VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – Canada has overstated how effective its efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions will be, the country's top environmental watchdog said on Tuesday.
The government has also not set up systems for accurately monitoring reductions in greenhouse gases or where the emissions are coming from, according to Commissioner of the Environment Scott Vaughan.
Ottawa is required to make annual reports on emission reductions, but Vaughan said the government's reports for the past two years lack key information needed to see if Canada is making any progress in cutting emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide, which are blamed for global warming.
"The expected emission reductions claimed in the plans are overstated, and the uncertainties related to these reductions are not disclosed," the report said.
Canada signed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, but soon after winning power in 2006 Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper walked away from it, saying that since the country's emissions had risen since the treaty was signed the cuts now required would hurt the economy.
Canada's emissions of greenhouse gases were 25.3 percent above the 1990 level in 2005, far above its Kyoto target of a 6 percent cut below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
The government then produced a less stringent plan that said Canada would reduce emissions by 50 percent from 2007 levels by 2050 and gave industries options on how they were going to make the reductions.
Environment Canada responded to Vaughan's report before its public release, saying it that while it agreed with several of the recommendations it may not be technically feasible nor cost effective to monitor actual greenhouse gas emissions they way the report suggests.
Vaughan said in the report he did not understand how the federal department could estimate expected emissions reductions in advance, but then not be able to measure the actual reductions after the fact.
The report was the result of a law pushed through Parliament by opposition parties angered by the Conservative's refusal to honor the Kyoto deal.
Environment Minister Jim Prentice said the government would look at any suggestions for improving the way it calculates emission reductions, but dismissed the law that required Vaughan's report as "partisan mischief" by the opposition.
In a separate report on Tuesday, Vaughan also criticized the government's fish management policies, saying Ottawa had failed to adequately administer or enforce the country's Fisheries Act.
In the 23 years since Ottawa adopted new rules to protect fish habitat, fisheries officials have still not fully implemented the policy and there was little information on whether it was meeting its long-term goals, the report said.
(Reporting Allan Dowd, editing by Rob Wilson)
Showing posts with label gashouse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gashouse. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Print Email Font Resize Visitors bureau launches carbon offset program
Green-minded visitors, whatever their political hue, can now fly or drive to Salt Lake City without worrying about their carbon footprints.
The Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau has started a carbon offset program on its Web site, www.visitsaltlake.com, for travelers to gauge the number of tons of carbon dioxide that will get belched into the atmosphere on their trips to and from Salt Lake City.
The site asks if the traveler wants to offset the CO2 emissions by purchasing tree seedlings that its partner, TreeUtah, will plant in the Salt Lake Valley. The month-old effort is in conjunction with Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon's One Million Trees for One Million People program aimed at planting a million trees by 2017.
Over its life, each $5 seedling purchased by a conventioneer or tourist should grow into a tree that scrubs a half-ton of carbon dioxide from the air. Trees take in CO2 through their leaves and convert the greenhouse gas to oxygen and water vapor.
“It's one of those things where oftentimes in our industry we are sort of led there by our clients,” said Scott Beck, president and CEO of the convention and visitors bureau.
In this case, the client was the Outdoor Retailer show staged twice a year in Salt Lake City by Nielsen Business Media and sponsored by the Outdoor Retailers Association. The show has offered a carbon-neutral travel program for several years.
“They started theirs quite a while ago. (Ours) was launched through discussions about how can we localize it here where their (Outdoor Retailer) convention is held,” Beck said.
The true test will be on whether anyone buys seedlings. Beck said the Universal Unitarian Church, which will stage its annual general assembly in Salt Lake City next month, is promoting the carbon offset program on its Web site. So is Meetings Professionals International. Its convention will be in Utah in July.
Convention and visitors bureaus in the West are increasingly embracing green programs as good business. In Portland, the Oregon Convention Center is participating in a program to offset natural gas consumption in its million-square-foot building by investing in projects in other parts of the state that reduce greenhouse emissions.
“We are auditing this year how much traveling our staff does, and we are going to try a pilot (carbon offset) program first to see how that would work to offset our emissions,” spokeswoman Veronique Meunier said.
The Washington State Convention and Trade Center provides convention clients compostable water bottles, drinking cups and coffee cups, as well as bamboo plates and birch or bamboo cutlery.
Denver's Visitor and Convention Bureau touts the region as one of the premier places in the nation for a green learning vacation. On the bureau's Web site are links to the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and the National Energy Renewal Laboratory in Golden.
“There is more of an emphasis on resources, so for the visitors that's their interest,” said Teresa Stephenson, spokeswoman for the Western Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus.
The quantities of carbon released to the atmosphere by tourists and conventioneers traveling to Utah can be staggering. Someone driving an SUV 1,600 miles to and from Salt Lake City will put a ton of CO2 into the air, according to the bureau's carbon footprint calculator. A round trip flight of 2,000 miles will emit a half-ton of the greenhouse gas per passenger.
To practice what it preaches, the bureau started the program with itself. Bureau officials estimated the staff will travel 1 million miles this year and emit 212 tons of carbon emissions. The bureau then bought 424 seedlings to offset its impact on the environment.
The Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau has started a carbon offset program on its Web site, www.visitsaltlake.com, for travelers to gauge the number of tons of carbon dioxide that will get belched into the atmosphere on their trips to and from Salt Lake City.
The site asks if the traveler wants to offset the CO2 emissions by purchasing tree seedlings that its partner, TreeUtah, will plant in the Salt Lake Valley. The month-old effort is in conjunction with Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon's One Million Trees for One Million People program aimed at planting a million trees by 2017.
Over its life, each $5 seedling purchased by a conventioneer or tourist should grow into a tree that scrubs a half-ton of carbon dioxide from the air. Trees take in CO2 through their leaves and convert the greenhouse gas to oxygen and water vapor.
“It's one of those things where oftentimes in our industry we are sort of led there by our clients,” said Scott Beck, president and CEO of the convention and visitors bureau.
In this case, the client was the Outdoor Retailer show staged twice a year in Salt Lake City by Nielsen Business Media and sponsored by the Outdoor Retailers Association. The show has offered a carbon-neutral travel program for several years.
“They started theirs quite a while ago. (Ours) was launched through discussions about how can we localize it here where their (Outdoor Retailer) convention is held,” Beck said.
The true test will be on whether anyone buys seedlings. Beck said the Universal Unitarian Church, which will stage its annual general assembly in Salt Lake City next month, is promoting the carbon offset program on its Web site. So is Meetings Professionals International. Its convention will be in Utah in July.
Convention and visitors bureaus in the West are increasingly embracing green programs as good business. In Portland, the Oregon Convention Center is participating in a program to offset natural gas consumption in its million-square-foot building by investing in projects in other parts of the state that reduce greenhouse emissions.
“We are auditing this year how much traveling our staff does, and we are going to try a pilot (carbon offset) program first to see how that would work to offset our emissions,” spokeswoman Veronique Meunier said.
The Washington State Convention and Trade Center provides convention clients compostable water bottles, drinking cups and coffee cups, as well as bamboo plates and birch or bamboo cutlery.
Denver's Visitor and Convention Bureau touts the region as one of the premier places in the nation for a green learning vacation. On the bureau's Web site are links to the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and the National Energy Renewal Laboratory in Golden.
“There is more of an emphasis on resources, so for the visitors that's their interest,” said Teresa Stephenson, spokeswoman for the Western Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus.
The quantities of carbon released to the atmosphere by tourists and conventioneers traveling to Utah can be staggering. Someone driving an SUV 1,600 miles to and from Salt Lake City will put a ton of CO2 into the air, according to the bureau's carbon footprint calculator. A round trip flight of 2,000 miles will emit a half-ton of the greenhouse gas per passenger.
To practice what it preaches, the bureau started the program with itself. Bureau officials estimated the staff will travel 1 million miles this year and emit 212 tons of carbon emissions. The bureau then bought 424 seedlings to offset its impact on the environment.
Monday, May 4, 2009
US supports reducing climate-warming gases
UNITED NATIONS – The Obama administration called hydrofluorocarbons widely used in refrigerators and air conditioners "a very significant" threat to climate change Monday, and expressed a preference for drastically reducing HFCs that are promoted under the U.N.'s ozone treaty rather than phasing them out entirely.
But a senior State Department official stopped short of endorsing a formal proposal last week by the two small island nations of Micronesia and Mauritius to alter the ozone treaty known as the Montreal Protocol by cutting HFCs by 90 percent by 2030.
The treaty promotes the use of HFCs, a class of powerful greenhouse gases, to replace ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that have now been virtually eliminated. But while HFCs do not harm the ozone layer, they are especially potent greenhouse gases — up to 10,000 times more so than carbon dioxide.
Micronesia and Mauritius wanted to include an HFCs phase-out in the ozone treaty discussions planned for November, calling it a dire matter of survival for their island inhabitants as sea levels rise.
The deadline for making such a proposal was this week.
0fficials at the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Defense Department had all backed a reduction of HFCs, but the idea ran into some resistance in the White House during a year when the administration is considering all its negotiating chips for the successor to the Kyoto climate treaty that expires in 2012.
The United States ran out of time "to complete the analysis needed to understand the potential impacts of such an approach or to consider how amending the Montreal Protocol to address HFCs would affect negotiations ... with respect to the post-2012 period," Daniel Reifsnyder, a deputy assistant secretary for environment and sustainable development, wrote in a letter to U.N. Ozone Secretariat Marco Gonzalez.
"We plan to continue actively studying and analyzing this issue," he wrote.
Proponents of the idea were disappointed.
"We cannot hesitate as a third of our future global warming emissions hang in the balance. We need action — and U.S. leadership — this year," said Alexander von Bismarck, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington that first pitched the idea two years ago.
Only about 2 percent of the globe's climate-warming gases are currently HFCs, but those are expected to grow to up to about a third of all greenhouse gases about two to four decades from now because of their promotion for a host of household goods that once used CFCs.
Some manufacturers, however, have already begun to replace HFCs with so-called natural refrigerants such as hydrocarbons, ammonia or carbon dioxide. Companies like Delaware-based DuPont Fluorochemicals, one of only five U.S. manufacturers of HFCs, say they support a global "phase-down" of HFCs to about one-fifth of their current use.
The U.S. market for HFCs is estimated at $1 billion, about a third to one-half what it is globally.
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry said Monday that "HFCs are significantly more powerful greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide, and the damage is only going to grow if we don't act in the short term."
He said in reaction to the administration's letter that President Barack Obama now "clearly recognizes the impact of HFCs, and I'm confident he'll work with Congress to find a way to address this growing challenge in the best and quickest way possible."
Last week, Kerry had joined with another leading Democrat, Senate Environment Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, in urging Obama to express strong support for using the ozone treaty to phase down HFCs by 85 percent by 2030.
In contrast to the proposed phase-down, Reifsnyder noted that a preliminary EPA analysis is based on "stepwise reductions" which would reduce HFCs by 85 by 2039. Legislation before the House already calls for U.S. reductions in HFCs.e
But a senior State Department official stopped short of endorsing a formal proposal last week by the two small island nations of Micronesia and Mauritius to alter the ozone treaty known as the Montreal Protocol by cutting HFCs by 90 percent by 2030.
The treaty promotes the use of HFCs, a class of powerful greenhouse gases, to replace ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that have now been virtually eliminated. But while HFCs do not harm the ozone layer, they are especially potent greenhouse gases — up to 10,000 times more so than carbon dioxide.
Micronesia and Mauritius wanted to include an HFCs phase-out in the ozone treaty discussions planned for November, calling it a dire matter of survival for their island inhabitants as sea levels rise.
The deadline for making such a proposal was this week.
0fficials at the State Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Defense Department had all backed a reduction of HFCs, but the idea ran into some resistance in the White House during a year when the administration is considering all its negotiating chips for the successor to the Kyoto climate treaty that expires in 2012.
The United States ran out of time "to complete the analysis needed to understand the potential impacts of such an approach or to consider how amending the Montreal Protocol to address HFCs would affect negotiations ... with respect to the post-2012 period," Daniel Reifsnyder, a deputy assistant secretary for environment and sustainable development, wrote in a letter to U.N. Ozone Secretariat Marco Gonzalez.
"We plan to continue actively studying and analyzing this issue," he wrote.
Proponents of the idea were disappointed.
"We cannot hesitate as a third of our future global warming emissions hang in the balance. We need action — and U.S. leadership — this year," said Alexander von Bismarck, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nonprofit watchdog group in Washington that first pitched the idea two years ago.
Only about 2 percent of the globe's climate-warming gases are currently HFCs, but those are expected to grow to up to about a third of all greenhouse gases about two to four decades from now because of their promotion for a host of household goods that once used CFCs.
Some manufacturers, however, have already begun to replace HFCs with so-called natural refrigerants such as hydrocarbons, ammonia or carbon dioxide. Companies like Delaware-based DuPont Fluorochemicals, one of only five U.S. manufacturers of HFCs, say they support a global "phase-down" of HFCs to about one-fifth of their current use.
The U.S. market for HFCs is estimated at $1 billion, about a third to one-half what it is globally.
Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry said Monday that "HFCs are significantly more powerful greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide, and the damage is only going to grow if we don't act in the short term."
He said in reaction to the administration's letter that President Barack Obama now "clearly recognizes the impact of HFCs, and I'm confident he'll work with Congress to find a way to address this growing challenge in the best and quickest way possible."
Last week, Kerry had joined with another leading Democrat, Senate Environment Chairwoman Barbara Boxer, in urging Obama to express strong support for using the ozone treaty to phase down HFCs by 85 percent by 2030.
In contrast to the proposed phase-down, Reifsnyder noted that a preliminary EPA analysis is based on "stepwise reductions" which would reduce HFCs by 85 by 2039. Legislation before the House already calls for U.S. reductions in HFCs.e
Friday, May 1, 2009
BLM, Forest Service sued over air pollution in NM
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Environmentalists claim in a lawsuit that federal agencies violated the law by approving plans that would expand oil and gas development in New Mexico's San Juan Basin — one of the nation's largest natural gas fields.
WildEarth Guardians, Dine (di-NEH') Citizens Against Ruining our Environment and Carson Forest Watch filed the lawsuit Wednesday in federal court in Albuquerque.
They say the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management decisions allowing for more drilling should be thrown out because they failed to properly account for the impact on air pollution.
BLM official Tony Herrell says the agency prepared an environmental impact statement and an air quality model. The Forest Service did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
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