The Globe and Mail has a good article on why we need to get away from
our traditional thinking in terms of addressing climate change:
“The
World Bank estimates that a more conservative 200-million new cars will
be on the road in India by 2040, meaning that a new car enters the
system every five seconds. In contrast, Mr. Condon considered his recent
LEED Gold project, four years in the making, which saves an impressive
450 tons of carbon dioxide annually. Every eight minutes, that
accomplishment is cancelled out by the CO2 output of new cars in India.
“In the time I’ve been speaking to you, four years of efforts at
reducing greenhouse emissions from one project have gone,” he says.”
Although
there are some worthy attempts at energy efficiency, most people don’t
understand unless we find solutions that enable the developing world –
particularly India and China- reduce their emissions, then pretty well
anything we do in the developed world is meaningless. But we also need
to understand that we need to “sequester” carbon. Building more energy
efficient cars or avoiding travel in the developed world does not or
slow down the rate of GHG emissions in the developing world.
I was
recently at an ITU sponsored Green ICT where I heard the usual
platitudes from various well meaning people on how they were going to
reduce emissions. One speaker from a major telco mentioned how their
organization had saved millions liters of transport gasoline and
hundreds of millions of air travel through the use of tele-commuting
and video-conferencing. The telco falsely claims they have saved
thousands of tons of CO2. I asked where are those millions of litres of
gasoline and the empty planes sitting on tarmacs as a result of these
policies? If you can’t sequester the carbon then that means those
millions litres of gasoline and empty seats can be resold to someone
else ( perhaps at a cheaper price) and the CO2 impact remains the same.
That
is why I argue that only meaningful measurement standard to genuinely
prove that you are helping the environment is ISO 14064. With ISO 14064
you must go through a rigorous process to prove carbon sequestration.
And that is why, to date, virtually no “energy efficiency” project, or
applications such as video conferencing, telecommuting etc has been
able to meet the ISO 14064 requirements.
In the ICT world there
have been some incredible claims by SMART 2020 and IEA that ICT can save
15-20% of all CO2 emissions – but with no rigorous ISO 14064
methodology. I suspect, as with most other such energy efficiency
claims these will all turn out to be bogus. If we continue on our
current path ICT is not going to be a green champion but the ultimate
environmental bad boy. It is already the fastest growing sector in terms
of GHG emissions.
It is also interesting to note that the Carbon
Disclosure Project estimates that collectively corporations and
governments spend $690 billion per year mostly on energy efficiency and
yet global GHG emissions continue not only to rise, but are now
accelerating.
There is a message here.
We have to stop
this mantra of green washing and tokenism of energy efficiency. We
need to focus on radical solutions that genuinely can be measured and
certified to reduce or eliminate GHG emissions. That means we have to
focus on the real problem – which is the type of energy we use and not
how much we consume. It is dirty energy that produces CO2. That is why
we need ICT solutions that will only use renewable energy. The
Greenstar project is one great example. Using eVehicles for energy
transport and building Energy Internet is another. For more examples please see.
Globe and Mail: Only radical thinking will solve environmental problems
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/growth/only-radical-thinking-will-solve-environmental-problems/article2447562/print/
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R&E Network and Green Internet Consultant.
email: Bill.St.Arnaud@gmail.com
twitter: BillStArnaud
blog: http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
skype: Pocketpro
