Environment Magazine

Environment Magazine is THE business tool to help you tackle climate change through emissions policy, carbon accounting, green strategy and environmental technologies.

On-line and in the printed edition, it keeps businesses abreast of environment news, Government policy, key technology and environmental shows, conferences and events.

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A Green Investment Bank?

Tuesday, 30 March 2010 03:39 By Chris Innis

The Government last week announced another big idea for the environment sector, a "Green Investment Bank" owned and funded by Government to promote clean industry and technology. Like all these ideas, first impressions are good. The Government is seen to be doing things, it is an easy headline to convey and understand and it is always applauded by those from the industry.

However, it is another bad idea and a waste of money. Why?

Weighing waste and taxes

Tuesday, 09 March 2010 10:44 By Chris Innis

Bristol City has announced that it is trailing a scheme where households will pay by weight for the removal of household rubbish. The scheme will allocate a waste level to each household, waste or rubbish will be weighed, and if the household weighs in above its allocation, it will pay more for the removal of its waste. On the face of it, it looks like a great idea. But is it?

One aspect of government in the last 30 years has been that policy changes too often have been made without a thorough examination of the consequences, intended and unintended.

Feed in tariffs and any other measure

Monday, 08 March 2010 01:24 By Chris Innis

As the moves to the low carbon economy continue, many of the ideas that we believed might get there are unwinding. In recent days we have had biofuels exposed as doing more harm than good and, ergo feed in tariffs. We have had windfarms, we will have tidal power and we all know about nuclear power. Some short comings have come as no surprise, biofuels in the tropics being one, others are more complex.

Take as example feed in tariffs. Very few technologies can generate power at the same cost as existing technologies.

WRAP announces waste reduction targets under Courtauld Commitment 2

Monday, 08 March 2010 02:52 By Chris Innis

WRAP, the industry sponsored association, that helps business reduce waste has announced its members' targets for waste reduction under an new agreement referrred to as the Courtauld Commitment 2. The new targets are a 10% reduction in carbon impact of grocery waste by 2013, a reduction in household waste of 4% by 2013 and a reduction in supply chain product and packaging waste of 5% by 2013. The new commitment was signed by 29 of the UK's largest retailers and suppliers. Others are expected to follow.

While any target is progress, but given the amount of waste that the food and grocery sector generates, are these targets enough?

Copenhagen has given us a greater understanding

Monday, 21 December 2009 21:40 By Chris Innis

Copenhagen was a disappointment but to those that have taken a practical view of climate change and climate politics it came as no surprise. In the hands of the UN, climate change politics has always been about aid, not climate. National positions have always been taken and targets set against the demands for compensation or if you like aid. The assumptions that put Kyoto in place, no longer apply, simply because the world has changed since Kyoto. The population and immigration have increased, pollution has increased and the balance of power has moved away from the developed world. The real threat to the environment is in the developing world, not the developed world because it is there that there is the pressure of populltion, corruption (yes a big intangible contributor) and lack of measurement and infrastruture to commit to clean energy projects. As the climate knows no boundaries, so any international agreement should show no lnational boundaries and this idea that one nation has a right to pollute and the other a greater right to pollute because of its past is a nonsense.

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