Categories
Authors
Subscribe to blog
 |
Receive email notification when new entries are posted
|
 |
Blog Archive
Member login
|
|
| Contributing to the IPCC |
|
I have the great honor to be selected to serve on the IPCC as lead author of the fifth assessment report. It has always been my desire to contribute to addressing environmental problems. Climate Science is fascinating – the ways scientists have found to tease out evidence about past climate are amazing. It is scary to see how the various pieces of the puzzle – not all of them yet found or correctly placed – provide an increasingly complete and compelling picture that – in rich and unforeseen detail –confirms the basic physics laid out by the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius 110 years ago.
My task is to contribute to the volume on Climate Change Mitigation – how to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases as to limit climate change to a not-too-disruptiv...
|
|
|
Posted by Edgar Hertwich at Friday, July 30, 2010
|
|
| UN Resource Panel highlights food and fossil fuel as global problems |
|
It was my big day in Brussels: The deputy director of the United Nations Environment Programme, Angela Kropper, and the EU's Commissioner for the Environment, Janez Potocnik, were there for the launch of our report, The Environmental Impact of Production and Consumption: Priority Products and Materials. It was the request for the report that prompted me to work on the Carbon Footprint of Nations. The report was written by a working group of the Resource Panel and published by UNEP. The evening before we spent on our mobile phones, giving interviews to Reuters, the Guardian and other news outlets.
The story, as we framed it, was of a top-down assessment to identify the most important causes of environmental problems - the most important consumption categories, materials and industry sec...
|
|
|
Posted by Edgar Hertwich at Wednesday, June 30, 2010
|
|
| Carbon footprint calculation methods matter for policy |
|
Recently, the idea of monitoring the carbon footprint of a nation as one option for climate policy has found its way into the legislative process in the UK. A Private Members Bill has been put forward in the House of Lords – the Bill seeks to put in place a consumer emissions target (the current UK Climate Change Act which sets an 80% reduction target only addresses production, i.e. territorial, emissions). Lord Teverson who initiated the bill said: "The Defra report considered the position in the United Kingdom in 2004 and came to the conclusion-I was surprised by the accuracy with which the figures can be worked out by academics-that the consumption emissions of the United Kingdom economy were some 37 per cent higher than our production emissions."
Apart from the fact that this...
|
|
|
Posted by Tommy Wiedmann at Friday, April 09, 2010
|
|
| Top Environmental Policy Paper |
|
The Carbon Footprint of Nations has been recognized as the Top Environmental Policy Paper in 2009 by Environmental Science & Technology (announcement).
It is a big honor for us to win that award. ES&T is the most important journal in environmental science and environmental technology, publishing 1500 papers in 2009. We were apparently among 80 papers nominated for the award. Most likely, the popular appeal and policy relevance of our paper was an important factor in our favor.
We have previously been awarded by ES&T. In 2007, Glen Peters and his collaboration parters won the award for their analysis of China's growing CO2 emissions, identifying the growth of the urban population and investment in infrastructure as important causes.
In 2005, Edgar Hertwich was the runner-up to the Top En...
|
|
|
Posted by Edgar Hertwich at Thursday, March 11, 2010
|
|
| Carbon Footprint - Updated |
|
A recent update of our study on the carbon footprint of nations highlights the role of China, Russia, the USA and the EU.
Steven Davis and Ken Caldeira have just published an analysis of the carbon footprint of nations using the GTAP 7 database, allowing for a comparison of the years 2004 and 2001. The paper published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS for short) uses the same methods, research questions and data sources as our 2008 and 2009 papers. It highlights the role of the most important polluters and largest trade flows by emissions embodiment.
According to Davis and Caldeira, 23% of the global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning were connected to the production of goods ultimately consumed in a different country. The largest trade flo...
|
|
|
Posted by Edgar Hertwich at Thursday, March 11, 2010
|
|
| Sharing the atmosphere |
|
The Climate Conference in Copenhagen has ended as expected: with a political declaration instead of a legally binding agreement. Nonetheless, there seems to be wide-spread disappointment among the public. Commentators are busy portioning out blame for the failure of the negotiations, where the U.S., China, and the unwieldy UN procedures receive the largest shares. Those involved in the negotiations process see Copenhagen as a stepping stone rather than a finish line: they point out that the Copenhagen Accord keeps going the process towards a final agreement – scheduled for next winter’s meeting in Mexico City. Furthermore, as a first international document to trace developing country commitments, the Accord is necessary to get the US Senate to pass climate legislation. From my ...
|
|
|
Posted by Edgar Hertwich at Monday, December 28, 2009
|
|
| “Exported Emissions” at COP15 |
|
The Guardian and industry actors call for considering Carbon Embodied in Trade as part of a climate deal at Copenhagen.
On December 7, 2009, 56 newspapers from 20 countries published a joint editorial calling world leaders to use the 14 days of climate negotiations in Copenhagen in order to come to an effective and fair agreement to limit climate change.
At the time I am writing this, it is too early to see whether the call will be heeded. The editorial points correctly to what has emerged as the core element of the negotiations: the need to fairly distribute the responsibility for reducing emissions. A critical passage of the editorial, calls for recognizing the issue of emissions embodied in trade:
Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and p...
|
|
|
Posted by Edgar Hertwich at Monday, December 14, 2009
|
|
| The Environmental Footprint of Biofuels |
|
A new UN report emphasizes the importance of addressing land use, water, and biodiversity impacts of biofuels.
The jury is now in on biofuels: Current government mandates in the United States, Europe and other countries to blend biofuels into ordinary car fuels cause substantial environmental damage, do little to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and have a questionable contribution to energy security. A new UN report and a new book document many, sometimes fascinating facets of this intricate issue. There are many types of biomass, different options for growing this biomass, a few technologies for converting the biomass to various liquid fuels. It is not surprising that the environmental impacts depend on the particularities of the growing, harvesting, transporting, converting and use ...
|
|
|
Posted by Edgar Hertwich at Sunday, November 15, 2009
|
|
|
|
|
Page 1 of 2
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
