Boost for Clean Energy Projects in Victoria & Asia Pacific

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) plans to issue Clean Energy Bonds to support its clean energy projects in Asia and the Pacific. They are expected to have four tranches, one each denominated in Australian dollars and Turkish lira and two tranches in Brazilian real. Meanwhile, the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) has welcomed the Victorian Government’s commitment to advance renewable energy sources and options through a new Office of Solar Energy and a $30 million dollar boost.

A new Office of Solar Energy and a $30 million boost to support r

Tuesday 31 August 2010: The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) has welcomed the Brumby Government’s commitment to advance renewable energy sources and options.

A new Office of Solar Energy and a $30 million boost to support renewable energy technology was announced by Premier John Brumby today.

“The GBCA is always pleased to see encouragement and support for renewable energy,” says the Chief Executive of the GBCA, Romilly Madew.

“The Brumby Government continues to demonstrate strong leadership in the area of climate change, and we welcome the government’s willingness to partner with industry to produce and operate technologies which accelerate the development of renewable energy options.

“We do believe that more work needs to be done if Victorians are to cut their emissions by at least 20 per cent by 2020. Residential and commercial buildings are responsible for 23 per cent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, which means that buildings should be a top priority for government action.

“There is a wealth of research that supports our message – that buildings represent the single largest opportunity for greenhouse gas abatement, outstripping the energy, transport and industry sectors combined. With the right policy support, green building can be a cost-effective solution to the nation’s climate change challenges,” Ms Madew concludes.

About the Green Building Council of Australia

The Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) is Australia’s leading authority on green building. The GBCA was established in 2002 to develop a sustainable property industry in Australia and drive the adoption of green building practices. The GBCA has more than 900 member companies who work together to support the Council and its activities. The GBCA promotes green building programs, technologies, design practices and processes, and operates Australia’s only national voluntary comprehensive environmental rating system for buildings – Green Star.

Source: www.gbcaus.org

India Infoline News Service (1 September 2010):

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) plans to issue its inaugural Clean Energy Bond to support its clean energy projects in Asia and the Pacific.

The Clean Energy Bond is expected to have four tranches, one each denominated in Australian dollars and Turkish lira and two tranches in Brazilian real. It will carry tenors of between 4 and 7 years and will be issued in September. ADB will provide assistance to clean energy projects in an amount at least equal to the amount raised by the Clean Energy Bond.

The issuance, targeted at Japanese retail investors, will be arranged through HSBC Securities (Japan) Ltd. and will be distributed nationwide by more than 20 securities firms.

The planned bond issue follows the successful sale in April of ADB’s inaugural Water Bond, which is supporting the ADB’s work in the water sector in Asia and the Pacific.Rapid economic expansion in the region has put immense pressure on resources and the environment. The use of coal and oil and other carbon-based fossil resources to meet the region’s growing energy needs has added to the release of greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change.

At the same time, insufficient energy investment in the region is preventing many developing countries and individuals from reaching their full potential. A quarter of the population of Asia and the Pacific – or more than 800 million people – still have no access to basic electricity services, while some 1.8 billion people continue to rely on traditional biomass fuels for cooking and heating.

“Clean energy is a crucial element in the fight against poverty in Asia and the Pacific. To put the region on a path to sustainable and inclusive economic growth, we are committed to supporting clean energy projects in the region that avoid harming people or the environment,” said ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda.

Between 2005 and 2009, ADB’s total clean energy investments exceeded US$5 bn.

Additionally, the ADB is targeting US$2 bn a year in clean energy investments by 2013 focusing on renewable energy projects such as biomass, wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal as well as on energy efficiency projects in industrial, commercial and residential sectors.

Through its clean energy program, ADB intends to help the region meet its energy security needs, facilitate a shift to a low-carbon economy, and ensure everyone in the region has access to energy.

Source: www.indiainfoline.com

Can Green Business Make Big Change Fast Enough?

Over 70% of Fortune 500 companies have sustainability mandates, but do they go far enough? In a sea of corporate social responsibility programmes, green “seals of approval” and eco claims, business really has not changed significantly. Seeking to enable a deep green business transformation, the Environmental Defense Fund is hosting a series of Sustainable Solutions Labs across the U.S. Teresa Burrelsman has the story.

Teresa Burrelsman, Eco Via Consulting in the Environmental Leader (30 August 2010):

Over 70% of Fortune 500 companies have sustainability mandates, but do they go far enough? In a sea of corporate social responsibility programs, green “seals of approval” and eco claims, business really has not changed significantly.

Seeking to enable a deep green business transformation, the Environmental Defense Fund is hosting a series of Sustainable Solutions Labs across the U.S., “un-conference” think-tanks. Orchestrated by DigIn, the Labs bring together green business leaders throughout each region to share successes, lessons learned and needed future actions that will accelerate the sustainability shift.

At the Seattle event, on August 10th at the lovely eco campus of Seattle University, conversation catalysts from Microsoft, REI, Starbucks, Brittingham Partners, and the Bainbridge Graduate Institute shared their experiences to spur the ensuing discussions.

Microsoft’s Director of Environmental Sustainability Steve Lippman described a successful new practice of billing data center energy use by square foot to individual business units. The result: business units specify more efficient equipment and share in the savings. “But it’s low-hanging fruit,” he said. “The systems we create [as a society] don’t harbor sustainability.” He went on to state that the real challenge is creating large scale change, and soon.

Scientists say we have 10 years in which to bring down CO2 levels in the atmosphere to avoid irreversible climate change. Despite scientific consensus, many of our policy makers, business leaders and consumers believe it’s all hype. However, if green business is good business anyway, change will do us good regardless of the climate issue. Lippmann emphasized, “Don’t let small wins distract from the bigger task at hand.” Microsoft, REI and other NW companies are part of a business coalition pushing for bigger changes through tougher energy efficiency legislation in Washington State.

As one of the event’s facilitator’s, I spent the day with the Effective Collaboration for Sustainability discussion. Our discussion groups agreed that a big focus of collaboration should be getting major corporations to support green business policies, incentives and legislation. Additional suggestions repeated across many of the day’s topics. Whether discussing Organizational & Cultural Change, Urban Agriculture Infrastructure, or Green Investing, a consensus emerged. Attendees urge corporate America to ask better questions, establish industry-wide metrics that help everyone make better decisions, and educate themselves and each other about proven success strategies.

Kevin Hagen, Director of CSR at retailer REI, underscored the need to overhaul the business decision process; “Question your assumptions, which are almost always wrong!” When looking into the company’s carbon footprint the REI team expected product transportation would be the heavy hitter. Instead, employee commuting had twice the footprint, at 14% of their total carbon emissions. Another assumption overturned, REI says they save money by purchasing renewable power, by using long term contracts that hedge them against spikes in conventional power prices.

A good example of finding and addressing the larger environmental issues is the ubiquitous disposable coffee cup. Ben Packard, Starbucks’ VP of Global Sustainability, relayed the fact that consumer concern focuses on use of disposable cups. However, only 1.9% of those concerned customers bring their own cup. Furthermore, the bigger environmental impact for coffee drinkers is tropical deforestation, not cup disposal. Starbucks has integrated sustainable purchasing practices into its entire coffee supply chain, a fact that is relatively little known yet has enormous environmental benefit.

We have a long way to go, but a lot of good data is already out there. If you have something to share or want to get involved in creating change, visit the Sustainable Solutions Lab 2010 wiki and join the discussion.

Teresa Burrelsman is a senior sustainability consultant at Eco Via Consulting in Seattle. She has worked with private and public organizations on implementing green buildings and sustainability programs. She is also a member of the Sustainability Collaboration Network, a multi-disciplinary consultant collective that focuses on regenerative development and creating sustainable expertise through training and research.

Source: www.environmentalleader.com

Lucky Last – Change of Heart for Climate Skeptics?

Two of the world’s most influential climate sceptics appear to have had a change of heart. The Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg wrote a book in 2001 called The Skeptical Environmentalist which said climate change wasn’t that serious and we couldn’t and shouldn’t do much about it. But now he says it’s undoubtedly one of the chief concerns facing the world today.

Michael Hanlon the formerly ultra-sceptic science editor of Britain’s two-million-copies-a-day Daily Mail has also changed his mind after a recent trip to see a glacier in Greenland. The apparent about-face comes as the UN’s climate body completes a review aimed at restoring its credibility for reporting on climate change.

Paula Kruger reports for the ABC’s PM programme. Read More.

Paula Kruger reported this story on PM on ABC (31 August 2010):

Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg became famous for being a climate-change doubter after his 2001 book The Skeptical Environmentalist and in 2004, when he organised an event called the Copenhagen Consensus. It brought together a groups of economists and asked them what global problems should be addressed with a hypothetical budget of $50 billion. The group decided addressing climate change wasn’t a priority.

He was interviewed about that position on the Foreign Exchange show on America’s PBS network in 2006.

BJORN LOMBORG (2006): I’m not saying it’s not going to be a problem. But I’m saying we’ve got to look at, how big a problem is it? It’s not devastation. It’s a problem. The second part is you also got to ask how much change can you do? How much can you actually affect this?

PAULA KRUGER: But Bjorn Lomborg has a new book on the way and with it a new position. He has told The Guardian newspaper that global warming is “undoubtedly the chief concern facing the world today” and by investing $100 billion annually the climate change problem will be resolved.

Professor Bob Carter from James Cook University is often labelled a climate change sceptic but he prefers the term climate agnostic. And he doesn’t take Bjorn Lomborg seriously because he isn’t a climate scientist.

BOB CARTER: What’s with all these economists? It’s just astonishing. The climate change issue is an issue of science. 

Professor Shapiro who chaired the InterAcademy Council is an economist at Princeton University. We have in Australia at the moment the author of the discredited report done for the British government about three years ago, Nicholas Stern, giving talks. He’s an economist. And now we have Bjorn Lomborg who is a statistician and also in a sense an economist, a social scientist issuing a new book on climate change.

It’s about time that people especially governments started asking scientists. The economists only come into play in this debate if there is a problem. There first has to be demonstrated a problem with dangerous global warming caused by human carbon dioxide emissions. 

That has not yet been demonstrated. And until it has most of these books by economists are beside the point. They’re discussing a problem which hasn’t even yet been shown to exist. 

PAULA KRUGER: But there is another high-profile sceptic who was a science writer for Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper. Michael Hanlon has slowly been shifting his views over recent years. But it was 10 years ago he compared some warnings about climate change to the ancient Romans who blamed thunderbolts on punishing gods.

Today he still says he still believes climate change is exaggerated. But in a report filed from Greenland after a trip to see the break-up of a glacier he wrote, “it is impossible to maintain that nothing is going on”.

Ben McNeil is a senior researcher at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. He says scientific evidence is what is altering the tone of the climate change debate.

BEN MCNEIL: In the climate science community the sceptics are very few and far between. But then you’ve got on the other, the wider community side there’s obviously a lot of sceptics. Now they’re going to change their thinking as the evidence comes forward. And as we’ve seen the evidence is compelling. 

And so I think for someone who is reasonable in their assessment of things it would be easy to flip sides. But for unreasonable sceptics, which many out there many are, I don’t think they will change.

PAULA KRUGER: In an attempt to provide a more transparent process for delivering information on climate change the UN’s body on climate, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has just completed a review.

In 2007 there was controversy after a IPCC review asserted Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035. The IPCC says that mistake did not change the broad picture of manmade climate change.

Ben McNeil again.

BEN MCNEIL: It’s very important for it to not play an outward advocacy role. It’s a scientific role. So I think this review is going to shore up the transparency and the trust in this process which is actually important.

PAULA KRUGER: Critics had been calling for the resignation of the IPCC’s chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri. But he says he wants to instead stay on to implement changes recommended in the review.

Source: www.abc.net.au

We’re on our way to Singapore when most of you read this. Moderating at a Sustainable Development Forum at Raffles City Friday night and staying on for a few days to get the Sustain Ability Showcase Asia underway.