Green, technology and people

I wrote in one of my earlier posts about a CO2 Compensation service. I have to admit I was quite skeptic of the idea. I know that my current lifestyle emits too much CO2 and this felt like a way to buy myself a clear conscience. It reminded me of a practice that was common in the Middle Ages in the Catholic Church – the paying of Indulgentia. The original idea was that by doing good or giving back to the community, you could ‘even out’ the impact of your sins. This quickly turned into a system that was widely taken advantage of and resulted in a blossoming mini-economy around these payments. The ability to pay for your sins was a big source of income for the Church but the side-effect was that morality was on the decline, simply because people could buy back their conscience.

I wanted to know more about the CO2 compensation service offered by the Climate Neutral group. I called them up and asked them whether what they offered was a way to buy myself a clearer conscience or whether there was more to it. They explained to me the theory behind the service, stressing the fact that we cannot yet live in a fully CO2 neutral society and that an additional investment to ‘pay’ for CO2 emissions compensation will help us get there quicker. This is off course a fully voluntary step that companies and individuals have to take and it is no surprise that the majority of their customers are companies. In a way though, this works like a Carbon Tax – something which many key thinkers believe is a better solution than a Cap and Trade program. You pay for the emissions you are responsible for.

So far so good, but I was still puzzled by the simplicity of the service. You pay a fee and voila, you are ‘climate neutral’? What actually happens with my money? The money paid is invested in ‘CO2 reducing projects’ – all certified by several standards bodies. So, that sounded like I cannot really call myself ‘climate neutral’ now can I? I mean, the service actually does not compensate for my CO2 emissions; it does not take them out of the atmosphere. What it does is that it invests in alternative energy projects, resulting in less CO2 in the future. Don’t get me wrong, that is still a good thing, but calling myself ‘climate neutral’ after I pay the fee…..hmm, that seems like a bit too much.

Another question I had was around scale and impact. What if everybody does this? Will that work? Will the calculations they made to determine the fee you need to pay based on the amount of CO2 you emit be strong enough to hold? If so – why do the governments not pick this up, charge everybody the amount and we are in climate neutral nirvana? It seems it is a bit more complicated than that. Because there are not enough sources of sustainable energy yet, having everybody buy this service will not get us in a climate neutral society. That will still be a very long process. Furthermore, the execution of the service is hindered in some way by the Kyoto protocol. Investing the money in projects within countries that are part of the Kyoto protocol will actually be taken into account when determining the reduction targets set by the protocol. The Climate Neutral Group does not want to reduce the burden of the Kyoto members because otherwise it would be building energy neutral projects that will then not have to be built by the nations themselves. So therefore, it invests in regions not covered by the protocol.

The CO2 compensation service should be seen as one part of a bigger plan. We cannot live on sustainable resources yet and if you, as a company or an individual, want to take full responsibility for your emissions now (while you are also trying hard to reduce them) – you can, through this service. The Climate Neutral Group also sees that compensation is just a part of a more layered approach, this is why whenever they work with their clients, the focus is mostly on sustainability consulting with CO2 compensation to cover the emissions impact that is left.

Will I buy the CO2 compensation service? I think I will. I am not done working on reducing my emissions but I will take responsibility for paying for my footprint that will remain and speed up the process of building facilities that product sustainable energy.

I have read a lot of books and papers on energy and climate change and I have recently read a book that really is the best one of them all. It is extremely insightful and uses a very non-biased way of comparing our energy use and the possible sustainable energy sources to cover that.

In essence, the book looks at the possibility of sustainable energy first and then the economics behind it. The answer to the first question the author raises “can we live on sustainable energy?” is : yes. But only if we invest massively in developing sustainable energy sources and he provides a very clear view on each and every one of them. He also touches on the economic aspects of actually building these sustainable energy sources and fortunately, the answer to the question whether this is affordable is also a firm yes. But we do need to start, and start big.

Mr. MacKay uses his home country, the UK, as the main target for all his calculations and insights and extends those to the rest of the world in later chapters. I believe that this book should be localized for every country because it makes every debate about switching to sustainable energy so much better. I have asked the author whether there are such plans, and if not, whether I can help in making a Dutch version of this book.

If you want to read a much better review of this book than my brief one, check out the review by @BillGates on his blog The Gates Notes.

You can buy or read the book for free here: Without Hot Air

Happy reading.

Toyota got a lot of bad press this week for announcing a major recall of their Prius model due to a malfunction in their braking system. Apparently the error is specific to the braking system in a hybrid car. Hybrids like the Prius brake differently than regular cars, they use both friction from pads pressed against drums or discs and also use the car’s electric motor to slow down. This is also needed in order to be able to regain energy from the braking motion. Is the bad press deserved or not? In some parts yes, it turns out Toyota was aware of the problem before and did not disclose this information. While the braking problem only sometimes occurs and which has the effect of suspending braking for about a second or so, this has already resulted in a couple of accidents. Toyota should have gone public with this information long before it came out now. When large companies detect such an error, especially in such a successful model, the pressure to cover it up to extend the success is very big. The truth usually always comes out though and obviously, Toyota should have treated this differently.

On the other hand, Toyota has been the carmaker that dared to set the stage for alternative powered cars in a time when this really was not yet that mainstream. They are now in their third generation hybrid models and you have to give them credit for that. It is not so much that there is a problem with the braking system. Toyota has shown innovation in moving forward with this technology and while causing a big short-term financial caveat for them and their shareholders (and not to forget, injury to some unfortunate drivers), they still could survive this ‘crisis’ (as Toyota President Akio Toyoda calls it) and come out like the company that drives green innovation and now has to deal with a minor setback. They do deserve credit for innovating and I wish that the media would give them some slack for it. After all, there is no innovation without sometimes screwing up. Personally, I don’t believe in hybrid technology. I think it is just a transitional technology but I do think it is good that they pioneered in it and that they have created a market for it.

It will be interesting to see if this incident has a longer lasting impact on the popularity of Priuses. Especially at a time when two other Japanese firms are pushing a different kind of technology. Nissan/Renault will launch a number of fully electric vehicles that will rely on an intricate replaceable battery system as built by the company Better Place, a startup of former SAP executive Shai Agassi. I was at a meeting with Mr. Agassi last year in Amsterdam where he told about how his company got started and you have to give credit to Nissan/Renault for believing in Better Place’s scheme around replaceable batteries. (Mr. Agassi also spoke at TED) A good example of a company really taking a stand for something. This will enable them to take the majority of the early electric car market or it will backfire because the replaceable battery system may be run over in time by faster loading fixed batteries. The other Japanese carmaker that is working on yet a different alternative technology is Honda, who is betting on a hydrogen powered car. It is very exciting to see these different technologies come to market and see which will prevail. It may not always work, and sometimes needs a push from a government like Better Place & Nissan/Renault in Israel, but this is the free market economy at it’s best. Let’s hope that Toyota will not suffer too much from this incident that this will slow down (no pun intented ) their work on more sustainable cars.

To be continued.

Scanning a number of newspapers around the world and listening to politicians shows a grim picture. Yes, the mistakes that have been made by the IPCC are serious ones and should be looked into. But the way that certain media and politicians are dealing with this is really typical. From a newspaper perspective I can kind of understand it, they need to sell papers and draw people to their website in order to survive and any kind of half-crisis will do to jump on and exploit. The fact that media have become so detached from a regular user-based income has resulted in this behaviour of scandal-hunting. Minor things are blown out of proportion on an ever further gliding scale of sensibility, all just to make that one-off buy of the newspaper at the stand or that one online view which enables them to sell adds and, let’s be realistic, keep journalists employed. Too bad these journalists are then ‘forced’ to drive this cheap journalistic approach.

Politicians is another story; it is amazing to watch how some parties (notable example the liberal party in the Netherlands) are racing to be in the headlines with examples of ‘strong measures’. One of them is proposing to postpone the work on the new water defences in the Netherlands until the IPCC reports have undergone serious investigation. This cannot be serious……The current minister for Environmental Affairs in the Netherlands, Mrs. Cramer, has stated she wants to have a full investigation into the workings of the IPCC.

How refreshingly different has been the reaction of her British colleague, Mr. Ed Milliband, who has stated that mistakes are part of science and that these little errors do nothing to change the broader picture; man is responsible for the large concentration of greenhouse gasses which will cause global warming. He further stated that the ‘science’ behind all these sceptics that are now standing on the barricades, wanting the IPCC to be removed all together, be looked at with the same rigor as these mistakes by the IPCC.

Every scientists will tell you there are mistakes in their work. It’s just how science works. Mistakes will be looked in and improved, resulting in better science.

Long story short – these mistakes don’t change the bigger picture. Let’s all go back to work and start doing something against climate change, rather than debating these errors as if this has changed the whole world and we can emit CO2 like in the good old days.