Driving to market is not really helping – The Geelong Advertiser

tags: food, miles, WiGLinks

• With petrol prices tripling food transport costs within a matter of years, the “food miles” factor was inexplicably linked to climate change, the CSIRO’s Mark Howden said.

• The phrase referred to how far food had travelled from farm to dinner table. The further it travelled, the more emissions produced but environmental consultant Andrew Campbell said “politically correct” sometimes did more harm than good.

  The logic was that more emissions were produced if a chicken farmer drove a small amount of produce to sell to shoppers, who had all driven individually, in comparison to large supermarkets shipping stock from overseas.

Carbon Planet orbits in a world of change | theage.com.au

tags: WiGLinks

MISaustralia.com – EDS pushes green credentials

tags: greenit, australia, eds, WiGLinks

• EDS pushes green credentials

India’s Energy Challenge

tags: india, energy, solar, WiGLinks

• The advanced industrialized economies were lucky to have had their development fuelled by cheap fossil energy. Today’s developing economies have a much tougher challenge. It was a very short window of opportunity which opened just about 150 years ago and is likely to close in the next 40 years, by when the known reserves will be depleted at current levels of consumption.

  All told, 200 years is a very brief interlude considering thousands of years of human civilization and hopefully hundreds of thousands of years yet to come. At some time in the distant future, they will look back and remark that the age of fossil fuel was a short inflection point, a point at which humanity passed through the bottleneck of dependency on oil from the ground. Before that point, humanity’s primary source of energy was the sun, and so it will be after that point.

Economics of solar power – The McKinsey Quarterly

tags: solar, economics, WiGLinks

• A new era for solar power is approaching. Long derided as uneconomic, it is gaining ground as technologies improve and the cost of traditional energy sources rises. Within three to seven years, unsubsidized solar power could cost no more to end customers in many markets, such as California and Italy, than electricity generated by fossil fuels or by renewable alternatives to solar. By 2020, global installed solar capacity could be 20 to 40 times its level today.

there is no need to worry: god will provide on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

tags: WiGLinks

IIM Ahmedabad to launch carbon finance course- Education-Services-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times

tags: india, mba, carbon, WiGLinks

• After the Indian
  Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIML), it is now the turn of IIM Ahmedabad to
  launch a programme on environmental management strategies with special focus on
  carbon markets, a market in which India is now the second largest seller in the
  world.

Green Map And Sydney’s Pyrmont Sustainability Website » Pigs Will Fly | the can do community blog

tags: WiGLinks

• Today I had a phone call from a Pyrmont blogger who’d discovered PWF’s report on Australia’s first Community Owned Wind Park. His comments?

  “Its not everyday, that you read a story on a great community blog, and you go WOW…Why Did It Take So Long…Wake Up Australia…More of the Same Please.”

‘Major discovery’ from MIT primed to unleash solar revolution

tags: solar, WiGLinks

Google Moves to Reinvent Transportation – GigaOM

tags: WiGLinks, electric, car, google

• Let’s not kid ourselves: Google’s investment in transportation so far is paltry compared to what it’s spending on other industries. But while we’re not predicting that Google will make a G-car any time soon, its efforts to push plug-in vehicles as a way to build out a smarter power grid, and to bring some of the intelligence of information technology to transportation, will be worth watching.

Tenders called to help schools tackle climate change – David Bartlett, MP – Tasmanian Government Media Releases – Annotated

tags: australia, WiGLinks

• Tenders are being called for companies to design, supply and install energy and rainwater storage solutions and also to supply and install innovative, energy efficient lighting options for Government schools.
• 
  • A good time for Australian companies to target this market. – post by suhit_a
• “Under the Australian Government’s National Solar Schools Program, schools are being offered grants of up to $20,000 for solar technology and up to $30,000 for solar hot water systems, rainwater tanks and other energy efficiency measures,” Mr Bartlett said.

Area’s Showing the Greatest Potential for Solar Energy « PY’s Solar Weblog

tags: solar, WiGLinks

• Solar insolation is the rate of solar radiation (kilowatt-hours per square meter) over an area.The world map shows the amount of solar energy in hours, received each day on an optimally tilted surface during the worst month of the year. This is used as an indicator of solar energy potential.
• 

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