The Great Debate UK
Big business still not tackling carbon emissions
– Sam Gill is Operational Director at the Environmental Investment Organisation. The opinions expressed are his own. —
Today’s launch of the Environmental Tracking (ET) UK 100 Carbon Rankings show just how far we have to go in tackling corporate emissions. If the first step is getting trusted, accurate data into the public domain, then 65 percent of the UK’s biggest companies are keeping us in the dark.
Only 35 percent of companies within the ET UK 100 independently verify their Scope 1 and 2 emissions (direct emissions and those from electricity use), but the rest expect us, the public, to accept their data (if even provided) at face value. In light of the financial crisis, independent verification should be the bare minimum, with those verifiers also coming under scrutiny. Recent history should ring alarm bells: it was far too easy for credit rating agencies to hand out Triple A ratings to securities they knew nothing about. In the fight against climate change – where false accounting could lead to irreversible damage to our environment – we need to be equally vigilant. It takes a brave auditor to qualify the report of large company offering lucrative contracts.
The ET UK 100 – ranking the UK’s 100 biggest companies by emissions and levels of transparency – has shown the varying attitudes among British companies in their approach towards climate change. Thirteen percent of companies failed to provide any data, including household names like the City of London Bank, Standard Chartered, and the parent company of P&O ferries, Carnival. This lack of transparency is not limited to one sector or industry but spans all of them.
from The Great Debate:
States see pushback against carbon trading
-- John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own --
Efforts to implement cap-and-trade programs at state level are faltering, just as policymakers in Washington are struggling to generate enough support to put in place a comprehensive national system.
Recent setbacks in California and Arizona point to growing headwinds against the policy. As cap-and-trade loses momentum and becomes embroiled in bigger political disputes about the size and role of government, opponents are becoming emboldened to try to block the policy completely.
from The Great Debate:
Business must take the lead on carbon management
Léo Apotheker is CEO of SAP. The views expressed are his own.
Most people who followed the Copenhagen climate talks in December will have been disappointed.
While the agreement brokered by the group of countries that included the United States, Brazil, China, India and South Africa and ratified by most of the attending countries is being touted as a success of sorts, it fell far short of the expectations that had built up, and achieved very little in concrete terms.
In the fight against climate change, carbon capture is crucial
- Hannah Chalmers is a postgraduate researcher at the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey. All views expressed are her own -
This week the International Energy Agency launched a series of detailed technology roadmaps covering 19 technologies that are expected to be important in mitigating the risk of dangerous of climate change. One of these was for carbon capture and storage (CCS).
from The Great Debate:
U.S. cap-and-trade choice inferior to carbon tax
-- John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own --
President Barack Obama's first budget puts climate change at the heart of the administration's long-term economic plan. But despite the clear theoretical advantages of a simple carbon tax, he seems set to follow the EU and California in opting for a cap-and-trade system.
The budget plan commits the administration to work with Congress on an economy-wide emissions reductions program, based around cap-and-trade.
from The Great Debate:
Clean energy investment needs greener light
-- Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own --
Investors in clean energy are like motorists stuck at broken traffic lights. The public policy light is green but the price and credit lights are deep red.
Investment in wind, wave and solar power should be booming after the European Union last year adopted an ambitious goal to draw 20 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020 to help fight global warming, and U.S. President Barack Obama made green power a central plank of his government's policy.
