Telehouse London switches to 100% renewable energy

Last week data centre company Telehouse announced that it's London Docklands data centre site ‘now purchases 100% renewable energy’ from UK provider SmartestEnergy. The data centre houses the IT infrastructure of almost 500 major international organisations.
SmartestEnergy is the UK’s leading purchaser and supplier of electricity from independent generators. The renewable energy it provides to Telehouse comes from projects throughout the UK using a variety of sources including wind, solar, hydropower and anaerobic digestion.
It’s a further step for Telehouse in its commitment to reduce its carbon footprint. The Telehouse London sites have already been awarded the Carbon Trust Standard, which certifies that an organisation has measured, managed and reduced its carbon emissions across its own operations and is committed to further reductions in the future.
Tokuji Mitsui, managing director of Telehouse and KDDI Europe, pointed out that "The majority of electricity supplied to us is utilised by our clients, therefore it is integral that we take on initiatives such as the 100% green energy supply, which in turn benefits our customer's credentials by reducing their carbon footprint. We intend to roll out this green partnership initiative with SmartestEnergy to all our European sites in the near future."

Well the press release is not absolutely clear. Some energy may be 100% renewable (in the UK ‘green’ energy is sometimes only that with a high renewable proportion), but it may not mean that all your energy comes from renewable sources. In this case, though, it does seem that Telehouse London now only uses renewable energy.
It will certainly make it easier for customers to assess their ICT carbon footprint with the knowledge that there are no Scope 3 (indirect) emissions from this part of their external service delivery. Among the sort of customers that Telehouse has, the question about supplier emissions will certainly have started to be asked.

Source: http://www.thegreenitreview.com/2011/12/telehouse-london-switches-to-100.html

Humpback whales' record breeding

Monday, December 12, 2011 » 03:54am

Australian wildlife experts are celebrating after what is believed to be the best humpback whale breeding season for 50 years.
Hundreds of mothers with newborn calves have been spotted migrating south past Australia to the cooler waters of Antarctica.
Geoff Ross, from the National Parks And Wildlife Service in New South Wales, told Sky News: 'It's been a really cracking year.
'The season used to go from June to just after July, but it is now going on for much longer and we have seen many calves.'
Earlier in the year 2,202 whales were counted during daylight hours passing Sydney's Cape Solander as they headed north to breed.
Now the humpbacks are returning south, with skippers on whale-watching boats as well as crews on commercial ships all saying there has been a definite increase in numbers, especially of juveniles.
The humpback and southern right whale populations off Australia's coast are slowly recovering after commercial whaling ended in the 1960s.
'It is excellent news,' said Mr Ross, adding 'the migration is longer, they are swimming more slowly, they are almost carefree.'
The population is growing by about 10% each year, but in Antarctica whales are still at risk from humans.
Activists have left Australia and are also heading south to try and disrupt Japanese whalers, who mainly hunt minke whales in Antarctic waters.
Last season, Japan cut short its annual whale hunt after it was obstructed on the water by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
This year, Japan plans to send a patrol ship to protect its whaling crews.
Andrea Gordon from Sea Shepherd said: 'The Japanese whaling fleet just got an infusion of an extra $30m to continue their whaling programme and Sea Shepherd has a volunteer crew funded by donations.
'We would be more than happy to step aside if the Australian government would send a fleet down to enforce international law.'
Australia has condemned Japan's decision to continue whaling, but Tokyo claims Sea Shepherd's activities are illegal harassment.
Japan introduced 'scientific whaling' to skirt a commercial ban on hunting the animals.
Last year, Australia filed a complaint against Japan at the world court in The Hague to stop scientific whaling in the Southern Ocean.
The decision is expected to come in 2013 at the earliest.
Source: http://bigpondnews.com/articles/Environment/2011/12/12/Humpback_whales_record_breeding_695582.html

Report details climate change in Pacific

Updated December 07, 2011 21:42:55

Photo: Tuvaluans fear rising sea levels will render their Polynesian archipelago uninhabitable. (Torsten Blackwood: AFP)

A new report shows for the first time detailed projections of the effects of climate change on the Pacific's 15 small island states.

The three-year study by Australia's CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology predicts increased air and sea temperatures, more extreme rainfall days, a more acidic ocean and rising sea levels
It is the first time the island states have received an official climate change projection.
Dr Gillian Chambers from the CSIRO says the Pacific islands are facing major challenges.
"We're looking at air and sea surface temperatures which are going to continue to rise over this century," she said.
"In particular there's going to be large increases in the number of very hot days and warmer nights as well.
"If we're looking at rainfall, generally we see that basically there's going to be an increase in rainfall over the region and perhaps what's most significant is that there's going to be more of the really heavy rainfall events."
Dr Chambers warns the changes will lead to an increase in ocean acidification and rising sea levels.
And she says there is likely to be fewer tropical cyclones, but "the ones we do get will be more intense".

Audio: Pacific islanders facing dramatic change (The World Today)

Dr Chambers says Pacific island states are especially vulnerable because they rely on the sea for the livelihoods.
"Particularly if we're looking at the oceans, then a large percentage of the populations in the Pacific islands, they depend on what we call subsistence farming, a subsistence style of living, which is very much dependent on the land and the resources and to the sea and its resources as well," she said.
"So there's already a very delicate balance between what they take and what's available on land and in the sea and many of the changes we're seeing in the climate and the ocean, it's sort of tipping that balance, certainly not in the favour of the Pacific islanders."

Gradual process

The idea is that the report will empower the island states to adapt to the effects of climate change. Considering the size of their economies it will be difficult, but Dr Chambers says they have time.
"What the Pacific climate change science program has done is really provide them with the sound scientific information, the best that we have now, as to what's going to happen around 2030, around the middle of the century and around the end of the century," she said.
"That information then has to be translated into how this is going to affect the Pacific - say a taro crop or a banana crop or an orange crop.
"So there's a lot more steps that have to be taken by the Pacific island nations in order to build these projected climate changes into their future development."
She says the report's results are generally in line with global projections and will help island nations adapt to climate change.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-07/report-details-climate-change-in-pacific/3717694

Last decade equals warmest on record: UN

Thirteen of the warmest years recorded have occurred within the last decade and a half, the United Nations' World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said.

The year 2011 caps a decade that ties the record as the hottest ever measured, the WMO said in its annual report on climate trends and extreme weather events, unveiled at UN climate talks in Durban, South Africa.
"Our science is solid and it proves unequivocally that the world is warming and that this warming is due to human activities," WMO secretary-general Michel Jarraud said in a statement, adding policy makers should take note of the findings.
"Concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached new highs and are very rapidly approaching levels consistent with a two to 2.4 Celsius rise in average global temperatures."
Scientists believe any rise above the 2.0 threshold could trigger far-reaching and irreversible changes on Earth over land and in the seas.
The 2002-2011 period equals 2001-2010 as the warmest decade since 1850, the report said.
2011 ranks as the 10th warmest year since 1850, when accurate measurements began.
This was true despite a La Nina event - one of the strongest in 60 years - that developed in the tropical Pacific in the second half of 2010 and continued until May 2011.
The report noted that the cyclical climate phenomenon, which strikes every three to seven years, helped drive extreme weather events, including drought in east Africa, islands in the central equatorial Pacific and the southern United States.
It also aggravated flooding in southern Africa, eastern Australia and southern Asia.
While La Nina and its meteorological cousin El Nino are not caused by climate change, rising ocean temperatures caused by global warming may affect their intensity and frequency, scientists say.
Delegates from almost 200 nations have gathered in Durban for the UN Climate Change Conference.
Countries are expected to make a last effort to save the dying Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005.
The talks are the last chance to set another round of targets before the first commitment period ends in 2012.
The European Union is willing to sign up for a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol but other signatories, including Russia, Japan and Canada, are not.
The United States - the world's second biggest emitter after China - never ratified the protocol.
Major developing nations with surging economies, such as China and India, were not covered in the first commitment period as they were classified as emerging economies.

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-29/past-15-years-warmest3a-un/3702564

Tackling hunger and climate change: from farm to fork

On the third annual Agriculture and Rural Development Day taking place in Durban, South Africa on December 3rd, governments will be grappling with an apparently unsolvable conundrum; how to feed a world that recently crossed the seven billion population mark, while reducing the contribution of agriculture to global climate change?
The recent price drop of wheat, maize and other grains offers a much needed relief in a food crisis that has been going on for too long, and has left many people hungry or starving. However, in many countries, the price of some of our basic staples such as bread, rice, flour, milk and meat has continued to rise. And around the world, continuously unstable food prices are making it impossible to predict how much food will cost from one month to the next.
Many of the factors that contribute to hunger and unstable food prices are intimately linked to those that make the world’s farming systems ecologically unsustainable.
One big factor is oil. The industrial farming methods that are used to grow much of the world’s food are highly dependent on oil, not only for fuelling machinery but also to manufacture the chemical fertilisers and pesticides used to maintain high crop yields.
The use of oil in agriculture undermines soil health, pollutes local water systems and erodes biodiversity. Clearing land to make room for agricultural production replaces diverse natural vegetation with farms that grow just one crop. The oil that is needed to run farm machinery contributes, together with the inefficient use of fertilisers and animal feed production, to global greenhouse gas emissions and thus to climate change. Industrial agriculture also ties the cost of farming and hence food prices closely to changes in the price of oil, which have risen sharply over the past few years.
Food production has become increasingly globalised, and the road from farm to fork stretches around the world, with transport and refrigeration adding to increased levels of emissions. With a handful of corporations exerting a stranglehold over the entire supply chain, local communities are losing control over their food and farming systems, driving both hunger and environmental degradation.
In much of the developing world, governments and farmers are pressured by corporations and institutions like the World Bank into growing crops for export instead of for local consumption, usually using intensive farming methods that damage the local environment. With decreasing soil quality, rising costs of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and giant corporations taking over the food market, small-scale food producers in poor countries are being hit with a double whammy of falling incomes and unpredictable food prices
The COP17 UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, provides an urgently needed opportunity for governments to find a way forward. On 3 December, the focus of the conference will be on the contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas emissions; as well as on the urgent need to help the world’s food producers adapt to the impacts of climate change. The simple fact is that the UN conference should focus on changing the way food is produced. There is overwhelming scientific and field evidence[i] demonstrating that farms that grow a mixture of crops while using ecological fertilisation and pest control methods can cut greenhouse gas emissions and produce more food. These ecological farming methods also reduce the dependency on oil, take good care of soil and water systems, and cut farming households’ costs while providing them with more food.
It’s basically a no-brainer. But the powerful corporate interests that benefit from the current system are trying hard to prevent changes to public subsidies, tax systems and agricultural research and outreach needed to foster the transition from intensive to ecological farming systems.
Greenpeace is campaigning hard in Durban and beyond to ensure governments start listening to sense when it comes to food and farming; for the good of people, as well as the good of the planet.  
Dr Julian Oram is a senior political advisor for Greenpeace International

Source: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/tackling-hunger-and-climate-change-from-farm-/blog/38166/

Mobile company introduces a biodegradable SIM card

French mobile phone company SFR is introducing a ‘paper’ SIM card which is biodegradable and recyclable. Developed by Oberthur Technologies, a French chip card company, apart from the microcontroller itself it consists entirely of natural wood fibres.
Apparently the card performs in the same way as the usually plastic-based versions, but being wood-based has a reduced environmental impact. Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions are 30% less, according to research from SFR.
The card was launched on November 17 with a pilot involving 10,000 cards for new or renewing SFR customers.

Last year the company introduced biodegradable plant-based plastic for its SIM cards, made from a renewable material derived from corn, sugarcane or potato starch. Now it seems to have gone one stage further. The new card apparently only saves about six grams of CO₂e per customer (according to greenIT.fr), equivalent to 132 tonnes of CO₂e across all SFR customers. But, as they say, every little counts.

Source: http://www.thegreenitreview.com/2011/12/mobile-company-introduces-biodegradable.html

China Has No Plans to Limit Carbon Emissions

by Brian McGraw on December 7, 2011

There have been a few news stories out of Durban suggesting that China (the worlds largest CO2 emitter) has turned a corner on carbon emissions and has tentatively agreed to limit them, with Bloomberg running an article titled “China Climate Plan Makes ‘Excited Buzz’ as U.S. Lags: UN Envoy.” What did China actually say?
Ron Bailey, Reason magazine science correspondent reports:

So here’s what China apparently wants the rest of the world to do: (1) agree that China’s greenhouse gas targets can be different from those imposed on rich countries, (2) agree that for the next 9 years rich countries will continue to cut their greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol while China’s continue to grow, (3) agree that no negotiations take place on targets until a scientific review is finished in 2015, and (4) agree that rich countries begin showering poor countries with $100 billion in climate reparations annually. If the rich countries will just do that, China will consent to begin negotiating some kind of “legally binding” treaty after 2020. Frankly, with these preconditions, it seems that China’s current position actually remains pretty much what it has always been: It will accept legally binding limits on its greenhouse gas emissions when Hell freezes over.

China’s best offer is to consider limiting emissions after 2020, still almost a decade away, and only if all the other countries continue to play this game until then. Who can blame them — they are rapidly industrializing and getting wealthier, which requires massive amounts of fossil fuels.
What if future negotiations aren’t successful? China is currently ‘negotiating’ with other countries regarding their annual emissions, it just so happens they are offering zero emissions reductions. Where is the evidence that they will agree to anything sufficient in 2020, when their per capita incomes will still be markedly lower than other developed countries?

Source: http://www.globalwarming.org/2011/12/07/china-has-no-plans-to-limit-carbon-emissions/