Volvo Group partners with WWF’s Climate Savers Program to reduce emissions.

Volvo Construction Equipment and Volvo Buses have joined the Volvo Group’s cooperation with WWF´s Climate Savers program, pledging to reduce CO2 emissions by 30 million tons from construction equipment, buses and trucks through 2014.

“By expanding the partnership with WWF to include our buses and construction equipment, the Volvo Group will demonstrate that it is serious about continuously raising our targets in terms of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions from our products, by complying with our vision for sustainable and carbon-neutral future transportation,” said Volvo’s CEO Olof Persson.

The Volvo Group became the world’s first auto manufacturer to join WWF Climate Savers in November 2010 with a commitment to reduce the lifetime CO2 emissions of its trucks sold from 2009 to 2014 by 13 million tons compared to 2008 models.

Thanks to improved fuel efficiency, the goal has now been increased to 30 million tons, and will include the company’s buses and construction equipment. Thirty million tons is the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted by Sweden in its entirety in seven months.

Volvo’s joint-venture company, SDLG, will also become the first leading Chinese construction equipment company to be a member of Climate Savers family.

“Emissions in the transport sector have a major impact on the climate and must be met with vigorous initiatives. It is therefore very encouraging that the Volvo Group now wants to broaden their cooperation with WWF by expanding to new business areas” said Håkan Wirtén, Secretary General of WWF Sweden.

Climate Savers and the Volvo Group

WWF’s Climate Savers program involves multinational companies in the battle to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. The companies that are included in Climate Savers pledge to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions pursuant to an agreement between the WWF and the company. Independent technical experts review the results, and agreed targets must be more ambitious than the company originally planned. Meanwhile, it Climate Savers are also required to play a leading role in its industry in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The agreement between Volvo and the WWF applies for AB Volvo and the Volvo Group’s brands, Volvo Construction Equipment, Volvo Buses, Volvo Trucks, Mack Trucks, Renault Trucks, UD Trucks and SDLG. SDLG manufactures construction equipment in China, and will be the leading Chinese company in handling climate change towards low carbon economy.

This article is originally published in WWF News.

Pacific fisheries need better technologies to ensure food security.

Climate change could benefit some Pacific fisheries, but tracking the success of adaptation needs effective monitoring, says Johann Bell.

Climate change could derail plans by Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs) to use fisheries and aquaculture to foster economic development and food security.

Bottom-dwelling coastal fish are expected to be hardest hit. Under continued high emissions of greenhouse gases, stocks of these fish are estimated to decrease by 20 per cent by 2050 due to global warming and ocean acidification, which affect the fish themselves as well as the coral reefs that support them.

But much uncertainty remains about the impacts of climate change. And contrary to assessments for some other parts of the world, the projections for fisheries and aquaculture in the Pacific are not all negative.

Fisheries boost

In particular, tuna stocks are expected to rise in the eastern Pacific, and increased rainfall is likely to improve the production of freshwater fisheries and pond aquaculture in the western Pacific.

Indeed, many communities could switch their fishing efforts to tuna that frequent coastal waters. By installing anchored fish aggregating devices (FADs) to temporarily hold tuna, small-scale fishers could access these valuable resources more easily.

Building networks of inshore FADs to increase coastal communities’ access to tuna is an example of a ‘win-win adaptation’: it will help supply the additional fish needed by growing populations in ways that are likely to be favoured by climate change.

Governments should strengthen investments in monitoring the success of such ‘win-win adaptations’. Effective monitoring will be key to ensuring that the most appropriate adaptations are applied at the right times and in the right places.

Technical solutions

There are technologies available to help managers monitor the effects of fishing and climate change on coastal fish stocks. For example, digital photography and image analysis can simplify sampling to determine species composition and the size of catches landed at fish markets, providing a baseline against which change can be measured.

In addition, governments routinely conduct household and income expenditure surveys which could be modified to assess the success of efforts to increase the proportion of tuna in the catch of coastal communities.

Simple methods for collecting remotely-sensed data, and ground-truthing this information, also have a role to play in separating the effects of climate change from other stressors on the coral reef habitats that support fish stocks.

Regular mapping of vegetation cover in water catchment areas will also be needed to monitor the success of revegetation programmes designed to prevent sediments and nutrients from degrading coral reefs fringing the coast.

Missing information

But existing monitoring tools are not in place for coastal fisheries in many PICTs. Even the basic information required for fisheries management, such as the relative abundance and sizes of fish landed at main markets, is often missing.

And although the technology underpinning some of the priority adaptations to climate change is mature, interventions will not work in all PICTs, or in all locations within a country. Additional surveys and planning will be needed to identify sites with the appropriate conditions.

For example, in the case of FADs, information is needed from local communities to identify areas frequented by tuna, and which parts of these areas are suitable for installing the devices.

Alongside these efforts, training programmes are needed to improve the technical skills of coastal communities that are adapting to climate change by increasing their tuna catches and engaging in pond aquaculture. The training should extend to improving post-harvest methods to increase the shelf life of fish caught and produced in remote areas.

Long-term effort

PICTs will need to invest in a variety of monitoring programmes to improve their understanding of industrial tuna fisheries. The returns could be significant, if not vital — industrial fisheries contribute 10–40 per cent of government revenue in four PICTs, and 10–20 per cent of gross domestic product in two PICTs. Tuna canneries also provide 12,000 jobs across the region.

There are key improvements that governments should make as a matter of priority. Observer programmes that currently monitor fishing practices on industrial tuna fleets need to be expanded to help provide the basic biological data needed to better understand the function of ecosystems that support tuna, and to determine whether these ecosystems are being affected by fishing and the changing climate.

Investing in more comprehensive observer programmes that improve the quantity and quality of data will also help to build and validate the biophysical models needed to assess the potential production of tuna across the Pacific.

And new technology is needed onboard purse-seine fishing vessels (boats that surround schools of tuna with large nets). For example, digital images would help record changes in the species composition and size of the tuna caught by different fleets, and from different areas of the Pacific Ocean.

Such data should preferably be processed by computers on board, and transmitted to the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency and Secretariat of the Pacific Community via the vessel monitoring system.

The necessary tools and capabilities for long-term monitoring programmes must be developed as soon as possible — the longer the data are available, the greater the power to detect change and provide the information needed for adaptive management.

This article is originally published in SciDev.Net.

Soraa LED can match the output of a 50-watt halogen.

LED lightbulbs promise a highly efficient, nontoxic, long-lasting alternative to today’s incandescent and halogen lightbulbs. Lighting entire rooms using LEDs has, however, proved both technically challenging and expensive.

Soraa, a startup based in Fremont, California, has developed a new type of LED that it says generates 10 times more light from the same quantity of active material used in other LEDs. The company’s first product is a 12-watt bulb that uses 75 percent less energy than a similarly illuminating 50-watt halogen bulb. Company officials would not disclose the cost of the bulb, but say it will pay for itself in less than one year through energy savings.

LEDs contain a semiconducting material that lights up when current passes through it, and are commonly used for low-light applications such as illuminating computer screens.

LEDs are usually made by growing a thin layer of gallium nitride on top of a sapphire, silicon carbide, or silicon substrate. Soraa takes a different approach. It uses gallium nitride for the substrate. This reduces a mismatch in the crystal structure between the two layers, which causes the performance of LEDs to diminish as current densities increase. By reducing such mismatches, or “dislocations,” by a factor of 1,000, Soraa officials say they can push 10 times more current through a given area of active layer material. The increase in current density results in a tenfold increase in LED brightness.

Gallium nitride is significantly more expensive than either sapphire or silicon-based materials, but the increased output more than makes up for the added cost, says Soraa CEO Eric Kim. “We have a simple, highly dense light source that reduces system design, making it the most cost-effective light, period,” Kim says.

Other 50-watt-equivalent LED lights typically combine multiple LEDs into a single bulb. The increased brightness of Soraa’s LEDs means it only has to use a single chip or diode.

Soraa’s LEDs could prove to be expensive, however. Colin Humphreys, director of research at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, says growing gallium nitride in bulk is difficult and time-consuming.

“I pay about $30 for a six-inch-diameter silicon wafer or a two-inch-diameter sapphire wafer, and about $500 for a one-inch-diameter gallium-nitride wafer,” he says. Humphreys founded CamGaN, a startup developing LEDs that use gallium nitride on a silicon substrate. The company was recently acquired by Plessey Semiconductors. “[Soraa] may well be able to produce gallium-nitride wafers more cheaply, but surely not at the same price as for silicon and sapphire.”

Kim says Soraa has a novel method of fabrication that significantly reduces the cost of gallium-nitride production. He adds that the cost of the substrate is only a “single digit percent” of the total cost of the company’s bulbs. Soraa has received more than $100 million in startup funding, and plans to ship its first bulbs for commercial applications by the end of this quarter.

This article is originally published in Technology Review.

The pilot plant makes biogas out of food waste from wholesale markets.

A pilot project in Germany is collecting food waste from wholesale fruit and vegetable markets and cafeterias to ferment and make methane, which will then be used to power vehicles that have been converted to run on natural gas.

The pilot plant has been developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Interfacial Engineering and Biotechnology and is located next to Stuttgart’s wholesale produce market for easy access to food waste. The plant will make methane from the waste by using microorganisms to break down the food in a two-stage digestion process over a few days.

Because the food waste being fermented on any given day can be more or less acidic depending on what was tossed out, the pH levels have to be constantly monitored in order for the microorganisms to best do their thing. The waste is held in several tanks that feature a management system that monitors many parameters, including pH level. The software then calculates how many liters of which waste should be mixed together to feed to the microorganisms.

The plant produces about two-thirds methane and one-third carbon dioxide from the process, but nothing goes unused: the filtrate water which contains nitrogen and phosphorous, and the carbon dioxide produced from the fermentation are both used to cultivate algae for another project, while the sludge left behind from the fermentation is sent to other institutes that are capable of making methane from it.

The pilot project has been funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and has partnerships with energy company Energie Baden-Württemberg, which is processing the biogas, and with Daimler, which is supplying natural gas-converted vehicles to run on the fuel.

This article is originally published in EcoGeek.

As the demand for natural gas increases and catches up with supply, Exxon should benefit from its early investments.

It has been a bleak couple of years for many investors in natural gas, as expected demand failed to materialize resulting in abundant supply. However, expectations for increases in demand creation and price recovery should directly benefit companies, like Exxon, that have investments in natural gas resources. Though traditionally recognized for its capabilities in petroleum exploration and drilling, over time Exxon has built up a significant capability and inventory within the natural gas sector.

Investors have been waiting a long time for the natural gas revolution and for Exxon’s natural gas play to begin bearing fruit. Although it has not had a positive impact on profits lately, Exxon’s natural gas assets may be poised to augment profits and share value as the energy source becomes more prominent and in greater demand.

Exxon & Natural Gas

It’s been over two years since Exxon Mobile Corporation (XOM) bought shale-gas company XTO Energy for $25 billion making it the world’s largest natural gas producer. Since the acquisition, shares of Exxon are up an extremely modest 17%, compared with a 38% and 37% gain for competitors ConocoPhillips (COP) and Chevron Corporation (CVX), respectively. Higher oil prices have helped cover up a disastrous few years for natural gas assets.

Natural gas prices plummeted 31% last year (while West Texas Intermediate crude oil rose 8%) as huge supplies drastically outpaced demand. In 2011, The United States Natural Gas Fund, LP (UNG), which aims to track the spot price of natural gas, fell a staggering 42%.

Pearce Hammond, Jr., CFA, and Co-Head of E&P Institutional Research for Simmons & Company International, believes short term pressures remain but the future is brightening for the natural gas industry. Simmons & Company’s 2012 forecast calls for a natural gas market that is still oversupplied, but not as severely as 2011. In fact, last week many traders were caught “offsides” as the U.S. energy department slashed its estimates of the amount of gas in the Marcellus shale formation by 269 trillion cubic feet, down to a third of what was previously estimated. This, combined with other downward revisions, led the price of natural gas to rally on reduced supply.

The overall supply and demand dynamics should continue to improve. Hammond believes organic natural gas demand is increasing, which will benefit natural gas exploration and production leaders like Exxon.

Natural Energy Transition

According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, global gas demand increased six-fold from 1965 to 2010. Natural gas, already a big component of total energy usage, is expected to grow markedly over the next ten years. A study released by Exxon in December 2011 forecasts that global energy demand will jump 30% by 2040, and that natural gas will overtake coal to become the number two overall fuel source by 2025.

Natural gas proponents argue that huge natural gas reserves and cost effectiveness are speeding up this transition. Crude oil trading at close to $100 per barrel is historically high, compared with natural gas priced near $2.33 per million BTU.

In addition to the pricing advantage, natural gas is preferential for environmental reasons. The higher the hydrogen content in fuel, the cleaner it is. Natural gas has relatively high hydrogen content; it burns about 50% cleaner than coal and roughly 30% cleaner than oil. Many experts, including energy magnate T. Boone Pickens, believe that natural gas is the transitional fuel to bridge the gap for green energy sources like wind, solar, and nuclear. In a previous post, I described the various options that green investors have and the issues that they face.

Demand Dynamics

When looking for companies that will benefit from the long-term prospects in natural gas, just look to big oil. The world’s largest oil producers are now counted among the dominant natural gas producers. After the XTO acquisition (which made Exxon a leader in the natural gas sector) shares of Exxon were pounded in the aftermath as investors correctly believed the price paid for XTO represented a significant premium to intrinsic value. Since the acquisition natural gas prices have tumbled. In its defense, Exxon cites the forecast for growth in natural gas usage, and believes their bet will pay off in the long run.

Since prices are low, developing nations like China—which desperately need cheap energy sources—are likely to import increasing amounts of cheap natural gas. China currently uses a very small percentage of global natural gas supply, yet demand is growing exponentially. Depressed prices create a huge opportunity to export large supplies of natural gas to ports around the world where alternative energy sources are comparatively more expensive. All natural gas producers including Exxon should benefit from increased demand from China.

Hammond believes that “it’s just a question of time before the U.S. is no longer a net importer, but is actually a net exporter, of natural gas” and that reduced global nuclear utilization (fallout from the Fukushima meltdown) and an aging domestic coal fleet could help natural gas take market share faster than anticipated.

Barriers to Change

Although the outlook for the sector is bright, significant obstacles remain. Powerful lobbying groups, including the coal industry, are actively fighting the conversion from dirty energy sources to natural gas. Proponents of natural gas believe the U.S. government should let old coals plants expire that are up for renewal.

But coal companies and other groups are actively lobbying the U.S. government against supporting natural gas. This is stalling federal support for natural gas fueling stations as well. More of these fueling stations would push truck and automobile operators to purchase vehicles that run on natural gas. Demand for natural gas would pick up dramatically if it were to become a core transportation fuel source.

Somewhat surprisingly, the environmental lobby is another threat. Obviously, clean renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and nuclear are much cleaner than natural gas and are preferred by many lobbying groups. Another potential threat, although unlikely, is a potential federal ban on hydraulic fracturing (or fracking)—a technology that is increasingly used to extract natural gas from complex rock formations—due to potential environmental issues that may result from its use.

Exxon’s Natural Gas Future

Natural Gas deposits can be difficult to discover and perhaps more difficult to estimate. The impact of smaller shale deposits than expected may result on some resistance to share price increases in the short term, since companies like Exxon are valued in part in relation to the amount of oil and gas they can expect to extract in the future. Even though the demand for natural gas has increased to over 300 billion cubic feet per day, experts like Pearce Hammond think the market will remain oversupplied in the near-term, and the current supply glut should keep prices extremely low.

Despite the environmental concerns, lobbying efforts, and current pressures on natural gas prices, there is still a consensus, even from many in the oil industry, that the natural gas revolution is inevitable. Cost efficiencies in concert with low prices are helping to foster demand as natural gas competes against other energy sources. At some point in the not so distant future, if demand catches up to supply, prices should rebound. When that happens, companies like Exxon, that have made considerable investment in Natural Gas should benefit significantly.

This article is originally published in Forbes.

Hershe’s zero-waste strategy has achieved tremendous success.

General Motors has nearly 80 landfill-free manufacturing facilities, Kraft has 36, and now the Hershey Company is building a portfolio of zero-waste-to-landfill sites.

As of this month, the company has four zero-waste facilities in Pennsylvania.

Three are chocolate plants: The site in Hazelton reached its zero-waste goal last week; the firm’s West Hershey factory became zero waste in 2011; and the Reese’s plant in Hershey achieved zero waste in 2010.

The Hershey’s Chocolate World Attraction also attained zero waste status in 2010. The site is a visitors’ center, rather than a plant, but has several features whose waste is diverted from landfills. There’s a restaurant, a store, and an area where visitors can order up and help make customized candy bars.

The zero-waste strategy at the three plants has prevented more than 1 million tons of material from going to landfills, company spokesman Jeff Beckman told me. Ninety percent of the waste from plant operations is recycled, he said. The rest is food waste, which is taken to nearby waste-to-energy incinerators to produce power.

The company has exceeded its first zero-waste goal, which was laid out in Hershey’s 2009 sustainability report: Achieve zero-waste-to-landfill at at least one manufacturing plant by 2012.

“We’re not stopping there,” Beckman said. The company, which has eight manufacturing facilities in the continental United States, has not publicly set its next target but is pursuing zero-waste goals at other sites, he added.

An expansion of the West Hershey plant is on track to start landfill-free operations later this year when construction is complete. Estimated at as much as $225 million, the project is being conducted as zero-waste construction, meaning all leftover material and debris generated during the course of building is diverted.

This article is originally published in GreenBiz.

Electronic waste grows as Africa does not have a proper recycling infrastructure.

Safe and sustainable handling of electronic waste, to both salvage reusable materials and dispose of dangerous ones, is a growing problem worldwide. The Independent recently reported that Britons alone throw away 17 million devices each year, a value of around £762 million, and much of it ends up in landfills.

However, even better intentioned disposal — particularly resale and donation — doesn’t necessarily result in a healthier resting place for electronics. According to a report released by the United Nations this week (PDF), 30% of used electronics imported into five African countries — Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, and Nigeria — are already broken, and thus should have been classified as e-waste in the first place.

Around 70% of all of imports into those countries are used electronics and, with domestic electronics included, produce nearly one million tons of e-waste each year in just those five countries.

If these countries had the proper infrastructure to recycle electronics sustainably and safely, this wouldn’t be such a big problem. (Beyond the basic ethical considerations of dumping electronic trash into Africa.) But most developed nations don’t even have efficient electronic recycling, much less in developing countries.

“The collection and recycling of e-waste is almost exclusively carried out by non-registered individuals widely referred to as ‘scavengers’” in the studied countries, says the report.

The impacts of such practices are multi-fold. There is economic loss, because rare metals that could be salvaged are often abandoned. There are environmental impacts, as toxic metals such as lead and cadmium leach into soil. And those chemicals in the environment could lead to multifold health problems, beyond the basic dangers of handling and disposing of electronic parts.

This article is originally published in Smart Planet.

Demolition waste and glass are turned into bricks at Tiostone Environmental in Hong Kong

April Lai is a woman with a mission. Every Thursday and Saturday, she spends 2.5 hours at a public trash collection point in the Wan Chai district of Hong Kong, home to some of the city’s most colorful nightlife, and scores of bars, clubs and restaurants.

Her goal: to collect glass. Wine bottles, beer bottles, jam jars, soy sauce bottles — she takes them all.

Most of the glass is brought in from a few dozen bars in Wan Chai and in Soho, another bar-studded neighborhood in this Asian financial hub. And sometimes Hong Kong residents come to her little spot among the skyscrapers to bring their offerings. When they do, Ms. Lai, a 50-something bundle of energy, beams. “When people show their support, it is so encouraging,” she said.

Each haul from the bars brings in between two and three tons of glass on average — not bad, given that the resources of Green Glass Green , the tiny nongovernmental organization managed by Ms. Lai, extend to just a few part-time drivers and volunteers.

The destination for all this glass is Tiostone Environmental , whose small factory on the outskirts of Hong Kong makes paving stones from trash.

Founded by three young entrepreneurs in 2005, Tiostone turned about 100,000 tons of waste from the construction industry and 4,000 tons of waste glass last year into paving stones for Hong Kong sidewalks.

In addition to Green Glass Green, several large corporations, a small number of housing developments, hospitals and the Hong Kong Airport Authority also contribute waste glass, said Dixon Chan, who spent several years on a Hong Kong Polytechnic University research project on the uses of construction waste and glass before setting up Tiostone.

In nearby Macao, the government, which last year started a glass-collection initiative, also has begun to ship glass to Tiostone.

It is a symbiotic relationship: Tiostone needs glass as an ingredient for its “eco-bricks.” And the company’s demand for used glass gives a raison d’être to the nascent glass collection efforts.

But it is a recent pairing, and it remains hampered by widespread public indifference and bureaucratic hurdles — illustrating how in many Asian countries, waste management is struggling to keep pace with the rapid rise in consumption, and the resulting garbage, that has accompanied economic growth. Recycling has been a feature of everyday life in Europe for decades, but in many developing economies — or even in developed economies like Hong Kong’s — it has yet to gain real momentum.

To be fair, Hong Kong has improved its overall recycling rate for things like paper, plastics and metals to about 50 percent in 2010 from 40 percent in 2004. But the recycling rate for glass is a paltry 3 percent, reflecting the fact that most businesses, households and politicians do not see glass as a potential resource.

By contrast, Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland recycle about 90 percent of their glass. The E.U. average was 67 percent in 2009, for a total of 11 million tons, or 25 billion glass bottles and jars collected that year, according to statistics compiled by FEVE , a glass container industry association in Europe. In the United States, about one-third of all glass containers are recycled.

To some extent, Hong Kong’s poor performance on glass recycling can be explained by the sheer cost of collecting the stuff — glass is heavy and expensive to transport. Ready access to raw materials from mainland China means it can be less expensive to make new glass than to convert old glass into new containers.

However, it also highlights a wider phenomenon: Even though environmental issues are advancing up political and public agendas across Asia, they are generally still not at the top of the list. Policy action is often reactive and patchy rather than visionary and decisive, and not backed by the sort of financing, business incentives and sustained public education campaigns that could make a real difference.

When environmental issues do make it onto the public radar, they generally relate to health concerns like air and water pollution, rather than efforts to reduce waste and preserve resources.

There are important exceptions: Japan, South Korea and Taiwan boast sophisticated recycling programs for diverse types of waste.

But Hong Kong, like many other Asian economies, has struggled to get a handle on its trash. Policy makers in the city have known for years that it will soon run out of landfill space.

Despite this, Hong Kong residents keep generating more garbage every year. The city’s seven million inhabitants produced 5.7 million tons of trash in 2004, according to government statistics . By 2010, the amount had swelled to 6.93 million tons.

On a per-capita basis, this means Hong Kong is far more wasteful than other developed societies.

The fact that Green Glass Green, which began its collections 18 months ago, receives some government financing shows that the Hong Kong Environmental Protection Department is starting to take glass recycling seriously, Ms. Lai said.

At the same time, however, glass collection efforts in the city remain on a small scale. Green Glass Green, for example, is able to stage only two collection rounds a week. Ms. Lai is struggling to obtain permission to place collection bins (the sort that are ubiquitous in Europe) in public locations that would allow people to drop off glass whenever they want to.

Many of the bars around Hong Kong remain indifferent to the concept of setting aside bottles for separate collection, she said, and a program backed by the government and the Hong Kong hotel association to collect glass from hotels, started in 2008, has had only lackluster uptake.

Tiostone, meanwhile, got the go-ahead to manufacture its bricks in 2010, when government specifications allowing recycled material to be used in paving stones took effect.

“But we could use a lot more glass — it’s one of the main things that’s holding us back,” Mr. Chan said. Moreover, the recycled-materials mix is restricted to floor paving stones and cannot be used for walls or slope reinforcements.

“Things are moving, but they are moving very, very slowly,” Mr. Chan said.

Ms. Lai, he said, is doing a great job. “But we need 1,000 Aprils,” he said, referring to her.

This article is originally published in NYTimes.

Intel is one of the world’s largest semiconductor chip maker organisation.

Global Initiatives is proud to announce that Intel has signed on to sponsor the upcoming B4E Global Summit, 21-23 May 2012 in Berlin, Germany.

The technology giant has been dedicated to environmental sustainability while transforming the digital economy. Recognising that ICT has a crucial role to play in mitigating environmental degradation, it focuses on improving energy efficiency, emission reductions and resource conservations throughout their operations and products.

Its implementation of green initiatives successfully reduced greenhouse emissions by approximately 45 per cent in 2010, which is equivalent to the annual electricity use of nearly 218,000 average American homes. In addition, more than 40 billion gallons of water – about the size of 60,000 Olympic swimming pools, was saved since its first water conservation investment in 1998.

Under strategic partnerships, Intel has also completed 9 solar electric installations in the US and Israel, which collectively generated more than 3.8 million kWh per year of clean solar energy. The US installations currently ranks among the 10 largest solar installations in its respective utility territory.

Intel will be sharing its sustainability expertise and best practise examples in a keynote presentation at B4E Global Summit. It will also join the working group committee for energy in shaping the agenda, proposed outcomes, speakers and participants. Through these involvement, Intel hopes to transform green innovations for the 21st century.

The B4E Global Summit is an exclusive opportunity for industry professionals to network, share thought leadership and discuss pressing issues. The event aims to shape suitable policies and deliver innovative solutions for a sustainable future. These recommendations will essentially be presented to key decision makers in Rio+20.

About Intel

Intel is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom and blogs.intel.com.

To learn more about Intel’s Green Initiatives, please proceed to their dedicated sustainability webpage.

Joining B4E Global Summit 2012

To be actively involved in sharing thought leadership and shaping policy recommendations for Rio+20, please click here.
To learn more about partnership opportunities, please contact Patrick Schulze at patrick.schulze@globalinitiatives.com.

A hairdresser uses electricity from a micro-hydro plant in Tuungu, Kibiri District, Meru South, Kenya.

Traditionally, the bell that tolls at midnight on New Year’s Eve rings out the old and rings in the new. But for billions of people, 2012 promises more of the same – another year without adequate access to energy.

Across the world, more than a billion people lack access to electricity, and 3 billion still rely on dung, wood and other biomass fuels for cooking and heating. This means nearly half the world’s population prepares food and heats their homes in a way that, according to the World Health Organisation, causes about 2 million premature deaths every year through indoor air pollution from inefficient biomass combustion – with women and girls disproportionately affected.

Unfortunately, under current projections, in 2030, the same number of people will face identical problems and will continue to be denied the social, economic and environmental benefits that access to clean, reliable and affordable energy services can bring.

But there is hope for a different future.

The United Nations has declared 2012 to be the International Year of Sustainable Energy For All and has recommended that the international community adopts a global development goal of universal energy access by 2030, bringing important focus and momentum to solving the energy access challenge.

There is growing recognition by the international community that developing countries could use climate investment to simultaneously address access to energy and climate change mitigation and adaptation objectives. Access to energy is now a prominent consideration in international climate discussions and in the design of climate-financing mechanisms, which could lend significant weight for discussions leading up to Rio+20.

Critical to solving both these challenges is the ability of business to scale up its role. Business has the technologies, solutions and equipment that can deliver clean, reliable and affordable energy even in the most demanding geographies. The challenge is building the supporting commercial models and expanding the environment that can encourage the deployment of these solutions.

To help companies and other key stakeholders understand how to maximize the contribution of business to access-to-energy solutions, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has launched the Access to Energy Initiative. Co-chaired by GDF SUEZ, Schneider Electric and my company, ERM, with 21 of WBCSD’s member companies actively engaged in its core group. Our initiative is focused on the key opportunity areas for business to expand energy access by scaling up innovative business models, enabling policy frameworks and financing mechanisms.

Companies involved in the initiative are some of the leading innovators in delivering access to energy. Eskom, for example, developed an electricity program that connected 1.5 million households in South Africa in a five-year period while reducing per-unit connection costs by 50%. GDF SUEZ has expanded electricity and other basic services to 30,000 households in Casablanca, Morocco, while also reducing connection costs. The company is now scaling this program, seeking to improve service delivery to 500,000 people.

Companies have also started innovative investment funds to provide capital and expertise to local entrepreneurs and small- and medium-sized enterprises tackling energy access issues. My company’s Low Carbon Enterprise Fund has supported around 10 enterprises in this way – and in common with our colleagues in other companies, we have found that building entrepreneurial capacity is every bit as important as providing finance.

In order for business and its solutions to be effective, we require assistance from government, lenders and other stakeholders to address barriers to entry that exist in places where the energy-hungry population is concentrated.

A recent WBCSD report, Business solutions to enable energy access for all, provides some excellent examples of how some of these barriers can be overcome by creating business models that specifically address the local challenges and enable the schemes to attract investment capital. To deliver a brighter outcome in 2030, these schemes will have to be massively scaled up – in effect we need a major transformation in some of the ways that energy is funded and delivered if we are to provide clean, reliable and affordable energy services to the majority of the world’s population by that time.

As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a recent New York Times Op-Ed: “With the right policy frameworks in place, the return on investment can be enormous: increased productivity and growth, job generation, including for grass-roots entrepreneurs, improved public health, enhanced energy security and a more stable climate.”

If the barriers to entry can be addressed through government policy, public-private partnerships and other mechanisms, business can duplicate, expand and scale up current solutions and innovative alternatives. This will help ensure that, when the bell tolls on 1 January 2030, the world is that much closer to achieving the goal of access to energy for all.

Robin Bidwell, Group President, ERM, a member company of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development

This article is originally published in Guardian Sustainable Business.