Electric cars help mitigate climate change if you recharge them with green electricity and keep the air in our cities clean and healthy.

Electric vehicles (EV) will play a key role in decarbonising our economy. It's by encouraging their use that we can turn our backs on fossil fuels and escalating CO2 emissions. The UK government is right in encouraging the switch to electric cars and offering EV grants, but this incentive should be introduced immediately and not in 2011. It is important that we prepare for drastic emission cuts, and this includes switching to EVs, gradually but in sufficient numbers and with momentum.

Critics of EVs say that they are only 30% efficient in using the power stored in the battery, and if this electricity is generated by a non-clean source such as coal-fired power stations, then the carbon footprint is comparable to a fossil fuel propelled vehicle. There is some truth in this argument, but if we don't switch to EVs, then our dependence on fossil fuels will continue and we will never deal with climate change. What we must do is demand utility companies to turn to renewables and clean electricity. The effort to generate electricty in a clean way and our switch to EV should go in parallel and we don't have to wait for one to happen to start doing the other. Governments are already investing massive sums of money in CSS (which is still an untested technology, but if all goes according to plan, CSS will be the "holy grail" of climate change mitigation). There is a long way to go but there are an increasing number of green electricity providers available, and you can choose to recharge your EV from one of these.

The additional argument is one of heath and our immediate environment. Many people living in our cities have forgotten how clean air can be, and they can only get a taste of this by going to the countryside. This is the extent of how accustomed we have become to live breathing toxic fumes on a daily basis, and our cities are immersed in soot, dust and traffic emissions. The impact of this translates in poorer health and reduced longevity. What is the price of this? No amount of EV grants is too expensive to make our cities healthier places to live in.

Brunella  

Carbonica's "The Future is Paperless" campaign has got to a good start and now enlists 24 participating small businesses, who are running partially or entirely paperless offices. This results in a saving of over 5,000 trees per year.

Carbonica promotes the use of paperless computer-trasmitted fax, electronic signatures and email transmission of documents as a replacement of B2B or B2C communications by post.

Consumers are increasingly technology savvy and have widespread access to the internet and email and most companies find that their market base is not restricted by telling their customers that the communications will be 100% electronic and paperless.

The participating companies are from a broad range of activities in the service sector: from recruitment consultancies to web design/IT to travel consultancies. One company reduced its carbon footprint by 40% by reducing transport emissions by allowing 2 staff work from home in switching all internal administration and paperwork to electronic format. A 2-week plan to scan existing hardcopy files resulted in a neater and more spacious office environment.

For more information on the "Future is Paperless" campaign and to find out how Carbonica can help your business become paperless and carbon neutral, you contact me on perpetua@carbonica.org

Perpetua Sachs

In view of the recent report by Friends of the Earth against the use of carbon offsetting and the inclusion of forestry programmes in a future Copenhagen treaty, Carbonica wishes to make the following statement in defence of forestry (REDD) carbon offset programmes (and carbon offsetting in general).

London, 3 June 2009 

Carbon credits and carbon offsets are an integral part of the Kyoto protocol and have enabled an entire sector of the economy to invest in emission reduction programmes, contributing to the mitigation of climate change. Furthermore, CDM has contributed to raise awareness among companies and individuals about their priority to reduce emissions and pay the cost for the environmental damage caused by GHG emissions, in particular CO2. Putting a price on carbon is a good way to manage our environmental damage.

CDM is far from being a perfect mechanism and the forthcoming Copenhagen treaty gives us the opportunity to improve the framework. There are obviously fundamental questions that must be addressed. The principle that an emissions reduction programme generates a "carbon credit" which in turn legitimises a company to pollute and entitles it to emit a permissible amount of GHG gases into the atmosphere must be completely dismissed. In order to mitigate climate change we must start from the premise that the only permissible level of emissions is zero and our net global GHG emissions must be negative. The reason for this is very simple: the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is already too high and for our mitigation efforts it is mandatory that we capture CO2 from the atmosphere, not simply reduce our emissions.

However there is a very good reason why CO2 emission quotas are allocated within the Kyoto framework. It helps us keep our emissions under control. These quotas, however, should not be interpreted as "permissible" emission levels within our mitigation efforts, and within the Kyoto protocol's main remit every conceivable measure must be adopted to gradually reduce them.

For this reason, cap-and-trade mechanisms where companies gradually and continually try to find ways to reduce their emissions and overall carbon footprint, will be the more realistic foundation of a future Copenhagen agreement, and will pave the way to an orderly and gradual transition to a low-carbon or decarbonised economy.

Carbon offsetting is an umbrella term that is used for many different products. It is important to distinguish carbon offsets that are created from emission reductions and those that stem from carbon capture and result in a net negative amount of GHG emissions. Forestry carbon offsets are the only type of offset where net GHG emissions are negative, and therefore the only ones that play an active role in mitigating and reversing global warming. Other offsets, such as renewable energy projects, contribute to net emission reductions and make no more than a neutral contribution to our mitigation efforts.

One could ask the question of why a carbon credit is created by investing in, say, a hydro project in developing countries, whilst investing on a wind turbine in the UK would not entitle a company to create an emission credit that it can sell on. It is an interesting question. 

One answer is that by placing a price on emissions, developed countries can fund emission reductions and green energy projects in the developing world. This can only be positive.

Forestry projects on the other hand, are very different instruments. They are pivotal to climate change mitigation and for this reason not only should they be high on the agenda of the Copenhagen talks, they must be the cornerstone of our global climate change mitigation and reversal strategy.

Carbonica dismisses the claims contained in the FoE document that offsetting contributes to global warming and forestry projects will lead to land grab and poverty in developed countries. On the contrary: the only sustainable forestry carbon offset programmes are those carried out in collaboration with local communities, by enabling them to make a living out of the forests and the environment around them, and empowering them to look after the land and have a vested interest in protecting it. For these projects to work, local communities must have sufficient autonomy and there can be no land purchase for the purposes of creating the offsets. The local farming communities will look after these assets best when they work on their own land. These carbon offsets are a fundamental vehicle for developed countries to protect the rainforests, and provide local communities with the skills to make a living and protect the wildlife, biodiversity and the living environment around rainforests. 

Other rainforest projects that are based on land purchase are not sustainable in the long term; they create fenced-off areas that entail a greater financial liability to the owners of the asset than the ecological service derived from it.

In order to takle climate change and draw a significant mitigation and reversal strategy, REDD programmes must be extensive and well funded to permit reforestation in quite an unprecedented scale. Forest owning countries will benefit from this cash flow and their deprived communities will reap greater benefits from reforestation than illegal logging, which is a problem directly correlated with poverty.

Mikel Susperregi

Chief Executive

mikel@carbonica.org