World is Green

What is the single most important economic number that can make or break the climate change solution?

According to Vinod Khosla, it is the Chindia price.

SPENCER MICHELS: What do you call it, the Chindia price? China-India?

VINOD KHOSLA: Yes. I say most effective climate change technologies have to be on trajectory, they don’t have to day one be cheap enough, but they have to be on trajectory to meet the Chindia price, the price at which India and China would adapt these technologies for economic reasons. Because without India and China adapting these technologies, there is no cost effect, there’s no real climate change solution.

An extensive interview at PBS. Check it out.

Data is the key to getting the emission trading system right in Australia. The discussions in Beyond Carbon 2008 was about managing the compliance issues around carbon. Data will play a major role in this.

According to ZDNet, the federal government has put out a tender to create a registry system.

The tenderer will have to supply and implement a registry — an
electronic database to store and manage these units — according to the
tender documents, as well as provide operational support and system
hosting.

This registry needs to connect to the international transaction log (ITL), which makes it compatible with other ETS’s around the world. It should also connect to the OSCAR (Online System for Comprehensive Activity Reporting) system which collects emissions data from large emitters and Federal and State government offices around the country. In fact, I have been trained and used the OSCAR system and its predecessar EDGAR to update emissions data for our organisation.

The first stage will be ready by the end of the year.

The recently launched International airport in my hometown of Hyderabad is a green airport.

The airport is Asia’s first airport to register under USGBC LEED NC certification for silver rating, and is going to be the world’s first certified green building (Edit: May be for a airport).

The airport consumes 25% less energy than what a similar facility without the environment-friendly features would consume. According to the data provided by Central Power Distribution Company of Andhra Pradesh, the airport’s average electricity consumption per month is 55,43,470 units.

The notable features of the new airport which makes it energy efficient are reduced overall conductance for the walls and roof, high performance glass with low shading coefficient and optimum visual light transmittance, overhangs and vertical fins to reduce solar gains, efficient chillers, efficient lighting using T5 lamps, amply day lit common spaces with photo sensor-controlled electric lighting, economiser and primary and secondary chilled water pumping for increased energy-efficiency.
[...]
“The energy consumption without the green features would have been around 23 million KWH per annum but with all the green building technology the actual consumption is estimated to be 17 million KWH,” said a spokesperson for the GMR group.
[...]
The cost of green building has also come down over the years. “The cost of first green building in India, the green business centre in Hyderabad, which came up in 2003 was 18% more than the conventional buildings, but the gap now is just 5%-8% more than a conventional building,” said S Raghupathy, Sr Director & Head, Green Building Centre (GBC).

Interesting numbers all along. In view of the climate change action plan, efficiency standards will be implemented by the market in view of the incentives from clean tech. The extra capital expenditure of green buildings are also coming down to international standards.

From the Indian Express

India has decided to stick to the safe path on dealing with climate change. In the much-awaited draft of its national action plan, there is no word on carbon cuts or caps on industry. Instead, it is “avoidance of emissions.” In the penultimate draft, there were caps specified for various sectors, including industry, which have been dropped — for now. The catchword for the action plan is “saving” or “efficiency” rather than capping.

The key points of the action plan:

• Setting up eight missions for “multi-pronged, long-term and integrated strategies” for achieving goals on climate change in areas that include solar, enhanced energy conservation, sustainable habitats, agriculture, water and sustaining Himalayan ecosystems, Green India project.

• The Green India project, which is already backed by a Rs 7,500-crore corpus, will aim at greening 6 million hectares over a period of 10 years.

• The water mission will aim to increase water use efficiency by 20 per cent through pricing and regulatory mechanisms. The agriculture mission would devise strategies on new developing new varieties of crops that would withstand extreme weather and variable moisture.

As the TOI suggests, the discussion on caps/standards or efficiency measures was also based on sending the right political signals to the international community.

A solar bonanza for GE.

General Electric Co expects its nascent solar-energy business to hit the $US1 billion annual revenue mark over the next three years or so, the head of its energy arm said.
[...]
The unit currently has over $US100 million in revenues…”If you think about the solar that’s on the market today, it’s six, seven times more expensive than wind,” Mr Krenicki said. “Solar requires material science breakthroughs, which is something that GE is good at.”
[...]
The Fairfield, Connecticut-based conglomerate expects to apply lessons learned in quickly building its wind business — which is on track to hit the $US6 billion revenue mark this year –to solar, Mr Krenicki said.

“We’re not going to dabble in the solar business,” Mr Krenicki said. “We will put the pedal to the accelerator once it is very clear what our competitive advantage is.”

Beyond Carbon 2008 is a conference in Adelaide exploring the challenges and opportunities presented by the transition to a carbon constrained economy, from multiple perspectives and for multiple audiences.

The program is organised by CEDA and sponsored by Australian Clean Tech, Hughes People Services, LocalGovernment SA, City of Onkaparinga and University of Adelaide.

Today, I will be live blogging the full day conference with the help of my friend P Y Wong. The program will start soon. Thanks to John O’Brien, the Managing Director of Australian Clean Tech and one of the organisers of this event for inviting me to this event.

The program is in 3 parts. Starting with an introduction from Mike Rann, Premier, of South Australia . The morning sessions are around “Climate Competitiveness”, a lunchtime keynote address and the afternoon sessions are around “Climate Leadership”.

8:30 AM -The conference attendees are coming in, everybody is settling down and even some of the media people are here. The Premier, Mike Rann is here now. That would mean the conference will start soon.

8:40 AM - Tim Hughes, from Hughes Public Relations is convening the event and has got this program going.

The first session will be with 4 speakers for 10minutes each and then followed by a panel discussion. Then some morning tea, some networking drinks, followed by lunch and then the afternoon sessions.

Read the rest of this entry »

We are entering an extraordinarily dangerous time for economic policy. The combination of rising global inflation, slowing economic growth (stagflation) and the unstoppable progress towards putting a price on carbon is going to require some very thoughtful leadership.

-Source: Business Spectator.

The Rudd government in Australia ordered a new way of providing solar pv rebates to families. As reported before on Worldisgreen.com, “The Clean Energy Council told The Sunday Age that one company had 98% of orders abandoned. The biggest impact has been in cities, where 50-70% of orders were being ditched, leaving companies with millions of dollars of lost business.”

The government has clearly not understood the scenario here. The concept of means tesing makes sense if the subsidy is for the welfare of the people directly. However, in this scenario that is simply not the case. The subsidy for the solar pv is to be seen as a subsidy for the solar industry and provided through the consumers rather than directly to the industry.

The Messenger local news in Adelaide asked their readers about the means testing, and the answer was:

John O’Brien, who runs Australian Clean Tech is organising the Beyond Carbon 2008 conference on June 3, 2008 in Adelaide, South Australia. It is a 3 days event managed by CEDA. John previously launched the Australian Clean Tech index.

Update: If you are interested, check out the Live Blogging that I have done of the entire conference.

From the blurb that I have got with me:

The conference will explore the challenges and opportunities presented by the transition to a carbon constrained economy, from multiple perspectives and for multiple audiences.

The focus of Beyond Carbon 2008 will not be backward looking at the reasons for the current position, or focus too much on the threats and dangers, but rather will highlight how different groups within the community can work towards building the greatest benefits for themselve and society as a whole, through the transition process.

Beyond Carbon 2008 will be about a direction forward for business, government and the community in assessing the opportunities and risk associated with climate change.

Hon Mike Rann MP Premier and Minister of Sustainability & Climate Change for South Australia will officially open Beyond Carbon 2008.

The conference on the 4th and 5th of June will be managed by LGA SA focussing on the governance of climate change.

Some distinguished speakers are present for the morning and afternoon sessions including; Ray Garrand, Chief Executive of DTED, Professor Dexter Dunphy, Terry Kallis from Petratherm, Christina Jensen from Macquarie Climate Group, Dave Sag from Carbon Planet, Andrew Peterson from PWC and more.

I am attending the event, courtesy of John O’Brien and exploring the option of live blogging the event.

Standby saturday is a campaign in Australia to inform, educate and motivate people to action at home and work to switch off all their appliances at the plug point and save almost 10% of energy wasted in standby.

The campaign is scheduled for June 7th, 2008.

Standby Saturday highlights a simple but important step to reduce unnecessary energy wastage – switch off appliances and equipment all the time – every time when not in use, instead of leaving them on standby.

Figures from the International Energy Agency show that, based on 10% energy wastage for domestic residencies, electrical devices left on standby waste an estimated 4.8 Terawatt hours of energy per year and account for nearly 7.7 Megatonnes of carbon emissions each year. This doesn’t include commercial equipment and is equivalent to the total output of Australia’s biggest power station for over 10 days.