Category Archives: English

New Report: Carbon Footprint Estimation Boundaries shows dramatic lack of Methodology

Posted on 2008/09/02 by | Leave a comment


“Do the Tier 1 and 2 estimates provide reasonable guidance?”
“Nearly two-thirds of all economic sectors providign goods and services (…) would have less than 25% of their total carbon footprint represented by Tiers 1 and 2.”

These are just two statements from a recently published report. “The Importance of Carbon Footprint Estimation Boundaries” was published by H. Scott Matthews et.al. from the Carnegie Mellon University in the Environmental Science&Technology Viewpoint. I read about it on ClimateBiz.

The survey analyzed existing methodologies for calculating carbon footprints, which are mainly focusing on so called Tier 1 and 2 emissions. These are emissions from the direct energy-consumption and indirect emissions of purchased electricity and steam. This view makes definetly sense for e.g. power plants. But these are already under investigation through the Kyoto-protocol or similar guidelins.
The researchers porpose to extend the existing three Tiers yet another fourth tier. This Tier 4 should include the total life-cycle emissins for production (reflected in Tier 3) plus delivery, use and end-of-live.

The extension makes from my point of view and my daily experience with customers really sense since most companies which would like to contribut to voluntary climate protection can really focus on their main emission sources. I call those sources the sensitive positions in a balance or carbon footprint. Many times only a few sensitive positions determine the outcome considerably.

This study is the second recommendation after the statement of the European Commission (EPLCA) which clearly advise to get the whole picture by apply a life-cycle approach. And for sure there will be more to come soon from a well known international body – trust me.

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Carbon Calculators: Identical Values but different results

Posted on 2008/08/07 by | Leave a comment

As posted today on ClimateBiz researchers from the Vanderbilt University and the University of Washington published a study on carbon calculators for an individual’s carbon footprint. The results among the 10 analyzed calculators varied by as much as several metric tons. Also the majority of the calculators lack of a proper information about the methodology and estimations behind the calculation. This is a common problem with most calculators on the internet. Without the knowledge of the methodology and an error estimation the outcomes are nearly useless.

The study is available here.

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Carbon Labelling in the UK

Posted on 2008/07/10 by | 1 comment

A new report from the Forum of the Future explores carbon labelling of products and the effects on shopping behaviour. I read about it at the ClimateBiz Newsletter.
Especiall the UK companies are very active setting standards and defining labels. Therfore also the UK customers are quite familiar with those new labels but on the other hand – as all of us – quite unsure how to rate them. It’s the same “problem” as with other labels on food. The customer will most likely tend to buy a labelled product. But there is always some doubt left: what does this really mean, is it the best label, who is defining the standards, who can assign this label,…?
These and many other questions may arise as today a variety of different labels are on the market – some are very good described but most of them are just poor colorfoul pictures without any relevance. If you can not find detailed information about all your questions – Keep your hands off!

You can download the report here.

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Are you still considered as a hippie?

Posted on 2008/06/20 by | Leave a comment


Yesterday I had an interesting discussion with a designer. He is facing the problem that his colleagues think that he went crazy since he thinks about “green design”. Talking about sustainable or green is not only a trick to sell products to the young LOHAS-community. Normally you have to think about a proper production, a low-energy usage and a simple recycling anway. This is somenthing every student learns in the first lessons. I wonder everytime when people come up with an twenty-year old approach just trying to find new ways to sell their old-fashioned products. Everybody should think about how he can do his way on the sustainable road. And this does NOT mean that we should stop driving cars and flying to Hawaii. I just say that we all should think a bit more how we can really make change happen. And don’t be upset when the world is not chaning today – progress is a bit slow.

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Get together with GreenDrinks

Posted on 2008/05/09 by | Leave a comment



Catch up with people in your region and all over the world by visiting the monthly (informal) meetings know as Green drinks. Simply contact the local contact and meet up for a beer or dinner. I joined the group in Munich called MUS. Looking forward to meet you there.

Please find more here.

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Search green and keep updated

Posted on 2008/04/23 by | 1 comment

Flock released on the Earth Day a “Eco-Edition” of their browser.
Not only that they donate 10% of the revenue generated by searchers to green organisations. They provide a huge variety of information on relevant news, blogs and social-networking.

Learn more or download l

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Green IT Trends

Posted on 2008/04/04 by | Leave a comment


The prominence of Green IT is growing every day. According to a new report from Forrester Research one of the five Green IT trends will be the end-of-live managment.

This means that initiatives in the IT will also stretch to other parts of the company. More and more divisions of the companies have ongoing or at least planned “green projects”. Now they merge in most cases to a single company strategy. But not only other parts of the own company are affected – also distributors and resellers should be aware of this trend. Under the life-cycle-approach everybody who is involved in generating a service or the production of a product will be influenced.

Sustainability is one of the major concers in the information and communication technology (ICT). But efforts should not be scaled down to green electricity. Only if I’m aware of the current situation and the coherences, the right decisions can be made. An organisation has to benchmark the current position. Companies don’t have to green their complete organisation at once. The proper starting point and a sophisticated mid-term strategy are crucial. Considerably important is a holistic view on the company processes.
Among those are

  • energy efficiency,
  • resource management,
  • environmental impact,
  • measurement and monitoring systems,
  • IT infrastructure for devices and building,
  • mobility generated communication,
  • regulations and laws.

Only a mature strategy, based on approved regulations, will allow continued focus and improvement.

Source: Greenercomputing.com

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Green Money

Posted on 2008/03/28 by | Leave a comment


Modern green lifestyle has a big impact on the economy. Not only that (seemingly) green products were preferred. Also the whole financial sector offers green investment possibilities. More and more customers with long-run personal decisions try to invest their money not only green but also under social or ethnical aspects. Banks and investment companies are offering various products or funds to meet the requirements. Recently I read about an Austrian shoe factory. They offered – beside their nice shoes – also a possibility to invest in their new solar system. In return the customer gets fixed interests over several years. This fits perfectly to their business approach to produce high-value shoes in an eco-friendly production. Particularly companies from the energy and environemt industry are in the focus of investors. It is quite easy these days to get capital also if your idea is not that elaborate. Investors and companies are not only looking for a high income return. They also look for a quite conscience. But this is something which you can still not buy. You have to proof your (green or social) responsibility in many ways – not only by investing in some green start-ups. Without an integral and sustainable strategy with proven results nobody will have success in the long run.

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How should I measure my Carbon Footprint?

Posted on 2008/03/17 by | Leave a comment


Many people these days talk about their ambitions to buy carbon offsets to make their business a bit greener. But at least in the voluntary market it is quite nebulous how they made the first step of this process: the calculation of their CO2-emissions.

Many of them simply take the energy-bill from the last year and multiply the kilowatt hours with some emission factors they found in the internet. Of course this sarcastic approach is not on the agenda of every company. Most of them really try to find some guidelines or even standards to carry out their emission calculations properly.

One approach could be the GHG Protocol (http://www.ghgprotocol.org/) which provides descriptive reporting methods and contains also motivational reasons for GHG reporting. Another similar document is the standard ISO 14064 et seqq. which only real difference is the treatment of indirect emissions. Last December ISO, WRI and WBCSD announced a cooperation on the accounting and verification of GHG.

The European Commission (EPLCA) has also recognized the demand for carbon footprint information. A leaflet was issued in late 2007 which clearly indicates that “a carbon footprint is a life cycle assessment with the analysis limited to emissions that have an effect on climate change”. (http://lca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/) According to this the carbon footprint is a sub-set of the data covered by the Life Cycle Assessmet (LCA) with the standardized methods from ISO 14040 et seqq. .

All documents adress the important methodological questions such as completeness, accuracy, system boundaries and the robustness of the indicators. One of the most important questions is, if the individual calculation reflects all life-cycle impacts of services or goods used. If not the findings could be misconceived.

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