thronged the grounds where they were treated to breathtaking aerial displays and had the opportunity to view an impressive array of aircraft in the static display.

The aerial display included show-stopping performances from the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF), the Royal Malaysian Air Force “Smokey Bandits”, the United States Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force “Roulettes”. Australian pilot Tony Blair of Blair Aerosports also made his debut appearance in the first stunt aerobatic performance in the history of airshows in Singapore. In addition, visitors had a chance to interact with the aerial display pilots in person during autograph and photo-taking sessions. Singapore Airlines also hosted guided tours on one of their last three remaining Boeing 747-400s, which was here at Singapore Airshow to commemorate the retirement of its B747 fleet.

“Singapore Airshow 2012 has been a success for everyone. We have set a new record for the value of deals announced, as well as the number of visitors on both trade and public days. As a testament to the show’s achievements, over 70% of exhibitors have already reaffirmed their commitment to take up exhibition space in 2014. The response from the record crowd that visited the event over the two public days was also overwhelmingly positive. We are looking forward to the next show and hope to deliver a more enhanced experience for all our visitors in 2014,” said Jimmy Lau, Managing Director of Experia Events, organiser of Singapore Airshow.

Singapore Airshow returns from 11 to 16 February 2014 at Changi Exhibition Centre.

Source: www.singaporeairshow.com.sg