Today is Earth Overshoot Day!

But what does that mean?

Earth overshoot day marks the day when we start living beyond our ecological means. We use more resources at a faster rate as what the Earth can regenerate in one year. So not a day to celebrate.

Source: Global Foorprint Network

The Global Foorprint Network is publishing that we would now require 1.4 planets to support our lifestyles, that means in less than 10 months we have used ecological services that take 12 months for the Earth to generate

And the overshoot day gets earlier every year!

This is definitely something to think about!

On the websites of Global Foorprint Network you find much more information about how this is calculated etc.

Of course the Earth Overshoot Day is something where all aspects of global actions are cncerned, still action ahs to be taken just in everyday life.

In CHAMP we will develop collection of calculators and guidelines on how to decrease the carbon footprint in travels, meetings and other activities that we hav ein projects. We want to encourage our cities and other stakeholders to think about this issue and to do what they are able to do.

More information on that will come later, here and on our website

Algae to the rescue

The California based company Aurora Biofuels have successfully cultivated a new strain of algae that absorbs twice as much CO2 and produces double the amount of biofuel as conventional strains. In a pilot facility in Melbourne (FL) this new algae strain has reached a daily biodiesel production of one gallon (3,79 liters) in a olymic pool sized pond.

According to Robert Walsh the CEO of Aurora:

"Algae have a built-in mechanism to be effective at low light and as it gets brighter during the day their uptake of carbon dioxide levels off,” said Mr. Walsh. “We’ve been able to go in and alter strains by natural mutation to cause the algae to deal with light across the whole spectrum. The algae continue to uptake CO2 through brighter light and are more productive."

The company plans to open a demonstration plant capable of producing daily 1,000 gallons of fuel in operation by the second quarter of 2010. A full-scale production facility is to follow in 2011.

Do you think the use of algae can contribute to the fight against climate change?

Source: greeninc

Report: Ensuring quality of life in Europe's cities and towns.

Ensuring quality of life in Europe's cities and towns – report developed jointly by several organizations is now available. Get to know more about the various perspectives on, and perceptions of, quality of life with a specific focus on cities and towns. The report stresses the challenges ahead to ensure quality of life in the long run for all social groups, and the crucial importance of sustainability and the environment as our life supporting system. The report sheds light on certain aspects of the current quality of life discussions in order to illustrate how different conceptions of quality of life influence the quality of life of others, and provides ideas for ways to meet the challenges that lie ahead. It aims to support individuals and politicians to discover a balanced concept for quality of life compatible with sustainable development. EEA Report No 5/2009

read more

Buy your own carbon emission permits.

In order to fight climate change, policy makers have developed carbon emission permits which control the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. There are a limited amount of permits and they must be bought by the polluters so they can keep on there production/pollution.

Sandbag is a non profit community organization who wants to influence this market by collecting money and buying carbon emission permits. This way there are less permits available which means the price of the emission permits will rise. If the price increases polluters will have to pay more for there emissions and will consider investing in cleaner technologies rather than buying emissions credits to cover their excess pollution.

Source: sandbag

The Volvo Experience

Volvo has launched a remarkable campaign in the Netherlands. People who purchase a Volvo C30 in the Netherlands can pick up there car in Göteborg (Sweden). The trip, visit to the Torslande car factory and Volvo museum are included in the car's price.

This is a nice initiative to promote Volvo and the Swedish culture, if it was not for the fact that the C30 is being assembled in Ghent (Belgium), located close to the Dutch border. These brand new cars have to travel over 1000 km north to reach Göteborg so there Dutch owners can fly to Sweden, pick them up and drive them through Denmark, Germany to finally reach the Netherlands.

This seems a bit of an odd strategy. You design and build a fuel efficient car, promote yourself as a green company then you ask your buyers to pick up the car on the other side of Europe.

picture: Google Maps

Will CCS be part of the solution?

Dealing with climate change can be done in different ways, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a possibility still in the development phase. The German pilot project shows us that CCS has a long way to go before becoming operational.

What is CCS and how can it help us in the struggle against climate change? The main idea is to capture and store CO2 so it does not reach the earth's atmosphere. This will be achieved by introducing a CCS technology near a large scale emitter of CO2, like a fossil fuel power plant. The CO2 is captured by scrubbing it from the air and can be stored underground.

The first pilot Carbon Capture and Storage power plant in Germany has not been successful so far:

"Vattenfall’s Schwarze Pumpe project in Spremberg, northern Germany, launched in a blaze of publicity last September, was a beacon of hope, the first scheme to link the three key stages of trapping, transporting and burying the greenhouse gases.

The Swedish company, however, surprised a recent conference when it admitted that the €70m (£60.3m) project was venting the CO2 straight into the atmosphere. “It was supposed to begin injecting by March or April of this year but we don’t have a permit. This is a result of the local public having questions about the safety of the project,” said Staffan Gortz, head of carbon capture and storage communication at Vattenfall. He said he did not expect to get a permit before next spring: “People are very, very sceptical.”

The spread of localised resistance is a force that some fear could sink Europe’s attempts to build 10 to 12 demonstration projects for carbon capture and storage (CCS) by 2015. The plan had been to transport up to 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the power plant each year and inject it into depleted gas reservoirs at a giant gasfield near the Polish border….

Stuart Haszeldine, a CCS expert at the University of Edinburgh, warned of the danger of opposition towards CCS snowballing into a “bandwagon of negativity” if too many early projects were rejected. “Once you’ve screwed up one or two of them, people are going to think ‘if they rejected this in Barendrecht, there must be a reason’,” he said."

The public opinion is very negative towards these new technologies. As time is running out we need to deal with this threat now and by opposing helpful measures we are only getting further away from our goal.

Sources:
Grist
The Guardian

What about the Water Footprint?

The Carbon Footprint finally seems to have taken off and now a new tool emerges the Water Footprint. Similar to the Carbon Footprint the Water Footprint can be used to calculate your water usage.

This tool can also be used in a more interesting way, manufacturers can label there products' footprint so consumers are aware how much water a certain item uses during it's manufacturing process. Did you know that for the production of one cup of fresh coffee you need 140 litres of water while the production of one kilogram of beef requires 16,000 litres of water.

An pioneer in this field is Raisio a Finnish food manufacturer who introduced a H2O label on its oat flakes.

According to the New York Times:

"Over the past couple of years, the idea of reporting carbon footprints for various products, as a way of allowing consumers to make informed choices about the items they buy, has gained wider acceptance. Now there are signs that other indicators — including water-use footprints — appear to be coming into the mix.

The label used by Raisio indicates the water that the plant uses for growth and production, as well as what’s discarded as waste water. The company said it was “the world’s first food company to add an H2O label to product packaging” and that it had developed its own calculation model because no internationally established formula and product label yet exists."

Would you keep in mind a carbon or water footprint when deciding which product you will purchase? Or do you think labeling is getting out of control?

Source: Worldchanging