Smooth driving and the avoidance of sharp braking or acceleration can reduce fuel use by 5-10% and save drivers £200-250 a year, according to the CBI’s report, Tackling Climate Change closer to home (PDF).

Personal transport currently accounts for over a quarter of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, which are scheduled for a 34% reduction over the next decade. High profile legislation such as the imminent CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme is expected to drive carbon reduction progress, but with sectors such as the airline industry expected to get an easy ride with little or no emission reduction targets, other areas are likely to get hit harder, and improving driving technique is a simple way everyone can reduce emissions, says Neil Bentley of the CBI.

Learner drivers already have to demonstrate they can drive in a fuel-efficient manner, but this is not a pass or fail element. Making energy-efficient driving techniques a mandatory part of the test will make a significant contribution to changing the next generation of motorists’ behaviour.

The CBI report also calls for other measures to be introduced including setting limits for passenger car emissions and using revenues from highly emitting vehicles to subsidise low-carbon choices.

As well as benefiting individuals, the CBI will be hoping for an impact on business energy efficiency as well. Transport emissions are a large contributor of a lot of companies’ carbon footprints, and schooling drivers in more fuel efficient driving techniques will save money for business. This is particularly relevant for haulage companies, but is also applicable to any company with a car fleet or which reimburses employees for travelling costs.

Image of matchbox cars at the Singapore Toy Museum by Shiny Things @ Flickr

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Now UK householders are being offered the same opportunities as part of the government’s new domestic green loans scheme, which could see as much as £700 million a year lent to households to improve energy efficiency, announced by Department of Energy and Climate Change’s Ed Miliband MP.

The scheme represents great opportunities for homeowners. With the repayments for improvements structured in a Pay-As-You-Save manner (repayments set to be less than the projected savings), the loans will leave more money in the back pockets of the occupants of the UK’s 22 million homes. The loans will be tied to properties rather than individuals too, so that if a family move before payback on the loan, then the next occupants will be responsible for the repayments (as they also enjoy the benefits).

Improvements to be considered for loans include insulation and micro-renewables such as small wind turbines and ground source heat pumps. The deluge of money going into these areas will be a massive boon for companies providing such products, leading to strong local job creation for manufacturers and installers alike.

The government also stands to benefit as well. Strong achievements in domestic energy efficiency will help the UK towards its 34% carbon reduction target by 2020, and lessen the number of new power stations required to replace the country’s current stock of ageing coal power plants. The loan scheme will also stimulate the green sector at a time of recession, bolstering economic metrics such as unemployment rates.

Aside from the obvious plus points, the scheme will represent a substantial financial commitment from the government at a time when it is under pressure to start to reduce the huge national deficit.

There are worries for first-time buyers as well: properties which have received a green makeover will have additional overheads to meet (from the loan repayments), which will tempt mortgage companies to offer smaller mortgages to allow for the extra financial burden.

Image of Ed Miliband by theageofstupid @ Flickr

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Numerous companies have set up their stalls in this new emerging marketplace, but which is the best enterprise carbon accounting solution? Here are some of the current contenders, with client bases including most of the world’s most recognisable brands…

Enablon: The world’s largest sustainability software company, Enablon markets a sophisticated carbon accounting solution as part of their QEHS (Quality, Environment and Health and Safety) performance management software.

Enviance: Enviance’s cloud-hosted Environmental ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) platform has a strong focus on carbon accounting, as well as pre-empting the future need for effective water and waste management as well.

Hara: The young trendy upstart in the field, the Hara Environmental and Energy Management system promises ‘audit-grade’ enterprise carbon accounting, and includes modular support for supply chain analysis and product lifecycle emission monitoring.

IHS: The grand-daddy of the enterprise carbon accounting world, 50-year old IHS has included a carbon accounting module into its long-standing enterprise environmental and chemical management software.

Johnson Controls: The Energy and Emissions Management System by Johnson Controls promises web-based tools to help with enterprise carbon accounting obligations, including forecasting, tracking and data management.

PE International: The SoFi software provided by PE International offers carbon accountants the ability to audit carbon footprints, track goals and performance and identify cost-saving opportunities as well.

ProcessMAP: Long-standing contributor ProcessMAP has a software platform which tracks environmental performance parameters such as carbon emissions, as well as integrating reputation management alerts for key public sustainability ranking reports.

SAP: SAP Carbon Impact is a expansive enterprise carbon accounting tool which concentrates on tracking and analysing emissions effectively, with an emphasis on cost identification and source comparison.

There’s plenty of different capabilities on offer across these companies, with different companies likely to have their carbon accounting needs satisfied by different solutions. Bear in mind the goals that your company is trying to achieve both now and in the future from its carbon accounting, and how dedicated the companies above are to the development of their software offerings. Be sure to try the demos available from those who offer them, but don’t take too long to make a choice: substantial cost savings can be realised from carbon emission reductions, and proper carbon accounting is a sure-fire way of escalating an energy-efficiency agenda up the boardroom agenda.

Image by bettybluegreen @ Flickr

Have you used any of these or other carbon accounting packages? Why not share your experience in the comments below!

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One of the flagship issues of the environmental movement in the 20th century, whaling has long been condemned not just by green groups but most of the world’s governments as an unnecessary and cruel slaughter of one of the world’s most sentient lifeforms. Whaling nations such as Japan and Norway, as well as many small island nations, have long fought to protect what they see as a historic and traditional right to hunt whales for food.

One aspect of the ongoing fight between the anti-whaling nations and the whalers which has received little attention, however, is the carbon footprint of whaling. Like a red rag to a bull, though, some recent research has given even more cause for environmentalists to rally to the aid of cetaceans.

According to research from the University of Maine, the carbon footprint of whaling has been equivalent to removing 130,000 square kilometres of forests, or continuously driving 128,000 Humvees for the whole century.

The analysis is based on the fact that when whales die, their bodies sink to the ocean floor and their organic tissue is subsumed by the deep-ocean ecosystems, locking their carbon mass far away from the atmosphere. By contrast, commercial whaling ensures that the whales are brought into ecosystems more likely to convert the whales’ carbon content into atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Indeed, given that commercial whaling is also driven by the harvesting of whale oil, part of the whalers’ catch is burnt straight into the atmosphere.

The larger an animal is, the more efficient it is as a carbon store, meaning that whales are the most effective individual stores of carbon in the animal kingdom. In the same way that carbon credits are available for nations’ protection of forests, environmentalists will see the research as grounds for setting up similar carbon credits for the protection of whales.

On top of the direct carbon footprint of whale bodies, whaling also requires boat fuel for the whaling fleets. This was the basis of a previous conservative estimate of the carbon footprint of whaling released by a Norwegian pro-whaling lobby two years ago, which claimed that the carbon footprint of beef was eight times that of whale meat.

The difference comes from the agricultural infrastructure associated with livestock farming, as well as the methane that the bacteria in the cows’ digestive systems produce. The carbon footprint of the processes involved in hunting whale meat - producing 1.9kg of carbon dioxide per kg of whale meat - was also found to trump pork and lamb as well, although it was shown to be equivalent to conventional fishing.

The counter-argument at the time from Greenpeace was that all forms of meat were more carbon-intensive than vegetarian diets. However, this latest research has evened up the stakes somewhat, countering the pro-whaling greenwash of a low carbon footprint for whaling without isolating the general meat-eating population of the world.

Image of a whale fluke by t3rmin4t0r @ Flickr

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According to the Telegraph, Coventry City Council have decided to break ranks from the army of local government bodies in the Ostrich Block, with an ambitious plan to become the UK’s first city with centrally-controlled dimming street lighting.

Over the next 25 years, the entire city’s 28,000 street lights will be replaced with newer energy efficient lighting with full dimming capabilities, which will be hooked up to a central control centre to coordinate the level of lighting across the city.

As well as turning the lights down or off in the early hours when they are not needed, the lights could also be turned up on accident black spots or after football matches.

Coventry City Council aim to cut their energy costs and carbon emissions by 40% by the programme, but with the £250m project costing almost £9,000 per light, questions will be raised at whether the return on investment is justified, and whether the council could have opted for a cheaper scheme which could have yielded equal or better results.

Questions will also be raised about the timing of the project, shortly after it was announced that the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme was changed so that street lighting had escaped inclusion. That means that Coventry City Council will still have to pay the same amount for carbon credits under the UK’s forthcoming cap-and-trade scheme, since carbon reductions from the dimming street lighting will not be measured under the scheme.

With such a substantial level of funding being driven into the new street lights, it might have been ploughed into other initiatives which could have lightened the cash flow burden that the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme inflicts on businesses and local councils, as well as enabling them to perform better in the CRC league tables.

Other councils have begun trials and schemes involving street lighting, such as Devon Council’s car park lighting initiative, but Coventry City Council’s announcement is the first case of a city council investing so heavily in energy efficiency.

Image by dreamsjung @ Flickr

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Some countries have other ideas.

The Copenhagen agreement was a complicated beast, and although most of the headlines and disagreements revolved around carbon emission reduction targets, there were a range of other areas of discussion which were approached at the talks, including deforestation, technology transfer, bunker emissions, adaptation, financing and enforcement. Whilst the wording of the final agreement text had been stripped of almost any meaningful content at all by the last-minute pact between the USA, China, India, South Africa and Brazil, plenty of common ground had emerged between nations which has continued to be grown upon since despite the absence of a binding treaty.

One of the key relationships which emerged from the talks was that of the UK and India on the matter of climate change technology transfer. Connections had grown between the two nations with the proposal of Climate Innovation Centres for Technology Transfer, and the concept garnered widespread appreciation at Copenhagen.

Instead of taking an adversarial approach to technology transfer, both countries see greater collaboration as being beneficial to the economies of both countries. This is in stark contrast to China and the USA: the latter country has always being very protectionist regarding the competitive advantage represented by its advanced technologies, whilst the former country’s reputation with regards to IP protection has always been somewhat shady.

The latest fruit to be born from the new-found symbiosis on technology transfer is a joint research programme for cost-effective and efficient solar cells. The project aims to help the UK meet its 2020 carbon reduction commitments, and for India to deploy it’s planned 20 million solar lighting systems to habitations without access to the national grid.

Image of a solar panel by C-Ali @ Flickr

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The loan, issued as part of the Carbon Trust’s Big Business Refit, will allow Blue Chip to install energy efficient evaporative cooling technology at its five-acre datacentre site in Bedfordshire.

Blue Chip managing director Brian Meredith revealed that the new energy efficiency systems would save £100,000 per year, cutting indirect energy use on site by 60%. With an application turnover of only two weeks, he declared the loan to be a ‘no-brainer’.

The Big Business Refit launched in 2009, able to provide companies outside of the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (companies paying less than £500k for electricity annually) unsecured interest-free loans from between £3k to £500k for energy efficiency projects. The loan to Blue Chip is the first time that the maximum loan amount has been awarded since the threshold was raised from £200k from the previous Carbon Trust loan scheme launched after the world’s first Carbon Budget.

Whilst some projects such as that undertaken by Blue Chip have return on investment periods of 5 years or longer, energy efficient lighting technologies such as Somar Eluma intelligent warehouse lighting achieve payback in 12-24 months through superior savings and lower initial outlays. In conjunction with the Carbon Trust loans, this usually means positive cash flow from month one, with substantially reduce operating costs last long into the future.

Photo by Robert Scoble @ Flickr

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The concept of Low Carbon Economic Areas first emerged in the world’s first Carbon Budget in April 2009. The idea was for different areas of the country to specialise in different forms of low-carbon technology, with the specialisation driving both innovation and jobs in order to assist the UK’s drive towards being a key player in the emerging international market for green technology.

The first Low Carbon Economic Area was designated in the Carbon Budget to be the South West of England. Due to the peninsula having a huge amount of exposure to the Atlantic Ocean, the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset were declared to be the primary intended beneficiaries of wave power research and engineering.

A week later, the North East of England was designated as the country’s second Low Carbon Economic Area. This time the specialist technology was to be green cars, and the announcement was made to coincide with Nissan’s announcement of a new lithium battery factory in Sunderland to produce the energy storage technology for electric cars.

Fast forward six months, and the green glow bestowed upon both areas of the country has been washed away. The South West was ignored in the latest wave power research funding allocations, whilst the announcement of the latest Low Carbon Economic Area has led to direct competition for funding between it and the North East.

Low Carbon Car Crash

The Midlands has been declared the latest region to be afforded the status of Low Carbon Economic Area, but unlike the other areas it has been allocated a technology already covered by another area: cars. With the North East already supposedly specialising in low-carbon car manufacture, the Midlands - with its massive history and capability in car manufacture - has been given the same task, albeit with a different twist.

The Midlands is set to specialise in hydrogen car technology, with part of the investment in the area going towards the creation of a ‘hydrogen corridor’ along the M4 from south Wales to Swindon.

Given that electric cars are anticipated to go mainstream in the next 5 years, whilst hydrogen cars are not likely to be seen in appreciable numbers until 2030 or beyond, this puts the ball firmly in the North East’s court. However, with this the first strong commitment by the UK government to a long-term vision of a hydrogen economy, the Midlands will be fighting with the North East for every penny in the automotive innovation pot.

With the prospect of hydrogen car manufacturing jobs a long-distant and unreliable prospect, many in the Midlands will feel that they have drawn the short straw in the Low Carbon Economic Area lottery so far. Interpretations of the government simply running out of ideas for near-term low-carbon solutions are likely, as well as that the title of Low Carbon Economic Area is little more than Westminster greenwashing.

Falling off the Green Wave

Another Low Carbon Economic Area wondering about the benefits of the title is the South West. The latest round of government funding for wave power resulted in five of the six beneficiaries of the money being based outside of the South West. At the same time, Cornwall-based wave power firm Orecon announced it was closing up shop due to lack of funding - their venture capital backers had earlier withdrawn, and the Carbon Trust’s Marine Renewables Proving Fund was a match fund.

The South-West still has a commitment from government for the area to realise the economic benefits of wave power, but with most of the research being done in Scotland, the short-term benefits are negligible. Instead, the hope is to realise the benefits of medium and long-term manufacturing and maintenance, the latter of which is projected to make up 50% of the costs of wave power.

High Greenwash Economic Area

The latest developments in the Low Carbon Economic Area saga reveal the fundamental flaw with the government’s commitment to the concept. Funding and support is largely going to the leaders in the fields of low carbon technologies, wherever they may be based. The areas have been designated largely on pre-existing areas of expertise or manufacturing capacity, but there will still be plenty of investment available to businesses geographically outside of the region chosen for their speciality.

By declaring regions as Low Carbon Economic Areas, the government is simply playing politics by promising new investment to parts of the country struggling under the grip of the recession. Money will still flow for that speciality into other regions, creating bitterness for those who believe they have been promised more, whilst there is no incentive for businesses to actually relocate themselves into a relevant area. As a result, the strong interplay of related companies and services which could be achieved by geographic concentration is not being realised, whilst those promises made are already starting to ring more hollow.

Image of a car crash by Uberto @ Flickr

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In an amazing about-turn, Ofgem is now recommending a new part-nationalisation of the energy markets in order to prevent the massive energy shortages which the country now faces in the second half of this decade.

The liberalisation of the energy market in the UK has led to short-term supply contracts and volatile prices, making the significant investments needed in new nuclear and renewable power sources too risky for the power companies involved, who have been more willing to simply profit from existing sources.

However, a swathe of elderly coal and nuclear plants are due for decommissioning over the coming ten years, leaving the UK facing a gigantic shortfall in energy generating capacity. The construction of new power stations need to be begun imminently to avoid widespread energy shortages and rolling blackouts which would cripple British businesses and cause unrest in a country not used to being deprived of power.

Both the government and energy companies have dragged their heels over the construction of new power stations: the former over the unpopularity of such buildings with local communities, and the latter over uncertainty over returns on investment. The result is that the window of opportunity to avoid UK energy shortages is almost certainly closing, and Ofgem has finally held up its hands and acknowledged that the free market energy system which was supposed to guarantee investment and lower energy prices has failed to produce the expected results.

Instead, it is now advocating a more nationalised system whereby electricity and gas could be sold to consumers through a state-controlled body supplied by private energy companies who would be under minimum supply obligations as part of their contracts. This would ensure minimum rates of return on new power plant construction and make pricing less volatile.

However, energy prices would certainly increase in order to pay for the £200bn investment necessary to safeguard the UK’s power generating capacity. Ofgem and other energy analysts agree that a 20% rise by 2020 is the most likely scenario, although the Department of Energy and Climate Change prefer a more politically acceptable estimate of 8%.

Such price rises would add a huge burden onto consumers, with household bills averaging around £2000 a year. Businesses would face a substantial rise in operating costs as well, making investment in energy efficiency projects such as energy-saving warehouse lighting even more important and with an even greater return on investment too.

According to a recent survey carried out by the Carbon Trust, 49% of all UK businesses are concerned about the prospect of energy price hikes this year, making energy costs and how to control them one of the key hot topics for UK business in 2010

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The UK is entering a period where failing coal and gas power plants are combining with lethargic progress with wind and nuclear power to create the prospect of a massive energy shortage during this decade. As an island nation on the edge of the Atlantic, one resource which the UK has an almost endless supply of is wave and tidal power, but its has historically failed to invest effectively to realise the potential energy goldmine which surrounds it.

The introduction of the idea of Low Carbon Economic Areas was one of the key introductions of the UK government in order to stimulate growth and investment in green technologies. The concept was that different regions of the country would become specialists in different classes of low-carbon technology, ensuring that engineering and manufacturing jobs would be sensibly and evenly distributed around the country.

The first Low Carbon Economic Area was announced in the Carbon Budget as being the UK’s South West, and that it would be the focus for the nation’s investment into wave power technology. With massive amounts of coastline and strong exposure to Atlantic waves, the choice of the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset to be the centre of wave power innovation made perfect sense.

However, the government’s £22m funding for experimental wave power, administered by the Carbon Trust in the form of the Marine Renewables Proving Fund, was finally allocated yesterday to six companies. Only one successful applicant - Marine Current Turbines - was based in the South West (and only just!): all the others are based outside of the South-West, with four of the companies all based in Scotland.

The Marine Renewables Proving Fund had no geographic locational agenda attached to the selection process, despite the government’s commitment to regionalising the economic benefits of advances in wave power technology, therefore the Carbon Trust understandably chose recipients of the fund based on those companies they believed offered the most long-term potential, match-funding existing private financial commitments.

Voith Hydro, Pelamis Wave Power, Hammerfest Strøm UK and Aquamarine Energy are all either Scottish companies or have their UK operations based in Scotland, whilst Atlantis Resources Corporation is based in London. These companies’ system trials are also largely based in Scotland, making a mockery of the idea of other areas of the country specialising in different low-carbon technologies.

The funding news is particularly bitter for Cornwall-based wave power company Orecon. Flying the flag for the South West Low Carbon Economic Area, the company’s patented Multi-Resonant Chamber had already booked its place on Cornwall’s forthcoming Wave Hub - the centre-piece of the commitment of the government to the peninsula’s LCEA status. As well as the Cornwall wave hub, Orecon had also secured an order for three wave power devices for a Portugese shipyard prior to losing their financial backing.

However, immediately after the announcement of the Carbon Trust fund allocations, Orecon announced its closure due to lack of funds. The Carbon Trust funding was set up as a match fund, and Orecon’s venture capital funders withdrew earlier in 2009 as previous applications for government funds dragged their heels.

Whilst there is no reason why wave power projects might not be sensibly deployed in the South-West in the future, the lack of funding for wave power R&D jobs means that the short-term benefits of the Low Carbon Economic Area are at best intangible.

Once wave power solutions have proven themselves at trial level, however, the intention is to use Wave Hub to test small arrays of wave power devices, generating notable quantities of electricity in the process. Later deployments of larger scale arrays (expected from 2020 ) would be also likely to feature in the South West. With 50% of the costs of wave power projected to be maintaining installations, engineering and maintenance opportunities would finally arrive to back up the concept of a Low Carbon Economic Area, with the possibility of local manufacturing jobs as well. Existing marine support services would hopefully also see an increase in demand.

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