Sample presentations and publications.
The Climate Test: Aligning Energy Project Assessment with Climate Policy
The federal government is overhauling the National Energy Board (NEB), Canada’s pipeline regulator. As part of the NEB Modernization process, Environmental Defence commissioned a special report on how to design a “climate test”. The climate test would ensure that major energy projects—like tar sands pipelines—fit within Canada’s climate commitments and make economic sense in a low-carbon world.
The Changing Carbon Management Landscape
What is the future of carbon management? Eleven trends we expect will become more important in the coming years.
The Next Generation of Carbon Footprinting
A presentation to The Climate Registry’s Annual North American Climate Policy Forum in June 2010, focusing on the expanding boundaries of carbon footprinting. The presentation covered the following subjects:
• Current Situation and Trends – What is happening?
• Business Drivers – Why are companies doing it?
• How are they doing it?
• What are the challenges to widespread adoption?
Towards an ISO Standard for Carbon Footprint
What is the carbon footprint of a flight from New York to Los Angeles? Though a simple question, the answer is not clear. Consumer Reports recently looked at eleven leading carbon calculators and found answers differed by up to 350 %. Flights may have some unique carbon accounting challenges, but even for mainstream manufactured goods, it is not uncommon to see differences of 200 % or more between estimates of the carbon footprint for the same product.
How can consumers trust information from companies if it is not accurate and consistent? And what does it mean when a product claims to be “carbon neutral”? As green products increasingly go mainstream, credible data and information to support environmental claims are critical to support market growth and protect consumers.
Hence, there is an urgent need for internationally accepted practices to ensure a consistent and credible approach to quantifying the carbon footprint of products and services. The good news is that ISO has already developed a number of standards to support companies that want to measure and communicate the carbon footprint of their operations, products and services.
Integrating Sustainability into Capital Project Design
The article describes approaches used by Metro Vancouver to align their decision making with the multiple objectives of sustainable development – social responsibility, environmental excellence and financial performance – and how Metro Vancouver is considering environmental and social impacts as well as lifecycle costs in the design and selection of capital projects.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions: A Systems Approach
Engineers have an important role to fulfil as the focus of climate change discussions shifts from policy to implementation. We need to promote rigorous, proven tools and methods that use a systems perspective.
Cool Business Guide: Lower Costs, Higher Productivity and Climate Change Solutions
This 100-page guide was designed to help managers learn how they can respond to and profit from actions to address the climate change challenge. It uses a step-by-step approach to show how businesses can plan and implement their response to climate change and achieve lower costs, higher productivity and increased competitiveness.
The guide’s short, easy-to-read sections introduce readers to climate change; identify how climate change could affect businesses; give examples of how leading businesses are profiting from their response to climate change; provide practical, straightforward tools that can be used immediately to plan and implement a business response.
Key topics include:
- What is climate change?
- What are the major risks and opportunities for business?
- Success stories: how leading businesses are profiting from their response to climate change
- Tools and approaches to guide your response to climate change
- What to do next and where to find help and resources
The guide is also a valuable reference that describes many government and private sector resources and tools to help you obtain expertise, networking and financial assistance.
The Canadian Renewable Energy Guide (First Edition)
The Canadian Renewable Energy Guide illustrates how to take advantage of renewable energy technologies for everyday applications in homes, cottages, remote sites, transportation, industry, agriculture, and more. It is a comprehensive guide to using renewable energy to preserve the environment, to save money, and to ensure secure, reliable energy.
Duncan Noble 