IEA bids to keep alive, without the economic growth to damage climate targets

The International Energy Agency has today urged Governments to place four energy policy set to, which it claims "climate goals alive are without economic growth to damage".

To speak in London, IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said: "climate change has slipped frankly on the backburner of pushed political priorities. "But the problem is not way - on the contrary."

The IEA wants to watch, said a global temperature rise of no more than 2 ° C by 2020, but van der Hoeven, was the figure of 3.6 to 5.3 ° C.

Still, she stressed that "much more to be done, energy sector emissions without economic growth put at risk - a major concern for many Governments to combat".
Last year in the United States, a transition from coal to gas power generation helped retrieve emissions by 200 million tons (Mt) emissions to levels of mid-1990s. Meanwhile, China experienced the largest increase in CO2 emissions (300 mt), "but the rise was one of the lowest in a decade it has powered through the use of renewable energy and improvements in energy intensity", the IEA says.

The IEA wants Governments around the world four measures in policy:
Targeted measures for energy efficiency in buildings, industry and transport;Limitation of the construction and the use of the least efficient coal plants.Actions to halve releases into the atmosphere from the upstream oil and gas industry expected methane (a powerful greenhouse gas); Implementing a partial phase-out of fossil fuel consumption subsidies.

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How Schools Can Use Less Energy & Spend Less Money without the Sacrifice

Making schools energy efficient need not be an exercise in sacrifice. Schools can get the same or better services, as well as increase the health and comfort of students and staff, all while using less energy.

The first step is to get an energy assessment that can help identify and prioritize opportunities for substantial energy and operational savings. Once these opportunities are identified, a school can develop a customized plan to reduce energy use, replacement and operating costs, and their carbon footprint. Common energy-saving measures for schools include installing high-efficiency lighting and lighting controls; heating, cooling and ventilation equipment; and motors, controls and variable frequency drives.

Incentives from government and/or utility-based programs may be available to help pay for the cost of an energy audit and/or energy efficiency upgrades. These rebates and incentives help schools lower the capital investment required to implement energy-saving strategies and technologies, as well as provide an attractive return on investment and payback due to savings on maintenance and energy costs.

In New York City and Westchester County, for example, schools with a Con Edison electric or natural gas account may be eligible for the following incentives from Con Edison’s Commercial and Industrial Energy Efficiency Program:

Payment of up to 50 percent of costs, with a cap of $67,000, for a Level 3 energy auditRebates for high-efficiency electric and gas equipment including lighting fixtures and LED exit signs, packaged heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, motors, chillers, and water and steam boilersPerformance-based custom incentives for installing high-efficiency equipment or energy-saving solutions not eligible for equipment rebates
Check to see what funding may be available in your area.

By David Pospisil, Guest Blogger, Energy Efficiency Markets

David Pospisil is Program Manager of Con Edison’s Commercial & Industrial Energy Efficiency Program, New York, N.Y. You can join the discussion on LinkedIn (Con-Edison-Commercial-Industrial) and Facebook.

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Energy Efficiency Without Trying (and With)

John Lennon wrote that life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Apparently, the same is true of energy efficiency. Energy savings happen when we’re busy doing other things — Internet-based things specifically.

We use email, bank online and download music not to save energy, but to make life easier and more interesting. Energy efficiency is a happy byproduct.

What online pursuits serve up the most energy savings in day-to-day life?

The Global e-Sustainability Initiative, or GeSI, recently commissioned the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) and the Yankee Group to answer this question. The study, “Measuring the Energy Reduction Impact of Selected Broadband-Enabled Activities within Households.” looked at eight broadband-related activities in the US, UK, Spain, Italy, Germany and France: telecommuting, Internet news, online banking, e-commerce, music and video downloads or streaming, e-education, digital photography, and e-mail.

Telecommuting provides the greatest energy savings among the activities (83 to 86 percent). From an energy efficiency perspective, it’s better to log-on to the office than drive there. Reading the news online and participating in e-education offered the least energy savings. Consumers tend to undertake these activities to complement, not replace, the old-fashion way of doing things. They still read the newspaper and travel to classes, so offset the savings gained by the online activity.

As telecommuting expands, and more of our daily routine takes place online, these eight activities could cut energy use by about two percent or the equivalent of 500 million barrels of oil annually. Not bad, but still small compared with the savings offered by a series of ‘scale’ activities: smart grid, manufacturing and building upgrades, electric cars, combined heat and power.

So while it’s nice that we inadvertently save energy, say by banking online, it won’t revolutionize our energy picture. But another recent report by the ACEEE shows what might: Intelligent efficiency.

Think systems or cities instead of light bulbs or refrigerators. That’s intelligent efficiency. The US could reduce its energy use by as much as 22 percent by focusing more on system rather than gadget efficiency, says the report “A Defining Framework for Intelligent Efficiency.”

“This is not your father’s device-driven approach to energy efficiency,” said R. Neal Elliott, ACEEE associate director for research. “A large portion of our past efficiency gains came from improvements in individual products, appliances, and equipment, such as light bulbs, electric motors, or cars and trucks. And while device-level technology improvements will continue to play an important role, looking ahead we must take a systems-based approach to dramatically scale up energy efficiency to meet our future energy challenges. Through intelligent efficiency, utility systems, interconnected cities, transportation systems, and communications networks can become the new normal across the United States and will undergird national and regional economies that, even in the face of increasingly scarce resources, grow and thrive.”

ACEEE cites several examples of intelligent efficiency already in the works. Among them is Envision Charlotte, an attempt to reduce energy use in city buildings through a partnership of Duke Energy, Cisco, and Verizon. Interactive video monitors in the lobbies of downtown office buildings display the collective energy used, in near real time, by buildings in the core of the North Carolina city. People pass by the monitors and see the easily readable data, learn energy efficiency ideas, and hear about success stories. They become more conscious of energy through this repeated exposure and their behavior changes — that’s the theory. Duke Energy expects the project to reduce electricity usage 20 percent by 2016 in uptown Charlotte’s business community.

One important point here. None of this – our online household activities or intelligent efficiency – excludes a tried-and-true approach to save energy: utility sponsored programs. A third recent study by ACEEE (Yes, this is a productive organization.) finds that utilities increased energy efficiency budgets four fold in a decade, from $1.1 billion in 2000 to $4.6 billion in 2010. Often when utilities save energy rather than buy it, it turns out to be the cheapest approach.

“The concept of energy efficiency as a utility resource is really very simple,” said Marty Kushler, ACEEE senior fellow and co-author of the report, ‘Three Decades and Counting: A Historical Review and Current Assessment of Electric Utility Energy Efficiency Activity in the States.’ “To keep an electric system in balance, you can either add supply resources or reduce customer demand. Utilities, regulators, and policymakers have increasingly come to realize that it is far cheaper to reduce demand through energy efficiency programs than it is to construct, fuel, and operate additional electric generating plants.”

The report found that energy efficiency remains the lowest cost energy resource available to utilities by a wide margin. Saving electricity through efficiency is about one-third the cost of generating it from a power plant.

It’s not surprising, therefore, that states have set aggressive energy efficiency goals; no states are scaling back. Instead, “the momentum is toward growth across the map,” says the utility report.

Sometimes we save energy inadvertently, and sometimes by design. Whichever, it is clear that our digital economy, combined with our increasing understanding of the programs and behaviors that lead to energy savings, create a clear path for growth in energy efficiency.

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UN Envoy plan sustainability goals without effect in the draft

Delegates from 190 Nations the finishing touches on a draft text early in the morning, the addresses cuts according fossil subsidies, support for the use of renewable energy and measures for the protection of the oceans, to UN diplomats and Brazil Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota during the negotiations in Rio de Janeiro. Measures should world leaders on May 22.
The discussion more than a year's work of 20th anniversary which started the first Summit of the Earth, where the UN bring talks to a standstill, global warming and the diversity of plants and animals to protect Cap. The year's session dubbed Rio + 20 includes 50,000 government officials, executives and analysts and is designed to act on setting an agenda for policymakers in the coming decades. It will have no power as a contract.

"The text is a nice signal, but you could drive a truck through all loopholes", said Jake Schmidt, Director of international climate policy at the natural resources Defense Council, a New Yorker, before completed the text was environmental group. "All the tangible results have been weakened or removed."
The delegates of objective, the document set the final terms of the text with the title "The future we want" before 130 world leaders come June 20 that leaders must agree before it is final.

'Finish line'

"We have tried the concerns and suggestions made by participants, including last-minute negotiations on the outstanding issues, to take maximum", said Brazil Patriota in a statement.

The agreement is on the press the balance between countries such as 27 members of the European Union, to design, that want the "green economy" including renewable energy and energy efficiency measures and poorer nations whose priority is lifting people out of poverty, instead of pursuing expensive clean technologies.
"To ensure a transition to a green economy enormous costs for developing countries", said Quamrul Chowdhury, Ambassador from Bangladesh, negotiated for the funding of the G77 group of developing countries. "Those who bear the cost?" "If countries such as Bangladesh to invest in a green economy, means that we have programs to combat poverty reduce."

'Weak words'

WWF, an environmental group, said the draft agreement was full of "weak words" such as "promote" and "promote", rather than those such as demanding "Will" and "must". The Group protect the tally 514 weak words to 10 strong before the text was finalized.

Such as the commitment to the protection of the oceans were tinkering with minor wording delegates late into the night, said Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, the climate negotiator for Brazil, who coordinated the negotiations.
Participants spread over Rio in hotels and an airport-sized Convention Center in the West of the city discuss carbon not with fossil fuels as a guarantee of arsenic from the mining related emissions contaminate water supplies.

You are working on plans to map the "sustainable development" targets, although just what would be negotiated in the next few years leave these objectives for future sessions, is.
Environmental groups want to offer the UN of concrete steps, in particular about the shift away from oil and gas.

"Our energy system broken, said Pascoe Sabido, energy consultant for friends of the Earth."It is not for the billions without electricity work or clean cooking facilities. "If the UN on providing sustainable energy for all are serious, she must listen to the people, locks you not the poor in a new generation of dirty energy."
Copyright 2012 Bloomberg.


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