introduction
Greenwash is a new word [both noun and verb] derived
from the word ‘whitewash’. Those who greenwash pretend to
work for the environment, while doing no such thing. An example is major
companies who claim that they are offsetting their carbon emissions, but
are not in fact. The following linked .pdf file is a useful review, with
a helpful appendix.
the
pardoner’s return - the growing art of greenwash
“Catholic doctrine maintains that to avoid time in Purgatory
after you die, you need to expiate your sins via some sort of punishment
or task that is an external manifestation of your repentance. The idea
was that the clergy were doing more of such actions than their meager
sins demanded, so they effectively had a surplus of good deeds. Under
the logic of the emerging market, these could be sold as indulgences
to sinners who had money, but not necessarily the time or inclination
to repent for themselves. Chaucer’s The Pardoner's Tale immortalised
the sale of such indulgences by pardoners, which was essentially how
the church took a market-based approach to sinning as a means of income
generation. The Brazilian theologian Dr. Odair Pedroso Mateus pointed
out in 2001 that indulgences are "not about grace and gratefulness
but about exchanging goods, about buying and selling, about capitalism".
“Many centuries later, there are new indulgences on the market
in the form of carbon offsets. The modern-day Pardoners are companies
like Climate Care, the Carbon Neutral Company, Offset My Life and many
others. These selfstyled ‘eco-capitalists’ are building
up what they claim are ‘good climate deeds’ through projects
which supposedly reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions. These wholesale
emissions reductions can then be profitably sold back at retail prices
to modern-day sinners who have money, but not necessarily the time or
inclination to take responsibility for their emissions, and can afford
to buy the surplus ‘good deeds’ from the offset companies.”
—
“CO2 is absorbed by trees as part of the carbon cycle,
an incredibly complicated set of chemical, physical, geological, and
biological processes passing carbon through the earth's biosphere. The
carbon cycle can be divided into two parts: active and inert. Trees
are part of the active carbon cycle, a continual movement of carbon
among plants, organisms, water and the atmosphere. In contrast, reserves
of fossil fuels are inert: the carbon they contain is locked up and
does not come into contact with the active part of the carbon cycle
unless we burn them. Movement of carbon between the active cycle and
the inert pool is one-way - once carbon is released from the inert pool
by burning fossil fuels, it enters the active cycle. It will not return
to the inert pool unless it undergoes the same sort of millennia-long
geological process that transformed it into a fossil fuel in the first
place.
“This fact holds numerous implications for plantation offsets.
Firstly, there is scientific uncertainty surrounding the complicated
exchanges of the active part of the carbon cycle. There is a huge degree
of variation in estimates of how much CO2 trees are capable
of absorbing and for how long they store how much of it, so it is impossible
to tell with any degree of accuracy how many trees you would need to
plant in order to accurately ‘neutralise’ your emissions.
“One of the more recent examples of this scientific uncertainty
was a study published in Nature in January 2006, which showed that trees
and plants are responsible for emitting a lot more methane (another
of the greenhouse gases responsible for climate change) into the atmosphere
than had been previously thought, contributing something in the region
of 10 to 30 per cent of the annual total of methane entering the earth's
atmosphere. Dr. Richard Betts of the Hadley Centre, a climate monitoring
organisation, commented that while the research would not greatly influence
predictions of global average temperature, "it shows how complicated
it is to exactly quantify reforesting or deforesting in comparison with
current fossil fuel emissions".
“A study published in December 2006 by the Carnegie Institution
of Washington in Stanford, California concluded that most forests do
not have any overall impact on global temperature. "The idea that
you can go out and plant a tree and help reverse global warming is an
appealing, feel-good thing," said Ken Caldeira, a co-author of
the study, "to plant forests to mitigate climate change outside
of the tropics is a waste of time.”
—
“ The credibility of all offsets projects is further undermined
by the fact that today's emissions are not the equivalent of emissions
being ‘neutralised’ over a period of time. The reason why
the offset companies can argue for carbon neutrality is they are using
a carbon calculation method that is best termed ‘future value
accounting’. Carbon savings expected to be made in the future
are counted as savings made in the present. This is the same technique
used by Enron to inflate its profits with such disastrous consequences.
Each time someone offsets their emissions, the amount of CO2
emitted is automatically in the atmosphere, whereas the period of ‘neutralisation’
takes place over a much-longer time period, sometimes 100 years. If
that person keeps offsetting regularly, their rate of emissions increases
rises at a much faster rate than the rate at which their activities
are being ‘neutralised’ to the point at which, far from
being climate neutral, quite the opposite is true. The carbon in the
atmosphere increases at a far greater rate than it's supposed ‘neutralisation’.”
This document is a very interesting elementary analysis of the conmanship
behind so-called carbon offsetting. You will find the alleged carbon offsets
do no such thing in any serious sense (examine the graphs in the appendix).
Much of the claimed offset schemes are, in fact, primarily funded by other
agencies who also tend to take the vast majority of the financial burden
of the schemes. Even the legality of the supposed/alleged
rights purchased by the ‘offsets’ are often dubious,
unenforceable and unreliably maintainable for the number of decades claimed.
This greenwash, combined with the poor reasoning often exhibited in society,
is confusing many people. This document gives some examples of current
progress in developing economic alternatives to fossil fuels, alternatives
that eventually should reduce industrial/communal carbon footprints.
It is not enough to install ‘clean’ methods of fuel generation.
The manufacturing and installation costs need to be considered, as well
as the production costs.
Alternative power generation methods will only be truly viable when all
their costs are lower than those for generating power using fossil fuels.
USA
nuclear energy - 1.66¢ per kw
“The US nuclear industry generated its second-highest amount
of electricity ever last year, while also reaching record low production
costs, the Nuclear Energy Institute said Tuesday.
“ The industry group said 103 nuclear plants nationwide generated
787.6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity last year, just off the
788.5 billion kwh record set in 2004.
“At the same time, production costs sank to a record 1.66 cents
per kilowatt hour in 2006, despite three years of price increases for
uranium, the fuel used in nuclear generation.”
solar
panels costs going down, but not yet cheaper than traditional sources
“Energy from solar panels currently costs 22-40 cents per kilowatt-hour,
compared with the national average consumers now pay of 11 cents per
kilowatt-hour from traditional sources.”
[Note the difference between nuclear production costs
and consumer prices. There is also the delivery system to consider, a
factor which can be bypassed by photovoltaics.]
“Innovation and lower manufacturing and installation costs will
make solar-generated electricity competitive with other sources of power
supplied to the grid, experts said.
“Solar panels cost residential consumers about $7 to $10 per
watt and commercial buildings $5.50 to $7.50 per watt, compared with
over $100 per watt in the 1970s.”
[Note that as a generalisation, traditional generating
capacity is approximately $1000 per kw.]
This is a very misleading article but interesting never-the-less.
In Germany and Japan, solar generation is highly subsidised.
With solar power generation, there is a major storage
problem that just seems to evaporate when the sales pitch starts!
peak
shaving
“The "tipping point" will arrive when the capital
cost of solar power falls below $1 (51p) per watt, roughly the cost
of carbon power. We are not there yet. The best options today vary from
$3 to $4 per watt - down from $100 in the late 1970s.
Mr Sethi believes his product will cut the cost to 80 cents per watt
within five years, and 50 cents in a decade.”
—
“Needless to say, electricity utilities are watching the solar
revolution with horror. Companies in Japan and Germany have already
seen an erosion of profits because of an effect known "peak shaving".
In essence, the peak wattage of solar cells overlaps with hours of peak
demand and peak prices for electricity in the middle of the day, crunching
margins.”
related material
Solar
revolution: the economic transformation of the global energy industry
|
click on this link, 
