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The European Commission last week called on the IT industry to step up efforts to cut emissions, announcing plans for a wide-ranging green IT strategy designed to ensure economy-wide emission reductions of 15 per cent by 2020.

Announcing the new strategy, which is to be formally adopted in the second half of this year, commissioner for information society and media Viviane Reding said that while the IT sector had already made significant commitments to reduce its environmental impact, it still had “enormous untapped potential for saving energy right across the economy”.

“I would recommend to the IT sector to show the way for the rest of the economy by reducing its own carbon footprint by 20 per cent by 2015,” she said. “I see from the response of European IT companies to the Commission’s ongoing work that Europe is already well ahead in using IT for greening the economy.” Read more

Source: Business Green

By Chris Milton

The Carbon Disclosure Project was launched in 2000.  It works on behalf of the largest global institutional investors to uncover and track greenhouse gas emissions from the largest global corporations. However, the launch materials for this year’s survey held some unexpected figures which show just how far these investment houses have come .. and how far they have to go.
There are ghost trains out there … I’ve seen them.  Full of spectral commuters, their skeletal mouths forever open in a ghostly wail as they are doomed to travel the British network without end. This is what a Government Minister once claimed in any case.  He said that only 90% of the UK’s trains reach an eventual destination.  Which means there’s a whole bundle of them out there, lost forever.
Not really.  But it’s always worth remembering that the statistics sword cuts both ways.
For example to mark the launch of its 2009 survey, the 2009 Carbon Disclosure Project issued a press release trumpeting the results of a survey it had conducted among its signatory institutional investors.
The headline figures were:

• 75% of the respondents factor climate change into their investment decisions (presumably as a risk) of which
• 80% consider climate change to be a relatively important impact to their portfolio

Sounds good, but there’s a flip side to these figures:

• 25% of institutional investors don’t believe climate change is a risk
• 40% of institutional investors don’t believe it’s a problem for their portfolio

Wow.  It’s really great that the majority of institutional investors appear to have a good grasp of climate change and the effect it can have on their investments. But if the CDP represents $55tr of managed assets, this means up to $22tr still isn’t being invested in companies which are contributing to solutions to climate change.
So there’s a fantastic opportunity out there for asset management companies to differentiate themselves and their products from one another on the grounds of sustainability. Say it loud and clear: if you are a sustainability sensitive investment house you can get more trade by pointing out that your competitors are not.  Surely that’s a good thing?
So come on .. let’s see a little competition!

Bio: A former CTO, Chris has a broad and varied background. He’s been involved with blue chips, consultancies & SMEs across a wide variety of sectors and has worked in Europe, the Middle East and Australia. In 2007 he decided to combine his knowledge of business and IT with his passion for all things sustainable and has been busy writing ever since. However, his greatest ambition remains to brew the perfect cup of coffee.

Apple’s launch of new green products at this week’s Macworld show has been overshadowed by the company’s attempts to quash shareholder requests for more corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting.

The company issued a proxy filing on Wednesday in which it urged shareholders to vote against a shareholder resolution proposed by As You Sow, an environmental group co-sponsored by the New York City Office of the Comptroller and the Green Century Equity Fund.

The resolution would require the company to publish a CSR report detailing its approach to greenhouse gas emissions, toxics and recycling by July this year. The report would also require Apple to define “sustainability”, and would include a company-wide review of policies contributing to sustainable operation. Read more

Source: Green Business

The UN talks on climate change have been ongoing at Poznan this week with the aim of coming up with a new international agreement to replace the Kyoto deal.

In support of a new deal 140 global companies are demanding that world leaders not to delay on climate change action because of the economic downturn and instead commit to deep and rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and include mechanisms to reduce tropical deforestation. Read more

Source: Greenbang

Legal experts have today downplayed the immediate risk presented by climate change-related litigation against carbon intensive firms, but warned that such legal action remains highly plausible in the long term.

Myles Allen, a physicist and climate change expert at Oxford University, warned this week that improvements in climate computer models mean it will soon be possible to quantify the extent to which manmade greenhouse gas emissions contributed to extreme weather events, raising the prospect of victims being able to successfully sue heavy emitters.

Speaking to The Guardian newspaper, Allen said that advances in climate change science could soon be used to underpin legal action against the most carbon intensive industries. Read more

Source: Business Green

As nations around the world prepare to cap carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, more financial institutions are beginning to weigh the risks of lending money to big carbon emitters.

Yesterday, Bank of America posted a new, overdue coal policy on its website announcing it will phase out financing of mountaintop removal coal mining!

And five major international banks announced their intention to begin applying what they call “The Climate Principles” to the decision-making process for loans. Read more

Source: Sustainable Business

Enough already, get moving, say global institutional investors that control $6 trillion in assets.

The London Pensions Fund Authority and California Public Employees’ Retirement System are among 130 investors pushing for action to implement national policies for countries around the world to reduce emissions 80% by 2050.

They want countries to sign on to a new binding agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol climate pact, which would set medium and long-term emission reduction targets for developed countries and to provide for an expanded and more liquid global carbon market. Read more

Source: Sustainable Business

When a company releases its first sustainability report, it often raises more questions than it can answer. More often than not, the biggest obstacle in making progress is learning just how big a company’s footprint is, and those first reports can often only lay out the big picture without necessarily giving a road map towards the green goal. Such is the case with business software provider SAP, which yesterday released its first-ever sustainability report. While not yet at a point of setting hard targets for emissions reductions, the company got the “60,000-foot view” of its footprint, according to James Farrar, the company’s vice president of Corporate Social Responsibility. Read more

Source: Green Biz

California published a radical climate change plan this week, outlining its intention to have its wide-ranging policy proposals formally approved by the end of the year and up and running by 2012.

Under the personal stewardship of Governor Schwarzenegger, the state has consulted 42,000 members of the public on the so-called AB32 scoping plan.

This sets out the policy measures required to ensure the state meets its high-profile 2006 commitment to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. Read more

Source: Business Green

“The first thing you need to understand about greening a supply chain is that the term ‘green’ is not specific enough. It has the wrong connotations. This is about saving money and becoming efficient.”

That is the view of Karl Feilder, chief executive of DHL Neutral Services, a subsidiary of the delivery giant set up to improve the efficiency of both DHL’s, and its customers’ supply chains.

It is a daunting task considering that DHL has set itself the ambitious target of cutting emissions by 30 per cent by 2020 – a task made more challenging by that fact that the company’s global operations span 220 countries and boast 400 aircraft, 170,000 staff, 4500 warehouses and other properties, and thousands of trucks. Read more

Source: Business Green