BRUSSELS, Belgium, September 16, 2008 (ENS) – After poverty, climate change is the most serious problem Europe faces according to a Eurobarometer survey presented in the European Parliament on September 11.

The poll found that 61 percent of respondents have taken some personal action to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. A quarter of those said they had changed their buying habits and used the car less to help the environment.

At the same time, the poll found that a majority believe that the people, governments, industry or the European Union are not doing enough about the warming climate.

The survey of over 30,000 people in 30 European countries found that 31 percent had not taken any action to change their behavior on account of the climate. Of those, almost half said they believe that government and industry should take action, while just over a third did not know what they should do.

The survey was conducted in all 27 EU member states as well as in the three candidate countries – Turkey, Croatia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.

Those who have taken action said they believe it would make a difference, that they had a duty to protect the environment or were concerned about what they would leave for future generations.

Eurostar and Thalys high speed trains await
passengers at Paris Gare du Nord. (Photo
credit unknown)

Across Europe, 28 percent of respondents said they use greener transport and 27 percent buy seasonal and local products that reduce CO2 emissions.

The results were presented at a press conference in the European Parliament by Italian MEP Guido Sacconi, who chairs the parliament’s Temporary Committee on Climate Change.

“The fact that many Europeans say that they do not have enough information, in particular on the actions that citizens could take, clearly indicates that we have to think about initiatives and measures to spread this knowledge more widely, especially among the most vulnerable groups of our population,” said Sacconi. “The role of regional and local authorities in this task will be crucial.”

Sacconi noted differences in attitudes in different countries, saying he thought the responses of those polled depended on whether or not the country had experienced an ecological disaster.

He cited forest fires and droughts in Greece and Cyprus as two examples of countries where people’s ecological awareness had been raised by natural disasters.

Sweden is the country where most people have taken personal action to help reduce their C02 emissions, with 87 percent of respondents saying they have done something.

By comparison, 60 percent of people in Latvia and Lithuania said they have taken no action.

Royd Moor Wind Farm near Penistone,
South Yorkshire, England (Photo by Ian
Britton courtesy FreeFoto.com)

At the press conference, Europe’s Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas pointed to the stimulating effect that green industry could have on Europe’s economy. He noted that 56 percent of those polled believe that climate change can help the economy.

“Saving energy means saving money, so there is a common logic that citizens consider it to be beneficial for economy,” Dimas said.

He went on to say that “citizens have role to play both as consumers, by choosing to buy the right products, and as voters.”

By the end of this year, Europe’s Environment Ministers meeting in the Council along with elected MEPs should reach an agreement on a package of Europe-wide legislation that will help mitigate climate change.

Dimas called on MEPs and the Council of Ministers not to “dilute” the proposed measures.

Margot Wallstrom, vice-president of the European Commission and a former environment commissioner, said, “Surveys of this kind are important components in our policy-making. It is striking to see that European citizens take the issue of climate change so seriously and it confirms our belief that continued, coherent EU action in this area is imperative.”

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DENVER, Colorado, August 24, 2008 (ENS) – As delegates from across the country converge on Denver for the Democratic National Convention opening Monday, most of them are buying offsets to neutralize the carbon dioxide emitted to power their planes, trains and cars.

This Green Delegate Challenge is part of the Democrats’ year-long effort to make their 2008 national convention the most environmentally sustainable convention in the party’s history.

“We’re committed to using practical, common-sense solutions to limit our impact on the environment and make this convention one of the most sustainably produced events of its kind,” said Leah Daughtry, chief executive of the Democratic National Convention Committee.

Convention organizers estimate convention activities like air travel, ground travel, accommodations and waste will produce an average of one ton of the greenhouse gas CO2 per person.

The podium at the Democratic National
Convention (Photo courtesy DNCC)

To offset the climate-warming effect of that ton of carbon dioxide, delegates are purchasing renewable energy from a portfolio of U.S. projects selected by convention organizers and provided by NativeEnergy. They include wind power for a Colorado school district and a landfill gas-to-energy project in Illinois.

The cost of a carbon offset is modest, just $24 for one person flying 2,500 miles to the convention and back home and staying for five nights in a Denver hotel.

Delegations with the highest percentage of members offsetting their carbon emissions will be recognized in their seating section on the convention floor. All the state delegations are participating and about half of them have chalked up 100 percent participation.

For the first time, the carbon footprint of the whole convention is being calculated. Energy-efficiency for reduction of CO2 emissions is the goal, but where carbon emissions are unavoidable, the DNCC will buy NativeEnergy carbon offsets to neutralize them.

When delegates and media arrive at the convention, they will find compact fluorescent, LED and solar powered lighting, and generators fueled by biodiesel. A percentage of the power supplied to convention venues will be generated by wind farms and purchased by the venues through Green-e certified renewable energy credits.

There are many alternatives to gasoline and petroleum diesel for transportation around Denver.

Freewheelin, the nation’s largest bike-sharing program rolled into Denver this afternoon, bringing 1,000 bikes to the Democratic National Convention for free use all week. Developed by health-benefits company Humana and bike-advocacy group Bikes Belong, the Freewheelin program will also bring 1,000 bikes to Minneapolis-St. Paul for the Republican convention during the first week in September.

The Pepsi Center, the Convention Center, the DNCC Headquarters Hotel and the DNCC offices are all located within walking distance of either light rail or the 16th Street mall shuttle, which is run on hybrid buses. Most delegation hotels are also accessible from these public transportation systems.

The buses used to transport delegates and media from all the hotels to the Pepsi Center will be either hybrid, alternative fuel or run on biodiesel. Bus idling will be kept to a minimum to reduce air pollution.

As official vehicle provider, General Motors is offering hybrid, E-85 and high fuel efficiency vehicles for transport during the convention. All DNCC vehicles and bus miles will be tracked and included in the carbon footprint calculations.
C[mg=/UPLOADS/blog/ecommunity_news/blogpost_data/08_08_18/20080824_01_dnccrew.jpg]Crews prepare the convention floor for the
arrival of delegates on Monday. (Photo
courtesy DNCC)[/img]]

Inside the convention center, the DNCC says on its website that “choosing sustainable materials is at the heart of our greening plan.” Sustainable and recyclable service ware, sustainably-harvested wood products, and rented or reused materials are being used to stage the event. Materials used will be measured, tracked and wherever possible, reused or donated to community organizations and schools at the conclusion of the convention, organizers say.

A comprehensive recycling, composting and waste minimization program aims to divert a minimum of 85 percent of all waste from the landfill.

As official recycling provider, Coca-Cola will recover and recycle all paper products, plastic bottles and aluminum cans recovered at all official convention venues. The company will also provide biodegradable bags, liners, and recycling bins for material recovery. Coca-Cola will use energy-efficient coolers and vending machines to supply beverages and will deliver the beverages on hybrid electric delivery trucks.

The environment in and around Denver will benefit from the work of more than 1,000 convention delegates who will volunteer at community service sites on the first-ever Delegate Service Day on August 27, co-chaired by Michelle Obama and Colorado First Lady Jeannie Ritter.

Graffiti and litter will be cleaned up in downtown Denver and at Stapleton and groups of delegates will restore areas of Cherry Creek State Park, Confluence Park, and Bicentennial Park as well as the historic Curtis Park neighborhood bordering downtown Denver.

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WASHINGTON, DC, March 18, 2008 (ENS) – The biggest single year increase in greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants in nine years occurred in 2007, finds a new analysis by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project. The finding of a 2.9 percent rise in carbon dioxide emissions over 2006 is based on an analysis of data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Now the largest factor in the U.S. contribution to climate change, the electric power industry’s emissions of carbon dioxide, CO2, have risen 5.9 percent since 2002 and 11.7 percent since 1997, the analysis shows.

Texas tops the list of the 10 states with the biggest one-year increases in CO2 emissions, with Georgia, Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Virginia and North Carolina close behind.

The top three states – Texas, Georgia and Arizona – had the greatest increases in CO2 emissions on a one, five and 10 year basis.

TXU’s coal-fired Martin Lake power
plant in east Texas (Photo
credit unknown)

Director of the Environmental Integrity Project Eric Schaeffer said, “The current debate over global warming policy tends to focus on long-term goals, like how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent over the next 50 years. But while we debate, CO2 emissions from power plants keep rising, making an already dire situation worse.”

“Because CO2 has an atmospheric lifetime of between 50 and 200 years, today’s emissions could cause global warming for up to two centuries to come,” he warned.

Data from 2006 show that the 10 states with the least efficient power production relative to resulting greenhouse gas emissions were North Dakota, Wyoming, Kentucky, Indiana, Utah, West Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri, and Iowa.

The report explains why national environmental groups are fighting to stop the construction of new conventional coal-fired power plants, which they say would make a bad situation worse.

“For example” the report points out, “the eight planned coal-fired plants that TXU withdrew in the face of determined opposition in Texas would have added an estimated 64 million tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, increasing emissions from power plants in that state by 24 percent.”

Some of the rise in CO2 emissions comes from existing coal fired power plants, the analysis found, either because these plants are operating at increasingly higher capacities, or because these aging plants require more heat to generate electricity. “For example, all of the top 10 highest emitting plants in the nation, either held steady or increased CO2 output from 2006 to 2007.”

Robert W Scherer Power Plant is a coal-fired
plant just north of Macon, Georgia.
It emits more carbon dioxide than
any other point in the United States.
(Photo credit unknown)

Georgia Power’s Scherer power plant near Macon, Georgia is the highest emitting plant in the nation. It pumped out 27.2 million tons of CO2 in 2007, up roughly two million tons from the year before.

In view of these facts, the Environmental Integrity Project recommends that the nation’s oldest and dirtiest power plants should be retired, and replaced with cleaner sources of energy. That will require accelerating the development of wind power and other renewable sources of energy.

Another good solution is cutting greenhouse gases quickly by reducing the demand for electricity, the authors advise. Smarter building codes, and funding low-cost conservation efforts, such as weatherization of low-income homes, purchase and installation of more efficient home and business appliances will reduce demand and yield greenhouse gas benefits.

Texas tops every state measurement in the report from the most carbon dioxide measured in total tons to the largest increases in CO2 emissions over the last five years between 2002 and 2007.

Ken Kramer, director of the Lone Star chapter of the Sierra Club based in Austin, Texas, says his state not only has more emissions than any other state – it has solutions to offer, such as a recent boom in wind power installations.

“The bad news is that Texas is #1 in carbon emissions among the 50 states, and our emissions have grown in recent years,” Kramer said. “The good news is that Texas has the potential to play a major role in addressing global warming if we embrace smart energy solutions such as energy efficiency and renewable energy, solutions which pose tremendous economic as well as environmental benefits.”

In Des Moines, Mark Kresowik, Iowa organizer of the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign, said, “Energy efficiency and renewable energy are powering a renaissance in rural Iowa and creating thousands of new manufacturing jobs for our state. By rejecting coal plants and reducing pollution through energy efficiency and renewable energy our states will prosper and attract new businesses and young workers for the future.”

The consumption of electricity accounted for more than 2.3 billion tons of CO2 in 2006, or more than 39.5 percent of total emissions from human sources, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. Coal-fired power plants alone released more than 1.9 billion tons, or nearly one third of the U.S. total.

The Department of Energy projects that carbon dioxide emissions from power generation will increase 19 percent between 2007 and 2030, due to new or expanded coal plants.

An additional 4,115 megawatts of new coal-fired generating capacity was added between 2000 and 2007, with another 5,000 megawatts expected by 2012.

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SAN DIEGO, California, March 11, 2008 (ENS) – The growth in China’s emissions of the primary greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, CO2, is far greater than previous estimates, making the goal of stabilizing atmospheric greenhouse gases much more difficult, finds a new analysis by economists at the University of California.

The authors of the study, Maximillian Auffhammer, UC Berkeley assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics, and Richard Carson, UC San Diego professor of economics, based their findings upon pollution data from China’s 30 provincial entities.

Auffhammer said the study should serve as an alarm challenging the belief that actions taken by the wealthy, industrialized nations alone represent a viable strategy towards the goal of stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide.

“Making China and other developing countries an integral part of any future climate agreement is now even more important,” said Auffhammer.

“It had been expected that the efficiency of China’s power generation would continue to improve as per capita income increased, slowing down the rate of CO2 emissions growth,” he said.

The Jinzhushan coal-fired power plant
in China’s Hunan province (Photo
courtesy Hunan Datang Xianyi
Technology Co Ltd)

“What we’re finding instead is that the emissions growth rate is surpassing our worst expectations,” he said, “and that means the goal of stabilizing atmospheric CO2 is going to be much, much harder to achieve.”

Previous estimates, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, say the region that includes China will see a 2.5 to five percent annual increase in CO2 emissions between 2004 and 2010.

The new University of California analysis puts that annual growth rate for China to at least 11 percent for the same time period.

Based upon these findings, the authors say current global warming forecasts are “overly optimistic,” and that action is urgently needed to curb greenhouse gas production in China and other rapidly industrializing countries.

The study is scheduled for print publication in the May issue of the “Journal of Environmental Economics and Management,” but is now online.

The researchers’ most conservative forecast predicts that by 2010, there will be an increase of 600 million metric tons of carbon emissions in China over the country’s levels in 2000. This growth from China alone would dramatically overshadow the 116 million metric tons of carbon emissions reductions pledged by all the developed countries in the Kyoto Protocol.

The protocol was never ratified in the United States, which was the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide until 2006, when China became the largest emitter.

The projected annual increase in China alone over the next several years is greater than the current emissions produced by either Great Britain or Germany.

Researchers traditionally calculate the CO2 emissions for a region or country from data on fossil fuel consumption. Existing models then use those emission figures and factor in such variables as population size, a society’s affluence and technology developments to forecast the growth of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Shentou-2 coal-fired power plant
in China’s Shanxi province (Photo
courtesy Skoda Export)

In explaining the startling differences in results from previous estimates for China’s carbon emissions growth, the UC researchers point out that they used province-level figures in their analysis to obtain a more detailed picture of the country’s CO2 emissions up to 2004.

“Everybody had been treating China as single country, but each of the country’s provinces is larger than many European countries, both in geographic size and population,” said Carson.

“In addition, there is a wide range in economic development and wealth from one province to the next, as well as major differences in population growth, all of which has an effect on energy consumption that cannot be easily addressed in models based upon aggregate national data,” he said.

Since data on fossil fuel consumption is not reported at the province level in China, the researchers used waste gas emissions, available from China’s state environmental protection administration reports, as a proxy for CO2 emissions in this paper.

Moreover, the researchers said, the majority of other studies forecasting China’s CO2 emissions relied upon information from nearly a decade ago. During the 1990s, per capita income was growing faster than the use of energy in China, which typically relates to slower growth in carbon emissions.

“A notable shift occurred in China around the year 2000, around the time when hope for an agreement with the U.S. on the Kyoto Protocol began to diminish along with external pressure for China to reduce its emissions,” said Carson. “Energy use started to grow faster than income, and much of the energy that was used wasn’t efficient.”

The authors also pointed out that after 2000, China’s central government began shifting the responsibility for building new power plants to provincial officials who had less incentive and fewer resources to build cleaner, more efficient plants, which save money in the long run but are more expensive to construct.

“Government officials turned away from energy efficiency as an objective to expanding power generation as quickly as they can, and as cheaply as they can,” said Carson. “Wealthier coastal provinces tended to build clean-burning power plants based upon the very best technology available, but many of the poorer interior provinces replicated inefficient 1950s Soviet technology.”

“The problem is that power plants, once built, are meant to last for 40 to 75 years,” said Carson. “These provincial officials have locked themselves into a long-run emissions trajectory that is much higher than people had anticipated. Our forecast incorporates the fact that much of China is now stuck with power plants that are dirty and inefficient.”

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TreeHugger loves to see the power of pop culture put to good use; not only does it offer a fantastic opportunity to spread our green message to a new, hip demographic, but we can be entertained at the same time. As such, we’ve been happily tracking the progress of the music industry as both up and coming and well-established acts put the planet higher and higher on their lives’ set list, if you will. One of the ways they can have the most positive impact — while still being able to play music and entertain fans — is by greening their tours. Whether it’s biodiesel in the bus or carbon portfolios in their back pockets, more and more bands are going green on tour every day. Here are some of our favorites.

1) Jack Johnson [www.treehugger.com] is one of the originators of the green touring stars
2) Barenaked Ladies [www.treehugger.com] are pumping biodiesel, buying carbon offsets for what they can’t reduce or make more efficient, recycling all the way and ditching disposable plates in favor of the real deal.
3) Before Pearl Jam [www.treehugger.com] announced their Carbon Portfolio Strategy and switched to biodiesel on tour, they were offsetting tour-related emissions and working on the “Vote for Change Renewable Energy Project.”
4) British rockers Gomez [www.treehugger.com] partnered up with Clif Bar’s GreenNotes program to fuel their tour with biodiesel, offset the tour’s CO2 emissions, use recycled paper and soy based inks for printed materials and provide organic cotton merchandise options for its fans.
5) Not to be outdone by the young whippersnappers, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young [www.treehugger.com] racked up 220,000 miles last year on tour; powering them all with biodiesel made them 78% cleaner than before, and they ponied up to be carbon neutral in 2006.
6) MTV’s $2 Bill Tour [www.treehugger.com] from 2006 wasn’t left out of the biofuel fun: the 27-city tour featuring 30 Seconds to Mars was fueled by biodiesel as well.
7) All of this biodiesel is great, but why use internal combustion power when you can just tour by sailboat [www.treehugger.com] as independent musicians Red Hunter, Jana Hunter and Ray Raposa did for a two-week east coast tour of the US.
Both The DittyBops [www.treehugger.com] and musicians Johnny Eden and Derek Olive [www.treehugger.com] are showing bands how to really travel green when there isn’t an ocean or lake in sight: they’re bicycling between tour stops. The DittyBops hit the road around the US; Eden and Olive are are pedaling across Canada from Powell River BC to Petite Riviere, Nova Scotia, a distance of 6,500 kilometers — that’s 4000 miles!

As you can see, there are many musicians making big changes while still cranking out some great tunes; stay tuned for more info on green tunes, including tips for musicians, resources for bands, and other ideas for tuning in and going green.