A new analysis calculates that vegetation in the world’s tropical regions stores about 229 billion tons of carbon, which is about 21 percent more carbon than previously believed.

Using remote sensing satellite data — including cloud-penetrating LiDAR — and field observations from forests, woodlands and savannas across Africa, Asia, and South America, researchers say they were able to create the first “wall-to-wall” map depicting carbon density.

According to their results, Brazilian rainforests store about 53.2 billion tons of carbon, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (22 billion) and Indonesia (18.6). “For the first time we were able to derive accurate estimates of carbon densities using satellite LiDAR observations in places that have never been measured,” said Alessandro Baccini of the Woods Hole Research Center the lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The results could help improve the accuracy of reporting carbon emissions as part of the UN-based REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) initiative, which provides incentives to developing nations to prevent large-scale deforestation.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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These days we are surrounded by gadgets that require an increasing supply of electricity. Therefore finding ways to charge them with as little energy as possible and avoiding energy waste are steps we can take decrease our energy consumption and carbon emissions.

A new range of products designed to eliminate “wasteful stand-by consumption, also known as vampire power”, promises to do just that. They are produced by Bracketron and feature what the company calls GreenZero Technology. Their eco selling point is that they don’t consume energy when left plugged into power outlets, like most chargers do.

The GreenZero chargers detect when the device is fully charged or unplugged, and then automatically shut off. The chargers then consume zero idle power to save energy, while also lengthening the life of the device battery by limiting top-off charging time.

Bracketron’s GreenZero product lineup includes the Mushroom GreenZero and Stone GreenZero wall chargers for mobile devices, and the Stone Battery, a mini portable power supply that is available for both iPhone and microUSB-connected mobile devices.

The GreenZero chargers and battery were unveiled at the International CES 2012 in Las Vegas on January 12 and 13. The line will be available at retailers across the U.S. in March 2012.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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A new study says that compensating the world’s poorest communities for helping conserve the planet’s most vital habitats would help solve two major challenges: biodiversity loss and poverty.

In fact, if global leaders were to put an economic value on the preservation of the world’s biodiversity hotspots — including such benefits as providing food and water and absorbing carbon emissions — it could be worth more than $500 billion annually for 330 million of the world’s poorest people.

Since the people who live near these resources typically don’t have the means to protect them, the urgency for such economic mechanisms becomes increasingly critical, according to the study, published in the journal BioScience. “Developed and developing economies cannot continue to ask the world’s poor to shoulder the burden of protecting these globally important ecosystem services for the world’s benefit,” said Will Turner, vice president of Conservation International and lead author of the study.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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One of my very first posts in 2010 was about what I called the triple crisis. As I noted back then “our economies are crumbling, our climate is warming and our energy supplies are getting scarcer.”

You would think that after two years, we would have started to do something about them. Well, from what I see, we haven’t. Unemployment is still high, we are still as reliant on oil and coal and our climate is getting weirder by the month.

On top of these crises, a fourth one has emerged: government debt. Our economies are completely broken as the richest are getting even richer and as more and more people are struggling.

We are now certain that we are beyond peak oil. The IEA announced it in its World Energy Outlook last November. Since conventional oil supply is not growing any more, any increase in oil supply will come from extreme oil. And with it more pollution per barrel of oil extracted.

Meanwhile, our climate continues to get warmer and weirder as more extreme weather events that have occurred in the past two years. From Texas to Thailand, from Europe to Australia and Brazil in South America, all our continents have been affected.

This would be worrying enough, but with positive mechanisms feedback such as the melting permafrost in Russia or the Amazon rainforest which started EMITTING greenhouse gases, the situation threatens to move from alarming to dire.

The Economist announced that we should  “Be afraid” in a recently published issue. Well, I am starting to be seriously worried for our common future, for my own future…

Solutions DO exist most fortunately:

Energy efficiency, conservation and sobriety can do wonders. This is why I am now preferring efficiency and sobriety over renewables… As we have less and less capital to spend and as a mechanism to engage our chronic unemployment, these mechanisms can do wonders.

Renewable energy sources like solar, wind and many others (geothermal or tidal among others) still have the potential to completely change our ways of life this decade, but they need to be paired with efficiency efforts and behavioral modifications.

Let’s hope we will apply them with the necessary scale and scope… Let’s make it happen in 2012 and after!

photo: Flickr

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The worldwide movement toward sustainability has made significant progress over the past half-dozen years as companies and cities have pursued strategies that balance future and current societal needs. Now, sustainable development is entering a new phase, characterized by greater alignment within and between the public and private sectors.

The road to sustainability has been plagued with roadblocks, including an unprecedented global financial crisis and attempts by entrenched business and political interests to deny climate science. Perhaps the greatest obstacle has been the lack of consistent and comparable standards for defining and measuring sustainability. Although these issues have yet to be fully resolved, many well-coordinated initiatives in recent years have pointed the way forward for companies and cities..

In 2012, major trends shaping the sustainable development movement include:

Transparency – Buildings, companies and cities are measuring and disclosing energy usage, carbon emissions and other information relating to sustainability. Commercial building owners don’t always have a choice: Five major U.S. cities and two states have enacted energy performance measurement and disclosure policies to date, and nine more cities and states have bills under considerations, to help tenants and investors make better informed decisions. Buildings in Europe are required to display energy performance certificates, and Australia is implementing similar requirements.

Corporations don’t require legal mandates to encourage disclosure. In 2011, more than 3,000 companies, including 404 Global 500 firms, voluntarily reported their carbon emissions, water management and climate change policies to Carbon Disclosure Project in 2011, perhaps swayed by CDP’s 551 investor members, who use the information in deciding where to place more than $71 trillion in investment capital.

Transparency is also on the rise at the city level. CDP invited 58 cities worldwide to report sustainability related data for the first time in 2011, and 42 responded, with 38 of them making their responses public. This year, CDP Cities is expanding its request to 150 cities and continues to see a high response rate, as well as extraordinary awareness and commitment on climate change issues by city leaders. These leaders recognize that managing energy, water and waste not only helps attract residents and business growth but also enhances quality of life in a variety of ways.

Global Consistency – Deeper sustainability reporting by cities and multi-national corporations has intensified the need for consistent ways to measure the effectiveness of energy, water and other sustainability strategies on a worldwide basis. Given the wide regional variation in environmental priorities around the world, the end goal may not be a single global standard, but a way to translate local government and business practices into a common global vocabulary for measuring effectiveness and recognizing achievement..

LEED, the building sustainability rating system originated in the U.S., is now frequently pursued in many countries with their own systems, as owners seek to attract international tenants. ENERGY STAR, the U.S. EPA energy benchmarking standard, will soon be able to provide accurate ratings across North America, thanks to a new cooperative agreement with Canada. And in 2011 the International Organization for Standardization released the ISO 50001 standard for energy management systems, which includes specifications for measurement, documentation and reporting on energy consumption.

Consistent measurement is important to corporations as they focus on sustainability not only in their own operations but, increasingly, throughout their supply chain as well. And while CDP Cities is not attempting to rank the sustainability of cities, it is developing a globally cohesive framework for understanding the effectiveness of sustainability strategies pursued by different cities.

Public/Private Collaboration – 2011 stood out as a year when government and business organizations explored their shared green goals and realized that public-private partnerships and collaborative initiatives are often the best way to overcome obstacles to sustainability. Some of these joint efforts will start to bear fruit in 2012.

A clear example is the December announcement of a $4 billion energy retrofit commitment by the U.S. federal government and 60 CEOs, mayors, university presidents, and labor leaders. Called the Better Buildings Challenge, the eight-year initiative includes $2 billion in energy upgrades of federal buildings and another $2 billion of private capital to improve energy by 20 percent in buildings totaling 1.5 billion square feet. (Jones Lang LaSalle joined the Challenge with a commitment to work with owners on improvements at buildings totaling 98 million square feet.)

The Better Buildings Challenge illustrates the alignment between business and government goals in seeking energy and carbon reduction. Achieving those goals also requires cooperation; for example, groups ranging from the World Economic Forum to Greenprint Foundation have called for changes to loan underwriting guidelines set by governmental bodies to facilitate financing of energy retrofits. More directly, U.S. states have found they can increase renewable energy installations at buildings by offering incentives that would make solar power cost-effective for owners within a relatively short period.

As a firm that serves government and business entities, Jones Lang LaSalle sees tremendous untapped synergy between the two groups in achieving energy and sustainability goals, particularly in the area of public-private partnerships. As just one of many examples, airports and other government entities often have surplus land that’s unsuitable for commercial property development but could be leased to private companies for development as large solar energy installations;

Focus on Solar Energy – Speaking of solar power, 2011 was a breakthrough year for new installations in the U.S., and continued growth is seen for 2012, albeit at a slower pace. More than 1 gigawatt of photovoltaic solar energy capacity was installed across the U.S. in the first three quarters of 2011, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). By comparison, 887 megawatts came online in all of 2010, which represented a doubling of the total installed base at the time.

Solar energy installations at commercial properties drove much of the market growth in 2011, but the pace of new installations dropped significantly in the third quarter, SEIA reported. The big story going into 2012 is the unprecedented rise in utility-based installations, which jumped by 325 percent from the second to the third quarter.

The strength of the solar market in 2012 and beyond will be affected by several variables, including basic supply and demand economics, technological improvements, and the amount and type of available incentives. It is clear, however, that interest in solar energy continues to grow as payback periods grow shorter and fossil fuel costs continue to rise.

2012: Taking Sustainability to the Next Level

The common theme to all these trends is of an industry poised to break through to the next level. The industry has moved swiftly through initial phases of understanding the basic costs and benefits, implementing low-cost initiatives, exploring more sophisticated strategies, and navigating around roadblocks. Today, it is easier to see the opportunity for dynamic progress by cities, property owners and corporate tenants that have laid the groundwork for growth and success.

Article by Dan Probst, Chairman of Energy and Sustainability Services at Jones Lang LaSalle, appearing courtesy 3BL Media.

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The Australian government will begin imposing a tax on carbon emissions in mid-2012. But large giveaways to industry mean Australia’s scheme doesn’t go nearly far enough in reducing the nation’s CO2 emissions or providing economic stimulus.

Another global climate conference has come and gone with little action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, which makes efforts to combat climate change at the national or local level all the more important. After years of bitter debate and haggling, we in Australia last month finally decided to follow Europe in putting a price on carbon. Unfortunately, Australia’s plan, like Europe’s, gave away far too much to major emitters of CO2 and does far too little to reduce emissions, aiming for a 5 percent cut in carbon by 2020, with uncertainty as to how deep the cuts may be beyond then.

Countries that wish to use market-based mechanisms to tackle climate change can learn much from Australia’s example. Unfortunately, most of the lessons relate to what not to do. The final incarnation of Australia’s scheme could have been both economically and environmentally superior had the politics not been so poorly handled. A review of the blunders and miscalculations is instructive.

The price on carbon is too low to transform the way Australia produces or consumes energy.

While the Labor government was initially highly ambitious about the scope of its scheme and the depth of the emission reductions, the longer the debate dragged on, the more watered-down the scheme became. In the end, entire sectors of business, industry, or agriculture were either largely or entirely exempted from needing CO2 emissions permits in the coming eight years. The plan — a hybrid between a carbon tax and an emissions trading scheme — sets the price of CO2 emissions at a fixed level of $23 Australian per ton for the first three years, too low to drive substantial transformation of the way that Australia produces and consumes energy. Prime Minister Julia Gillard says CO2 emissions will be cut by 160 million tons over the next eight years, but that remains to be seen.

After the three-year fixed-price period ends in 2015, market forces will set the cost of pollution permits. However, price caps and ceilings will exist for an additional five years to provide some degree of ongoing price stability. Only about 500 big polluters — those responsible for releasing more than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year — will be required to purchase pollution permits under the scheme. That sounds fair enough, until you realize that many major CO2 polluters were largely let off the hook for the near future.

For example, agricultural emissions were exempted entirely from the scheme. Big sectors like passenger transport were effectively removed. And Australian exporters were given a huge break, after fervently arguing that the introduction of a carbon price would make them uncompetitive and result in jobs being transferred offshore. Despite the evidence that these concerns were largely exaggerated, the so-called “emissions-intensive trade-exposed” industries succeeded in winning their demands that they be largely exempted from the carbon price. Indeed, these big polluters will not have to pay the carbon price on 94.5 percent of their emissions for the first three years. While the carbon price legislation includes provisions for future review of these generous entitlements to free permits, in practice it will take at least five years to make any real reductions.

This highlights a key lesson from the Australian debate. The giveaway of so many CO2 emissions permits should have been presented to the public for what it is: lost revenue and a gift to the biggest polluters. Instead, export industries framed the debate as an essential step to protect domestic industry. The tens of billions of dollars in lost revenue associated with the provision of large amounts of free permits is money that the government could have been spent on investing in renewable energy, giving tax cuts to employees, funding targeted cuts in corporate taxes, or providing investment allowances to targeted industries. Such use of carbon tax revenues would have helped create stronger support among segments of business.

As it was, most businesses that were not big polluters were relatively silent about both the desirability of introducing a carbon price and the enormous cost of providing the free emissions permits. Unfortunately, the consequences of providing so many free permits were not usually discussed in such terms — a major mistake.

While there is an economic argument for providing some compensation for some industries, there were no strong economic arguments for providing anything like the level of free permits given to the biggest polluters in Australia. The generosity of the assistance appears to be wildly out of step with the meager compromises made by the polluters. Put simply, if compensation is the price you are willing to pay to get what you want, the Australian taxpayer was willing to pay a lot to achieve very little.

Australia’s carbon scheme will also provide generous compensation to low- and middle- income households; the lowest income earners will receive more than 100 percent compensation for the likely impact of higher energy prices on their household budgets. That said, despite the enormous political outcry about putting a price on carbon, the price impact is likely to be less than one percent, or $9.00 per week, for an average household. Only the highest-income earners will miss out on compensation, but again the price impact is likely to be modest; a household earning $100,000 is likely to experience energy and other price rises of less than $1,000 per year.

Never underestimate the ease with which opponents can attack the details in any scheme.

Critics derided the idea of taking money away from Australian households with one hand, in the form of a price on carbon, and giving it back to them with another, labeling it a “great big money-go-round.” But this is one aspect of the carbon legislation that makes sense. With a price on carbon, those who can change their behavior and use fewer fossil fuels will be better off when they receive compensation from the government. Those who can’t change their behavior need be no worse off.

Another valuable lesson from Australia is to never underestimate the ease with which opponents can attack the details of any scheme — the more complex, the harder it is to sell. When proponents start putting effort into explaining a specific scheme, then by definition they must put less energy into talking about the gravity of the problem it is designed to solve.

Both the Australian government and the Australian environmental movement spent nearly four years talking about the details of an incredibly complex piece of policy, and in so doing virtually stopped talking about the scientific and economic cases for tackling climate change. The abandonment of this terrain enabled the climate and economic skeptics to promote a wide range of entirely misleading — but highly effective — messages, many focused on overstated claims of economic disaster. (A similar tactic was used to kill climate legislation in the U.S. Senate.) Opponents also frequently shifted ground, at first denying there was evidence of global warming, then accepting that there might be warming but repudiating the link to human activity. Some finally accepted that humans might be causing the planet to heat up, but then maintained that Australia is too small to make a difference.

To other countries contemplating a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme, I would offer the following advice: Be less ambitious at the beginning of the project and more determined at the end. Don’t try to take on all the polluters simultaneously, but approach different sectors in different ways at different times. They should be played off against each other on specific issues, rather than united in their hostility toward a general principle.

So where do things stand? The design of the legislation and the determination of the government to provide certainty to industry means it is highly unlikely that there will be any chance to broaden the scope of the scheme — and give it real teeth — before 2020. The debate about the scientific need to tackle climate change has been removed from the political agenda, replaced with economic arguments about whether the compensation is adequate or not.

Meanwhile, as Australia moves ahead with a watered-down plan that ignores scientific evidence about the depth of cuts required to help prevent global warming, the nation’s coal industry — the world’s largest exporter of coal — is experiencing a boom. Australia’s coal exports are expected to double in the coming decade, much of it heading to China, where the emissions will further foul the air of Beijing and Shanghai and add to the heat-trapping gases rapidly accumulating in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Article by Richard Denniss, appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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If all Europeans bicycled as much as the people of Denmark, the European Union could achieve up to one-quarter of its target for carbon emissions reductions in the transportation sector by 2050, a new report says.

According to the European Cyclists’ Federation, the average Dane cycles about 2.6 kilometers a day. If that rate were achieved across the EU, it would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 55 million to 120 million tons annually, or 5 to 11 percent of the EU’s overall emissions target, by 2020. (By 2020, the EU has vowed to reduce emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels).

By 2050, a large-scale shift to cycling would represent a cut in C02 emissions of 63 million to 142 million tons, or 12 to 26 percent of the target reduction for the transportation sector.

Since the EU is unlikely to meet its targets with more efficient technology alone, the report says a shift away from cars is critical. Meanwhile, New York City transportation officials say the number of people bicycling in Manhattan this year is double the ridership in 2007, largely as a result of increased bike lanes across the city.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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The German software company SAP is a leader in using computer analytics to help a company reduce its environmental footprint while also saving a few bucks. This week, SAP unveiled software that can establish how much CO2 and water it takes to make an individual product.

SAP’s first partner on the technology is Groupe Danone, the French multinational foodmaker known in the U.S. as Dannon. By the end of the year, Danone expects to be using SAP’s technology to evaluate 35,000 products, according to Peter Graf, SAP’s chief sustainability officer.

Many firms are reluctant to look deeply into the supply chain, that web of outside manufacturers and suppliers that supply the components of an end product. The endeavor is expensive and doesn’t at first seem to be of much use. But as customers demand greener goods and regulations begin to force industry to lower its carbon emissions, business are paying closer attention.

The exemplar in supply chain efficiency is the outdoor clothier Patagonia, which has made a crusade of working with its suppliers around the world to flush out waste at the factory, and then present the results on its website.

SAP software doesn’t require that level of zeal or transparency. It takes the company’s Business Objects software suite, which was created to analyze other business functions, and applies it to the “bill of materials” that is essentially a product’s ingredient list. For a cup of yogurt, Graf said, it might comprise everything from the raw plastic used to make the lid to the crop of strawberries.

(Which also explains how Danone is applying the analytics to 35,000 products. No, there aren’t 34,996 kinds of Dannon yogurt you’ve never heard of. That’s the number of combinations of materials that make up the products in question.)

From there, product managers and suppliers can work together to plug in as much information as is known about the carbon emissions generated and the water used to make these component parts.

Along the way, Graf said, it may become clear that one supplier is using more resources than another. And in many cases that may nudge the supplier to change its wasteful ways in order to keep in its client company’s good graces.

Article by David Ferris, appearing courtesy the Matter Network.

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For a long time, South Korea has been completely dependent upon imported energy resources to meet its large energy consumption. Prior to the use of renewable energy technologies, South Korea was the fifth largest importer of oil. Since the mid-1990s, however, that reliance on oil has steadily decreased. And although oil does still provide a large percentage of total energy consumption throughout the country, it has steadily decreased. South Korea implemented the goal to increase its total alternative energy supply by five percent by the year 2011, and by 2030, they want this percentage to rise to nine. Now, for many countries, these goals may seem small, but for a country so dependent on oil but so willing to invest in renewable energy and energy efficiency, it definitely is not.

1 ) 2011 Increase in Renewable Energy Investments to Finance more Projects. The South Korean government has made a pledge of $891.2 million dollars in renewable energy investments for 2011. One fifth of the total investment will go to the establishment of five solar and wind technology testing bases. Along with the increase in the investment, the South Korean President Lee Myung-bak believes that this will increase renewable energy exports “nearly ten times higher in 2015 than in 2009.” The minister of Knowledge Economy states that the government, with this investment and future investments, “aims to continue to act on its national strategy of expanding in the global market for renewable energy and other technology.”

2 ) South Korea Renewable Energy Fund. To begin the expansion of its renewable energy infrastructure, in 2009, the government set up a $72.2 million renewable energy fund. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy stated that a lot of the money would be used to gain the attention of private sector investments in projects concerning hydroelectric, wind, and solar power, as well as developing technologies and plant construction. This is to assist the government’s goal of increasing energy export revenues up from $1.2 billion in 2008.

3 ) First Renewable Energy Management System. In late 2010, IBM began a collaboration with South Korea for the first renewable energy management system. The IBM collaboration is with South Korea’s POSCO ICT to create a management system for a smart grid. This is part of the Smart Grid Initiative to create a “low carbon; green growth” vision. The Smart Grid Initiative, supported by the government of South Korea, “is a comprehensive program that covers Smart Power Grid, Smart Consumers, Smart Transportation, Smart Renewable Energy, and Smart Electricity Services. Its goal is to promote economic growth for the country and set a foundation for Korean companies’ technological strength in the global smart grid market.” POSCO ICT will adopt the IBM business analytics software to create an “intelligent renewable energy management system” that will make informed decisions on power generation.

4 ) International Green Energy Expo Korea. The International Green Energy Expo Korea is one of the most professional and largest photovoltaic trade fair in South Korea. More than 400 companies show up from more than 25 countries – 40 percent of the exhibitions are from outside South Korea. Hosted by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, some of the top photovoltaic companies show up, including SUNTECH Power, JA Solar, and Jintech.

5 ) Conergy Korea. An announcement was made by Conergy Korea to extend the solar plant in SinAn, South Korea from 19.6 MWp to 24 MWp and therefore make it the largest solar power plant in the country. The completed plant will produce 33,000 MWh per year and will supply 7,200 households with clean energy per year and decrease carbon dioxide emissions by 24,000 tons annually. This solar plant will increase South Korea’s bid to become a global leader in clean technologies. The Conergy Korea CEO Kim Jihun said that this would be a landmark moment.

6 ) Voluntary Agreement Program. The Korean government has created a Voluntary Agreement Program whereby to energy providers and energy users are assisted in economizing and evaluating rational energy usage and providing assistance in the development of detailed implementation plans for the conservation of energy. It will be regulated by the Rational Energy Utilization Act.

7 ) Taegisan Wind Power Plant. The Taegisan Wind Farm Project falls in line with South Korea’s “low carbon and green growth” plan. This plant, started in 2008, is the has the leading wind generation capacity of 40 megawatts, which supplies enough energy to feed 25,000 general households and reduce carbon emissions by 60,000 tons annually. A number of other investments have been made, as well as loans, to increase the capacity of the plant. For example, in 2009, the Mizuho Corporate Bank provided a syndicated JPY 4,100 million loan which equals roughly 60 percent of construction cost for expansion purposes.

8 ) Korean Tidal Power Plant Project. Through collaboration between UK company Lunar Energy and Korean Midland Power Co., stemmed the plans for the creation of a 300-turbine field off the coast of South Korea by 2015 – it would provide 300 MV of renewable energy, which could power 200,000 homes. The 500 million British pounds project will utilize power from quick-moving tidal streams, the result of rising and falling tides, to turn turbines along the sea floor. It will be the largest tidal project in the world.

9 ) 500 Turbine Off-Shore Wind Farm Project. At the closing of 2010, South Korea announced its new plan to create a 2.5 GW offshore wind farm along its southwestern coast. This 500 turbine project will cost an estimated $8.2 billion and will be funded in part by the South Korean Government and the rest by private investments. The project is slated for completion around 2019. The Knowledge Economy Ministry said, “Considering the small size of our land, offshore wind farms, with less environmental damage and fewer potential complaints from residents, are far more promising sources of energy than onshore wind farms.”

10 ) Future Collaboration with Israel’s Cleantech Sector. Due to the fact that Israel ranks fourth on the list of largest cleantech nations around the globe and South Korea’s huge technology center, a clean technology partnership between the two countries seem very ideal. In November of 2010, a 37 member South Korean delegation took a ten day visit to Israel to look at 13 Israeli companies, including Zenith Solar, BrightSource, and Ormat Industries. The concept for future collaboration throughout the renewable energy field was discussed, including the manufacturing of automobiles, as well as batteries for cars and battery replacement and charging stations. Israel has the know-how and South Korea as the manufacturing capabilities as it is the fifth largest country for car manufacturing.

Article by Shawn Lesser, Co-founder & Managing Partner of Atlanta-based Watershed Capital Group – an investment bank assisting sustainable fund and companies raise capital, perform acquisitions, and in other strategic financial decisions. He is also a Co-founder of the GCCA Global Cleantech Cluster Association ”The Global Voice of Cleantech”. He writes for various cleantech publications and is known as the David Letterman of Cleantech for his “Top 10″ series. He can be reached at shawn@watershedcapital.com

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Electric cars do not pollute as do internal combustion vehicles. The relative problem is one of frequent charging and limited distances. Pay-as-you-drive electric car rentals are expected to help cut pollution and reduce traffic in Paris, as the new fleet of fully electric Autiolib vehicles hits the French capital. As of December 5, Parisians could take the bubble cars for a ride from more than 1,200 parking spots where they rest for recharge. They would cost 10 euros a day or 15 euros a week, while an annual fee of 144 euro allows users to take the car for only half an hour each time for 5 euro, just over the price of two underground tickets. The Autolib system builds on the success of the Velib bicycle-sharing service.

Modeled after the city’s successful curbside bike rental scheme, Autolib (a contraction of automobile and liberté) will offer electric vehicles for customers to pick up or drop off at various locations around the city. Additional will be available in two dozen nearby cities as well.

All things said, Autolib could reduce Paris’ carbon emissions by upwards of 22,000 tons per year.

Soaring insurance and parking costs have already persuaded 25% of French citizens to cut back or give up on using their cars, according to a study published last year by Chronos TNS Sofres.

The little four-seater Bluecar, designed and manufactured exclusively for Bolloré by Italian designer Pininfarina, famous for sculpting Ferraris and Maseratis, will have a range of up to 250 km between before a recharge which will take about four hours.

Bolloré said his batteries are safer than the lithium-ion variety used by most of the car industry because they are less prone to overheating. They are also more stable when being charged and discharged.

The car rental scheme follows the car-sharing project launched in September 2011, which also aimed to clear the traffic-clogged Parisian boulevards and deliver what its backers hoped would be a major boost for electric vehicles.

Under the €235 million project, the brainchild of Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, the car-hire service debuted with 66 cars and 33 rental stations across Paris before expanding to 3,000 vehicles and more than 1,000 stations by the end of 2012.

Similar projects exist in the US and in other European countries, such as Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. The Belgian Zen Car, one of the first EV-for-hire services, was launched at the beginning of this year with around thirty 100% electric cars.

The company Zen Car and the Société Régionale d’Investissement de Bruxelles have announced a partnership to set up an electric car sharing scheme in the Belgian capital as of March 2011.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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