Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who is the Greenest of them All?

Which country’s younger people are most committed to reducing the impact of climate change by letting their behaviour influence and encourage reducing carbon dioxide emissions? The young people who are aged today between 18 and 25 will, in a few short years, be wealthy and will be spending their wealth. Their expenditure will influence environmental behaviour far more than their votes.

Making savings in climate change expenditure

Every Department of the United Kingdom government has to make savings. It is important to understand that this is a necessary process to secure future prosperity. I do not know (and frankly no one knows for sure) whether the Labour plan to spend our way out of recession or the Coalition plan to make savings is the best plan for the nation.

When having the great and the good is not great enough and not good enough

I wrote about the Energy Savings Trust on 27^th November 2007. The EST is a typically British compromise response to the problems of energy security, climate change and fuel poverty. An agency is formed, with the great and the good and the representatives mainly of the government and fossil fuel industry on the board of directors and it is “owned” by the government and the fossil fuel energy companies. There are no representatives from the renewable industry at all at board level in the Energy Savings Trust.

Suing their wrappers off; journalists upset Tesco

You can sue the pants off someone, but you cannot sue the wrapping off.

 

Yesterday I blogged about Tesco’s noble aspiration which was to help its customers tackle climate change. The way Tesco decided to help its customers tackle climate change was to label twenty items that it sells with a carbon footprint. There, job done! Tesco can get back to its core business in many parts of the world, including Thailand, knowing that they have helped their customers tackle climate change.

Labelling supermarket items with carbon details

Knowledge is critical, for without knowledge we cannot make meaningful choices. Unfortunately when it comes to carbon emissions knowledge is fairly meaningless unless it is comprehensive. That is why when it comes to moderating our own carbon emissions behaviour we should accumulate our knowledge which should then help us in actions which concentrate on the easy carbon savings first.

 

I have just returned from Portugal where everyone I met who heard that I was in the solar thermal business proudly told me that Portugal had new laws which degrees that solar panels must be fitted to every building in the course of construction or the course of refurbishment.

Energy Savings Trust – Trusting to save energy with a green barometer

The Energy Savings Trust is the United Kingdom’s agency for helping individuals (as opposed to businesses) to save energy. It does focus on energy savings, as its title suggests) but has some expertise in renewables. There is no specific government agency that promotes the use of micro generated renewable energy, but you would expect that in a government that straddles responsibility for energy, renewables, and climate change and carbon emissions over many different departments and whose energy minister does not have cabinet rank.

The Carbon Trust gets audited

The Carbon Trust has been audited by the Audit Commission and has passed its audition. The Trust spends around £100 million a year advising businesses on how to save carbon and it is reckoned that this expenditure on advice saves somewhere between 1.2 million tonnes and 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year. That is a large difference for an auditor to cope with, but the methodology of measuring emission savings is still not robust and will probably never be entirely satisfactory.