Got a green idea? Then join the grab for $75 million cash -

tags: australia, Funding, WiGLinks, clean, tech

• The Rudd Government today announced that the $75 million Climate Ready program is open for applications.

  Applicants can apply for grants ranging from $50,000 to $5 million. The grants will support Australian businesses developing new products, processes and services to tackle climate change.

  It will provide dollar-for-dollar support for research and development, proof-of-concept and early-stage commercialisation activities.

RSA – Carbon Limited – Personal Carbon trading – About Carbon Limited

tags: carbon, trading, Personal, WiGLinks

• In a 3 year project, the RSA is exploring the idea for personal carbon trading, originally described by David Fleming in 1996. CarbonLimited is bringing together expertise from the commercial, social and financial sectors to subject ideas about personal carbon trading to rigorous analysis.

  The project has so far been investigating how a personal carbon trading scheme might function, as well as analysing its potential social and economic impacts.

Business Spectator – Indian firms lag in climate action

tags: carbon, emissions, india, WiGLinks

• India’s top firms face little stakeholder pressure to combat climate change with only about 40 per cent of the companies surveyed setting voluntary carbon emissions reduction goals, a report said.

  A survey by KPMG consultants of 70 CEOs found their response to climate issues was driven largely by the need to comply with expected regulations, while leaving the leadership role in tackling global warming to the government.

• While many companies in the developed world have measured their baseline carbon footprint and set reduction targets over 5-10 years, in India only 41 per cent of firms had some qualified reduction goals to be achieved by 2010.

  About 38 per cent had no such goals.

The Big Idea on Fuel Economics

Unless gas hits $10 a gallon, Americans will continue to buy SUVs in droves. – Inspired by the continued sales of SUVs.

tags: WiGLinks

• Unless gas hits $10 a gallon, Americans will continue to buy SUVs in droves.

  – Inspired by the continued sales of SUVs.

Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme

tags: australia, carbon, emissions, WiGLinks

Green plan comes at cost, admits Rudd | theage.com.au

tags: WiGLinks, australia, carbon, emissions

• REDUCING carbon emissions will not be cost free for Australians, Kevin Rudd has bluntly declared, as he turns the heat on the Liberals to pass the Government’s scheme in the Senate next year.

The 7.30 Report – Govt releases green paper on climate change

tags: WiGLinks, carbon, trading, australia, govt

• Well it’s hardly a surprise but the Government’s green paper tells us an emissions trading scheme will be costly.

  It will be inflationary and could push the price of electricity up by as much as 16 per cent.

  But to ease the pain, the Government has promised compensation for pensioners, motorists and low income households; and assistance for high emitting businesses.

  The Greens aren’t happy, and neither is the Opposition. But the broad outlines of the Governments design to reduce carbon pollution has been welcomed by the business community.

Green.view | Why does Berkeley have so many Priuses? | Economist.com

All of this raises the question of why the politically green huddle together in the same sorts of locations. Dr Kahn speculates that small initial differences in spatial attributes, such as being close to a beach or public transport, may create the initial seeds of green communities. “This in turn attracts ‘green businesses’,” he explains, “such as tofu restaurants and bike shops, and this in turn attracts more greens.” The process culminates when greens have enough political clout to elect politicians and enact green regulation that further enhances their community’s attractiveness to environmentalists.

tags: WiGLinks, green, marketing, consumers

• All of this raises the question of why the politically green huddle together in the same sorts of locations. Dr Kahn speculates that small initial differences in spatial attributes, such as being close to a beach or public transport, may create the initial seeds of green communities. “This in turn attracts ‘green businesses’,” he explains, “such as tofu restaurants and bike shops, and this in turn attracts more greens.” The process culminates when greens have enough political clout to elect politicians and enact green regulation that further enhances their community’s attractiveness to environmentalists.

The full-cost economics of climate change: an aluminium case study

tags: WiGLinks, industry, climatechange, australia, Economics

• This report applies a full-cost economics approach to climate change adaptation, using the aluminium industry as a case study to illustrate the complexity of the policy challenge. The report examines the positive value of jobs within the upstream aluminium industry, and the negative value of carbon emissions from the sector. It estimates the value which flows from aluminium jobs to individual workers and to the wider community. The report provides a demographic survey of aluminium towns and finds that aluminium towns are less economically vibrant than the Australian economy as a whole, with lower median incomes (despite high aluminium wages), lower employment and lower workforce participation. This highlights the critical importance of aluminium to these towns, employing thousands of local workers at an average wage more than double the national median.

Australian CleanTech: What is Cleantech?

tags: clean, tech, australia, WiGLinks

• The term cleantech therefore tends to be a more amorphous industry group than, say, environmental services, and a less rigid investment asset class than, say, financial services.

  Sectors that appear to fit into the definition of cleantech without dispute include:

  • Renewable energy – wind, solar thermal and photovoltaics, wave, tidal, hydro, geothermal, biomass and biogas;
  • Water technologies that increase efficiency;
  • Energy efficiency, green buildings and biomaterials;
  • Waste management and recycling;
  • Energy storage and fuel cell technologies;
  • Low emission vehicle technologies; and
  • Environmental Services

Enterprise Rent-A-Car Says Thin Clients Will Save $500,000 · Environmental Leader · Green Business, Sustainable Business, and Green Strategy News for Corporate Sustainability Executives

Enterprise Rent-A-Car expects a move from PCs to HP thin clients will cut energy consumption by 5 million kilowatt-hours, save about $500,000 annually, and reduce CO2 emissions by 6.5 million pounds per year, Computerworld reports.

The network of more than 45,000 thin client terminals – operated through 743 terminal servers – connects Enterprise rental offices throughout the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and Puerto Rico.

Thin clients use only 13.6 watt-hours and 2.4 watt-hours of electricity in active and passive states, respectively, compared with the 77.1 watt-hours and 1.8 watt-hours consumed by PCs.

tags: WiGLinks, energy, greenit, thin, clients

• Enterprise Rent-A-Car expects a move from PCs to HP thin clients will cut energy consumption by 5 million kilowatt-hours, save about $500,000 annually, and reduce CO2 emissions by 6.5 million pounds per year, Computerworld reports.

  The network of more than 45,000 thin client terminals – operated through 743 terminal servers – connects Enterprise rental offices throughout the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and Puerto Rico.

  Thin clients use only 13.6 watt-hours and 2.4 watt-hours of electricity in active and passive states, respectively, compared with the 77.1 watt-hours and 1.8 watt-hours consumed by PCs.

Crikey – Crikey’s green paper: these are the climate options – Crikey’s green paper: these are the climate options

tags: WiGLinks

• Rather than wait for Penny Wong, we thought we’d jump the gun with our own Paper on the options for addressing climate change.

  The key thing to bear in mind with all this stuff is what we are actually trying to achieve. Yes, yes, we’re trying to do something about the greenhouse effect, but what, specifically, and how? Answering that question properly leads into hotly-contested debates about economic and administrative efficiency, where tiny details can have vast and unforeseen real-world consequences.

Enduring ideas: Classic McKinsey frameworks – The McKinsey Quarterly – McKinsey frameworks – Strategy – Strategic Thinking

tags: strategy, tools, WiGLinks

• Ever since strategy arose as a managerial discipline in the 1960s, business leaders have been honing their analysis of where and how to compete, grow, and best manage their organizations. Strategic and organizational models or frameworks help inform these decisions, offering shorthand for qualitative analysis of potential scenarios and insight on what options to adopt.

Big Think: Voices on Green – washingtonpost.com

Listen to Branson on clean fuels.

tags: video, branson, clean, fuels, people, WiGLinks