Tag Archive for: Carbon Emissions

Australia Will Join EU Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme

Australia recently announced that it will join the European Union’s carbon emissions trading scheme starting in mid-2015, a decision that most likely stemmed from the fact that they are one of the world’s worst greenhouse gas emitters per capita, mostly because of their use of coal to generate power. This decision will result in the biggest emissions trading market on the planet.

Australia’s major polluters can currently start buying European carbon permits to cover their liabilities from July 2015, but Europeans must wait to buy Australian permits until mid-2018.

An unpopular carbon tax was passed in Australia on July 1st of this year. It stated that almost 300 of its biggest polluters had to pay 23 Australian dollars, which is equal to 24 US dollars, for every metric ton of carbon dioxide, or an equivalent carbon gas, that they emit. Due to this tax, Australians feared losing their competitive edge from being charged more than other countries. However, the linking of the Australian and EU systems has calmed these concerns.

This bond will provide the possibility of reducing compliance costs to businesses with operations both in Europe and Australia, and will support the overall goal of lowering emissions and battling climate change through international collaboration.

Locus Joins Water Week by Offering Water Quality Management Software in the Cloud

While some scientists may still disagree as to whether or not greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities are largely responsible for global warming change, there is almost no dispute that water-related issues represent a challenge to mankind that is of no less importance than climate change.

Any emission of unwanted gases into the air can be almost instantly remediated by cutting off the source. However, any gases that have escaped cannot be recaptured to be remediated. In contrast, water that is contaminated frequently can be treated, but the process is generally lengthy, costly, and energy-intensive.

Amid the rapidly growing concerns regarding the degradation of water quality and water scarcity, the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) launched the CDP Water Disclosure, an initiative that seeks to increase reporting on water-related risks and opportunities, especially by companies operating in water-intensive sectors.  Governments and other voluntary reporting organizations such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) are expected to provide the industry with more water reporting frameworks in the near future that are similar to those that exist for carbon reporting. Furthermore, water-related activities such as pumping, purification, irrigation, energy production, hydro fracturing, etc. are some of the biggest, if not the biggest contributors to GHG emissions. It is estimated that over 25 percent of GHG emissions in California are attributable to water-related activities. The entire output of Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant is spent on moving water in California, and that’s a lot of Giga-Watt hours (GWh).

Of all the types of water-related data that companies need, one stands out in terms of its sheer quantity and complexity: the measurements pertaining to water quality. Existing regulations require monitoring and reporting of the contamination of surface water bodies and groundwater by various industrial processes, spills, and other releases.  Monitoring and reporting on such activities generate enormous quantities of data that until recently have rarely been used for anything other than to comply with regulatory reporting requirements.  However, entities such as the CDP Water Disclosure project and the GRI reporting initiative are starting to shift the focus from compliance–based monitoring and reporting of effluents, to the scarcity and quality of drinking water supplies and the impact of energy associated with water activities on carbon emissions.

As detection technology improves and human exposure to low-level contamination is linked to more diseases, more testing will be required for ever smaller and smaller concentration levels.  All of this means only more and more information that needs to be captured, stored, managed, and reported.

If one can find information on almost any topic within seconds on the web and for free, why should companies pay their consultants to mine their own water, carbon, and other environmental data to find information that the company already owns? A different approach is called for, one that relies on new web-based software that gives environmental professionals Google-like abilities to search complex water data sets and growing piles of seemingly unrelated water quality information. Finding water quality information on the fly should be no different and as easy as creating graphs showing financial performance of the stock over time using one of the popular financial websites, such as Yahoo Finance.

New Web 2.0 technologies provide a low cost means of making critical information available that organizations need to understand and manage their overall water or carbon footprint. Web-based Environmental Information Management systems offered through Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms (increasingly referred to these days as Cloud Computing), can provide the collaborative software tools businesses need to (1) organize and manage their water quality information from a single virtual location, (2) automate workflow processes, 3) gain ownership of their data, and (4) open up relevant datasets to the public via overlays on web-based GIS technologies such as Google maps.  An added benefit of these systems is that they allow for the possibility of accessing and linking not just water quality data, but all relevant environmental information, including compliance, greenhouse gases, sustainability and climate change data, and even health data and information, from a single entry point on the web.

Governmental agencies, companies, and other NGOs that have to manage water quality data would benefit from adopting the Cloud Computing model. Cloud computing-based software allows companies to manage and organize their water quality data on a larger and more comprehensive scale, including water and carbon footprint reporting, thus avoiding the need to buy additional software or store the same data in more than one location.  It is slowly making its way into companies that have to manage large quantities of water quality data and meet routine compliance requirements. The Cloud-based enterprise software model fits the way environmental information needs to be managed through the use of mashups (applications that integrate data or functionality from multiple sources or technologies), and has the potential to completely upend the way corporations manage their water, carbon and other environmental data.  And with proliferation of smart phones connected to the Web, one can collect and report data in real time directly from a smart phone. In summary, what industry needs is Cloud-based Environmental Enterprise Resource Planning, or EERP.

Water quality issues pose potential liabilities of billions of dollars to businesses worldwide.  Companies would find themselves able to make quicker, more confident decisions at less cost if they managed the data associated with these risks using robust web-based information management systems similar to existing ERP systems.  What industry needs is a portal-like software platform that allows Single Sign On (SSO) to multiple applications for managing, organizing, and visualizing air, water, soil, emissions, energy and sustainability data that can easily mash up.

EPA Delays Rules for Boilers to April 2012

The Environmental Protection Agency is delaying issuing final regulations aimed at cutting pollution from factory boilers until April 2012.

The delay is one in a serious of slowdowns in regulatory agenda to curb carbon dioxide emissions using the Clean Air Act and several rules aimed at reducing emissions from coal-burning power plants.

Although the federal court has ordered the EPA to implement the boiler standards, the agency has said it needed more time for public input. This latest delay would push the deadline for compliance to 2015 from 2014.

The EPA’s delay has frustrated environmental and public-health groups, which cite evidence that the rules would save lives and avert thousands of heart and asthma attacks.

Industry, on the other hand, has said that the rules would be extremely costly and difficult to implement.

Boilers are on-site generators that can provide energy for apartment buildings and shopping malls, as well as refineries and factories.

The EPA rules also would affect incinerators at industrial facilities. Small boilers located at universities, hotels, hospitals and other commercial buildings also might have to comply, though the EPA has sought to limit the impact on smaller emitters.

Hydraulic Fracturing Disclosure Becomes the Law in Texas

Texas is now the first state with a law requiring upstream oil companies to publicly disclose the chemicals they use when extracting oil and gas from dense shale formations.
The natural-gas industry, bowing to longtime pressure, will disclose more information about the chemicals it uses for hydraulic fracturing.

Several other state agencies have regulations forcing some disclosure, but none have made it law. Texas’ law will force oil and gas companies to post the chemicals and the amounts used beginning in July 2012.

The relatively new drilling method for natural gas extraction—known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking—carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting large amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressure to break up rock formations and release gas deposits. Anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of the water sent down the well during hydrofracking returns to the surface, carrying drilling chemicals, very high levels of salts and, at times, naturally occurring radioactive material. The issue has taken on national importance as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is used in more states to extract once out-of-reach hydrocarbons from impermeable shale formations.

Locus designed its Environmental Information Management (EIM) software specifically to meet the hydro fracturing industry’s needs for managing subsurface and water quality data.
Locus expanded our software offerings to manage and visualize water, waste, wastewater, drilling fluids, radionuclides and air emissions more effectively online. With Texas law in place and other states probably to follow soon, Locus felt that the market needed an off-the-shelf tool to manage hydrofracking data. Locus’s software provides any natural gas production site that has a need for data management and reporting—and almost all have—the necessary functionality to meet these requirements.

Environmental groups worry the chemicals could contaminate aquifers and water supplies while the industry says the process is safe. There is only one way to prove it and that is to disclose data. And that is what Texas law will require. The Texas law will require companies to make public the chemicals they use on every hydraulic fracturing job in the state. Texas law is significant because oil and gas drilling is a key industry in the state and the industry vocally supported the measure.

Earlier this year many big gas producers said they would begin voluntarily publicizing the chemicals online at FracFocus.org. The site states that groundwater protection is the “Priority Number One”. Oil and natural gas producers have stringent requirements for how wells must be completed to protect groundwater. The genesis of these requirements is water safety. Casing is the first line of defense used to protect freshwater aquifers. Locus’ EIM database stores groundwater chemistry information for over 400,000 groundwater monitoring wells that can be easily screened online for contaminants of concern and prove the case that hydrofracking is safe when used properly.

The hydrofracking industry has been in the spotlight in recent months and Locus wanted to provide this sector with a tool to prove its case to the public and regulators that natural gas production using hydrofracking can be done safely and transparently without jeopardizing drinking water supplies.