Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., more commonly known as Al Gore, was the 45th Vice President of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under former President William “Bill” Clinton. While many know Al Gore for the 24 years he spent as an elected official, today he is more known for his work as an environmental activist. Al Gore has founded a number of non-governmental organizations based around the environment, and created the 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth about the affects of global warming. For all his efforts, Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as an activist regarding climate change.

1 ) Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, Byers Climate Solutions Group. Al Gore heads the climate solutions group at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, Byers (KPCB), a premier venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley, California. The Wall Street Journal has listed it as the “largest and most established” firm in the globe. KPCB has been championing investment into the clean technology sector since 1999 and has actively invested in a number of ventures that have the potential to solve a variety of urgent challenges associated with the global climate crisis. The focus includes funding technologies that are related to renewable energy, clean water, sustainable agriculture, and next-generation transportation.

2 ) Al Gore Endorses a Green Bank Bill. In 2009, when testifying right before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Al Gore endorsed a new Green Bank Bill. First introduced by Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), this bill would create a financial institution that is government-owned and would provide necessary support to qualified energy efficiency and clean energy projects.

3 ) Call to have all Energy in the United States made Renewable in Ten Years. In 2008, Al Gore decided to make the challenge to the United States to get the country to make a switch to completely renewable sources of energy in ten years time. He made the mention that the solution to the current climate crisis will also help in renewing the economy through the creation of more jobs, and it will provide an escape route for the United States when it comes to continually rising energy prices.

4 ) Global Marshall Plan. Al Gore created the Global Marshall Plan in his book “Earth in the Balance,” and provides specific ideas regarding how to save the current global environment. In his book, Gore states, “The model of the Marshall Plan can be of great help. For example, a Global Marshall Plan must focus on strategic goals and emphasize actions and programs that are likely to remove the bottlenecks presently inhibiting the healthy functioning of the global economy. The new global economy must be an inclusive system that does not leave entire regions behind. The new plan will require the wealthy nations to allocate money for transferring environmentally helpful technologies to the Third World and to help impoverished nations achieve a stable population and a new pattern of sustainable economic progress. To work, however, any such effort will also require wealthy nations to make a transition themselves that will be in some ways more wrenching than that of the Third World.” There are five strategic goals, stabilizing the global population, the quick development of technologies that are environmentally appropriate, a change in economic rules of the road in respect to the environment, new international agreements regarding the environment, and a plan to educate the world about the environment.

5 ) Supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Al Gore has been a huge supported of the Kyoto Protocol. This protocol was formed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and is geared toward fighting the increase in global warming. This international environmental treaty has the goal of stabilizing the carbon dioxide emissions concentrations throughout the atmosphere to a level that would prevent the possibility of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the current climate system.

6 ) An Inconvenient Truth. An Inconvenient Truth is a book written by Al Gore in 2006. It is based on Gore’s lecture tour regarding the topic of global warming and further elaborates on a number of points regarding climate change. It was turned into a documentary film also in 2006 that followed Gore’s initiatives to educate the general public about climate change. The movie won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. Both the book and the movie have been widely credited for increasing international public awareness in regards to the climate change and helped to reenergize the global environmental movement.

7 ) The Al Gore Sustainable Technology Venture Competition. The Al Gore Sustainable Technology Venture Competition is the very first and most prestigious clean technology and sustainably business plan competition in Asia. It was established in 2007 and looks to increase the generation of India’s engineering, technology, science, and management students to start thinking more sustainability and creating sustainable technology solutions that will provide a positive impact on the environment.

8 ) The Climate Reality Project. The Climate Reality Project was founded and chaired by Al Gore and currently has over five million members around the world. It is a nonprofit organization that remains dedicated to providing education to the global community in regards to the importance of the implementation of a comprehensive solution to the current climate crisis. The project emphasizes the requirement to bring together a very diverse range of organizations and individuals to strengthen the global network of people looking to take action when it comes to various climate issues.

9 ) Live Earth. Live Earth was established by Kevin Wall along with Al Gore and “built upon the belief that entertainment has the power to transcend social and cultural barriers to move the world community to action…Live Earth seeks to leverage the power of entertainment through integrated events, media, and the live experience to ignite a global movement aimed at solving the most critical environmental issues.” For example, on 07/07/07, Live Earth produced “Live Earth: the Concerts for a Climate in Crisis,” which was hosted on seven continents and broadcasted in 132 countries.

10 ) Generation Investment Management LLP. Generation Investment Management LLP is a private, independent owner-managed partnership that has offices in New York, New York, London, England, and Sydney Australia and focuses on environmental and social responsibility. It was co-founded in 2004 by Al Gore and David Blood. The mission of Generation Investment Management LLP is to “Deliver superior investment performance by taking a long term investment view and integrating sustainability research within a rigorous fundamental equity analysis framework; create long term client partnerships by delivering unique investment insights and exceptional client service; [and] attract, retain, and develop the best professionals within a passionate investment culture.”

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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Climate talks began in Durban, South Africa on Monday amid downplayed expectations for any meaningful agreements on cutting greenhouse gas emissions or progress on finding a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

With the Kyoto Protocol’s mandatory carbon targets now covering less than a third of the world’s carbon emissions, some observers say that a global, top-down approach may increasingly be replaced by local, incremental climate policies, from Australia’s new carbon tax to Colombian initiatives to replace polluting truck fleets and promote renewable energy.

“The situation has never been weaker for [a global] vision,” said James L. Connaughton, who chaired the Council on Environmental Quality under President George W. Bush.

In 1997, nearly 200 industrialized nations agreed to the Kyoto Protocol, pledging a 5.2 percent reduction in carbon emissions compared with 1990 levels by 2012. But the U.S. never ratified the protocol, and the targets did not apply to emerging countries like China and India.

The European Union is the only Kyoto signatory willing to sign on for a second five-year commitment period, but will only do so if other nations — including the U.S., China, and India — begin negotiations on a global deal that can be implemented by 2020.

Negotiators hope to make some progress in Durban on establishing financing mechanisms to help developing nations deal with the impacts of global warming.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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Those who fly or are planning to fly to Europe nowadays will find that there is a heavy tax to pay loosely called environmental fees. European rules forcing all airlines to pay for carbon emissions are within the law, an adviser to Europe’s highest court said on Thursday (October 6), in the latest stage of a bitter battle between the European Union and the aviation industry. From January next year, all airlines will have to buy permits under the EU’s emissions trading scheme (ETS) to help cover the carbon cost of all flights that land or take off in Europe.

Europeans are not calling this a tax, but an “emissions trading scheme.” Whatever the term, the Canada-based International Air Transport Association has estimated that the tax would add $21 to $45 per passenger to fares for flights to Europe from the United States. U.S. airlines estimate that the tax could cost them, or their passengers, up to $3 billion through 2020.

Because there are more non-European aircraft that fly to the continent, the levy would raise more revenue from them than it would raise from European carriers.

“EU legislation does not infringe the sovereignty of other states or the freedom of the high seas guaranteed under international law, and is compatible with the relevant international agreements,” said the opinion from Advocate General Juliane Kokott

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol on combating climate change ruled countries should try to regulate aviation emissions through the industry body International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), but talks with the body have not yielded progress.

The European Union — regarded as the vanguard of efforts to reduce planet-warming emissions — therefore decided to include airlines in addition to factories, power plants and other installations in its carbon trading scheme.

The EU scheme sets a cap on the level of emissions allowed.

Utilities, factories and, from January, airlines that emit carbon above their cap have to buy carbon permits to cover these emissions. If they emit less than their limit, they can sell spare permits from their emission allowances.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

European chemical manufacturers are covertly venting huge quantities of the powerful super greenhouse gas HFC-23, according to a study by the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA). The report, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, says that Western Europe’s emissions of HFC-23s — an ‘F’ or fluorinated gas mainly used as a refrigerant — are between 60-140% higher than officially reported. Italy alone was found to be emitting 10-20 times more HFC-23s than it officially reports. The greenhouse gas has a global warming potential which is 14,800 times higher than CO2.

CHF3 is a potent greenhouse gas. The secretariat of the Clean Development Mechanism estimates that a ton of HFC-23 in the atmosphere has the same effect as 11,700 tons of carbon dioxide. More recent work suggests that this equivalency, also called a 100-yr global warming potential, is slightly larger at 14,800 for HFC-23. The atmospheric lifetime is 270 years.

According to the 2007 IPCC climate report, HFC-23 was the most abundant HFC in the global atmosphere until around 2001, which is when the global mean concentration of HFC-134a (1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane), the chemical now used extensively in automobile air conditioners, surpassed those of HFC-23. Global emissions of HFC-23 have in the past been dominated by the inadvertent production and release during the manufacture of the refrigerant HCFC-22 (chlorodifluoromethane).

There is no legal obligation on companies to reduce their HFC-23 waste gas emissions, but signatory states to the Kyoto Protocol must report their venting of the substance to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

“Nation states have to declare [HFC emissions] but their information is related to what they get from the [chemical] companies,” EMPA researcher Stefan Reimann told EurActiv.

An EMPA-style evaluation of the EU’s emissions inventory might strengthen Europe’s hand in international talks.

Reported values tend to be estimated rather than measured. EMPA is comparing measured results to estimated values.

The pollutant analysis by EMPA was conducted at its Jungfraujoch research station using a ‘MEDUSA’ special gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, which enabled more than 50 halogenated greenhouse gases to be evaluated and emission sources to be identified.

Because HFC-23s are almost exclusively emitted in the production of HFC-22s, “we exactly know our point sources,” Reimann said.

EMPA pointed the finger at Italy’s “sole HFC-22 plant west of Milan” (Solvay’s Solexis plant at Spinetta Marengo) as being responsible for the country’s over-emission of HFC-23s.

He confirmed that HFC-23 waste gases were created at the Solexis plant but said the question of whether they had been vented into the atmosphere was a difficult one to answer.

Denmark is currently calling on EU member states to ban the use of HFC-23 offsets in meeting national greenhouse gas reduction targets in the non-traded sectors.

Sixteen of the EU’s 27 nations have signed the Danish proposal but others, such as Italy, have a financial stake in HFC-23 offset projects.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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Climatologist Raymond Bradley has come out fighting in his new short book Global Warming and Political Intimidation: How Politicians Cracked Down on Scientists as the Earth Heated Up. It’s a lively albeit sobering narrative which recounts his and others’ experience of harassment, character assassination and unfounded accusation from the politicians who serve fossil fuel interests in the US Congress.

Bradley has worked in climatology since the 1970s and explains in the prologue that it’s only as he has gradually learned more about the subject and scientific evidence has accumulated, that, like almost every other climatologist on the planet, he’s become convinced that global warming is a critical issue that requires urgent attention. He was one of the three authors of Michael Mann’s 1998 Nature article and follow-on studies which produced the so-called hockey stick graph demonstrating the recent warming as unprecedented in the last 1000 years. The graph became the focus of attack by deniers who seemed to think that if it was refuted the whole edifice of climate science would crumble.

“Nothing could have been further from the truth, as concern over global warming rests on a vast array of scientific evidence, of which the hockey stick is but a minuscule part.”

Bradley describes a Senate committee hearing in 2000 chaired by Senator McCain, who in a time before the issue became quite so heavily politicized along party lines had asked Senator Kerry to share in inviting scientists to testify. It was a positive occasion, and although John Christy, one of the five invited, trotted out the themes of carbon dioxide as a plant food and climate as always changing, the warnings of the others were “clear, consistent, and stark”. The senators listened and understood and McCain for a time became a global warming evangelist within the Republican Party.

Bradley’s next encounter with a congressional committee was deeply disturbing. In 2005 he and his co-authors of the hockey stick paper received an extraordinary letter from the chairman of the House Energy Committee, Congressman Joe Barton, and the chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Congressman Ed Whitfield. It referred to a Wall Street Journal article reporting methodological flaws and data errors in the authors’ studies of the historical records of temperatures and climate change. The chairmen wanted to know whether obligations concerning the sharing of information developed or disseminated with federal support had been appropriately met. They set out a long list of comprehensive demands regarding all financial support received for the research, all agreements related to funding, the location of all data archives and many details as to how the data was used, what response was made to requests for data and why. They also demanded explanation in detail of the authors work for the IPCC, right down to inquisitorial questions as to the steps they took to ensure the soundness of the data underlying the studies forming the basis for the key findings of the IPCC report. Finally they required a detailed narrative explanation of the errors in their studies alleged by McIntyre and McKitrick (neither of them climate scientists) in a paper in Energy and Environment.

It’s a chilling list, and Bradley’s conclusion when he’d recovered from the initial shock is well justified:

“This was not a legitimate inquiry; it was politics, impure but simple. We had unwittingly stumbled into a minefield where the players were the energy companies with infinite financial resources, along with Washington lobbying fronts and political hacks in Congress.”

Many rallied around the scientists in the face of this assault, including Republican Congressman Sherwood Boehlert to whom the book is dedicated. He wrote to Barton:

“My primary concern about your investigation is that its purpose seems to be to intimidate scientists rather than to learn from them, and to substitute Congressional political review for scientific peer review. That would be pernicious.”

The fact that the science was vindicated didn’t stop Congressman Barton announcing yet another hearing at which the infamous Wegman report was presented. Bradley summarizes:

“The goal of Congressman Barton, Senator Inhofe, and others like them is to ensure that legislation to control greenhouse gases is never passed by the U.S. Congress. Their strategy, like that of the tobacco industry in the past, is to sow the seeds of doubt about climate science, and if that means destroying the reputations of those who carry out the science, so be it.”

The book carries a very interesting account of the pioneering work which went into the reconstruction represented in the hockey stick graph, and the vast amounts of data involved. In the 1999 paper which extended the period covered by the graph back from 1400 to 1000 Bradley points to the title as a sign of the caution with which the authors proceeded: “Northern Hemisphere Temperatures during the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations.” He also offers an illuminating account of the role of peer review in testing advances in scientific knowledge. Indeed throughout the book there is a strong underlying sense of science as the work of a community of people constantly analyzing and evaluating the findings that emerge.

Mention must be made of the global warming primer provided in one of the chapters of the book. Maintaining the conversational tone which marks much of the book Bradley leads the reader through an admirably clear and logical traverse of the central findings of the science. His account of the warming globe includes explanations of how carefully the instrumental data from the last 150 years has been collected and given appropriate weight, an enterprise he was engaged with in one of his early research projects. He explains the part played by the trace greenhouse gases in producing the warming and highlights the threatening speed with which the changes are occurring.

Tackling the problem is already daunting. If we get to 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and were then to stop altogether it would still take a thousand years for the level to return naturally to 350 ppm. Bradley acknowledges the inadequacies of the Kyoto Protocol but still sees it as critically important because for the first time the greenhouse gas problem was universally acknowledged and it set most nations of the world on the path to emissions reduction. He finds some reason for hope on the grounds that we are moving, however laboriously, in the right direction.

The doubt merchants still do everything they can to stop the needed actions. Bradley surveys some of the campaigns they have mounted and continue to pursue. Climategate was one of the worst, and the hounding of Phil Jones appalling.

“Phil is a great guy, as honest as the day is long, and his research has always been careful, thoughtful and significant. The notion that he would purposely manipulate data to deceive anybody is completely ludicrous.”

Bradley’s book is a valuable insight into the harrying that many climate scientists have had to endure over the past two decades. It lets us see what it is like to be on the receiving end of political intimidation and ranting deniers in the media and the blogosphere. These scientists, who have simply gone about their work as they should, have been reviled and threatened, sometimes at high levels of government. Powerful vested interests have gone to war against the science which reveals the dangers threatening humankind. Bradley uses the word malevolent only once, and evil not at all, but both words came to my mind frequently.

Article by Bryan Walker, appearing courtesy Celsias.

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Not for the first time, the Prime Minister was happily promoting the irreconcilable. “By stepping up, showing leadership and competing with the world,” he announced last week, “the UK can prove that there need not be a tension between green and growth.”(1)

It could have been worse. After the Treasury and the business department tried to scupper the UK’s long-term carbon targets, David Cameron stepped in to rescue them. The government has now promised to cut greenhouse gases by 50% by 2027, which means that, with a following wind, the UK could meet its legally-binding target of 80% by 2050. For this we should be grateful. But the coalition has resolved the tension between green and growth in a less than convincing fashion: by dumping responsibility for the environmental impacts on someone else.

The carbon cut we have made so far, and the carbon cut we are likely to make by 2027, have been achieved by means of a simple device: allowing other countries, principally China, to run polluting industries on our behalf.

Officially, the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions have fallen from 788 million tonnes in 1990 to 566mt in 2009 (2). Unofficially, another 253mt should be added to our account (3). That’s the difference between the greenhouse gases released when manufacturing the goods we export and those released when manufacturing the goods we import. The reason why our official figures look better than those of most other nations is that so much of our manufacturing industry has moved overseas. It is this which allows the government to meet its targets. If the stuff we buy is made in China, China gets the blame.

This would be less of an issue if China were obliged to restrict its emissions. But under the only global treaty in force at the moment – the Kyoto Protocol – developing countries have no need to reduce their impacts (4). That suits the governments of both rich and poorer nations. Governments like ours can pretend that there is no conflict between green and growth. They avoid unpopular decisions, allowing people to consume whatever they fancy, and they keep business sweet by promising endless expansion. Governments like China’s can keep supplying us with the goods we couldn’t produce at home without breaking our obligations.

Though the UK has been better served by this system of false accounting than most nations, it’s a global problem. A recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that even if all the unenforceable pledges made in the Copenhagen Accord were honored, carbon cuts by the rich nations between now and 2020 would be canceled out by their imports from developing countries (5). In other words, nothing will have been achieved. Already, 16 billion tonnes – equivalent to 27 years of the UK’s emissions – have gone missing from the international system as a result of this false accounting (6).

One of the results of such prestidigitation is that we greatly underestimate the pollution caused by manufacturing. Because we don’t see these emissions in our own accounts, and because the government seeks to clean up only the carbon which officially belongs to us, we have concentrated on greening the electricity and heating in homes and offices, and the transport we use, and have overlooked everything else we buy. We emphasize services and forget about goods. As soon as you account for the stuff we use that’s made elsewhere, you discover that we’ve been missing more than half the story. As the Guardian’s carbon calculator shows, manufacturing and consumption is responsible for 57% of our real emissions (7). Cameron’s contention that there need not be a tension between green and growth collapses.

It looks naive today, it will look cynical in 2027. The new carbon target is likely to be more than annulled by the growth in outsourced greenhouse gases. Figures produced by the Carbon Trust, a government-funded body, show that by 2025 our true emissions (produced both here and abroad) will rise from 844mt to 908 mt (8). So much for the 50% cut by 2027.

This is an issue which governments of all varieties appear to have ignored. But recent freedom of information requests by Guy Shrubsole and Alex Randall of the Public Interest Research Centre show that civil servants have long been advising ministers that the issue makes a mockery of their carbon targets (9). Their briefings have warned that “the rise in UK consumption has outstripped the improvements achieved” and that “the Government needs to be cautious about over-claiming on its achievements in decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation”. Some hope.

The obvious conclusion is that the international system for regulating emissions is bust. It has been bust since it was launched in 1992. From the outset it allowed rich and poor nations tacitly to conspire in producing a semblance of action. As soon as the UN tried to resolve this problem by bringing developing nations into the system at Copenhagen in 2009, the process collapsed.

After the talks fell apart there, we were promised that the matter would be settled at Cancun the following year. It wasn’t, so we were told to wait until the talks in Durban in December 2011. At the end of last month, both the EU and US negotiators announced that it isn’t going to happen in Durban either, but that miracles will be administered in 2012. I can picture the delegates at the 2100 meeting, sitting beside the air conditioning units in Murmansk, promising that it will all be sorted out in 2101 at Ny-Ålesund.

If governments are serious about preventing climate breakdown, they must admit that the process has failed, abandon it and start again with a new one. I still believe the most promising system is the cunningly-designed carbon trading scheme proposed by Oliver Tickell in his book Kyoto2 (10). This would also be resisted, as it doesn’t allow rich countries to dump their emissions on poorer ones. But it has two advantages in expediting the negotiations, over the current system. The first is that it is fair, transparent and universal, with fewer opportunities for false accounting: governments are less likely to feel cheated. The second is that, because greenhouse gases would not be allocated to states, there is no longer an incentive (which has fatally undermined the negotiations to date) to pass the buck to other countries and engage in carbon nationalism.

The old system is dead, but there will be no successor until governments are brave enough to issue the certificate. Until that point, there’s only one thing these interminable, soul-sapping talks will save: face.

Article by George Monbiot, appearing courtesy Celsias.

References:

1. http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/news/pn11_41/pn11_41.aspx

2.http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/climate_change/gg_emissions/uk_emissions/2009_final/2009_final.aspx

3. Steven J. Davis1 and Ken Caldeira, 23rd March 2010. Consumption-based accounting of CO2 emissions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 107, no. 12, pp 5687–5692. doi/10.1073/pnas.0906974107

http://www.pnas.org/content/107/12/5687.full.pdf+html

4. http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.pdf

5. Glen P. Peters, Jan C. Minx, Christopher L. Weber and Ottmar Edenhofer, 25th April 2011. Growth in emission transfers via international trade from 1990 to 2008. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. doi:10.1073/pnas.1006388108.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/04/19/1006388108.full.pdf+html

6. As above .

7. http://www.monbiot.com/2010/05/05/carbon-graveyard/

8. http://www.carbontrust.co.uk/events/events-resources/Documents/2010-10-footprinting-and-labelling-brief-PT.pdf

9. http://climatesafety.org/uks-total-emissions-set-to-rise-new-data-obtained-by-pirc/

10. http://www.monbiot.com/2008/07/01/green-lifeline/

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Carbon emission reductions achieved since 1990 by the world’s developed nations were canceled out many times over by the increase of imported goods from nations without binding emissions targets, including China, according to a new report.

While climate policies, including the Kyoto Protocol, stabilized carbon emissions in many wealthy nations from 1990 to 2008, most of these nations increased their “consumption-based” emissions significantly during this period because of large imports, according to the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study, which the authors call the first global assessment of how international trade affected national carbon footprints since Kyoto, says that while developed nations reduced their CO2 emissions by 2 percent from 1990 to 2008, those emissions actually increased by 7 percent when imports were factored in.

“This suggests that the current focus on territorial emissions in a subset of countries may be ineffective at reducing global emissions without some mechanisms to monitor and report emissions from the production of imported goods and services,” said Glen Peters of the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research and lead author of the study.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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In 2001, Japan noted that most of their energy came from fossil fuels, including over 50 percent from oil, over 16 percent from coal, and more than 13 percent from natural gas. Because of these numbers, Japan released the “Revised Long-Term Energy Supply and Demand Outlook” which emphasized the efficient use of energy and reduction of carbon emissions. Since then, Japan has become one of the global leaders of the international cleantech industry. The impact of cleantech in Japan can be felt on a national and international level.

1) Climate Change Investment. Japan created a fun of $10 billion to assist emerging countries looking to reduce their emissions. This investment project is due to the fact that Japan has had a lot of luck in the cleantech sector, they want to take that impact and bring it to other nations. It is a five year program that will put money aside for climate change mitigation, grants, aid, as well as technical assistance to countries that are looking to make the switch into renewable energy sources. The goal of this is to bring the world closer to what Japan called the “Cool Earth 50” initiative, which is to reduce overall global greenhouse gas emissions by half by the year 2050.

2) Hybrid Subsidizing. To make hybrid vehicles more affordable to the Japanese population, the government is looking into providing subsidies that would cut the cost of a hybrid vehicle by 25 percent. These subsidies would equal out to be about 300,000 Yen, roughly $3,000 USD, and allow more individuals to purchase these environmentally friendly vehicles which would improve air quality. It is a move by the government to support environmentally friendly transportation by making them more cost effective to the public. It is the government’s hope that this program will provide the necessary encouragement for motorists to turn in their new cars for hybrid vehicles.

3) Cleantech Exports Investment. More than $1.6 billion dollars is currently being invested into overseas cleantech projects that involve Japanese companies. It is run by Innovation Network Corporation of Japan and seeks to assist Japanese companies gain contracts overseas in the cleantech sector. The hope is that the projects will provide Japan with carbon credit earning power that they can use to achieve its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 25 percent in 2020. So far, investments have gone to a smart-city project located in India.

4) Action Planning. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has cited that the most important issue when it comes to cleantech is to sustain the cities with affordable energy supplies and reduce carbon emissions. To overcome the energy supply limitations and emissions problem, it has become apparent the need to introduce energy saving techniques into the city. There have been numerous measures implemented to increase the impact of cleantech. This includes reduction of carbon emissions from large facilities, energy saving measures for all new buildings, energy saving techniques at home, reduction measures for vehicle carbon emissions, and a program to introduce renewable energy to energy suppliers.

5) Tokyo Green Building Program. This program began in 2002, at the start of the cleantech revolution in Japan after it was realized that energy consumed in Tokyo office buildings and houses counts for about half of overall energy consumption. This program requires that building owners create plans that would conserve energy and be environmentally-friendly.

6) Leading Innovation Cleantech Race. According to the Clean Energy Patent Growth Index, which indicated the level of innovation in the sector of clean energy, Japan is dominating the index, especially in the areas of energy storage devices and fuel cells, which have received more than 157 patent approvals in just one quarter. Toyota and Nissan, two Japanese automobile manufacturers are leading the patent race in this sector with the first two spots on the index, followed by Japan’s Honda company.

7) Carbon Reduction Goals. Japan is one of the few countries close to reaching their carbon emissions goal, which is a reduction of 25 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2020 through the elevation in the use of renewable energy sources. The government has funded more than $55 billion throughout a five year period toward this plan, and looks to boost solar photovoltaic systems and will make Japan a leader in solar energy and electric cars development and implementation.

8 )Priority of Environment Technologies. Japan is one of the leading countries in the development of environmental technologies because of the intense focus and priority it has received. The reasoning for the high prioritization is mainly Japan’s obligations to upholding the Kyoto Protocol and establishing environmental targets for all sectors, including industry, transportation, commerce, and households. They key sectors in the technologies forefront are clean energy, solar power generation, fuel cells, waste treatment, recycling, and air quality.

9) Japan Renewable Energy Policy Platform. In 2008, the Japan Renewable Energy Policy Platform was created to provide different proposals for policies surrounding renewable energy. To fulfill the vision set to have 60 percent or more of Japan’s total electrical needs satisfied by renewable energy sources and reduce carbon emissions by 75 percent by the year 2050, the platform suggested that local and national governments would need to set clear targets toward renewable energy use for the medium and long term periods, that the public needs to be provided with an understanding and agreement about using renewable energies, and that appropriate strategies be taken to decrease barriers to entry in order to enlarge renewable energy markets.

10) Japan’s residential fuel cell program – ENE-Farm. Within one year of the major utility companies in close partnership with PEM fuel cell developers like Toshiba and Panasonic, the ENE-Farm residential fuel cell brand achieved a nationwide public recognition rate of 71%. This was achieved by an unparalleled degree of cooperation between the corporate players involved and huge resources spent on advertising. Nothing like this level of public awareness has been achieved in any other country, and Japan is now well set to roll out its home fuel cell products to other parts of the world having gained deep experience in the marketplace.

Article by Shawn Lesser, president and founder of Atlanta-based Sustainable World Capital, which is focused on fund-raising for private equity cleantech/sustainable funds, as well as private cleantech companies and M&A. He is also a co- founder of the GCCA Global Cleantech Cluster Association, and can be reached at shawn.lesser@sworldcap.com

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(Reuters) – Japan said it aims to propose an alternative to the Kyoto Protocol in coming months, after criticizing the international climate framework as neither using effective technology nor including major emitters.

Tokyo will come up with a set of proposals to fight global warming beyond 2012, including bilateral agreements between countries on emission offsets generated by the use of clean-energy technology, government officials said on Thursday.

The move underlined Japan’s urgent need to regain the trust of developing countries, many of which have blamed Japan’s opposition to extending the Kyoto Protocol for causing a major delay in U.N.-led climate talks.

“We are not at all looking backward. We now think we should come up with a Japan proposal,” said Ikuro Sugawara, director-general at the trade ministry’s industrial science and technology policy and environment bureau.

“We should draw a vision of what the globe should be, use Japan’s wisdom (on clean-energy technology) and propose what can be done with the remaining 96 percent of emissions,” he said at a meeting of the ministry’s climate policy advisory panel.

At the last U.N. meeting in Cancun, Mexico, at the end of 2010, governments put off tough decisions until this year on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Japan at that time argued that Kyoto is out of date because it covers less than 30 percent of current global emissions, including a 4 percent share for Japan, and fails to provide a solution.

The protocol, whose current round ends in 2012, obliges almost 40 rich countries — except the United States — to cut emissions or face penalties.

Last week, Prime Minister Naoto Kan made public, albeit with few details, Japan’s intention to take the lead in areas of the environment this year.

“In addition to the existing framework for environmental countermeasures … I would like to put forth a new international initiative addressing Asian environmental challenges in particular,” Kan said in a speech on foreign policy.

The internal process to come up with such a proposal in Japan will have little to do with a split parliament, which makes it difficult to pass bills related to next fiscal year’s budget as well as those for policy measures on domestic emission cuts.

Article by Risa Maeda; Edited by Jane Baird; appearing courtesy Reuters.

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It’s no secret that, regardless of how the world addresses the challenge of reducing global carbon emissions, buildings are going to be a central part of the puzzle. Buildings represent about one-third of emissions worldwide and provide some of the quickest and most cost-effective ways to reduce carbon emissions.

The problem right now is that it’s hard to certify that an investment in energy efficiency measures for new and existing buildings will actually reduce carbon. For countries establishing long-term carbon reduction goals as well as corporations seeking business opportunities in the growing carbon management solutions market, that represents a major barrier.

National governments can meet their internal and Kyoto Protocol carbon emission reduction targets by establishing national policies and carbon reduction plans for buildings over which they have jurisdiction (i.e., buildings in their own country). But that leaves a lot of untapped investment opportunities in other countries that could actually be more cost effective.

Certification programs around the world, such as LEED, are starting to fold carbon considerations into their certification criteria to ensure that buildings keep carbon emissions down. But if, say, LEED measures carbon one way and HQE measures it differently, these programs may not serve as bulletproof ways to tie buildings into national carbon reduction plans.

However, a group of industry players, led by UNEP’s Sustainable Buildings and Climate Initiative (SBCI) has been working over the last few years to address the inconsistencies in carbon measurement techniques around the world. The group has been working to develop clear and transferable carbon metrics (known as the Common Carbon Metric) that can be used to measure carbon reductions in buildings, whether it’s a new office park in Mumbai or a retrofit program in Rio de Janeiro.

One of the group’s recent breakthroughs was to enable Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects to use these new metrics in CDM building projects. The CDM is a program that allows Annex I countries (i.e., the majority of developed countries) to invest in carbon reduction projects in developing countries and claim the carbon reductions for their Kyoto Protocol carbon reduction targets.

While building projects have technically been eligible for CDM status for the last ten years, inconsistencies in the methods for measuring carbon from CDM projects have made CDM projects for buildings prohibitively expensive. By making the Common Carbon Metric a viable pathway to measuring and certifying carbon reductions, it will be much easier for developed countries to invest in carbon-reducing building projects in the future.

That also means that energy efficiency vendors and service providers can expect new business opportunities in carbon management to open up, particularly in the developing world. As buildings will represent some of the most attractive early entry points for carbon investment no matter where, they will figure prominently into the carbon management market going forward. About $3.8 billion will be invested in just the software and services associated with buildings across a variety of sectors by 2015 – not to mention the additional revenue streams created for the companies that actually install the efficient building systems that will provide those carbon reductions.

Article by Eric Bloom.

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